Mike's Saudi (18) Habala the hanging village

This is pretty much as I remember the hanging village Habala, now it is served by a cable railway from somewhere near where this picture has been taken. I believe it is becoming a bit of a tourist attraction.

 A few miles from the base the Mountains started huge valleys literally thousands of feet deep following one after the other like a great field ploughed by giants. I visited them with a couple of English friends, all along they were pretty much the same a shear drop of well over a 1000feet followed by a 45 degree slope of maybe another couple of 1000feet. At one point where the vertical cliff met the slope there was a little village, Habala, with a few terraced fields and a group of small houses.

The population of this place use to climb up to the top along a diagonal narrow ledge intermittently using tree trunks driven into the rock face where the ledge had petered out. At the top they parked their Toyota trucks for the drive into town. I believe the village originated in the time when the Turks invaded the area and these people took refuge in this virtually impenetrable place. It fascinated me; fortunately a little way from the village was a promontory where I went to photograph it.  As I tried to gain a suitable view point I moved slowly forward checking through the camera view finder as I went. For some reason I took the camera from my eye and found I was standing with my toes a few inches from and looking down a drop of thousands of feet. I moved slowly away from the cliff and sat down in a cold sweat. Every time I closed my eyes for days afterwards all I could see was the drop I had so narrowly escaped. How the population of the village could run up and down their path with their possessions balanced on their heads I just do not know.

A BAC friend of mine, a mountaineer decide he would like to climb from the village straight up the cliff face taking two days over it. The villagers thought he was mad and warned him not to go but John had climbed all over the world and knew exactly what he was taking on. He started his climb on the Thursday morning and by evening had reached just over halfway up where he camped on the cliff face in a hanging tent. On the Friday he completed his climb to find all the villagers at the top with the traditional cooked sheep and a pile of rice to celebrate his arrival. He visited the village several times more and was hailed as a hero each time. Later when John returned to the UK he joined a mountain rescue team in Wales and started an outward bound school.

 

 

Mike's Saudi (17) Our first house in Khamis Mushayt

Sadly this is the only picture of Old Khamis I could find, it seems that all I knew and loved has gone, even this is a poor modern interpretation of country house not a town house.

 

I had to wait over three long years for Syb and Karen to join me in Saudi but at least it had given Karen the time to finish her schooling and she was fast maturing into a young woman. There were no villas left on the camp estate so after my persistent lobbying, BAC had found us a place in town. It was a top flat with English neighbours below who in fact we very rarely met. The place was of typical local construction concrete blocks had been laid on top of the contours of the land, going up and down as did the surface below them. These were built to three stories high gradually levelling off through each course until at the top it was more or less level. The whole was then rendered to hide the construction. On first seeing it and knowing it was pivotal in getting the family to join me, I was delighted. A board stair case at the end of the building climbed to the first floor which through double doors led onto a large tiled hall lit by a tiny chandelier. Off this main thoroughfare led two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a lounge and a secluded walled ladies veranda with a fountain. The fountain drained straight into the flat below which we were to find out the first time we tried it. The bedrooms and lounge were joined on the outside of the building by a long balcony.  Back through the double doors and up the stairs led to the kitchen, dining room and a flat roof.

This was our home for about six months after which time we moved into a modern villa built to European standards on base. At the time of this move the flat walls were moving, in one bathroom the blocks had broken through the plaster, I was relieved to go. But our time there had been an experience; in many ways the owner of the flats lived in a small house next door with an adjoining door to our garden through the purdah wall. Most Saudi houses were surrounded by a wall at least six feet high to prevent the passerby from seeing the female members of the family. Our landlord used to use the flat’s garden for growing vegetables it had been agreed as part of the rent that when a tanker came to fill our water tank it also watered his vegetable patch. Tending his crops meant that he spent a lot of time round the outside of our building, he was an old man and Syb used to spend hours in the garden sat on a low stone wall communicating with him in their personal sign language.

He had a daughter who taught at the local girls’ school and would wave and shout “Hello” as she passed.  We never accepted his invitations to visit him in his home. BAC had warned us about that sort of thing, I was away at my job leaving the girls alone in the flat. Many are the times since we have cursed our reluctance to go, our later experience showing how foolish we had been to ignore this wonderful opportunity.

Mike's Saudi (16) How we taught the Saudis in the 1970s

The photograph taken by Mztourist of an RSAF Lightning aircraft at the RSAF Museum Riyadh

At work I was getting to know my trainers and trainees, if you can imagine a situation where the trainees had had little experience of science or engineering and the trainers were widely experienced men who found it difficult to connect with the these simple country lads. The Saudis had also been taught American English at an introductory course which only added to the trainers difficulties. You may get some idea of my job, to get these two factions to meet and it had to be done in the work situation. There was always the difficulty of maintaining the aircraft and training the Saudi boys. For us Brits there was the added challenge of training to an American system which at the time few Brits at any level understood.  It was only much later when I was working alongside the Americans that I really appreciated it and how appropriate it was to the Saudi situation at the time; remember this was in the 1970s.  To add to all these problems the Saudis had spent 60% of their schooling on religious studies which didn’t leave a lot of time for everything else. Another item seen by some as a problem was that the training program on the ground was overseen by the Pakistan Air Force. This really annoyed some of the section chiefs but I got on fine with my Pakistani I had only one and in the end he just trusted me to get on with it. It was very interesting time to be there, remember Saudi Arabia had only been united as a country about 40 years and was still emerging from a mainly desert community.

