The Underground City(8)

Sheikh Rashid swung round and let out a yell that echoed round the tents.

“Shimaal! Shimaal!” His words rang round the camp. Sand was hastily thrown over the fires and children, animals and anything moveable was grabbed and thrust into the relative safety of the tents as the sandstorm swept down on them, the billowing clouds of dust and grit shutting out the sunlight as it rolled in a furious, swirling mass across the desert, carrying everything before it.



Lewis drove on towards Al Antara and so anxious was he to get there before darkness fell that he forgot to look in his rear-view mirror, thus missing the dreadful sight of the approaching storm billowing in behind him. The first hint that something was wrong was when the palm trees at Al Antara disappeared. He blinked. It was impossible. They had been there, just a few hundred yards away, as clear as crystal, and now they had gone. Then a burst of wind hit the car and within seconds the vehicle was surrounded by whirling clouds of sand that quite successfully blotted out both desert and sky and reduced his world to the inside of the 4x4. Driving was impossible. He put on the brakes hastily and switched off the engine. Now what was he going to do?

The shimaal hit the oil-company township just as Brian was preparing to take the boys to Al Antara. He grinned at them as they loaded their gear into the jeep and hid a smile at the stuff they’d brought. He actually had no intention of letting Lewis stay in Al Antara all night and once the boys had had their joke, he’d get Lewis to follow him back to the township. But if they really thought they were going to scare him with their collection of Halloween masks and ghost costumes, they were, he reckoned, doomed to disappointment. Stuff like that wouldn’t faze Lewis for a minute.

At that moment, a strong gust of wind swept through the garden, bending the palm trees and blasting them with a wave of choking, dusty grit.

Colin grabbed at Peter in an effort to stay on his feet. “What’s happening?” he gasped, hardly able to see as the sand got into his eyes and up his nose.

“It’s a sandstorm,” gasped Peter. “A shimaal.”

“Quick, everyone,” Brian snapped. “Back into the house. There’s no way we can travel in this!”

Once inside, they watched from the window as the shimaal howled and screamed round the house like a banshee with whooping cough. Brian looked worried and reached for the phone. His mother and father were visiting friends but he knew he had to tell them what had happened so that the company could send out rescue teams. His heart sank. What they were going to say when he told them that Lewis Grant, of all people, was stuck out in the desert in the middle of a shimaal, he didn’t know — but he could guess.

“Do you think Lewis got to the oasis?” queried Peter half an hour later, as Brian looked at his watch yet again.

“He should have,” was the answer. “If he didn’t, then I only hope he’ll have had the sense to obey the first rule of the desert.”

“What’s that?”

“Never get out of your car in a sandstorm.”



To be fair, it actually wasn’t Lewis’s fault that he left the car. As he’d brought a bottle of water and a six-pack of soft drinks with him plus a powerful torch and a good supply of comics to while away the hours until daylight, he’d settled down in the car quite happily at first, although it was definitely eerie with the wind and sand howling round outside. Without air conditioning, however, the inside of the car gradually became more and more uncomfortable. A fine dust laced the air and he shifted restlessly as it got hotter and hotter and as his throat dried up, gulped down more and more of the soft drinks until he saw, with a prickle of worry, that there were very few cans left. Not being able to see anything was scary as well. He tried hard to concentrate on the adventures of his hero, Superman, but every so often he lifted his eyes and frowned worriedly as gusts of wind rocked the car until he really thought that it might topple over.

A normal sandstorm might, indeed, have rocked the car a little but Lewis didn’t know that this was no ordinary sandstorm. The bedouin didn’t go to Al Antara after dark because they knew there was a djinn there and that it came out at night. It was not just superstition. They knew! From time to time, Mr Williams from the oil company tried to persuade them to return, rebuild the houses and make the oasis their home but they were always steadfast in their refusal. Mr Williams could say what he liked, but a djinn was, after all, a djinn.

As the 4x4 gave a particularly violent lurch, Lewis grabbed at the door for support. His hand hit the door handle and in a triumphant roar of wind and sand, he tumbled out into the storm. The door then slammed shut as the vehicle righted itself. Crying with frustration he tried to open it, and couldn’t. It must have stuck! Pulling his T-shirt over his mouth to keep out the sand, he felt his way round to the passenger door, tripping over his torch as he did so. He sighed with relief as he picked it up and stuffed it into his pocket. It would be getting dark soon and he’d need the light. Again he struggled to open the doors. He knew perfectly well that he hadn’t locked either of them but despite his frantic efforts, neither would budge. There was only one thing for it. He’d have to take shelter in one of the houses at the oasis for no one could survive for long in the suffocating air of such a storm.