Long hot days permeated by the scent of petrol and rubber, and longer nights distended by the desert silence, have carried Abdul Ghassan from his thirtieth to his sixtieth birthday without his being aware of it. He wakes at dawn when salaah sounds at the mosque, performs his ablutions at the common facilities, and returns to his portable cabin to pray. Each trailer in the work-yard is partitioned to house two men, and Abdul Ghassan’s home is little more than a berth with a bedside table. There is just enough room on the floor to pray, and these days it is age, rather than space, that makes it difficult to kneel.

He eats his breakfast at the mess, wishing salaam-aleikum to his coworkers before proceeding to his tasks. In the yard they repair and refit the scrapers and ploughs that will make their way to Al-Kharj or to the farms in the north-west, the tractors and pulleys that will be rushed to the frenzied housing projects in Dammam and Jeddah, and the pawing hoes that will lay the butter-soft roads to and from Riyadh. Theirs is the kind of hard, physical labor that devours the hours, that allows a man to think in peace without thinking too hard about anything. The workers don’t speak to each other; even if they could hear over the drills and the clanging of metal against metal, they would have little to say. Most are Filipinos, small fearful creatures who speak little Arabic and no English, who, like Abdul Ghassan, have left their families behind to support them. When appropriate, Abdul Ghassan speaks to the manager on their behalf; with his steady hands, his smile, his broad shoulders, and his six-feet-five-inches he has, over the past thirty years, gained their trust.

Now he feels the days, fat and lazy and imperturbable, curling with a sigh into the folds in his skin. Summer nights are mute, neutered, but in the winter the wind stirs the dust of wilted desire. Abdul Ghassan was once a very handsome man; even now the gentle convexity of his stomach does not prevent him from impressing most people he meets with his distinguished appearance. His fingers are nimble, his eyes sharp, his features strong and leonine, his silvery-white hair and beard are thick, and he can carry more weight than men half his age. In the photograph he keeps by his bedside, taken during his vacation in India two years ago, he is taller than both his sons. Beside him, his wife Syeda is veiled, diminutive, a shadow. She had been too shy to unveil for the camera; her modesty has left his dreams vague.

On most nights there is nothing to do, and Abdul Ghassan watches a little television, reads the Quran, puts out some milk for the stray cats, and falls asleep. But for this last year, his nephew Anwar has come by about once a month to drive him to a local sports club. When Syeda first wrote to him from Hyderabad, asking him to watch out for her sister’s son who would be coming to Riyadh to work, he had been worried; if he couldn’t afford to keep his wife with him, he couldn’t possibly find room for the boy. Anwar, however, showed tremendous initiative, and within three months of his arrival found an apartment, acquired a car, discovered a sports club, and eagerly took his chacha to play table-tennis.

In his youth, Abdul Ghassan had been a legend, and it was Anwar’s ambition to convincingly defeat his uncle at the sport and return to tell the tale. Their endless duels drew an audience, and challengers as well. A man called Venkat was so well matched against Abdul Ghassan, and so impressed by the old man’s determination to play “as if his life depended on it” that he offered to split the cost of a table-tennis table, a table which now sits in the sheltered space between the portable cabins in the workyard.

Venkat is thirty-six and tireless, and when Abdul Ghassan needs a break to catch his breath, Venkat coaches his wife Indira. At times a few of the other workers sit on the steps outside their cabins to watch, and Abdul Ghassan is never entirely sure whether it is appreciation for the game or awe at seeing a woman compete, but Indira doesn’t seem to mind. She wears a baggy Fila tracksuit and stays focused on the game, grinning when a worker praises a good shot with a yell of Aiwa! and often turning to Abdul Ghassan to ask, “Chacha, did you see that?”

Their children, Nidhi and Deepa, sometimes make themselves useful and retrieve the balls. If told perfunctorily to disappear, nine-year-old Deepa retreats to a corner to watch the game in bored silence, while Nidhi, the elder by three years, vanishes into the workyard to play among the machinery, content to busy herself by exploring the innards of the sleeping tractor army.

Tonight, Deepa sits on the steps, sulking. She may be hungry, or she may have fought with her sister. But her parents, as they volley in rhythmic synchronicity, throwing each other occasional amused glances, know that she will soon recover her naturally sunny disposition. And Abdul Ghassan, who resents being ignored, does not want to watch anymore.

“I’m going to rest for a bit,” he announces, aware that nobody is paying attention. Going to his trailer, he finds Nidhi sitting on the bed, flipping channels on the tiny television set. The sullen bow of her lips is so like that of his wife that, for a second, he cannot look away. Pulling out some betel leaves and tobacco, he wraps a morsel to chew, and putting it in his mouth, sits down on the bed beside her. When he picks her up and puts her in his lap, she doesn’t object.

That was all he intended, to hold her, but once the warm, pulsing girl is in his lap he is reminded how starved he is for touch. He blames the desert in part, the insufferable temperatures that make people smelly and irritable and unwilling to come close to one another, and also the law that forbids him to touch any woman but his wife with whom his only intercourse now takes the form of frenetic, expensive phone-calls and the confirmation of wire transfers. The child’s hair smells of coconut and exertion, and when he rubs her arms and puts his own around her waist, she laughs with pleasure.

Outside the thin door of the cabin there is a roar of triumph followed by laughter.

“Okay, okay, let’s play again,” Indira teases her husband. “This time I’ll show you.”

Suddenly, embers of something long asleep burn hot and desperate in a dying lurch, and Abdul Ghassan lifts his fingers to touch the breasts of the girl in his arms.

“Does that feel good?” he asks her gently.

“No,” she says crossly, pushing his arms away.

“It should. It will if you let it. Want to try again?” he asks, continuing to caress her.

When she climbs out of his lap and leaves the cabin without looking at him, he feels cold, petrified. He closes his eyes and hopes, insh’Allah she’ll forget. Then the words imprison him and he trembles. Even if Allah is willing for her to forget, who will make Allah forget? Inarticulate, aimless terror propels him to the door which, when he throws it open, reveals nothing more than Nidhi and Deepa observing an insect, and their parents still playing, laughingly wiping the sweat from around their eyes. The stayed judgment leaves him lonely, rather than relieved, suffocated by a crowd of absences.