The Sand

Woke up tired again, with nothing worthwhile to look forward to. Taking a stroll through the corridor outside while brushing my teeth was a bad idea. It was windy and the sand again got into my eyes, needing me to retreat back inside. Hunched over the sink I looked at my face in the cracked mirror, recounting once again how life had brought me here.

Covid-19 had hit at an annoying time for me. My after-graduation trip to Istanbul had to be cancelled and I had to shelter-in-place for four dreary months. In lieu of travelling the world, I couldn’t even start a job, nobody was hiring entry level Data Analysts. Once the reopening started, I clutched the first offer that came my way. It was a medium sized startup, nothing exciting but you couldn’t afford to be picky at this time. I had to ramp up remotely and only met my coworkers on Zoom.

I was looking forward to October when the restrictions on IT jobs were to be lifted and I could go to work in person. But nobody imagined the second wave would hit so bad, the death rate of the manufacturing workers had everyone shit-scared. Instead of paying the sky-high real estate costs of Silicon Valley for enabling effective social distancing, the software companies decided to enforce permanent work from home for the employees. It was cheaper and had less PR risk, nobody wanted the fiasco of the meat packing plants on their hands.

Bloody hell! I was not one to stay cooped up inside the house forever. Life cannot be lived over video conferencing, how was I even supposed to bond with the people I work with? You can’t Zoom in just to chat about geopolitics or to retell the shenanigans of your annoying neighbor. The beauty of life is in the impromptu conversations and experiences, which have a way of sprouting up when you put people in physical proximity. That serendipity is what I missed about university life the most.

You only had to walk out of your room a bit to meet (really, physically meet) other young and vibrant set of people, opening fresh avenues for adventures and experiences. I remember roaming about the campus one night and hearing some enigmatic but jaunty music emanating from one of the computer labs. A bright eyed Arabic looking guy with an ear to ear smile was playing a guitar-like instrument for a couple of his friends. I later learnt that it was a traditional middle-eastern instrument called the “Oud”, it’s tune brought memories of Arabian nights and Alladin background music, the kind of sound that would spontaneously conjure up an image of the place it belongs in.

I ran back to my room, got my harmonica and joined him. He offered no words and just smiled welcomingly. His friends had also joined in. The Japanese guy was drumming the desk and the African-American girl was whistling. We had a jolly time just jamming a few hours and having a beer or two after. We never got close and I don’t remember either of their names but we’d smile and wave whenever our paths crossed around campus. Just having that tiny shared experience had bonded us somewhat. When we waved at each other, we knew that the exact same memory was triggering in each of our heads.

After the second wave of Covid-19 that fall, the world got tense. In times of crises, everyone looks out for their own. The long peace that had sustained more or less for decades was being chipped away at the edges. A second cold war was starting, this time it was China instead of Russia on the other side. The economy was the first fatality, followed by liberal politics. It was an era of strife and power struggles for control of resources and influence. High minded and pacifist philosophical arguments sounded funnier and more out of touch than usual.

More immediate for me, money dried up in Silicon Valley and the startup I worked for collapsed. To control unemployment and prioritize its own citizens, the government outlawed foreign work visas and outsourcing. Non-citizens had to go back to their countries, mostly places with no real opportunities. This was a further blow to the tech industry and they didn’t end up hiring more Americans, they just cut costs, downsized and went into lean and mean survival mode like everyone else. My prospects of getting a decent job looked even bleaker.

What little savings I had, I couldn’t really use them for travelling the world. The US passport stopped carrying the weight it used to. All countries now require a Visa to visit which is conditioned on three negative Covid test results within the past two months. We Americans are treated as ticking virus bombs around the world. Given that my health insurance went away with my job, there was no way I was going to be able to afford three tests out of my own pocket. Even the US government doesn’t want people to travel internationally and spend their money in some other economy. You need to get a special tourism permit from the US government for every country you want to visit and quarantine for two weeks once you get back.

