Mirages of the Rub Al-Khali

By George P. Matheos

Ritchie savored the excitement he was sensing in the darkness of the room. Not the excitement of adrenaline induced fear but the excitement of adrenaline pumped anxiety and anticipation. This was the promised feast that Abdullah had turned into a nightmare, that night, almost two months before. He had been an unkind host this Bedu-made-in America Abdullah. He had grievously injured his trusting guests, had been cunning in his deception, and merciless in his cruelty. Grievously he had erred and grievously he was going to pay for his sin. He could no longer be trusted, this raving mad dog of an Arab. He had made a mistake of major proportions in betraying the friendship of an American.

In a series of murderous adventures, Glassier takes terrorism to the center of the Rub al-Khali Desert. To his surprise, this area also known as the Empty Quarter is not only full of oil, but also of love, hatred, sex, drugs, and above all-mirages-the ultimate level playing field.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 13, 2005
• ISBN: 9780595807451

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Copyright © 2005 by George Peter Matheos

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-36306-3 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-80745-1 (ebk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-36306-7 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-80745-3 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

To my most beautiful wife Victoria

Whose love has been my life

Contents

Preface

P R O L O G U E

C H A P T E R 1

C H A P T E R 2

C H A P T E R 3

C H A P T E R 5

C H A P T E R 8

C H A P T E R 9

C H A P T E R 10

C H A P T E R 11

C H A P T E R 12

C H A P T E R 13

C H A P T E R 14

C H A P T E R 15

C H A P T E R 16

C H A P T E R 17

C H A P T E R 18

C H A P T E R 19

C H A P T E R 20

C H A P T E R 21

C H A P T E R 22

C H A P T E R 23

C H A P T E R 24

C H A P T E R 25

C H A P T E R 26

C H A P T E R 27

C H A P T E R 28

C H A P T E R 29

C H A P T E R 30

C H A P T E R 31

C H A P T E R 32

Preface 

This book represents one expatriate’s very subjective interpretation of several impressions of Saudi Arabia. I have had the interesting opportunity to have spent approximately nineteen years over two different work assignments (1966—1967; 1980—1997) in Saudi Arabia. My first stay was in Jeddah, on the Red Sea, and my second stay was in Dhahran on the Persian Gulf in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, just north of the Rub al-Khali Desert. During the course of those nineteen years, I experienced feelings for Saudi Arabia and its people that were always strong whether in liking or disliking them. All sensations of Saudi Arabia whether of aromatic spices, incenses, foul smelling alleys, or thoughts about the King, or Islam, register powerfully in one’s brain. Of course, given their policies of religious intolerance, no tourism, anachronistic dress codes, etc., Saudi authorities don’t particularly give a damn on what sort of impression they’re making on an expatriate’s or anyone else’s brain. Conceivably, they don ‘t have to because they believe they have been an important nation in the past, they are an important nation today, and they’ll continue to be an important nation in the future.

Part of my Saudi Arabian landscape were the many US expatriates who lived and worked in Dhahran, the administrative capital of the world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco. Like in most other communities, in Dhahran too, misconceptions, likes and dislikes, misunderstandings, and prejudices of every kind were found in great abundance between Saudi Arabs and expatriates from all over the world living or working there. One of the frustrations that all expatriates have experienced while living in Saudi Arabia has been the difficulty in informally socializing with Saudi Arabs. All the easy familiarity that might exist in the work place simply stays there at the end of the day. It is a rare expatriate that has had the good fortune of being invited to a Saudi Arab house or has met the wife of a Saudi Arab colleague over a cup of coffee. Consequently, all sorts of imagined happenings, in an effort to comprehend a very strange environment, would be attributed to Saudi life by inquisitive expatriates.

In attempting to comprehend the practiced Islam, the King and His Government, the character of the people, the history, the climate, and above all the desert culture and the legend of the Bedouin soul, and so much more, Saudi Arabia becomes a humbling experience, requiring the spectacle of mirages for a glimpse of understanding. As an expatriate, just when you begin to think that you have finally zeroed in on an element of Saudi life, a contradiction pops up, making all previous understandings appear as flimsy as a mirage of the desert. The irony of this book is that it is full of mirages. It is above all, fiction. It becomes an unforgettable adventure only after having been read completely. The journey is in the trip throughout the seemingly unrelated chapters of which, each, as well as the whole book, become distinct mirages only at the end.

