“And one more thing,” Captain Craft told them. “You’re not in San Diego or Norfolk any more. You’re going to find out right quick that the folks out here have got some different values from the folks back home. When you were stationed stateside, going off base on liberty meant you could loosen up and relax for a while. But when you go out on the economy here, you’ve got to be twice as careful as you are on post. The locals are fine people as a rule, but there are things that might be second nature to you and me which are downright offensive to them. That means no drunkenness, no fights, no wisecracks, and no uniforms.
“You men: I don’t care how hot it gets out there, you wear long pants and a shirt at all times unless you’re on the beach. And you, Miller: no sleeveless tops or low-cut necklines, nothing tight or see-through, and you either wear slacks off base or keep your hemlines at the knee or lower. These people are more modest than you ever thought was possible, and they don’t want to have to look at your uncovered skin.” The captain paused to check his watch. “Well, that about wraps it up,” he said, “unless there are any questions?”
The four new men—one of them, Miller, a woman—exchanged tentative glances. It had been a huge amount of information to absorb at one shot: the briefing had lasted a little more than an hour. The one black sailor in the group half raised his hand.
“Sanders?” the captain recognized him. “Let’s go, mister, sing it out.”
“Well, sir,” the youngster began, “I’m kinda proud to be serving here in the US Navy and all that, you know? So I don’t understand how come we’re not supposed to wear our uniforms when we go off post.”
“Your pride is noted and appreciated, mister. But nobody’s asking you to understand the policy. I am ordering you to remember it, that’s all. Do you understand that?”
Sanders looked stricken, and Craft realized that perhaps he’d been a bit too hard on him. After all, it was the kid’s first day at a brand-new duty station. Maybe he’d better unbend a little, not come across the complete ogre right off the bat. What was the boy’s first name again? Bill? No, that was Garripy, the new postal clerk. Tom, that was it.
“Listen, Tom,” he said more gently, “the local government wants us to keep our military presence here in the emirate as low-key as possible. I’m not sure I understand it, either. Hell, I’m not sure the admiral does, or even the ambassador. But part of the agreement that entitles us to maintain an Administrative Support Unit here in Bahrain, and to dock and fuel our ships out at the Mina Sulman harbor, is that we’re not supposed to flaunt the fact that we’ve got 70-some naval personnel stationed at ASU. And that’s why, any time you go out that gate and into town, the requirement is that you wear your civvies. You with me, son?”
Sanders managed a weak smile. “Yes, sir.”
“Very well.”
The Miller woman shot up a hand.
This one was going to be trouble, Craft thought. He’d felt sure of it the moment he saw her march down the C-130’s boarding ladder out at the airport on Muharraq this morning, strutting her stuff like she owned the damn plane. He was all in favor of equal opportunity and all the rest of it—hell, if a lady service member was willing to go into combat with the men, he didn’t see any reason to stop her—but Miller was going to have to learn that the Middle East was a far cry from the Midwest she’d grown up in, and she was going to have to modify her aggressive behavior a tad if she wanted to make it through her tour of duty here without some serious problems. He nodded at her, and she jumped into her question just as brash as can be.
“Sir,” she said, “I’m a little worried about the possibility of sexual harassment while I’m here. What am I supposed to do if I’m downtown and one of these ragheads starts—”
“Young lady!” the captain roared, and whatever Miller had intended to say died stillborn in her throat. “The piece of cloth our hosts wear on their heads is a ghutra, not a rag, and the men who wear ghutras are known as Arabs. If I hear the word ‘raghead’ out of your mouth again, I can assure you you’ll be much too busy peeling potatoes for the rest of your stay on this island to have to worry about sexual harassment.”
The woman gaped at him, speechless.
“Have I made myself clear?” Craft barked.
“Aye aye, sir!”