Perhaps it might help if I describe briefly the American training system known as ‘On the Job Training’ usually referred to as OJT. This meant that the trainee would accompany the technician in his daily work, studying what he did and gradually taking the job over, first under the guidance of the trainer/technician and later by himself at which point the trainee would be qualified in that single task. Once qualified the trainee would move on to a different job until he was qualified in all aspects of his work at which time he would receive a small technical promotion. This system was ideally suited to training a workforce intelligent but ignorant of any mechanical or electronic working. Theory was provided in formal lessons by people such as myself and in discussions with the trainer. This was a wonderful system to get a generation of young Saudis understanding the modern world quickly. The disadvantage was that they only learned what was immediately relevant to the job in hand.

The British way was to do an initial training course followed by experience in the field followed by a more advanced course, a system which was more in depth but took longer and required the trainee to have at least some idea of basic mechanics. If I may put it this way it required someone brought up Meccano not on herding sheep this is not an insult it was a fact in the 1970s. Here you can see the problem for the BAC trainers most of which had an RAF background and there was a tendency to teach beyond what was required for the job in hand. This frustrated both the trainer and trainee. However as I said earlier it was much later that I fully understood the advantages of the system particularly for the Saudi trainees and a country with a need to catch up on the modern world.

 

Mike's Saudi (15) Early days

After I arrived in Saudi I spent a few days in Riyadh before being sent to Khamis Mushayt but it was not certain that I would stay there in those early days and after a little time Ali Badi the most senior man of the Saudi photographic personnel and respected in the civilian world asked me “Mr. Mike would you like to stay here?” I was already starting to love the place and naturally agreed “I will write to my Head Quarters and ask them to have you stay”. It was the start of a long friendship based on mutual respect, although he was a Bedouin he was a natural gentleman and a great friend to me.

My future was decided from that point on. BAC paid their personnel at Khamis hardship money, it was at the time the back of beyond and my room was half a converted shipping container, not much in the way of luxury. The swimming pool had leaked so it had been turned it into an open air cinema; I remember once watching a film of Janice Joplin’s life after the first reel I was the only one left in the audience and the projectionist was begging me to leave. There was a sex film at the time Emanuel and for that the cinema was crowded only for half of them to walk out early on but when Jungle Book was playing they were standing in any available space, funny people expatriates.

I do believe that expatriates are a breed apart, an American I worked with much later on said “Don’t judge the people back home by the guys you meet out here”. In part I think he was right, it took a special type of man to live in those conditions in an all male camp for years and only get home for 15 days three times a year. There were homosexuals in the mix but by and large I found them just fine and at times exceedingly funny when they played up to it. There was one we called Sweet William who later on became friends with my daughter Karen, his favourite saying to her was ”You’re safe with me dear” and they got along well.

Of course for the heterosexuals there was a hospital full of nurses just down the road, they were expatriates too and most if not all were well able to look after themselves. In our compound we had a club with a bar serving homemade wine (grape juice, sugar and yeast, if you’re really thirsty kill it after a couple of weeks!) and Sadeeqy a form of spirit brewed in an illicit still hidden between two innocent looking walls. Saudi being a dry country but aware of the needs of foreigners came to the understanding that as long as we behaved ourselves they would ignore our social habits. We did find once one of the Saudi guards would nip in after the club was closed and finished off swill in the bottom of the glasses left on the tables, I never heard what happened to him. There was the time when we were warned about a raid by the Mutawa (religious police feared by ordinary Saudis and expatriates alike) quickly the stocks of booze were poured away. The booze then collected in the storm ditches where some vagrant donkeys took to alcohol like expats and were seen staggering about the area for a couple of days.

(There will be no blog next week as I am away but it will return on the 7th November)

Mike's Saudi (14) More RSAF Photography 1976

This evocative picture is by Marc Asmode and is nothing to do with blogg but I thought it made a nice illustration and it is in Saudi Arabia. This is a little story about how Mohammed (see Mike’s Saudi 2) lied to save my job.

At one time we had a sports festival at Khamis base, what an ideal chance to give the boys some real photography to improve their skills. Mohammed another of the boys was keen to show me he could do as well as Ali, I doubted it though he worked hard he was a much simpler man. But I encouraged him and he came along with the section’s Rolleiflex. Our chosen sport for the morning was a football match and I sent him to the far end goal line with the instruction to wait and photograph the action when it occurred at that goal mouth. Off he went and stood by the far goal but the action was all happening at my end, so after a little while he left his post and wandered up to my end just as there was a break away and a beautiful goal scored at what should have been his end. I was so mad at him for missing what could have been a wonderful shot, that I grabbed his hat and hit him with it. I’d completely forgotten where I was and soon there was a civilian talking to him in Arabic of course. This is my ticket home I thought as the two of them parted. But Mohammed came back to me “That was Prince (I regret I’ve forgotten his name) he wanted to know how I felt about you attacking me. I told him it was a game we play” The Prince seemed satisfied with Mohammed’s explanation and I stayed to continue my work.