—George P. Matheos Tolo, Greece, May, 2005

P R O L O G U E  

Alhumdullilah wassalatu wassalam Alla saydinal Mohammed wallah Allahi adjmaeen. Saalam aleykaum warahmatu Allahi wabarakatu.

His Royal Highness, the King, this morning received in audience in his palace the outgoing Bangladeshi Ambassador to the Kingdom. The ambassador handed His RoyalHighness a note of high importance from the president ofBangladesh concerning matters o fhigh importance between the two states and Governments.

His Royal Highness exchanged cables of good wishes with the Emir of Kuwait as the latterflew over our territory on his way to his territory.

His Royal Highness received in his palace the BoardMembers of the Society of the Development of Nations. His Royal Highness congratulated the Board Members on their excellent work within the importantframework of the accomplishments of the Society of the Development ofNations. The Board Chairman then thankedhis RoyalHigh-ness for his generous and unwavering support received by the Board from his Royal Highness andsaidall members were honored to have this opportunity to briefHis Royal Highness of the Society ‘sprograms which are intendedfor theglory of our country.

Development takes many formssaid the Chairman. Our Society’sgreatest effort is not in the realm of economics but in the Holy Realm ofAllah and the need of all goodMoslems to reassert their beliefandsubmission of their will to the Will ofAllah.

HisHighnesstheEmirofKuwaittodaypraisedtheeffortsof the USNavyin the Gulf and thanked the outgoing admiral John Diego for his efforts to enhance the cooperation of the two great countries andfor his support ofpeace in the region. Admiral Diego was presented with a solid golden replica of the one meter long Sword of the Conquering Imam of Islam. Admiral Diego for his part said that his wife would be proud of this magnif Icentsword, smileda lot, andhummeda tunefrom Madame Butterfly.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Sayid Arabia, Sweet Saudi Arabia, the land of the powerful Sauds. SaoodyArabia, Saoudi Arabia. Not from the often mistaken French Arabie du Sud, but probably from the Sudd of the Sudan via the house of Saud the founding fathers of modern Saud Arabia from Sudan. The Sauds who probably came over from the Sudan, maybe as slaves, long ago. Big and opportunistic Nubians who took many wives and sired many, many sons until all of the Arabian desert blossomed full of Sauds. There are more Saudi princes and princesses in Saudi Arabia than there are princes and princesses in the rest of the world combined. Saudi Arabia, the land of princesses and princes, the house that Abdullaziz al-Saud built in the middle of the Rub al-Khali Desert. Saudi from Sudan, and Arabia from the Greek ‘arapis’, meaning black as in Arabian coffee or brown as in sunburned dun. Who but Allah [pbuh] could have ever foreseen that so much life, so much energy, would spring from an empty desert. For every prince there’s a princess, probably his cousine, and for each there is a shopping mall. Lucky is the man who is befriended by a Saudi prince, for great fortunes await him.

In the beginning there was the hot desert, only. The warm to the naked, lean bodies hospitable desert, made hot by the living sun of heaven, giving and sustaining life to unclothed mankind who otherwise might have shivered into extinction. It could have only been the Rub al-Khali Desert of Saudi Arabia, the original Paradise, from the Persian, peri-daiza, meaning to be privately walled in, for protection from evil forces, no doubt, the Peri-daiza of the Empty Quarter, the warm, delightful Eden, that in their innocent nakedness, the ancestors of our dreams found the warmth to multiply as the grains of sand. In those beginning days of no habit, of no inhibitions, when man and woman were naked, and without shame, the warmth of the Rub al-Khali desert was definitely without abbayas. It was with the advent of neurotic ceremonies celebrated in the altars of dazzling vestments and geometric forms that the peri-daiza became less friendly, until finally, natural warmth was replaced with cold personal shame, the most subtle and cruelest form of repression, which over the centuries was cultivated to perfection by the dark, not from the sun, abbaya. It was then that Eden became the hostile Rub al-Khali. Eden, where humankind first found delight and first saw the light. Eden of Edinn, the most fertile plain of Babylon, just east of Jeddah whose ideal setting ofluxuriant green gardens have now been replaced with unorthodox to the clime Henry Moore imitation massive sculptures, most expensive but easily forgotten; grotesque, foreign to Islam, geometric forms lining the Jeddah Red Sea Cornice, famous throughout Saudi Arabia. Eden of Paradise lost now vaguely referenced as somewhere just south or maybe east of modern Jeddah from where lies the vast open desert of the Rub al-Khali of Saudi Arabia sprinkled with tombs of our long lost first mother Eve. Contrary to rumors that the tomb ofEve lies in Bahrain, it is without doubt, that the tomb ofEve, the mother of all mothers, mother of us all, lies somewhere near magic Jeddah, the King’s favorite, or just south ofJeddah, preserved in a massive grave, waiting for the second coming, in Felix Arabia. Peaceful, Felix, Saooody, Arabia as it was before the fall of Adam and Eve, and the discovery of oil, and the advent of the house of Saud in the Twentieth Century. All that tranquility in Felix Arabia rudely punctured by Socal from Southern California.