“Very well. And in answer to your question, Ensign, in the unlikely event you should ever find yourself in a situation where you feel you are being harassed, you get yourself out of that situation and report the circumstances either to me or to the XO and let us take care of it. But I’ll tell you what, Miller: with your attitude, I don’t think you’ve got much to worry about. Any other questions?”
There were no other questions.
“Very well,” said Captain Craft. “I wish you all an enjoyable year in Bahrain. Dismissed.”
* * * *
“Hey, Sanders, wait up,” a voice behind him called, and when he turned he saw Miller jogging toward him, a bulky canvas carryall banging her hip with every step. She came up to him breathing hard and put a hand on his shoulder to steady herself as she caught her breath. “You heading into town?”
“Name’s Tom,” he said, shifting his leather camera bag out of her way. “Yeah, I figured I’d take me a little look around. Captain really chewed you out back there.”
“You, too. I guess he doesn’t much care for women or blacks, huh?”
“He’s not so bad, I guess. Just runs a tight ship, that’s all. I seen worse. What’s your name?”
She brushed the question aside. “Miller’s fine. You mind if I come along with you?”
“Suit yourself. But I can’t go calling you Miller. My stepdaddy’s name’s Miller. What’s your first name?”
“Oh, hell.” She shrugged. “It’s Dolly. My damn name’s Dolly.”
The boy smiled. “Dolly. That’s a fine name. Pleased to meet you, Dolly.”
She smiled back at him, and they shook hands solemnly.
As they approached the thin wooden railing that separated the base from the outside world, a small man in an unfamiliar olive-green uniform stepped out of the guard shack next to the barrier.
“Good afternoon,” he greeted them pleasantly. His English was lightly accented, and his lively chocolate eyes regarded them with friendly interest.
“Hello, yourself.” Sanders returned the smile. “How come they got a Bahraini soldier here on the gate instead of a US Marine or somethin’?” He pronounced the word “BAH-rainy,” putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable and missing out on the gutteral hr most Westerners had so much trouble with.
“I am Pakistani,” the man explained, “not Bahraini—and a police officer, not a soldier. The Bahraini government’s Public Security Force supplies the guards for this gate, and most of us on the force come from Pakistan. In other countries, your own men stand the watch?”
“Men and women,” Dolly Miller corrected him. “Aren’t there any women on your security team?”
“No, I’m afraid we have no women—not in uniform, at any rate. This is an Islamic country, and such positions are held only by men.”
Miller seemed about to express her opinion of a system that excluded half its population from any type of position, but her companion cleared his throat.
“We were gonna stroll into town for a while,” said Sanders, “look around a bit. Can we go on through?”
“You are new here,” the Pakistani deduced. “Welcome to Bahrain. You will find it’s rather longer than a stroll from here to Manama, especially in this heat.” He nodded at the line of a half dozen red-and-white cabs parked beyond the wooden railing, their drivers—all in flowing thobes and checkered ghutras—lounging in a circle on the cracked sidewalk, conversing lazily in liquid Arabic. “You will enjoy yourselves much more if you take a taxi. And most certainly you may pass through—today and tomorrow, at any rate. But I will have to ask you to open up your camera bag and your purse for a moment before you go.”
“Why’s that?” asked Miller. “And what happens after tomorrow?”
“Someone has been smuggling spirits out of ASU, and this gate is the only way on or off the base. I am supposed to catch the criminal and put a stop to his activities. It is a matter of some urgency, I’m afraid. The government will not tolerate crime involving the non-Arab community, and, if the smuggling has not been stopped by midnight tomorrow, my superiors have been instructed to seal off this gate and allow no one on or off ASU until the situation has been satisfactorily resolved.”
Sanders let out a low-pitched whistle. “That’s heavy stuff. You’re talkin’ about holdin’ the US Navy prisoner here?”
“It is indeed a most serious state of affairs,” the policeman agreed soberly. “But I am hoping that I will be able to find out who is smuggling the spirits before my deadline is reached.”
“Spirits,” Sanders repeated. “You mean liquor.”