Later on in the match Mohammed took a superb shot of the ball stretching the back of the net and the luckless goal keeper diving forward at exactly the same angle as the net making a perfect triangle any professional sports photographer would have been proud of it. I was so pleased with the work the boys were turning out that I went to see the Security Officer and the Base Training Officer and asked them if we could print off some 20x16s and hang them on the training office walls. They flatly refused apparently it was a cultural thing and I couldn’t shift them from their position. I should have taken Ali with me but I doubt if would have done any good as when I told him about it he accepted it without disappointment “It is our way” is all he said. 

There was a panic one day when an aircraft ran out of runway and a photograph was require urgently so one of the trainers grabbed a camera and took the necessary picture. This was a very rare opportunity and Ali was most upset that no trainee had been taken, he was right and he complained to his authorities. A little later on the trainer was sacked. I mention it as it shows that on an expatriate contract how easy it was to fall foul with these little unintentional slips. Perhaps it highlights what Mohammed had done for me.

 

Mike's Saudi (13) RSAF photography 1976

 

“I used to teach a group of Royal Saudi Air Force personnel photography in the good old days before the digital camera had arrived. I was very lucky in that my boys seemed to take an interest in the subject unlike many other trades."

 One of the problems for the photographers was that their job on the flight line was simple and repetitive. Just a case of changing the film magazines in the aircraft after every trip and processing the film, essential but not very challenging (this was well before digital photography). To my way of thinking my boys might be required at any moment to take still photographs of a defective part for identification, a crashed aircraft or a visiting dignitary so I set up a training program to teach them ground photography. I was perhaps better qualified to teach this as I had taught similar subjects while I was in the RAF.

By this time Ali Badi and I had become good friends and I respected his advice so I put this idea to him and he advised me that we should put it to the Security Officer boss of the Photo Section for his approval. So along we went to see him, I wanted the boys to photograph the station fire engine for a starter exercise “Ah no” said the officer “You see Mr. Mike everything on the base is secret and must not be photographed but there is a fire engine down town which is exactly the same as ours why don’t you use that one”. He honestly wanted to help us so the three of us sat down over a cup of coffee and eventually came up with a compromise, we could photograph items on the base as long as we gave him all the prints and negatives to destroy. Ali and I were delighted we could now start a photographic course and use the fine array of cameras that so far had laid in a cupboard unused; nobody had ever asked before.

This later paid off when the King visited Khamis and Ali took the Rolleiflex out to record his visit. He did a good job and proved that he was much more than a flight line magazine changer. The prints were much admired and I got a little of the kudos for training him so did the Security Officer who was also our boss and Ali had proved to himself that he was a photographer. It also stirred the other boys into action for a while. So in a way we won all round and Ali was keen as mustard.

Mike's Saudi (12) Flying home

One of our British friends in Saudi had married a girl from the Caribbean she was white skined and a friend of Syb’s they used to play tennis together and that sort of thing in fact they were our neighbours at Tabuk. They adopted two coloured children a girl and a boy who acted as ballboys when their mother played tennis much to their dislike.

One time when our neighbours were going home on leave they flew from Tabuk to Jiddah as the first leg of the flight home, then changed to the international flight where their visas were checked. John was first through the visa control and has his visa stamped but when his wife and the children tried to follow him they were stopped the athorities accusing her of stealing Saudi children. Not unnaturally John returned through the control to support her. There followed  a big discussion in which BAC and the Embassy were involved eventually it was sorted out to the satisfaction of the Saudi authorities but by this time John and his family had missed their plane and had to wait to the following day.

This time the wife and children passed through the control first John ensuring that there was no problem followed. “Ah” said the official “You went yesterday” of course his visa had been stamped on the previous day. This time it was sorted out and they caught that days flight to the UK.

Funny things happen at the airports once on our return from the UK Syb was stopped as her luggage contained some small bottles with colours and flavourings in for cooking. She was about to be taken to an airport jail when fortunately a senior Saudi customs man realized they were not minitures of alcohol and we passed through. At the time the shop floor officials only had limited experiance and often required referance to a higher official. I guess now with the increased security at airports throughout the world things will have changed drastically. But in the 1970s it was often a quite an exciting challenge flying  home.

In fact in the very early days of my life over there you could wait at Jiddah airport while your aircraft was commendeered by a Prince to fly his family to somewhere within the country a privilage withdrawn by King Fisal, and we all thanked him for that  as there were over a thousand Princes in the country at the time. How there came to be that number was part of the stratergy adopted by King Saud in creating Saudi Arabia but thats another story.