12 | October• 2018
MY STORY
wait for Sheikh Jaber. He then ordered
one of the soldiers to remove the
Kuwaiti licence plates from our car so
we could put them in the boot.
hirty minutes later Jaber’s Cadillac
crunched to a halt and he waved to
Alyan and the two chatted for a few
moments. Once his car’s licence
plates were removed, the convoy
started on its way.
We drove along a winding sandy
track with dust clouds trailing our rear.
Alyan then explained
we were heading
towardsanundisclosed
location to witness a
sulha(peace-making
process) between
two one-time warring
Iraqi clans.
he secrecy was
important because
itwasamatterof
saving face.
“We will not be allowed to report
on the event, just witness it,” Alyan
warned. he Arab practice ofsulha
is centuries old and is based on
negotiation in front of third-party
mediators.INTHEDISTANCEAHEAD,ablack
monolith, studded with twinkling
lanterns,roseoutofthedarkness.
It was a huge camel-hair Bedouin
tent,wherethemeetingwastotake
place. Rows of American sedans
and limousines lanked the tent
on one side.Half an hour later, we were driving
south towards the desert kingdom of
Saudi Arabia. It was a moonless night,
phalanxes of clouds scudding in silent
array across the sky where stars had
long taken over. Alyan sat in the back,
reading directions from a map with a
cigarette lighter.
We scooted along a paved road,
a straight silver streak in the pitch
darkness, interrupted sporadically
by the ghosts of sand dunes that
stretched into the
distance.
hepavedroadranout
before we reached the
randomly marked border
with Saudi Arabia.
We were all dressed
in the traditional white
dish-dasheh(shirt) and
keiyyeh(head scarf ):
we looked like uncertain
phantoms under
the starlight.
Ahalfhourlater,thesoundof
engineseruptedinthesilenceand
thedarknesswasshatteredbytwin
pinpoints of light coming from the
directionofthekingdom.Itwas
our escort.
Two Land Rovers, with no
markings, stopped a few feet away,
and a squad of black-clad men toting
M16s jumped out. heir leader moved
towards Alyan and rubbed noses with
him in the traditional Bedouin way of
greeting. He told us our destination
was 15 minutes away, but we had to
Two Land Rovers
stopped a few
feet away, and
a squad of men
toting M16s
jumped out