Mike's Saudi Two

I’ll let Mike continue, he seems to be enjoying it.

“Mohammed was also a Bedouin but of a poorer background and a simpler man, though he had proved himself within the culture by getting married and fathering a son. We were friends and on a number of times he had saved me embarrassment caused by my ignorance of the local custom.

A little time after Syb and my daughter Karen joined me out there Mohammed invited us round for an afternoon naturally I wouldn’t insult him by refusing though I did wonder what we had let ourselves in for. He lived in a little block built house of a single room with a corrugated iron lean to. At the time his son had not been born so the whole space inside was given over to entertaining us. Although Karen could speak no Arabic and Mohammed’s wife knew no English they got on like a house on fire each speaking their own language and admiring the wife’s golden jewellery, this as with all Saudi women represented her personal wealth. They were the same age, sixteen.

Mean while Mohammed, Syb and I conversed in English, I can’t remember now the subject but at intervals during the conversation a few Saudi women would come in and settle down, each time Mohammed would tell then to take their veil off and they would sit there unveiled  some breast feeding their children. After a little while Arabic tea arrived along with some little European cup cakes, I had never seen this type of cake in Saudi before and I have no idea where he had found them. But I imagine he had gone to a great deal of trouble to get them.

As we all sat there without veils eating English cup cakes and drinking Saudi tea, Mohammed nudged me with his elbow “Just like England” he said. I managed not to laugh for he had tried to create what he believed was a European environment. Where he had done his research I don’t know but he was not in a position to have learnt it from any of his normal sources in a little brick room in the mountains of the Asair Province. We were honoured to be sat on the ground with our host and hostess who had gone to so much trouble to make us feel at home with an English afternoon tea.”