There was still one place that was hiring and had relatively better freedom of movement. I applied to join the Army and narrowly passed the physical exam. After I was accepted, the basic training took only ten weeks and I was certified “Combat Ready”. A couple of months later I got my posting to Saudi Arabia, like almost everyone in my training class.

The Saudi economy had been heavily reliant on oil, the demand for which cratered post-Covid and never recovered due to the movement restrictions globally. But miraculously, the sheikhs and the Saudi Royal family came out relatively unscathed through this and the brunt of the misery fell on the masses. In hindsight, this fact should have been hidden better because it turned out to be the perfect recipe for a violent people’s uprising. The Communist revolt against the House of Saud burst out remarkably suddenly and bloodily. It was dealt, as usual, with a heavy hand by the authorities. The newly minted “terrorists” and the traditional Saudi powers gave rise to yet another middle eastern saga of violence. Both parties constantly weakened each other but never managed to take down the other.

What is it about this part of the world that makes history repeat itself over and over? The power vacuum created by the collapsing national identity of this country was ripe for another game of proxy war. The US stepped in to help out and support its old allies, to save them from the communist revolution. The stated reason was that the US intelligence found evidence of China bankrolling the Communists and Russia supplying them weapons.

I have been fighting and resisting these communists guerillas for three years now in this godforsaken desert. The sand is finally washed off from my eyes and I feel much better. Looking away from the mirror, I put on my uniform and go down to the ground to take my position in guarding the perimeter of our camp. A couple of our Humvees pull up and one of the drivers shouts, “Caught these rascals planning to sneak attack us!” pointing to the back of the vehicle which contained five white-robed radicals with their hands tied behind their backs.

We have had a few of these incidents before. The extremists try to infiltrate a US military camp in the night to attack or steal stuff. A couple of our people had been injured in the past due to these but never fatally. We usually catch these troublemakers before they attack. After the capture, the procedure is simple, we need to keep these guys here for a week or two in our custody till the proper paperwork is completed for their transfer to the local state police. Once we transfer them to the local station, the police could use their interrogation techniques to gather intel from the culprits. How the intel was obtained was not our concern. It was protected by a strict “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. These were designated terrorists on this soil and we do not interfere with the affairs and methods of a sovereign state.

I turn to go back to my post when I catch a glimpse of the faces of these men. They look malnourished and tired. Their beards are unkempt and their eyes have a look of defeat. One of the guys stares straight back at me, his eyes boring into mine, with a look of incredulousness on his face. At that moment, someone yanks him out of the Humvee along with the other four and takes them away to the third floor room - a makeshift cell for the people we had to take custody of.

---

It’s been ten days since those Humvees arrived at the compound. I am in my room looking out the window to the horizon. Nothing really has changed here, the scenery is constant and unrelenting. The only change is the helicopter in the compound below and the whirlpool of sand it created on landing. My mind inevitably goes back to the happenings of these last ten days.

After the prisoners were taken to their cell, we had to take turns on guard duty in there. I went in expecting the usual pleas of innocence and pretending to be just another farming family. But this group was incredibly quiet and just looked down to the floor. They seemed to have resigned to their fate and were too exhausted to spin long tales. But the guy who had stared at me from the Humvee looked up again. My gaze travelled from his dirty tattered white robes up to his face which had a smile extending from ear to ear. “Still playing the harmonica?” he asked, with a glint in his eye.

I was dumbfounded, I tried to speak but couldn’t think of any words to say. I stammered, gave up and just gaped. He continued, “Fate has a cruel sense of irony, no? You know, we were just going to come in the dead of the night and steal some supplies, nothing violent. Needed some food, water and a generator. But that is not what the state police is going to charge us with, of course. You know their methods, you know what they do to us there.”

A torrent of emotions I didn’t understand was drowning all my thoughts. I stared at him for another minute and then looked away. He took the hint and didn’t speak another word. The room was silent again. The next five hours were the longest of my life but I wasn’t able to form a single coherent thought. This was unreal, this was surreal, this was a nudge of madness.