“The demon rum, I believe you call it. Dark rum, from a lovely tropical paradise some 20 times the size of Bahrain.”
“Jamaican rum,” said Miller. “And somebody’s smuggling it off base? Why bother? Captain Craft just told us this place is so liberal compared to the rest of the Arab countries you can walk into your neighborhood package store and buy whatever you want.”
“So you can. But the prices are quite high—much higher than in your American Class VI store here.”
“Still, how much money can a smuggler figure to make?” Tom Sanders asked him. “I mean, our booze is rationed, you know? You can’t buy but one bottle of the hard stuff a week. I don’t care how much you can sell it for outside, you can’t make enough of a profit on a bottle a week to make the risk worth takin’.”
“Ah, but our information is that the smuggler is taking two or three bottles of dark rum away with him per day. Or, perhaps”—he made a graceful gesture toward Dolly Miller—“with her. But I don’t want to hold you back from your excursion, especially since this may be your last opportunity to leave ASU for some time. May I?”
The Pakistani looked quickly but carefully through Sanders’ camera case and Miller’s shoulder bag, then raised the wooden barrier for them. “Your driver will tell you the ride downtown costs two dinars or perhaps even more,” he called after them as Miller pulled open the back door of the first vehicle in line. “They always try that, though the rates are fixed for journeys within the Manama area. Don’t pay him more than one dinar, whatever he asks.”
“Thanks!” the woman called back. “Hey, I’m Miller and this here’s Sanders! What’s your name?”
“Chaudri,” the little policeman said. “Mahboob Chaudri. Have a pleasant afternoon!”
* * * *
Their afternoon was far better than pleasant. It was fascinating. They roamed the twisted alleyways of the suq with the eager excitement of adventurous children. This was the first time outside America for both of them, and they were determined to soak up as much of the strange Arabic culture as they could. They watched gray-bearded tailors hand-stitch jet-black abbas, sitting cross-legged on the wooden floors of “shops” barely three feet wide and deep. They wandered down streets lined chockablock with gold merchants and tinsmiths and incense sellers and dealers in redolent herbs and spices. They passed open-air teahouses whose pale-blue benches were filled with grizzled old men puffing dreamily on tall glass water pipes. They saw beggar women swathed in black on every street corner and heard the babble of a dozen unfamiliar languages everywhere they turned.
It was a day of enchantment until, over milkshakes at the Aradous Coffee Shop, Dolly brought up the thought that had been troubling the back of both their minds.
“This thing about the smuggler,” she said. “You know, if we could catch him before that deadline tomorrow night and turn him over to the captain, I bet that’d go a long way toward making up for the kimshee we got ourselves into this morning.”
Sanders looked up from his half empty glass. “Him?” he said, a twinkle in his eye.
“All right,” she blushed, “him or her. Whoever. But what do you think? We could sort of nose around, ask some questions, see what we could dig up. We’ve still got more than 30 hours before the deadline. What do you think?”
“I think you gone crazy, Dolly, that’s what I think. You reckon we’re in trouble now? Well, you just go out there and start playin’ detective, girl, you’re gonna get us both in some deep kimshee and that’s for sure.”
Miller’s excited expression sagged. She lowered her head to her straw and sucked on it dismally.
“Hey,” said Sanders softly. “Hey, Dolly.”
When she looked up, she saw him beaming at her. “What the hell,” he said. “Let’s go for it.”
* * * *
When their cab dropped them back at the ASU gate, there were four Pakistanis lined up on the other side of it, waiting to be searched so they could leave the base. Although they were all in civilian clothing, it was as if they were uniformed: all four wore tailored long-sleeved shirts and dark pin-striped trousers with widely flared cuffs, all were of medium height and thin, all had dark-brown skin, short black hair, and lively brown eyes, and each one carried a five-liter water jug of red plastic.
