Mike's Saudi (31) First day in Dahran

Dahran in the 1950s

Dahran to day

My first day at work I had been introduced to Mansour, we were to work as a team monitoring the training on a large American contract. We had a staff of two Pakistani Air Force NCOs; Saffi and Khan. Saffi was a very timid type of person and I often wondered how he had achieved the rank of Sergeant but he was a really pleasant person to work with, a great worker but always looked for a lead from other people. Khan was also a Sergeant a small athletic sort of guy with a huge smile and an enormous beard. He was also very astute, knowing precisely the way to form information so as not to offend the Saudi Officers. At first Mansour left me to find my feet in the office with my two Pakistani friends, at first they were very wary of me but when they realized I was happy to work and respect them we formed a good team.

Mansour had worked in the Base Training Office for sometime before I arrived and lead quite a social life with his Saudi colleagues but gradually we got down to work. All official correspondence was in English and to start with this was my main work but Khan was pretty good a creating the day to day letters which gave Mansour and myself time to get to know each other and our American contacts. Very early on I remember once sitting in a car with him; I had just received my permanent base pass and he asked to look at it. “God you’re ugly” he said looking at my photo. Now this was often their ploy to check you out. So I took my pass back looked at it and said “You’re right so I am” He laughed and from then on we were friends.



Mike's Saudi (30) Move to Dahran

Dahran Airport

It was during this time that a remarkable opportunity happened I was offered a new post in the base training office at Dahran seconded to the Saudis. This meant that my boss would be a Saudi, my colleagues would be Saudis and as I found later my workforce would be members of the Pakistan Air Force. For someone starved of contact with the Saudi personnel this was the job of life time. Interestingly if I had applied and got the promotion I was offered earlier I would have been ineligible for this position. It would have been more money less fun. Naturally I accepted this new job and flew over for an interview with the Saudi Captain who would be my new boss.

Just at this time Syb got a signal through the company network that her father was dying, so she was rushed off to see him and support her mother in a few hours. By this time Syb was well known on base and she had much support and sympathy from her friends.

I rearranged my leave and followed her a few days later. I just managed to catch a few days with him before he died up to this stage he had not made a will and we concocted one, he dictating what he wanted while I checked the correct wording with our family solicitor. The will was enough to settle his estate but really it wasn’t too well written. Soon after his funeral I was on my way back to Saudi leaving Karen, Syb and her Mum to tidy up the details.

Back at base I found that I was acceptable to the new boss and arrangements were made for me transfer to Dahran. Although I worked directly for the Saudis they had no way of looking after me and Syb domestically and I was still employed on a BAC contract so they provided my housing and infrastructure. I had no wish to be on one of the large family estates with their intrigues and gossip one of the rumour was that we were Muslims something most of the families seem to find distasteful even though they were paying the wages. I’m pleased to say we were found a villa on a small estate of four surrounded by a purdah wall with a little patch of grass which we nurtured back to health. BAC even got us a lawnmower after a bit of arm twisting.

So when Syb returned I was happy to show her our new home, it was a large single story house built out of a Swedish kit and I’m happy to say she was impressed. We were in walking distance of the centre of town bigger than anywhere we had been in the country. The compound which we were on was used as a staging accommodation for newly arrived families but soon one or two wanted to stay and eventually we had stable happy bunch, who knew of our feelings and accepted them. The gate to our villa was close to the purdah wall which meant that we could have our Saudi friends visit the house without them being seen. That may sound odd but remembering their customs and the unfortunate feelings of the families on the larger estates it would not have been possible anywhere else.

 

Mike's Saudi (29) Hamid our friend and cleaner

About this time and our social life blossoming we decided to get a house boy for two sessions of two hours a week. To this end I went to see Gabbi who looked after the cleaning staff and put the idea to him. “Yes Mr. Mike I will get you the best cleaner possible” he said he was always a bit of a bull shitter. True to his word in a couple of days he arrived at our villa with a quiet and sad looking Pakistani. “This is Hamid the best cleaner on base” he assured us. Hamid spoke only very few words English but soon he and Syb had devised a basic sign language. Sometimes it went wrong as one time when he arrived she looked out of the window and said “It’s a lovely day” crazy thing to say everyday was sunny in the desert! However Hamid understood and cleaned all the windows.