Saoody Arabia with its Empty Quarter, and its about to be emptied Rub al-Khali of bare inhospitable, hot, dry, desolate, seemingly infertile desert land. SaudiArabia, daral-Islam, stripped ofits long and prolif Ic history ofAden, Adam and Eve, Moses and Ibrahim, Mohammed, [pbut], Mecca, or Makka to some, and Medinah, Scheharazade and the One Thousand and One Nights, Aladin and Sallahudin and their magic almost Moslem conquest of all ofEurope, daral-harb from Konstantinoupolis in the east, to the Iberian Peninsula in the west, from King Abdullaziz al-Saud to King Fahad and King Abdullah of the House of Saud, most powerful of men, Saudi Arabia has never been on the sidelines of history. Those that would ignore Saudi Arabia and the House of the Sauds will all too soon dearly pay for their slight with sclerotic economies.

The need for the warmth of the Rub al-Khali desert is genetically imprinted into the Saudi soul. No other peoples of this world live the original desert peri-daiza as the Bedu do. Not by chance that Jesus and all the saints that have followed have at some point in their life roamed the desert like the Bedu. When the world becomes a desert again, perhaps with the Lord’s second coming, or some other such unnatural event, it will undoubtedly be ruled by the Bedu of Saudi Arabia, again. Lots of people from all over the face of the Earth will then travel to live and work in the warm hospitable desert paradise of Saudi Arabia. The Bedu love their hot clime for it keeps them naturally warm and free of need. Who would want to leave the warm bed of the Rub al-Khali for the cold fjords of Europe and the rest? Undoubtedly, it was the unfamiliar cold of the north Arctic that kept the Moslem hoards to the warm shores of familiar Mediterranean lands and away from the cold Northern Europeans who were thus left alone to protest their petty religious wars. They like the heat, these Moslems, and straddle the hot lands of the world. Hot are their days and passionate their belief that there is but One God, and Mohammed [peace be upon him] is His Prophet. No petty wars or arguments about the truthfulness of their faith. There is but one Allah and Mohammed [pbuh] is His one true Prophet! For centuries they’ve tried hard to convince their unheeding European neighbors of the truthfulness of their way, first with the sword and now with their petrodollars. Not one ounce of Saudi blood was spilled in Bosnia but there is a Moslem land in Europe where none was there before. How could the House of Saud with its Most Generous Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques diminish when even the saintly Pope daily wakes to the prayer call of the most heavenly Mosque in Europe?