It was obvious there was nothing concealed beneath their tight-fitting clothing, but as Sanders and Miller paid off their driver and headed for the gate they saw Mahboob Chaudri unscrew the cap from the first man’s jug and pour a thimbleful of its contents into a clear plastic cup.
“You checking for that demon rum?” Miller asked.
“Yes, indeed,” the policeman replied. “But as you can see, I am finding nothing but ordinary water.” He spilled the sample into the dirt and went on to the second man’s jug. “Every non-American working here at ASU is permitted to bring one jug of sweet water home with him each day,” he explained. “That is what I think you would call a fringed benefit of their employment. Outside, they would have to pay for sweet water—which is the only water in Bahrain that is pure enough for drinking—but because they work at ASU they may get it here for free.”
He recapped the third jug and opened the last one. “This would be the simplest way to move the dark Jamaican rum off the base, which is why you are finding me checking. Without luck, though, I’m afraid. Everything is as it should be.” He threw the fourth small sample of water into the dust at his feet, capped the jug, and raised the wooden barrier to let his countrymen out and the two Americans in.
“Well, listen,” said Sanders, “it can’t be a non-American doing the smugglin’, anyway, can it? I mean, liquor’s rationed here on base and only Americans have got ration cards.”
“Your reasoning is certainly persuasive,” Chaudri agreed, “but I must check everyone who leaves the base through this gate. This crime, you see, is not a logical one, and how the criminal is smuggling the rum away from ASU is only one of the mysteries I have been instructed to solve. There is a larger puzzle.”
The young newcomers leaned toward him.
“Our information is that the dark rum appearing on the market here in Bahrain is definitely coming from ASU,” Chaudri told them. “But there is no dark rum available at ASU. The only rum sold here, even to the American holders of ration cards, is light rum….”
* * * *
The Class VI store was closed when they went there after leaving Chaudri, a heavy iron gate swung across the pale-green door and padlocked, so Miller and Sanders put off the inquisition they’d been planning and had dinner together instead. They ate at the Two Seas, a cafeteria-style restaurant where Pakistanis did the cooking, bussed the tables, and ran the cash register. There was no mess hall at ASU, so most of the military personnel ate their meals there. The food was good, the prices were low—and it was the only place on post that served food. Which made it the only place where any of them would be eating for an indefinite time, unless the smuggler could be apprehended within the next 28 hours.
Both Miller and Sanders were eager to get started with their investigation, but since checking out the Class VI seemed to be the obvious first step, they separated after dinner with an agreement to meet again in the morning.
In-processing kept them busy for several hours after reveille, but they joined up at 1100 hours and headed for the Class VI. The store turned out to be a smallish room, the walls crowded with shelves of canned goods, snack foods, and such basic items as paper plates, plastic utensils, zip-lock bags for storing leftovers, shaving gear, toothpaste, and a modest array of over-the-counter medications. There was a single deep freezer packed with an assortment of frozen foods and a cooler for cheeses, lunchmeats, and chilled beverages. An even smaller second room held cases of beer and soda and several well-stocked shelves of wine and liquor. In one corner was a towering jumble of empty cardboard boxes and unopened cartons of surplus goods for which there was no display space available.
The clerk was one of the four Pakistanis they had seen leaving the base the afternoon before, and—after browsing around for a while and verifying that there was indeed no dark rum being offered for sale—they walked to the counter where he stood writing a letter in a strange script that made no sense to either of them. A hand-lettered sign taped to the cash register identified him as Mr. Owais Gujarit, Manager.
“Is that Pakistani you’re writing there, Mr. Gujarit?” Dolly asked him.
The man looked up at them and grinned. “It is Pakistani, I suppose you could say, but it is not called Pakistani. It is called Urdu.”
“Urdu,” she repeated, tasting the unfamiliar word and finding it somehow pleasing. Then she remembered the task at hand and let what she hoped would pass for a look of cool indifference wash across her face as she framed her first question.