An understanding developed between us that if he finished early we would still pay him the full amount and if he worked over he would still get only the agreed amount. I believe he got the best deal out of the arrangement but only just. One day he brought us some seeds, we put them to our mouths to enquire if we should eat them, he laughed and indicated that we shouldn’t. Next day in his own time he arrived and planted the seeds against the purdah wall from then on he took to tending his little plot in our garden and we approved each time a little green shoot appeared. As I said his English vocabulary extended to about ten words and some of our less understanding visitors were shocked when Hamid would arrive in the room holding the vacuum cleaner point to the door and say “Out”.

The usual system was Syb would show him what to do then leave him to it. One time she asked him to clean the Gas cooker when she went back to see how he was getting on she found he had stripped it to its component parts which were all over the kitchen floor. That day he worked overtime but he left with the cooker gleaming in one piece and operable, we never found out his background was but I think he must have been a gas engineer back home.

A couple of friends of ours who lived off base asked if they could use our villa when we were on holiday. Naturally we let them and Hamid was to clean for them on his usual terms. When we returned we found that they had left the washing up for Hamid something we had never done. Hamid had indicated to them that he didn’t think much of their cooking as he had mistaken the non stick coating for badly burnt residue and taken over an hour to clean it off. We had a replacement non stick pan from stores but kept the brightly polished pan Hamid had cleaned.

Mike's Saudi (28) Settling in at Tabuk

Now in my day to day working life I met few Saudis or Pakistanis but the ones I did meet I got on well with. There was one occasion when a very young and arrogant trainee accused me of laughing at the Quran, just about the biggest insult he could throw at me. He was not expecting what happened next, I grabbed him by his shirt front held him against the wall and read him the riot act then I handed him across to the senior Saudi in the room who had known me at Khamis. He then repeated much of what I had said in Arabic. I had a great respect for Islam and our arrogant friend was not going to get away with that type of insult. Word must have got around as in future I was respected by all the Saudis on base.

Whilst I had the respect of the Saudi personnel, I cannot say I had the same from the British technical management although I always felt the Base Manager saw things my way. I have always believed I should do my best for the people who pay my wages and in this case it was the Saudis through BAC.  To the Technical Management I was interfering with their maintenance schedule by constantly worrying them about training the Saudi trainees as well.  In fact they were getting pressure from both sides but as I saw it the future of the Royal Saudi Air Force was in trained Saudis and not having to rely on expatriates for the foreseeable future. For me, life was simple I was not concerned about the political and religious side of the situation, so I could just focus on my job as I saw it. Looking back on it I was pretty naive to behave as I did, in Saudi there is always an underlying reason which is not always visible on the surface but at the time I was quite ignorant of it. However let’s not bother with that, life was pretty good all in all.

With Karen back in England and no job for Syb she kept herself busy playing tennis and swimming. The swimming pool was surrounded by a purdah wall but the tennis courts only had the usual netting. One day BAC received a complaint that the Saudis could see the ladies in their tennis dresses through binoculars! BAC hung sacking over the netting and honour was satisfied. None of the Saudis I knew would have objected, rather the reverse, I suspect that the Mutawa had something to do with it. There were times when the Saudi men would take exception to me photographing their women folk even though they were completely covered. I was once chased through Khamis because I was setting up to take a photograph of the backs of two Saudi ladies looking into one of the old shops. I did learn more about their customs from that point on.

 

Mike's Saudi (27) Vince and Fred

Vince (the guy I was instrumental in his dismissal) is a survivor and after some adventures in Malta where he and a friend had bought a 75 foot trimaran for the holiday trade. The idea being he his friend with their girl friends as crew would hire the boat out for the summer, and then move the whole operation out to the West Indies the following year. They had their first booking, bought in all the provisions and took the boat out for trial run before starting. A squall caught them and the mast broke going straight through the hull. Afterwards Vince absolutely broke, lived in a tent in the New Forest, where he took a course on stable management and eventually got a job in Germany managing a large stable. However the job was only open to a married person so he married his girl friend before he went.

I’m not sure how he got back to Saudi but there he was when we arrived at Tabuk as you may guess he could talk his way into anything and amazingly we were still good friends. So he went off to the local military hospital and arranged for them to employ his wife while he was waiting for a villa. He left Saudi in an even stranger way, one of the trainees asked him while on leave to enquire about a gravel crusher as he wanted to start a building company. Vince took up the challenge, had his one suit cleaned and visited a suitable manufacturer. Even in those days a gravel crusher cost many thousands of pounds, not phased Vince asked for ten percent of the cost price as his commission if the deal came off. When he returned from leave, the Saudi he represented decided to buy two. It was all arranged through Vince, on completion the Saudi gave Vince ten percent of the cost price for fixing the deal, apparently a Saudi custom. Vince left BAC shortly afterwards a rich man. He was a most unusual but a fascinating guy, sadly he died of a heart attack within a year.