The next day, we were all jolted upright at midnight by the boom of two gunshots. One of the captives had broken free, knocked out the dozing guard and snatched his rifle. While he was making a run for it, the sniper on the terrace saw him on the compound below. As he recounted it later, “The first bullet glazed the scoundrel in the arm making him drop the rifle. He stumbled for a moment but continued running. My second shot was squeaky clean, it went straight through his neck, stopping the idiot halfway through to the compound exit.” The white robed body was taken away and I stole a glance at the face, somewhat relieved that it wasn’t the face I had dreaded it to be. Rest of the prisoners were still in the cell and hadn’t even tried to break away among all the chaos.

This incident expedited the hand-over process. The US military wanted its hands clean of this mess and the Saudi police wanted these people under their observation to avoid losing them before extracting any useful information. Instead of the usual week or two, three days was all it took. Thankfully, I didn’t have to be on the transfer duty. While the prisoners were being transported from the third floor cell in our camp to the local station 15 kilometers out, I was going to join in the weekly soccer game we played.

Soccer was the easiest game we could play here. It needed no gear, no hoops, no grassy terrain, no zone marking. Just take the ball, decide on the two ends and start playing. Despite growing up on American football, I found soccer to be more enjoyable here in the desert. But given my sensitivity to the sand getting in my eyes, I preferred to play as the goalie and avoid all the running around creating mini-dunes. I saw the ball making its way towards me, a cross pass from the left to the right side left the goal post open. I traced the arc of the ball with my eyes and was ready to lunge when a shriek drew my attention to the building.

The slow motion feeling of tracking the ball continued for me as I watched a glorious white figure descending from the third floor in a perfect swimming pool dive, head first, to the concrete below. I saw the head hitting the concrete and bursting open, reminding me of the watermelon exploding videos I had seen on YouTube. The rest of the body collapsed into a messy heap, unnaturally distorted. 

This time I didn’t have to look, somehow my heart knew who that was. I knew he had decided not to go to the state police and took control of his fate in his own hands. I didn’t shout, at least not loudly. My whole body was howling, but I wasn’t able to move my mouth to let it out. I was drowning, I was paralyzed, I tumbled over and lay down in the sand. My eyes were still transfixed on the figure in front of me, growing redder every second. Nobody was looking at my slumped over body though, they were all rushing towards the building. I lay there for what felt like hours.

Once I was able to stagger up, exhausted and spent, I looked away and somehow was able to carry on. I volunteered for the transfer duty since the alternative was to help with the cleanup.

---

This was five days back but I still relive and revisit that dive every minute. The music of the Oud haunts my dreams, the melody sorrowful and deep. I can’t close my eyes without that smile flashing in front of me, so honest and earnest. The most curious thing about this was that I don’t even know his name. If I had the courage to talk to him during the hours I was in the cell, would things have turned out differently? Could I have stepped up and questioned the need to subject these people to unspeakable torment just because they were thinking of taking some of our food? Can I pretend innocence because I wasn’t the one who physically pushed him, he did it of his own accord? I didn’t even repay him enough for the couple of hours of music he had invited me to share all those years back. When I held all the cards, I preferred to look away.

But for the first time since that day, today I laughed. The helicopter had bought tidings.

The officer disembarked from the chopper and announced, “There has been an agreement. The USA is withdrawing troops from Saudi Arabia. We are no longer needed here, our peacekeeping mission has been accomplished. We can go home!”. Turns out there was a truce. China officially recognized the Saudi militants as terrorists and the Royal family as the rightful sovereign. In exchange, USA recognized Crimea as part of Russia and withdrew opposition to the abolishment of Hong Kong’s one country two systems policy.

The troops were jubilant, cheering, laughing and being merry at the news. I also joined in the laughter but for different reasons. I was amused at the absurdity of it all. So that’s why I am here in my room, looking out the window at the helicopter and the desert. We have been asked to pack our stuff and be ready to leave by 1800 hours. 

I mutter to myself, “Fate has a cruel sense of irony, no?”. I feel a sudden gust of wind and the now familiar feeling in my eyes.