* * * *
“I’ll get this one,” said Sanders and held up a hand to cut off Miller’s protest. “No, you bought dinner last night. Now it’s my turn.” He ripped open the velcro seal on his wallet and fished out a five-dollar bill.
“One Cornish hen, one cordon bleu, two salad, two cola,” the young Pakistani behind the register chanted rapidly, keying in prices with a stabbing motion of his right forefinger. “Four dollar sixty, sir,” he announced, an instant before the total appeared on the machine’s digital readout screen in bright blue figures.
Sanders dropped his change in the glass jar next to the register and they carried their trays across the busy dining room to the only remaining empty table.
The room was filled with whispered conversations—most of those Miller and Sanders could hear were worried discussions of the government’s threat to close the base off from the outside world in only 12 more hours. The two ensigns ate their lunch in silence, chewing over the information they had just received as they chewed their food—Owais Gujarit, the Class VI manager, had been cooperative but hadn’t had much of interest to tell them. New stock came into the store once a month, on the same C-130 flight that had delivered Sanders and Miller to the island the day before. Each month’s shipment included two cases of light rum, but there had never been any dark rum delivered in all the four years he had worked there.
“The thing’s impossible,” Sanders complained at last. “There’s no dark rum on sale over there in the first place, and even if there was there’s no way anybody could buy more than a bottle a week—and even if they could there’s no way to smuggle it out past that man Mahboob on the gate. I tell you, Dolly, it’s impossible.”
Miller set down her fork. “No, it’s not,” she said calmly. “I know where the stuff’s coming from, I know how it’s getting off-base, and I know who’s doing the smuggling. What say we step over to the Captain’s office and see if he’s around?”
* * * *
But as luck would have it Captain Craft was having lunch with the admiral aboard the Navy flagship out at Mina Sulman, so, an odd glint in her eye, Miller suggested they stroll down to the gate and share her theory with Mahboob Chaudri instead.
“Ensign Miller here’s solved your case for you,” Sanders greeted the Pakistani as he emerged from the guardhouse.
“Has she indeed?” An air conditioner rumbled loudly inside the shack, but Chaudri’s forehead glistened with perspiration. “I am delighted. I have not been pleased about the approach of my deadline. Closing down access to ASU would be making for a very uncomfortable situation here, one I would be happy to avoid. And although I have been enjoying my time here, I must admit I am ready for a more active assignment.”
Miller licked her lips nervously. “You mean this isn’t your regular job?”
“Oh, dearie me, no. This duty generally falls to a natoor—what you, I believe, would call a patrolman. I am a mahsool, a detective. I was placed here when we first learned about the smuggling, and I will be reassigned as soon as you tell me who I am to arrest and explain the reasoning behind your accusation.”
But a look of agonized embarrassment stole across Dolly Miller’s face.
“What’s the matter?” Sanders turned to her in concern.
She was hiding behind raised hands now and shaking her head.
“Ah, I believe I understand,” Chaudri smiled. “I’m afraid Ensign Miller was about to name me as the ASU smuggler.”
* * * *
“It’s really the most logical solution,” he said, pushing steaming cups of tea toward them. They were sitting around a plain deal table in the cramped guardhouse, and the air conditioner’s roar almost overwhelmed his comforting voice. “Unless you happened to know that I did not report to ASU until after the smuggling had already begun. Without that one vital piece of information, it must have seemed obvious that I was the only person with access to the base who could leave it without being searched.”
Miller lifted her head from her hands. “Thank heaven the Captain was out when we checked his office,” she said. “I feel like a big enough fool right now with you two knowing about this.”
“What I don’t get,” said Sanders, “is how you figured Mahboob here was gettin’ his hands on all that rum in the first place if he’s stuck up here in this shack all day and he hasn’t even got a ration card.”
Miller sighed. “I thought he had an accomplice, maybe—somebody who sneaked the stuff to him so he could take it away every evening when the gate closed down for the night and he went off duty.”
