I look at Jon, still fiddling with his Walkman, putting on another cassette tape, making sure the one he has replaced, the AHA tape, is in the correct container, replacing it in the hidden compartment between our seats. Jon is a neat-freak or, in his own words, he likes to be organized, because time only passes once, and no one gets a chance at recovering it. Jon works as a trainer at a big hotel in downtown Muscat.
We have been driving back from Nizwa, a town in the western interior of Oman, to Muscat, the capital city where we live and work. The two-day celebration of the Sultan’s birthday gave us a chance to drive around the nearby towns, taking in each town’s soukh or local markets. The storm hit when it was almost sundown, just when we had left the town proper and in the middle of a small highway flanked on both sides by date plantations. The red sky became dark and it was difficult to see ahead so we decided to pull over and let the storm pass. That was three hours ago and now it’s almost eight in the evening and the sun’s already setting, the sky taking on a charcoal gray hue from the subsiding sandstorm and the road has disappeared. There are no other vehicles on sight, not even a donkey nor a camel.
Jon leans over to turn on the windshield wiper, purposefully letting his hand brush against my breasts, his face touching my right shoulder. He tries to kiss my neck but I lean back against the car window, away from him. The windshield wipers make a low scratching noise as it travels across the dusty windshield, forming half arcs of now clear Omani skies. A new moon, almost a sliver, floats on the horizon. Faint twinkles of stars dot the sky.
"How deep are we actually buried in?" I ask him.
He shrugs his shoulders, looks around although it is already too dark to see anything.
"I don’t know. Maybe tire deep or less." He switches on the radio. Omani music fills the car.
"And how is this car going to move if it's submerged in sand?" I grip the car key between thumb and forefinger to start the car.
"You can't drive yet," he says, taking my hand away from the key in the ignition. "The car won’t go anyway."
"And how do you suppose we’ll go back?" I ask, my voice becoming high pitched as my panic starts to show. I'm supposed to check in with my boss once back in the city, the same way I had to inform them I'm driving around the interior for the weekend, of course, to the consternation of Mr. Cunningham, especially that I wouldn't tell him who was coming with me. By now, they would know that I didn't drive around in my SAAB because the car is parked right in front of the entrance of the Hatat House, my apartment building.
"The wind will start blowing again and then the sand will be blown and we'll be on our way." Jon says casually.
"How do you know this? Have you been caught in a sandstorm before?"
"No," he says nonchalantly. Then smiling, he says, "I'm just pulling your leg." He puts one arm around my shoulders and pulls me towards him. With the other hand he holds my face and kisses me in the mouth, the warm tongue searching mine. Thoughts of desert snakes and spider crabs crowd my mind again and I pull away.
"What’s wrong?"
"Snakes," I say, "they might wiggle through the muffler and get inside the car."
"No, they won’t," he says as he starts to kiss me again.
"We’re half-buried in sand in the middle of nowhere and all you could think of is just kiss?" I fold my arms across my chest. He sits straight.
"I wasn’t thinking of just kiss," he says, pretending to look hurt.
"Oh."
"I also want to have sex right here." He grabs me towards him, but I push him away.
"Are you serious? What if a policeman comes by? You want me to land in jail?"
"Do you see anything anywhere?" His arm flails. "It's dark all over. The only light we can see are the stars." His nostrils flare, something he does when he gets excited or anxious. One hand gropes inside my blouse. I give it a slap.
"Kill joy," he tells me, and sits back and looks away. He grabs his Walkman and carefully untangle the earphone cords.
Two Filipino expatriates in the middle of a date plantation somewhere in the interior of the Sultanate of Oman, that’s what we are, Jon and I. In the Philippines, we would never have met, our paths would never have crossed. Children of well-off families go a different route than those from the lower middle class. If ever, I would've been the secretary who types and answers phones, and he would be the boss who orders people around. It's like, he's up there in the big mansion and I'm down here in the servants' quarters, and never the twain shall meet. But in the land of the lonely that is the Middle East, all of us expatriate workers are equal.
A light wind blows and the sea of sand rustles around us. We sit and watch the sand and the stars, it seems for forever, but the clock on the dash tells me it has only been five minutes.
"Okay," I say.
"Okay what?" he asks seemingly annoyed.
"Okay, let's have sex right here."
We look at each other for a long time, then we break into a loud laughter. I laugh so hard I slap my hand on the steering wheel horn and it gets jammed. He tries to push buttons and knobs on the dash as I panic, the noise filling my ears. I scream and I hear Jon yelling at me to shut up.
I am still screaming when the horn stops.
I folded my arms across my chest and turned away.
"Damn car," I say.
"Hey, don't swear at my car."
"Damn car. How can we have sex in such a small car, half-submerged in sands and with such cramped space inside? I will never buy such a stupid car. Stupid Miata. I will never buy it even if they put it on sale for the price of the hatched back. We should’ve taken my car instead."
Jon sits quietly.
"Damn car." I say. "Damn sandstorm. Damn."
Suddenly he grabs me and says something in my ear. I try to push him away.
"Come here," he says and he grabs me again.
"You and your damn sex and your damn teeny-weeny car."
"I have something for you."
"What, you have a hard on?"
"Aside from that, look!"
He points towards the sky that has now been transformed into a blanket of dark velvet blue glittering with millions of stars.
"Aha," I say as I held on to his arm. "The stars of Oman. It's beautiful, ain’t it, the view?"
"See that big one, straight from here? The one beside those two clusters? See?"
"That one beside the Big Dipper and the Small Dipper?" I say in a mocking tone.
"Shush, just look, will you?"
"I'm looking! I'm looking. So?"
"That's yours. From me, for you."
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