Mikes Saudi (23) Our new life on base

Photograph by Nick Shields

When we moved on to base our life changed, especially with Karen being young and single our life now revolved round BAC, I still interacted with the Saudi boys at work and with their training. I also used to join a group of them for the morning break, as I remember it, I was the only member of BAC to do so and the boys appreciated it. I think that is how I became so well known to most of the Saudis eventually at all levels. I used to really enjoy their company and they responded by always speaking in English. Many of these young men I was to meet later on when they had become more senior.

One time I was asked to teach a group of instrument trainees the theory of light, these were not the usual Saudis I mixed with and few of them knew me. “Are you a Christian?” one of them asked as we started, this was their usual ploy and had caught some trainers out. One who was a lay preacher back in England started to tell them about his religion, he was reported and nearly sacked. But I had a feeling this would come up and had prepared myself. “We all believe in God” I said, they nodded expectantly “And we think of him as the Light and that is what I’m going to teach you today – Light” They all laughed and the lesson started. Later I got to know some of them quite well and they were really good lads.

Being a married man and living on camp changed our lives, now Syb and Karen had to go into town on a bus. This dictated the arrival and leaving times, there were also other wives as passengers who did not try to understand the local ways and behave through their ignorance as though they were superior and behaved as though they were in England and tended to look down on the Arabs, for my two they were embarrassing to be with. The shops worked from about nine in the morning till about ten at night so we took to going down to town in the late afternoon or early evening in the old Datsun. We still went down to the market on a Friday sometimes we bought a cooked chicken always sold with a bag of salad and disappeared into the mountains for a picnic. More often than not a Saudi man or family would find us and insist on us joining them and being photographed with either or both of my girls. One day we were stopped in the car by a man, who wanted to be photographed with Karen, I don’t think he’d ever seen a blond girl before. In some areas of the mountains there were long stretches of flat fine grass and we would take a couple of golf clubs to try a little driving practice. If you were a little off the fairway you would hit a rock face and the ball would come flying back. Often a group of Saudis would arrive from nowhere and clap when we hit the ball straight then send one of their young boys to fetch it. In that way we kept in contact with the locals.