“But they’ve only got light rum here on base and it’s dark rum that keeps turning up outside.”
Dolly’s eyes lit up. “Well, that’s the part I was positive I had all scoped out. It came to me while we were eating lunch just now. I was wondering why they call it cordon blue when there isn’t any blue in there at all. I thought maybe it starts out sort of blue and changes color while they’re cooking it.”
“I took French at school,” Sanders said. “Cordon bleu means ‘blue ribbon,’ and the idea is—”
“Changes color,” Mahboob Chaudri repeated slowly. He set down his cup and addressed Dolly. “Excuse me, please, Ensign, but are you saying that—?”
“I’m saying I figured you were taking light rum away from the base and adding some kind of coloring to it to make it look like dark rum later on.”
Chaudri washed a hand across his face. “In that case,” he said pensively. “In that case.” Suddenly he jumped to his feet. “Can you be back here at five o’clock this afternoon? Both of you?”
“Well, sure,” said Sanders.
“I can,” Dolly nodded. “But why?”
Chaudri flashed them a brilliant grin. “Because you have earned the right to be present when I expose the real ASU smuggler,” he said. “Is that reason enough, my friends?”
* * * *
Miller and Sanders were back at the guardhouse at five sharp. Mahboob Chaudri was waiting for them alone, but he refused to explain. “Allah is with those who patiently persevere,” he told them with a sparkle in his eye.
A quarter of an hour later, the four Pakistanis they had first seen the day before approached the wooden railing. Once again, each of them carried a red plastic jug of sweet water. The ensigns recognized two of the men as busboys who worked the luncheon shift at the Two Seas cafeteria. The third man was Owais Gujarit from the Class VI store, and the fourth was unknown to them.
As he had done the day before, Chaudri poured a small quantity of the liquid from each jug into a clear plastic tumbler. This time, though, he seemed vastly more confident, and, rather than simply looking at his samples—assuming because they were crystal clear that they were in fact sweet water—he sniffed at each of them delicately and tasted them, knowing that one of the four would turn out to be not water, but colorless light rum. And yet, one by one, the four samples proved to possess the no-smell and no-taste of pure water.
“May we go now?” said the fourth man.
Mahboob Chaudri seemed not to hear him. “Impossible.” He shook his head stubbornly. “This is impossible. There is no other way for the rum to be leaving ASU, I would swear it. If the smuggler is not bringing it out in these jugs—”
Then, all at once, the little policeman’s querulous expression cleared. “Ah,” he sighed. “Ah, dearie me, of course. I’m afraid that I will have to trouble you further,” he told the Pakistani civilians. “I must ask you to empty your jugs entirely.”
One of the busboys said a word in a language neither of the Americans had heard before. Miller wondered if it might not be Urdu. Chaudri answered him in English, for their benefit. “I want to compare the weight of the empty jugs,” he explained. “I want to see if one of them isn’t rather heavier than the others. When I am finished, you will have to go back and fill them all over again. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I have had an idea, and I must know whether it has any validity.”
With shrugs of exasperation, three of the four men uncapped and upended their jugs, spilling the expensive sweet water in the dirt at their feet.
The remaining Pakistani stood there silently, making no move to comply with the mahsool’s instruction.
“And you, sahib?” Chaudri prompted him.
The man raised his plastic jug slowly, as if preparing to uncap it, and then with a frightened cry he swung it at Chaudri’s head, knocking him to the ground. He ducked under the wooden railing and raced off down the dusty road.
Tom Sanders was after him in an instant. Before they had passed the far end of the line of taxis outside the gate, he had brought the man down with a flying tackle. He rolled the prostrate figure onto its back, his fist clenched and ready.
But there was no fight left in the slight man cowering on the ground. Staring up at Sanders with terror in his eyes was Owais Gujarit, the Class VI clerk.
* * * *
“When Mahboob poured the water out of the jug,” Dolly Miller explained, “we could hear something still sloshing around in there.”