The advent of the Mafia as a secret society, in sometimes Christian other times Moslem Sicily, was the quiet desperation of Sicilians to keep Sicily as the cosa nos-tra of conquered Christians until they would get help from the Byzantines to chase the persevering Moslems out of their homes, in their ever present periodic battles with the obsessed conquering heroes ofNorth Africa and the Rub al-Khali desert. Secrecy and vows of silence were the only means of coping with a violent, hated, non-Christian conqueror. To the conquering heroes of the Rub al-Khali, though, the unobservant infidel Christians ofHolyWisdom had to see the error of their ways or die on the sword of truth. To this day persists the Moslem need for European and other world conquests. It is a scream for attention, from a now insecure admirer for the recognition of worthiness, equality and approval all aimed at an inattentive idol West. It is a Turkish need for European, Western, or world recognition and acceptance as a worthy equal, never mind that the calendar is dated 1417, or so. It manifests itself today in the huge Arab new revisit pilgrimage presence of Saudi hajis in the now preferred European ports of call. With their bulging purses of petrodollars the Sauds of Saudi Arabia and their brethren from Iraq, Iran, the Lebanon et al, flood the gates of London, Switzerland, and Bonn, apres deluging France, Britain, and Scandinavia, all of whom, in a sad unending ritual, readily exchange arms and blond blue eyed wonders of the fjords for ever more petrol and petrodollars. More than ever, and with the help of their American mercenary friends, the Saudi Moslems are on the march again and the world is their playground. Only fools resist the onslaught of their petrodollar power. The kind and happy Bedouins are conquerors once more knowing that it all comes from Almighty Allah to whom they are lovingly grateful five times per day.

For how could such desolate people from one of the most hostile environments on earth, throughout history, exert such tremendous impact on the world but for the Grace of God. Say what you want, but Bosnia’s proof that the Sauds and their Saudi Arabia are on Allah’s and America’s list of favorites. They are the beloved ofAllah and America and no harm can come to them. And like Iraq, so is Bosnia an example of the Saudi wrath that will be felt by traitors to their tenders of love.

But as in years gone by, there is a worm in this rosebud of the Rub al-Khali and its name is Shia. Split from the majority Su’uni Moslem followers of Moawaya bin Abi Sufian, they chose to follow the path to Heaven of the Prophet’s (pbuh) son-in-law, Ali. Ali’s son, Hussein, one of the founders of the Shia sect, seven hundred years before the conquest of Konstantinoupolis, outnumbered, chose to be slaughtered by his traitorous Su’uni enemies rather than give in to their false proposals of peace and reconciliation. In his martyrdom, the Shia were to forever hate the Su’uni because Hussein was good, pure, beloved by all, and honorable, while the Su’uni that slaughtered him showed the debased nature of their character in the miserable manner of their betrayal. Since that dastardly act, self-flagellation is annually celebrated in pained remembrance, and in sympathy, of the beautiful and pure soul Hussein by all the Shias on both shores of the Persian Gulf. No one will ever forget the betrayals that have been suffered at the hands of traitors. It is the temperance of the Su’uni that tolerates the Shia transgressions, though everyone knows that the Shia of the Eastern Province are reproducing much faster than the Su’uni.

Secretly in their heart ofhearts the Shias insist and persist. They know that all things great in this Judeo-Christian-Moslem world have flowed from their homeland loins of ancient Mesopotamia, the land between the two mother rivers of all rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. Four thousand years BC, the ancestors of these Shias wrote about the first covenant with a single God, and of ‘Noah’s Flood’, and ‘the story of Adam and Eve’, and ofIbrahim who became Abraham to those wondering tribes of the Euphrates River, the Euphraes, or Hephraes, or Hebrews to the rest. In the genes of the Shias ofBasra, Qatif, and Isfahan resides the DNA of Gilgamesh, and Nebuchadrezzar II, destroyer of Jerusalem even then; of the great city of Uruk that became Iraq and of the waters of Babylon; of the wise Hammurabi whose laws preceded those of Moses by at least five hundred years. Thousands of years of perseverance, of ebbs and flows of the ancient rivers in their blood-streams have genetically convinced the Shia that in time all would be theirs again. What chance do the Sauds and their American friends have in this persistence of ten thousand years?

Allahu al-AkbaA God is Great!

