Let the Desert Sleep

Along the lip of a golden sand dune in the Qatari desert, a crowd of young men stood in a line, the sun painting their black shadows down the dune’s surface. The crowd was mainly locals in elegant robes, this stark wall of white broken occasionally by a Westerner expat in a t-shirt and shorts, skin glistening under a thick layer of acrid sunscreen. From the driver’s seat of a white Toyota Hilux, Benjamin Prowse watched the crowd shimmer and wobble in the scorching heat. 

Ben was an oil man from London, working at a firm based in Qatar. He cunningly brokered dodgy deals with locals on behalf of drilling companies, and he was damn good at it. But he found life dull in the tiny, alcohol-free Gulf state. That’s why he started dune bashing. He’d join the convoys of wealthy young men, children of royals and oil magnates, who’d pour onto the searing highway out of Doha and take their imported 4x4s into the dunes. From there the premise was simple. You tore the desert to shreds. The men would drive as wildly and as loudly as they could, using the dunes as ramps and jumps, drifting and sliding across the sand, sometimes losing control and rolling - sometimes even dying. It was a symphony of anarchy and masculinity fuelled by oil. The car in front of Ben roared and disappeared over the dune. He was up next - he revved his engine. 

Suddenly, the radio clicked on, and a voice crept out of the speakers. Ben didn’t recognise the language. It sounded ancient, and distant, and it quietly repeated a phrase. He turned off the air conditioning and listened closer to the haunting, guttural words, feeling an unexplainable sense of dread creeping up his spine.

The impatient honking of the cars waiting behind him snapped him back to reality. He quickly switched off the radio - it was probably nothing. Hopefully nothing.

Ben floored the accelerator and felt the motor rage. The car dropped suddenly as sand fell out from beneath spinning tires, before it launched forwards. He flew up over the ridge of the dune and landed, then wobbled. The tires struggled against the soft incline, but he steadied the beast, and slid skilfully along the surface of the dune, before settling back down with the sea of other cars in the hazy basin down the bottom, like a surfer coming to shore.

Ben parked and stepped out into the heat. The air was heavy with the smell of petrol. He opened the back door and took a bottle of chocolate milk from a cooler tucked away in the back. He had the milk imported from the UK each week. It tasted like home, and it was the next best thing to alcohol. 

He drank the entire bottle in one go, the milk dripping down his stubbled chin, before he tossed it into the sand. Then he lit a Camel cigarette, took a puff, and breathed a cancerous plume up into the desert sky. He finished it, dropped it, and stomped it into the sand with his shoe. 

Suddenly, Ben heard screams, and saw the crowd fleeing down the face of the dune. Car engines began to fire up as an enormous sandstorm came up over the dune like a red tsunami. Ben made a move for his car, but he was too slow. The sandstorm knocked him off his feet, into the ground, and the world went black.

Ben awoke at night. It was cold now, and the moon was unusually bright, casting a milky white glow across the dunes. Bits of car poked up from the sand like tombstones, but he couldn’t see any people. His head hurt, and he was tormented with thirst. In the distance, he saw movement.

Silhouetted in the moonlight was a line of camels being led across the peak of a dune. It looked like a Bedouin caravan, but Ben didn’t think the Bedouin tribes came here anymore. In any case, spotting them had probably saved his life. He tried to call out, but his mouth was sandy, and his voice was weak. He chased after them, through the metal graveyard, and up the dune, his legs sinking in the sand with each step. 

After much effort, he reached the back of the caravan and tried to get their attention, but they didn’t react. They all had their eyes shut, as if they were sleepwalking. The men, women, children, even the camels. The tribe trudged forward without a single eye open. Suddenly, they stopped all at once, and the camel at the back lowered itself to the ground. Ben hesitated, and then climbed aboard. 

The caravan rode for hours. Every cell in Ben’s brain was screaming out for water, but no one would respond when he asked for some. He didn’t even know where they were going. Why had he gone with them again? He wasn’t thinking straight.

Eventually, Ben saw moonlight shimmering on water in the distance. It was an oasis. The tribe stood around as Ben rushed to dismount his camel. They didn’t make a move for the water, but Ben rushed over, shoved his face in and gulped.

Oil.

He violently threw up chocolate milk and petroleum, over and over. 

When he’d recovered, he inspected the oasis. It was crystal clear. It looked exactly like water. He was so incredibly thirsty. He took another desperate sip, and again drank oil. He threw it up and began to cry. He’d been tricked.

An old Bedouin man now stood over him. He opened his sleepy eyes and whispered in an ancient tongue the same phrase Ben had heard on the radio. But now, somehow, he could understand it. 

‘Let the desert sleep.’

A warm breeze swept across the land, and in his last moments of life, Ben watched the tribe slowly disintegrate into soft desert sands on the wind.