Tales from the Desert

Stuart Crocker

Description

'Tales from the Desert' is the compelling, true story of a British expatriate who journeyed to Saudi Arabia as a young man to seek his fortune for a couple of years and ended up staying for twenty-five. The collection of real-life tales are amusing, mystifying, captivating and at times downright terrifying.Journeying to the mystical deserts of Arabia in the 1970s, when the world economy revolved around the price of oil and the concept of Islamic fundamentalism was barely known, the author takes the reader through a joyride of experiences including the unfolding drama of the first Gulf War and a 'too close for comfort' view of the uprising during the Arab Spring.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Memoir

Informations

• Publié par: The Conrad Press
• Date de parution: 08 août 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839783074
• Langue: English

Extrait

Tales from the Desert
an Arabian Memoir
Stuart Crocker


Tales from the Desert
Published by The Conrad Press Limited in the United Kingdom 2021
Tel: [phone]
www.theconradpress.com
[e-mail]
ISBN 978-1-839783-07-4
Copyright © Stuart Crocker, 2021
The moral right of Stuart Crocker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.


To my wife and daughter for their support and who also shared some of these experiences.


Contents
Chapter 1 Arrival - 1979
Chapter 2 Orientation
Chapter 3 The Company
Chapter 4 Getting Down to Work
Chapter 5 The Joys of Ramadan
Chapter 6 Moving into Town
Chapter 7 Dying For a Drink
Chapter 8 Bahrain by Dhow
Chapter 9 The King is Dead, Long Live the King
Chapter 10 A Place of My Own
Chapter 11 Party Central
Chapter 12 Getting The Chop
Chapter 13 Coast to Coast - A Trip to the Red Sea
Chapter 14 Getting in Shape
Chapter 15 A Very Saudi Wedding
Chapter 16 A Free Press
Chapter 17 Taking to the Water
Chapter 18 Diving The Red Sea
Chapter 19 Going the Course
Chapter 20 Clouds Gather - The Gulf War
Chapter 21 Gathering Storm - The Gulf War
Chapter 22 The Storm Breaks - The Gulf War
Chapter 23 Time for a Change
Chapter 24 A Second Coming
Chapter 25 Island Life
Chapter 26 Ladies in the Workforce
Chapter 27 Getting Restless
Chapter 28 A New Challenge
Chapter 29 The CEO Departs
Chapter 30 Causeway Blues
Chapter 31 Going ‘Too Fast’
Chapter 32 The Arab Spring
Chapter 33 Spring is Over
Chapter 34 New Boss and New Apartment
Chapter 35 Life in The Emirates
Chapter 36 Time to Leave
Chapter 37 The Last Grain of Sand


Introduction
T he aim of this book is not to provide a detailed, learned history of Arabia, nor indeed to provide an exhaustive analysis of the politics, religion and culture which prevail in that part of the world.
Although these are described in some detail and are referenced throughout, it is essentially the story of a British expatriate who journeyed to Saudi Arabia in 1979 as a young man to seek his fortune and to experience a foreign culture. I had imagined that this adventure would last for only a couple of years, but as things turned out, it lasted substantially longer.
Some of the experiences related in the following pages were amusing, many frustrating, some mystifying, while others were downright terrifying. It is my hope that through the telling of these stories which occurred in this strange, yet always fascinating land, the reader will gain an insight to a place which for many, remains largely unknown and impenetrable.


