Mike's Saudi (38) Mansour and Fateeha in England.

Our next leave in the UK was due in a few weeks time when we visited Mansour and Fateeha. “We are going to have a holiday in England and France” he said, as it happened we would be in England at the same time and we hoped to meet. I gave him my parent’s phone number and asked him to call me while we were there. “Will £10,000 be enough to cover our stay in England?” he asked. I assured him it would be more than adequate, remember this was 1980 and he could have probably bought a small hotel for that much. Of course his plan was to stay in London for the whole time, as he had never been out of Saudi Arabia before it was probably the only place in the UK he knew.

Leave came and we were at home with my parents in the Lake District when the call came through from are rather inebriated Mansour, he sounded really unhappy and we could hear Fateeha crying in the background. “I’ll be down to see you tomorrow”. I would like to have made it the same day but it was a six hour trip and it was already three in the afternoon. Next day Syb and I set out for London and to find the hotel where they were staying and determined to look after them for the rest of their stay in England. Mansour in his ignorance had climbed into a taxi at Heathrow and asked the driver to find them a hotel. He certainly had; it was one of the grottiest hotels in central London and was charging him through the nose for his accommodation.

  At the time our car was a 2CV Citron a 600cc French utility car and not very big so we had to leave some of their luggage at the hotel to be called for the following day for which they charged full room rate. The hotel had depressed Mansour so much that as many Saudis do when visiting non Muslim countries he hit the bottle and not being used to it, its effects soon began to tell. This of course alarmed Fateeha as she had no control over the situation, no family to call on in England only us. In fact when we picked him up he was still the worse for wear, I removed his half empty bottle of whiskey to Fateeha’s relief. Throughout their holiday they wore western clothes and looked remarkably smart. Six or so hours later when we arrived at my parent’s house he wasn’t too bad though I did support him as he met them. My father a man of many hidden talents greeted him in Arabic much to my amazement and to Mansour’s surprise and delight.

Fateeha was much happier now and conversed with Syb in their own Arabic/English language, she was most interested in the way Mum ran the house. She was so naive about the west that she had even packed an iron to press their things because she wasn’t sure if we had them in the UK. I can’t remember much of our day to day holiday together but one or two high lights will do.