You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

ADVENTURES WITH DAVE

A visitor from the Desert

My wife, and three children 4, 7, and 10, traveled with me to Saudi Arabia in 1982. I had accepted a teaching job in the Eastern Province. We went thinking of it as a one-year adventure. We stayed six. One consideration in our decision to stay those five additional years was a biologist named Dave Peters. Dave taught biology to medical students at King Faisal University, the same university where I taught Architecture. Dave provided many outdoor adventures for our faculty families which added to the rich tapestry of experiences we enjoyed during our sojourn there. Dave guided us into remote places in the desert and beaches of the Eastern Province. These trips took place in the Winter months when the days are comfortably warm and nights cool.

Dave’s trips would start with his recruiting two or three families to join him. In the week prior to one of Dave’s camping trips, while the families would anticipate the adventure and organize clothing and food, Dave would collect firewood.

It is not easy to find firewood in Saudi Arabia. The few trees are usually in some far-off oasis or in private gardens. Dave would gather broken pallets and similar wood scraps and pile them into his jeep. On the day of the trip, he would pack his jeep with camping gear, camp stoves, and cooking wear to be used by all. This gear he would pile on top of the firewood. On the morning of the trip, we would form a small caravan of four-wheel drive vehicles, and follow Dave over highways, small roads and then onto sand continuing far out into the desert until we would arrive at a spot, often against a large sand dune. Once there, Dave would stop and declare it to be our campsite. In camp, at night after dinner, Dave would stack a great pile of wood and light a monster bonfire. The children were delighted. We adults loved it also.

On one such desert camping trip, far from any towns, we had finished breakfast. The men had taken the the older kids to wander off for an adventure among the dunes. These dunes were more than 60 feet high, We had great fun climbing the gradual slope of the windward side. Once on the top, we would jump, rolling, falling, and tumbling down the steep leeward side with sand flying accompanied by shrieks of joy.

I had climbed the high dune overlooking the camp. From that height, I could see an expanse of desert, between dunes. As I stood gazing at what seemed endless sand, I saw a white Toyota pickup approach. It stopped a distance from the camp where the women and small children had remained. I recognized it to be a white Toyota pickup of the type that the king provides to Bedouin men who live in the desert tending goats and sheep. The king does this to support the Bedouin traditional life and to promote an independent source of meat for The Kingdom.

The driver of the pickup was certainly a man, as women were not allowed to drive in the kingdom. With binoculars he could see that the people in camp were all women. I became concerned when the truck wheeled around and drove directly toward our camp. It pulled up close to the women, who had gathered together, instinctively seeking safety in numbers. The truck stopped and out of it climbed a Bedouin woman. From stories my students had told me, I knew that when a trip to town was necessary to sell goats and buy supplies, the man would go leaving his wife in the desert to tend the goats. It is common for Bedouin women to feel isolated. Her husband would occasionally have visitors but the women had none. So this Bedouin woman was delighted to see other women in her desert. She came to chat. One of the women in our group spoke a little Arabic. She was able to interpret so the women could talk. They shared tea and enjoyed an extended conversation with no men around. Eventually, the Bedouin woman climbed back into her pickup and drove off, disappearing into the endless dunes.