It was a tale repeated to the people of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia by their fathers and grandfathers, if not for generations, definitely for decades. It said that the people of the Gulf were and still are enslaved by marauding Bedouin tribes, foreigners, who must be sent back into the desert that is their home. Cut off the three roads that connect the Eastern Province to Riyadh and ...all will be ours again. Once the land of the Royaume de Persie, and now ruled by Su’uni, the land of the Shias of Qatif and al-Hassa, freed from Riyadh, the Eastern Province would become the richest and one of the most powerful countries in the world. More important, the petro-arteries nurturing the Sauds will be forever severed. All these fantasies were reminded to school aged children susceptible to glory days of a yore more plausible then the done deed. But nowadays, as loyal as they were to the thought, it was hard to swallow, even for the young. The coming of Socal and the six other western oil companies that together in Saudi Arabia, before Saudi Oil Company (Soilco) were to become Aramco and be known as the Seven Sisters to Wall Street, had changed all the Shia dreams of recaptured wealth and glories. For Aramco meant ‘Arabian American Oil Co.’ and for the first fifty years at least, the ‘American’ portion was by far the most relevant. It was the ‘American’ part of the equation that literally made Saudi Arabia by defining national boundaries where non existed before. It was a typical land grabbing American magnif Icent effort which created Saudi Arabia, and any Saudi who was unawares or ungrateful to the deeds of the Americans, was left in poverty. The House of Saud, who wisely were forever grateful to the American efforts, were immensely rewarded for their fierce loyalty with more treasures than any thief of Baghdad could ever dream. Those who preferred to trade in goats and camels, instead oflight crude with Americans, were left slaves to their unattainable fantasies of envy, vengeance, and revenge.

For by the Grace of God, these American Saudis barely tapped the sand and found the greatest treasure the world has ever known. Everywhere they tapped, ever so lightly, torrents of light crude flowed endlessly to the surface. Light crude so fine that you could fry eggs in it and eat them. Even after a half a century of pumping out crude, more oil has been discovered in Saudi Arabia than has been removed from its vast underground oceans of crude. It has been the great misfortune of the Shias that the deals the Seven Sisters made for the light crude of the Eastern Province were made with the opportunistic Sauds and not the shy Shias. And once more the people of Gilgamesh, the greatest people that ever blessed the face of the earth, were forgotten by the pride in their wondrous beginnings and left at the mercy of uncivilized desert Bedouin.

And in the silence of this pained injustice, All will be ours again, would surface again and again in the thoughts and in the common conscience of all the Shias of the Eastern Province and the Gulf.

Could all that just cause and glory be ever so again?

Saudi Arabia.

Saoody Arabia!

The land of the Sauds.

Allahu al-Akbar!

C H A P T E R 1  

It is said by Bedouins east of the escarpment that TE Lawrence, in preference to an afternoon nap, tortured unfortunate Turk prisoners by slowly plunging his dagger into their bellies and wantonly gutting them while enjoying a measured extra sweet cup ofTurkish coffee, in his summer home in Taif, during his pillaroic days of wisdom, when he saved the noble Bedu from the darkness ofdepraved, perverted, and corrupt pashas.

You are very lucky to be alive my handsome friend. Allah must like you a lot or maybe he wants to punish you even more for your sins.

He was a small black bearded man standing beside Richie. It was after sunset and a bit cold. The small bearded Bedouin was wearing a gray thobe with a brown mischal over it to keep warm with qutra ‘a and a aigal on his head. It was dusk and a bit dark inside the small white tent. Richie was lying on the sand floor on top of a very rough woven rug or blanket probably made of goat hair. It definitely smelled of goat. The tent’s flapped door was open and Richie could see a large fire just outside it.

It doesn’t get that cold in the Rub al-Kali this time of year, thought Richie. They must be cooking their food.

"Sallam Aleykum. Are you awake now?"

There was silence because the situation was somewhat incoherent.

Yes, murmured Richie extremely weak.

Good. Then you can have some good hot mint tea all by yourself for a change. That is if the hole in your stomach has closed up a bit by now.

Kindly the small bearded Bedu smiled at Richie as if to assure him not to be afraid. Even in his weakness, Richie felt the familiarity of the smile as excessive and felt a bit uneasy. After all the years in Saudi Arabia he still could not recognize what was sincerity or custom in Bedu behavior.

The unfamiliar Bedu left the tent momentarily and came back with a large glass filled with hot tea and a generous amount of fresh mint leaves floating in it. It smelled delicious and made Richie feel hunger pangs in his wounded stomach.

The kindly man gently lifted Richie’s head and held the glass close to his lips after blowing across to cool it a bit. Richie took a strong sip, tasted the luscious scalding hot tea and wanted more. He was exhausted from an ordeal that he had never expected, a frightening near death experience that he had never anticipated but which by some miracle he had survived. He felt tickled to death in happiness as the sweet, sweet, hot tea of the hospitable Bedu made its way to his belly. He drank hungrily and quickly not minding the hot tea scalding his tongue and mouth.