Expatriates are more often than not unusual people, even Karen’s friend Fred although intelligent when we asked him over to the flat in Khamis, “Get your stuff and bring it over” I said. He went back and brought his tooth brush all he needed for an overnight stay. Fred was a very keen tennis player and often represented Tabuk along with Sybil in the BAC team as it grew dark early matches were often played in flood light at night. It was usual for both teams to supply the umpire alternately. Once when Fred was in the chair he had to ask the players what the score was, he’d become too interested in the stars. I was always amazed that he and Karen got on so well there was nearly 14 years between them and he was a great character as well as an intellectual, she was a typical teenager interested in pop music and not much else at the time they met. It was at Fred’s thirtieth birthday party and when we received the invitation she expressed her feeling in “I don’t want to go to an old man’s birthday party.” It was amazing how fast she matured.

Mike's Saudi (26) Early days at Tabuk

Very few of the old Khamis bunch arrived at Tabuk where we started off with no Saudi friends and not many English friends either fortunately Fred had came to Tabuk too so at least Karen didn’t feel too bad about the move. Fred was an English teacher who together with three others seem to form a new group of friends for her. They were a mixed crowd John a New Zealander with a sarcastic sense of humour, Pete who ran a private bank for the boys, and another John who was Winston Churchill’s nephew. Soon they became our friends too. Some of her flight line friends had transferred with the aircraft and some members of the photo club had come as well. Before long we were running a fairly full house. The camera club gained some new members and I used to run portrait lessons in the garden which was full of eucalyptus trees and bushes.

One of the new members didn’t think I was experienced enough and one night soon after we started we were sat in the club room under a single strip light when he suddenly asked “What exposure would you give in here Mike?” Not a nice question but I answered it to the best of my ability and he whipped his exposure meter out and measured the ambient light. “You’re right” he said with amazement, I never told him that it was a lucky guess but from that moment on he never questioned anything I said.

I had been promoted and now worked in Training Control as one of a team. There was no close contact with the Saudis except at a managerial level which had the benefit of meeting the senior Saudi workforce. Although I knew a few of them through my time with Ali Badi I never knew them socially. But we got along just fine I was now working over a much wider range of trades and my main trouble was with the BAC section heads that saw it as their main responsibility to maintain the aircraft and tended to ignore the training of the Saudis. They were senior to me which meant that I had to go through my management to get things done. A most frustrating position to be in, so in due course when I was asked to apply for the Training Control managers job which I was expected to get. I refused. I’ve often wondered about that decision since but it did lead to the most interesting part of my stay in Saudi.

Mike's Saudi (25) The family break up

We had now been in Saudi as a family for two years and Karen had reached the age of 18. Disaster unmarried adult females were not allowed to stay in Saudi. I am not sure whether this was a Saudi rule or a company one and it was applied a little unevenly but Karen had to return to England. None of us were happy about it most of all Karen, there was no problem in England she would stay with Syb’s Mum and Dad in Eastbourne. But tearing the family apart was heart breaking and would eventually lead to Syb and me leaving Saudi. As I said at the time we had no close Saudi friends to help us out, much later on a very good Saudi friend got her a visa to come out again but by this time she had settled down in England had a good job so she refused and has regretted it ever since. Sadly had she joined us I believe we would have stayed there until I’d retired but life doesn’t always allow us to travel the path we would prefer.

She was not short of Saudi expatriates visiting her in Eastbourne when they were on leave. They would arrive in a large Lotus car or on a turbo charged motorcycle; she rode in the car but turned down the pillion. One guy even brought his mother; it was a crazy world she lived in at the time. Fred of course visited her there and impressed Syb’s Mum. It provided great entertainment for her after her husband died there were one or two of the guys over in Saudi she knew the name of and if you mentioned them she would make an appointment for you to see Karen. Karen stayed in Eastbourne or nearby for the rest of her life and she is still there as are our grandchildren and their families. But that is an entirely different story and one Karen will have to tell.