Ahmed hawked, and spat into the flames of the small camp fire. This was normally a peaceful time for him, a time when he would be at one with the desert and his ancestors, but tonight he was troubled.
He had driven his pick-up truck into the desert straight after Friday prayers. He had not worshipped at the mosque this week as was normally the case, but had prayed in the yard enclosing his house.
He pulled up in a remote part of the desert an hours drive away from the lights of the city. He gathered a few sticks of brushwood and built a fire upon which he set a copper kettle of water with which to brew the black tea, sweetened with sugar that he habitually sipped during his weekly excursion.
He had been spending Friday nights in the desert for most of his thirty eight years. His father had first taken him there when he was a boy and they had passed each Friday evening away from everyone and everything, watching the sun set and talking together quietly as they sat around the fire before rolling themselves in blankets and sleeping under the stars. Since Ahmed had left his village and moved to the city twenty years before, he had continued with the same weekly ritual.
His father!....He thought of the old man now. He had been ill for some time. Ahmed thought that he may be dying, although his father would never admit that there was anything wrong. The old man was someone of quiet dignity not given to showing his feelings. He had been a carpenter, and a good carpenter at that. He had the patience and skill to produce pieces that were perfectly balanced and proportioned. When Ahmed was a boy his father had taught him how to shape and plane and work with the grain of the wood. He would carefully explain the difference between hardwoods and softwoods, aged and newly cut. He had wanted his son to follow him in his craft although he had never said so directly, but the son had wanted other things. Not for him the perilous existance of the artisan. No, he had wanted staus, power, respect. What a fool he had been!
The sky was changing from the purple of twilight to the deep blue that signalled the onset of night. The first stars were appearing low on the horizon. As it grew darker they would increase in brilliance, each one shining like a diamond on black velvet. Ahmed sat alone and watched the sky as he had done so many times before.
He thought of his wife. She would be at home with the children and would be preparing the evening meal. She hadn't wanted him to go to the desert tonight. It had been the first time that she had asked him to stay at home in all of the years that they had been together. She was frightened and he had seen the worry in her eyes. He had briefly thought of staying, but he could not show weakness - not at this time. He had told her to lock the door and that he would return shortly after day-break. He smiled to himself. For years now he had thought that she suspected him of going to a mistress each Friday night, although she would not dare to accuse him of such, and she had come to accept in her mind that each week he slept with another rather than the truth of passing the night alone in the open, and now she was worried; not for herself or the marriage but for the children.
Things had changed in the city. Only a few weeks ago he had been feared by many, but now the structure of his power had crumbled without him being able to stop it happening. He thought of those that had passed through his hands. The thieves and miscreants. Most had deserved the beatings that they had received. He had used batons and staves as well as his boots and fists, as had the others. It had been the only way to control some of those that were brought in. They would never change their ways and you had to assert yourself to show who was the master, the way you would with a dog. He wondered how many he had beaten, he couldn't remember. Most of them had been like cattle passing through the market, and he had had no interest in them as people. He supposed that it must have been two or three hundred.
There had been one man that he couldn't forget however. It had been only a week or so before the protests had started. The man had been different from most of those that he normally dealt with. He had been better dressed and more self assured, and his eyes had been different too. There wasn't the fear in them. The man had looked at him quizzically when he had been brought in. An agitator they had said. An enemy of the state. Find out who his contacts were. And Ahmed had gone about his work. Questioning, then shouting and threatening, then slapping and then beating. The man had shown fear then. Everyone did when they thought that they might die.
The man had been released after a few days. He had not known much and it was not worth keeping him in jail. When he had been taken to the door he had reacted differently to the others. Normally they would avoid eye contact, but the man in his good quality clothes had looked directly at Ahmed with the same quizzical look as when he had been brought in. It had un-nerved the policeman and Ahmed had pushed the man roughly out through the doors onto the dusty street.
Ahmed lifted the lid of the kettle and dropped in a handfull of loose tea before moving the kettle to the edge of the fire. He brushed his hands together and then walked to the pick-up truck and removed a thick woollen blanket from the cab. He draped the blanket over his shoulders and returned to the warmth of the fire. It was quite dark now and he could see no further than a few yards. He poured the tea over a strainer into a glass containing two suger lumps and set the kettle back at the edge of the flames.
He thought once more of his wife and children as he sat holding the glass of hot tea. They would be safe. He was fairly certain of that. Since the police station had been burnt down by protesters five days ago he had spent every day at home with them and nothing had happened.
Times were changing. He could not go back to work, for it now longer existed. The army was controlling the people now, and if he appeared in the street in his police uniform he would be in danger; The mob could turn on him and what was one man against many? He, who had been the ruler - the symbol of the authority of the state - was now unable to control events and was powerless.
It was getting colder. Ahmed placed the rest of his wood on the fire, arranging it so that the fire would burn slowly for the next hour or so. He wrapped himself in the blanket and lay on the hard sand and looked up at the stars. His father had always said to him: "Remember that you are a man first. Nothing more and nothing less". And his father had been right. The old man who had never owned a car, or been to the city or seen important people had known more than his son who had believed that happiness came from money and power. Ahmed was just a man, no more and no less, and a man was a very small thing in the universe. A man could not change the way of the world merely by buying a car and sewing brighter badges onto his shirt. He covered his head with the blanket and tried to sleep.
He awoke as the first rays of the sun glinted on the horizon. It was still cold and he kept the blanket wrapped around him as he sat up and watched the sun rise, turning the colour of the sky from red to violet and then to blue, the sand changing from grey to pink to yellow.
He stood and gathered up the things that he had used to make the tea the evening before and walked to the pick-up and placed them all carefully inside. He climbed behind the steering wheel and turned the key in the ignition.
He would return to the city and collect his family before returning to the small village where he had been born and where his father still lived. He had decided that he would be a carpenter.