My name is Hassan. Hassan ibn Khalifa al-Uthani from the tribe of the Uthani, the greatest Bedu in the now land of Saud.

There was a short pause in which Hassan the Uthani very intently searched for a sign of comprehension on Richie’s face.

And what may I ask is your name?

Again he blew across the tea to cool its surface and delicately he raised the hot glass to Richie’s lips before Richie had a chance to respond. Hassan’s hands appeared aged and weathered but still sure and strong. All his hand movements were slow and deliberate, full of confidence.

You need not answer me now. We will talk more when you get stronger. You have been asleep for two days now, but it has been a good healing sleep. We have sewn the cut in your stomach which was actually much smaller than the mess it made and we have sewn your belly as well. There was no injury to your intestines. You are young and strong and very, very lucky.

I am very, very hungry, answered Richie now warm with the minted tea with lots of sugar, lovely sweet, as the sweet and gentle Bedu like it.

Finish your tea and sleep more tonight and tomorrow you’ll have your first taste of camel milk and dates. Camel milk and camel piss if you’re not a good boy, Hassan laughed loudly.

My name is Richard Gephard Glassier, Richie mustered all the energy he had left. I’m American and my wife has been kidnapped by a Bedu educated in America. His name is Abdullah Al-Khaldoun. I’m going to find him and I’ll kill him more horribly than he tried to kill me. I’m going to cut offhis head and then kill him.

Yes, said Hassan. We will talk more of it tomorrow after breakfast.

Hassan exited the tent shutting the flaps behind him and Richie fell asleep again.

C H A P T E R 2  

We’re here to kick some ass...

For Richard Glassier, introduction to the desert had been as vivid as a holy icon hell and had imbedded a powerful image of desolation and loneliness, already familiar to his lonely mind, which, in this, his initial travels abroad, was to be further cultured with his participation in Desert Shield and later in bloody Desert Storm. He was twenty seven and Saudi Arabia was the first foreign country that he had ever been to. It had been a long flight over on the vinegary stinking C-30 transport. There was little sleep to be had on the plane crossing the Atlantic because other than the name, Saoodi Arabia, nobody really knew where they were going or why they were going there. They were gonna go kick some ass, someone’s ass, somewhere in some desert. It was something that had to be done, by someone, and the US was the only country with balls enough to do it. Some anti-American Aeerab mother fucken Sheik named Saddam Hussein (whoever the fuck he was) was causing some pain to America’s friends.

Kick some ass out there.

Teach these fucken Aeerabs a lesson they won’t forget for a long time to come. No doubt about that.

Still, there was enough apprehension to keep one awake on that flight over to Saudi Arabia. Too many vague thoughts about missiles and the existence of CIA and NSA documented biological and chemical warfare threats. As reassuring as the Defense Department training and pronouncements had been on the chemical warfare potential of the Iraqis, there was that uncertainty made more grotesque by the horrif Ic nature of death by chemicals. Hideously imagined scenes of young soldiers gasping for non-existing oxygen sucked out of the air by ghastly and terrifying green chemicals would play tricks on Richie’s and his comrades’ minds and make for uneasy sleep.

They landed at Dhahran International Airport at dawn which in Saudi Arabia, due to the local lack of daylight saving time, comes around four a.m., even in December, when Richie disembarked. Richie was tired and as they were being transported between Dhahran and Kafji, where he was to be stationed, he tried hard to stay awake but could barely keep his eyes open. It was a long slow ride in what seemed to him to have been a school bus and he was glad that it was December and not July from what he had heard about the blistering heat of the Saudi Arabian desert. Other young soldiers on the bus and all around him were likewise tired, confused, and full of fear of what was to come. Young black men and women from Chicago and other big towns who had joined the army to find some safety from the housing projects wars, and white farm boys from rural USA who had no idea what this ‘desert shield shit’ was all about but were ready to kick ass as soon as the word came down. They wore dumb smiles on their faces behind which hid an immense ignorance of anything foreign. Thanks to an American schooling system that had tremendous difficulties teaching reading, coupled with jet travel that measured immense distances in hours only, Saudi Arabia was beyond comprehension, and sanity, for the world’s toughest troops, whose thoughts lay in memories of the hated ghetto and the farm and the pet ducks that had been left behind in ponds and tubs. Rough as the memories might have been, home is the heart and the rest of the world a poor extension of it. The moment the troops landed in Dhahran, they all had the sensation that they had been gone from home for years. Such is the drastic change of the desert universe of Saudi Arabia that it precludes any other existence. You have to be alert in Saudi Arabia and alert means not cluttering your mind with mushy memories. One of the first signs welcoming them to Dhahran International Airport and Saudi Arabia was Death to Drug Traffickers.

