Justins Saudi Adventure!: Myths About KSA No.3 - Saudi Arabia is a "Dry" Country

Monday 7 July 2008

Myths About KSA No.3 - Saudi Arabia is a "Dry" Country

No Saudis drink alcohol.

This of course means that I haven't seen any guys out in the desert blind drunk or any guys acting like crazy people hanging out of cars at the weekend.

Nor do Saudi pile over to Bahrain at the weekends to get smashed and laid…. Oh no.
This is because it doesn't happen.

I was interested to note recently that the second biggest importer of Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey in the world is…. you’ve guessed it… Saudi Arabia.

That’s quite a feat in a “Dry” country don’t you think! In the major hotels in Saudi Araba Johnnie Walker is freely available if you ask the concierge. Of course it’s going to cost you about £120 a bottle but you can have as much as you like.

The hotels have a system for covering their tracks and destroying the evidence. Every night empty bottles are collected from guest’s rooms. In the early hours the next day, teams of workers steam the label off which are then burnt. The bottles are then smashed so that they cannot be recognised at Whisky bottles before being driven to a recycling centre.

I can see the News of the World front page headline now - "World Exclusive: Saudis are Normal People!"

Of course on the Western housing Compounds, all forms of alcohol are available, but again are expensive because they have to be smuggled in. Much more freely and cheaply available is home brew made on the compounds. This includes Beer, cider, mead and wine. Now I’m not saying it tastes fantastic, given the choice I would much, much prefer a pint of Greene King Abbott Ale. But the home brew is very acceptable and cheap. If you don’t brew your own somebody will sell you a pint for 50p.

More serious is the Sidiqui. This is a spirit distilled on the compounds. I kid you not, some people have stills in their houses.

ARAMCO is the big oil company out here and they have their own housing compounds for their Western employees. ARAMCO provide each new arrival with a still in their houses…call it part of the furniture!!!

The problem with Sidiqui is that you have you be careful as badly distilled Sidiqui can cause blindness. When I first in Saudi Arabia I thought everyone was a Herroin addict as they all had a teaspoon and lighter. I soon discovered that this was for testing the Sidiqui. Before drinking any, you first pour a small amount into the teaspoon, heat it and light it. If the flame burns blue it contains alcohol and is safe to drink. However if the flame burns yellow, it contains methanol which causes blindness and therefore should not be consumed.

So Saudi Arabia is definitely not “Dry” in fact as I see it, the danger for many westerners out here is returning home an alcoholic!

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Glossary

Abaya - A long black robe designed to cover all of a woman's body
Haram - "Forbidden"
Istemarah - Car registration
Khalas - Finished, the end
Mushkilla - Problem
Muttawa - Religious policeman, the "authority for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice"
Throbe - Traditional dress for Arabic men
Ghutra - The tea-towel like headscarf worn by men
Iqual - The black band that holds the ghutra in place
Wasta(h) - Having powerful social connections
Insha’allah – God willing
Insha'allah Bakora - Tomorrow god willing ......or definetly not tomorrow in my experience, more likely next month, if you're lucky!
Iqama - Visa

Monty Python Sketch

Although its not anything to do with living in the Middle East, I find the following Monty Python Sketch hilarious and pub lish it in the hope it also brings a smile to your face:

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You're right there, Obadiah.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
A cup o' cold tea.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Without milk or sugar.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Or tea.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In a cracked cup, an' all.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son".

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was right.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Cardboard box?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

ALL:
They won't!