Chapter 1
Arrival - 1979
A s I went down the aircraft steps, the darkness illuminated by the airport floodlights, I thought for a moment that I must be standing directly in the exhaust of one of the whistling turbofan engines of the British Airways Boeing 747 which had touched down ten minutes earlier.
It was eight in the evening on the 2 nd July, 1979 and, as I would soon realise, the oppressive heat had nothing to do with the aircraft engines, the natural air temperature even at this hour, was a brisk forty degrees centigrade. How impossibly hot, I wondered, would it be at midday.
I had just landed at Dhahran Airport in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, just a few miles away from the headquarters of my new employer, the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), the company which produced and refined all the oil within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It was the largest oil producing company in the world and the one for whom I would now be working.
My long journey to reach there had not just begun at Heathrow, it had started some six months earlier when I had responded to an advertisement in one of the national Sunday papers offering eye-watering - to me at least - salaries for professionals who wished to work for the Arabian American Oil Company in Saudi Arabia.
I had sent off an application, enclosing my not very long curriculum vitae and had waited, without any great expectation, for a response. The response however did come and it came within two weeks. I was invited down to London for an interview and a medical at the very grand Grosvenor House on Park Lane. They clearly meant business.
I arrived at the hotel one frosty January morning and walked up the steps where the door was opened by a liveried doorman. At the reception desk I was directed to the sixth floor where the company had rented most of the suites and in which they were conducting interviews for the many different disciplines they needed to recruit.
Suites had also been set aside for a group of doctors and other staff to perform the medicals. Two things were evident, one that this company was in a hurry and two, it was clearly a company which had a lot of money and knew how to spend it!
I thought my interview went reasonably well and I was subsequently given a fairly routine medical examination by a Harley Street doctor. I was told by my interviewer a decision would be made quickly and I would be informed within the next two weeks.
True to their word, I received a phone call the following week offering me a position and advising that a written offer was in the post. Goodness me! It was one thing to idly dream about disappearing abroad on a new and exciting adventure, quite another to actually make the decision.
I immediately called my ever-supportive wife whose initial reaction was to say; ‘Great, when do we leave?’
I explained to her that the job offer was conditional upon me being hired on a bachelor status contract. This meant that if I accepted, I would be going alone. Up until that point it had all been hypothetical, we had often discussed the possibility of working abroad, but had assumed that if and when an opportunity came along, we would both be going. Now would be a good time for a serious chat.
After a great deal of soul-searching over the next few days, we concluded that even though it meant we would be apart for the first time in our short married life, this was too good an opportunity to turn down.
We reasoned that it would only be for a relatively short period of time - two years at the most and that during that time, I would be able to return home on leave every four months and it would allow us in two short years to pay off our mortgage and ‘to get ahead of the game’ as it were. So when I received the written offer, I sent my acceptance by return.
And so it was that five months later, I found myself walking down those aircraft steps into the oppressive heat of an Arabian, July evening.
I was probably little different from the majority of my fellow passengers on that flight. I had been offered a well-paid job and, even more attractively, without the inconvenience of paying any bothersome income tax. Like many other expatriates, I planned to merely interrupt my UK career for two years to achieve a financial goal before returning home. My sojourn in the desert was therefore to be a strictly short term affair, or at least, so I thought at the time.
I had left London in 1979, but the use of the Hijrah calendar throughout much of Arabia meant that when I landed it was in fact only the year 1399 and I was shortly about to find out why. The line of almost four hundred disembarking passengers snaked its way across the tarmac and into the arrival hall where I was about to have my first shock.
It was utter chaos. There were long queues at each of the three open passport control booths and none of them appeared to be moving. I must have waited in my particular queue for the best part of an hour before I at last handed my passport to the officer. By the time it had been stamped and I was allowed to pass through to the barrier and into the baggage reclaim hall, virtually all the cases had been taken off the carousel and randomly thrown into a vast pile almost ten feet high.
Passengers scrambled to locate their cases which could have been anywhere in the mound. Once retrieved, every piece of luggage was subjected, without exception, to a thorough search conducted by a khaki uniformed customs officer. The technique was either to simply rummage roughly through the contents, or more frequently, just to turn the opened case upside down, spilling the entire contents across the inspection counter.
Having passed this ‘inspection’, the unfortunate owner then had to struggle to put everything back in his case, while being exhorted to hurry up by the customs officer, so the next suitcase could be examined in a similar fashion.
I had been well briefed during my pre-travel orientation in London about what was and was not permissible to bring into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It was a long list.
Items which might insult Islamic sensibilities such as alcohol, pork and of course pornography were strictly prohibited. I was later to discover that the term ‘pornography’ in Saudi Arabia included any representation of the female and sometimes the male form, in which the entire body was not completely covered by loose fitting clothing. Any newspapers, books or magazines were therefore eyed suspiciously and often just tossed onto the confiscated pile without being checked. I will relate the story of the ‘felt tip editors’ later on.
I eventually emerged outside the arrival building into a maelstrom of shouts, waving arms and a bewildering array of message boards. At last I saw my name being held up on a small board by a ginger haired, bearded man who introduced himself to me as Andy and took my