Sent to fight the even more dastardly evil dictator than Hitler, were macho boys and tough little girls from the dime store streets across America, who had signed up for service just to get away from home but, man, not this far. Innocent in their ignorance, they were all totally scared and baffled as to how this guy Saddam Hussein, whom only days before they had never heard of, how this unknown Eyeraqi could be such a threat to the mighty US, especially when he was so far away, from the middle of an unheard desert, in the middle of nowhere, and his big weapons, his SCUDs, were WW II vintage tubes that wobbled to nowhere predictably.

He’s a threat to the flow of oil out of the Gulf, Richie had heard some smart educated guy rant. The free world is dead without this Middle East oil.

He opened his blood shot eyes and looked out the bus window. It was cold though being December in Saudi, and he being tired, made the early morning feel colder than it probably was. The sand dunes of Saudi Arabia stretched as far as the eyes could see and again he wondered what there was here worth dying. He was riding on the right side of the bus going north and the intensely bright morning sun of Saudi Arabia burned into his eyes stinging a sharp reaction to look away from the window towards the inside of the bus. For the first time he became aware of a not so pretty black girl sitting next to him. She was thin like a street urchin of some underdeveloped country who could be tempted to do anything for a buck or two. She looked back at him and pushed her right leg slowly but firmly against his left in a gesture oflove and all he could meekly say was excuse me and pull his leg away. The girl, too, quickly pulled her leg away in intolerable emotions of repressed rejection and insufferably thought, I hope Saddam blows the shit off of it, you flimsy asshole.

He looked out the bus window again, low so that the sun would not shine into his eyes and hurt him. He could hear the troubled stillness coming from the inside of the bus as most of the troops were in unstable sleep from the long tiring journey to Saudi Arabia.

I should have called my mother. The thought entered his half awakened brain. Somebody should know where the hell I am when I get splattered all over the desert of Saudi Arabia. Not that anyone would give a shit about me but maybe someone would mention my name in memoriam to someone.

His loneliness was overwhelming and he almost cried.

He knew that Rita, lovely Rita, Rita Maid, his famous mother among the intensely dumb, simply would not care to be disturbed with a remote message of unpleasantness. He thought for one more fleeting moment, was there anyone else? and, no, he could not recollect anyone else who would remotely or otherwise care of his current whereabouts, whether he was dead or alive.

Lonely now, he wanted to push his left leg against the homely black GI girl next to him from—where could she have been from? Cleveland? Memphis? Where?—but was too chicken to do so. Strange how for some people courage disappears at moments of intimacy. Maybe, he wished, they’ll be assigned to the same tent and they’ll be able to sleep together totally in the skinny dippy nude, though she had better take a shower before and after because these blacks have a unique body odor, so they say. Hey, if you’re putting your life on the line for your country, your country should not be too offended if you screw one of its troopers. Shit, in her fear of death in the Arabian desert sands, who is to say that she wouldn’t want to die the romance of every little girl’s dream. To be taken by a young love, far away from home so as not to be embarrassing to family and maybe friends, two young wet virgin lovers in passion hooked together, arms and legs twisted all over each others’ bodies, and just as they’re about to pop, ...now, now, now. she would be saying, ...yes, yes, yes. he would be promising, the SCUD hits the fan and for one brief second they would think that they’ve hit the most powerful sweetest orgasmic pay dirt, and that all climaxes are like that, just before they’d be blown to kingdom come.