They were in Captain Craft’s austere office in the Admin Building, and Mahboob Chaudri—with a cold compress held gingerly to the side of his head —seemed content to allow the Americans to do all the talking.
“The way he worked it was simple,” Sanders told his superior. “Every afternoon after closin’ up the shop, he stuffed one of those big plastic baggies into his water jug, leavin’ the mouth of the baggie stickin’ out of the mouth of the jug. He filled the baggie with rum, then fastened it shut and filled the jug the rest of the way up with water.”
“How was the man covering up all that missing rum?” Captain Craft asked. “And what was he doing with it once he got it off the base?”
“He explained that while we were waiting for the Public Security wagon,” Sanders replied. “There was a foul-up in last month’s cargo shipment: the C-130 brought in 20 cases of rum for ASU instead of the two we were supposed to get. Gujarit was the only person in a position to spot the mistake, and when he did he hid the extra cases under a pile of other cartons in the back of the shop and started smugglin’ it out a little at a time. He smashed the empties and got rid of them with the store’s daily trash. Outside, he colored and rebottled the rum and pasted on phony labels he had made up at one of the print shops in town.”
The Captain swiveled his chair to face Mahboob Chaudri. “We’d better get a medic over here to take a look at that bump of yours.”
“Not necessary,” the Pakistani protested. “Back in Karachi, where I come from, my family has a long history of hardheadedness. But there is one request I would appreciate your granting me.”
“Name it, mahsool. We’re in your debt. I hate to think about the international repercussions if you hadn’t managed to clear up this business in time to prevent your government from actually shutting down our base.”
“Not in my debt,” said Chaudri. “Oh, no, indeed not. I would never have solved this case without the invaluable assistance of Ensigns Miller and Sanders, whom I overheard a short while ago hoping that the events of this afternoon might help to raise them a bit in your estimation. I’m not at all sure what they meant by the phrase ‘deep kimshee,’ Captain, but I would be most grateful if you would lift them out of it, whatever it is.”
The room was silent for a moment. Dolly Miller and Tom Sanders looked as if they were wishing they had somewhere to hide.
But Captain Craft surprised them. “Very well,” he said, with a smile that remained on his face until the meeting was adjourned a few minutes later.
AFTERWORD
The Administrative Support Unit in Bahrain has since been renamed, but it’s a real place as described in the story, and I spent quite a bit of time there during my 10 months in Bahrain. The Class VI store, the Aradous Coffee Shop, the red plastic “sweet water” jugs, the Cornish game hens and cordon bleu in the Two Seas restaurant on post—that’s all real. Even Miller and Sanders are named after real sailors, although the Miller I knew was male, not female, and the Sanders I knew was white, not black.
This is the second consecutive Chaudri story in which water plays an important role, and that too is authentic. Bahrain is an island nation, completely surrounded by water, but the water that surrounds it is seawater and therefore undrinkable. The country itself, however, is mostly desert, and the presence or absence of potable water is a life-and-death matter for everyone who lives there.
When the story was published in the April 1986 issue of EQMM, the table of contents gave its title as “Asu,” and that’s how it’s listed in various online mystery databases. The correct spelling, though, is “ASU,” which is pronounced as three separate letters (“A-S-U”), not as the words “ass-you” or “as-you.”
Rereading the story now, 30 years after I wrote it, I was struck by Mahboob’s statement that “Allah is with those who patiently persevere” and wondered if that was something I made up or something I researched. Google tells me that, sure enough, the second chapter of the Quran, which is called the Surat al-Bakarah, includes this passage at line 153: “Oh, you who have believed, seek help through patience and prayer. Indeed, Allah is with the patient.”
“ASU” was originally written as a standalone, but I eventually wrote a sort of sequel, “The Ivory Beast,” in which Miller and Sanders make a brief cameo appearance at the beginning. (You’ll find a photograph of the real Miller and the real Sanders—and the real me—in that story’s Afterword.)