There is virtually no danger of Iraqi troop penetration of Saudi defenses, Colonel Ray Johnson was saying. It was late afternoon of day one in Kafji, near the Kuwaiti-Saudi Arabian border. Richie had spent the whole day sleeping in a huge tent that was so big you could drive a truck down its hallways to get to your sleep area.

The Iraqis have given no indication that any attack is imminent or contemplated. Iraqi tanks are generally older Russian T-51/54’s, with T-72’s in the hands of their elite troops, the Revolutionary Guards, in the rear echelons. These guys are elite because they’re always hanging out in the rear, said Colonel Johnson, and those soldiers who were awake enough roared in laughter.

What about air attacks, sir?

There is virtually no danger of Iraqi aircraft penetration of our air defenses. Our AWACS and satellite intelligence is in place, and tracking is constant. In addition, friendly aircraft outnumber Iraqi over two-to-one. Also, their aircraft is generally inferior in quality, both older, less sophisticated, and less maintained. Their Mirages, both fighters and bombers, are the exception since they are believed to be quite effective. Not to worry though: IBM has programmed their on board computers. tremendous laughter from the troops, ...and the French have programmed their radar computers. Our strategy is to mount a massive air strike to obtain total air superiority. The Iraqi planes will never get off the ground after the first twenty four hours of our attacks, and will cease to exist as a danger. Iraqi air defense facilities like radar and ground-to-air missiles will be neutralized during this same period. After the first twenty four hours of the right stuff, the only Mirages the Iraqis will have left will be their illusions.

Tremendous roars, hoots, and laughter from the troops.

There were other questions about chemical attacks, biological attacks, terrorist attacks—too many damn questions and too many flip answers, thought Richie. So he tuned out all the general pep talk instructions, inspirational, morale boosting, cheerleading, informational bullshit that have become the stock and trade of all team building orientation gatherings from the Little Leagues of Iowa to the Great Halls of China. No matter what this fucken Colonel says, thought Richie, some poor asshole is going to get his brains splattered all over the desert sand and nobody will be able to distinguish the gray matter from the gray sand. One thing is for sure, and that is, that it ain’t going to be the fucken Colonel’s brain that will make for feed stuff to desert scorpions.

He looked around to see if the homely black girl was anywhere to be seen but she was nowhere in sight. Chances were that she had not been assigned to Kafji. Too bad. They could have had a good time passing away the desert days together waiting for their destinies. Richie totally tuned out the Colonel and sought refuge in the vast caverns of the desert air conditioned tent barracks.

We have the vision and know the mission of the whole world, thought Richie as he stared through his night vision goggles that were the talk of CNN and all the tele-media covering the GulfWar. It was two a.m. and he was standing guard somewhere near the Kuwaiti border and Kafji, Saudi Arabia. It was pitch black and he was sitting alone on top of the armored vehicle, the rest ofhis unit sleeping nearby in the desert. It was part of night vision tactics to always keep your night vision goggles on because these instruments provided excellent contrast and target identif Ication even in the blackest, darkest period of the night. One of the highs of high tech, these night vision goggles were the green envy of all of America’s enemies. So good was the target identif Ication of their view that commanders in the field were advising their young troops to keep their goggles on even during daylight hours.

We definitely have the vision, Richie roared the witnessed vision ofhis goggles with immense pride. America stands for great ideals, honor, commitment to our word, all guaranteed by our Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense.

Richie looked out into the dark night but could not see exactly where the other guys ofhis unit were sleeping because of a light shamal that had kicked up and there was lots of fine dust in the air. No smart goggles to penetrate a damn desert storm.

We are driven to protect democracy all over the world, because democracy is in our genes. Democracy is a synonym for America, and that’s why we’re here in Saudi Arabia. Our mission to protect is in our DNA. Pow, pow, pow...Richie took make believe potshots at the tyrants of the cold dark night of the Rub al-Khali.

He thought he heard rumblings like moving tanks but dismissed it as nerves. He looked out as far as the goggles could discern but could see nothing which was strange because the goggles’ near term vision was very clear. He tried to recollect his pleasant private thoughts again away from the dark, as in abbaya, desert.

It just goes to show, he said to himself, that not even on a clear night can you see forever. Or maybe some things cannot be seen by the eyes alone, he smiled at his cleverness.

Tired from