For Bahrain’s ruling family, the Al-Khalifas, the invasion and occupation of their close ally Kuwait was a disaster; Kuwait’s ruling Al-Sabah family were their friends and they worried they could be next. A joke was already doing the rounds in expat circles that had Saddam boasting he took Kuwait in a day, Saudi Arabia in twelve hours, and Bahrain by fax. One British banker got into big trouble for leaving a message on his answerphone that said, ‘This building has now been taken over by the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard.’ When the authorities found out they failed to share his sense of humour and he was questioned exhaustively, eventually even moving to Cyprus as a result. Employees of Gulf Air began to get bizarre notices posted under their doors advising them what to do in the event of a chemical (poison gas) attack. The advice included taping up the cracks in doorways and lying submerged in a bath and breathing through a straw. A similar official leaflet that later did the rounds in Saudi Arabia warned citizens that if they saw birds falling from the skies they should take cover indoors. ‘However,’ it said, ‘if you are caught in the open without cover then you must consign your fate to Allah.’
But for most expatriate Westerners in Bahrain that summer it was a case of crisis, what crisis? The pool parties and the barbecues at the rugby club continued, infused with a new spirit of defiance. T-shirts appeared, emblazoned with cartoons of a British boot kicking Saddam out of Kuwait. Isobel, our office manager, a hard-bitten Scottish divorcée, announced that if Bahrain got invaded she would be locking herself in her flat with a bottle of whisky.
Once the immediate fear was over I was allowed to return to London, but my boss, Rupert Wise, was keen that I move myself permanently out to Bahrain before war began. ‘Clients will be impressed you made the effort,’ he advised.
But I was in no hurry to leave London. I was twenty-nine and had just mortgaged myself to the hilt to buy a flat in Covent Garden’s Floral Street, home to The Royal Opera House, Paul Smith and the women-only health spa, The Sanctuary. My tiny, top-floor flat above that pretty cobbled street became the starting point for every evening out my friends and I embarked on. Carrie had by now pressed the ejector seat on our relationship after six years, complaining that she was hardly seeing anything of me these days. She was right. I was bitten by the travel bug: I had been to twenty-six countries that year and I couldn’t put all the blame on business trips. Understandably, Carrie was not prepared to jack in her life in London to come and live with me in Bahrain when our lives had already grown apart.
The gathering storm in the Gulf seemed a world away from my hedonistic existence in the bars and clubs of Soho. I won a reprieve when Bahrain airport was closed to civilian flights during the early stages of Desert Storm. But when flights resumed I could delay my departure no longer and boarded a flight to Bahrain, this time for three years.
By now the Gulf War was well under way and my Gulf Air flight gave Iraq a wide berth, skirting far to the east over Iran. I arrived to find the inhabitants of Bahrain’s capital, Manama, breathing a collective sigh of relief. The windows were all still taped up with white crosses to prevent shattering, but the Iraqi Scud missiles that had rained down on Tel Aviv and Riyadh had largely ignored Bahrain. Of Saddam’s dreaded Scuds tipped with chemical weapons there was not a whiff; he had plenty of chemical warfare stocks at the time, but it was made very clear to him through his then spokesman, Tariq Aziz, that if he deployed any such unconventional weapons against Coalition troops the retaliation would be colossal. Nevertheless, one of my first duties was to go to the British Embassy for chemical-protection training, practising how to put on a gas mask in a hurry. That evening, while Rupert Wise and I were out jogging near the prime minister’s palace on the west of the island, we heard and felt a massive explosion just across the water that separated Bahrain from the Saudi mainland. In the dying days of the war the Iraqi Army had scored a lucky hit, a direct missile strike on a warehouse in Dhahran where dozens of US Army servicemen had been assembling before heading home. Over twenty were killed that night, one of the worst blows sustained by the Coalition in the Gulf War, although of course it paled compared with the losses sustained by the frontline Iraqi troops.
The Gulf War ended with the routing of the Iraqi Army and the headlong dash northwards of the retreating invaders with their convoy of looted Kuwaiti vehicles, resulting in their destruction from the air along the Basra Highway. Over the next days and weeks reminders of the war were all around. The sky was a heavy leaden grey from the seven hundred oil fires that Saddam’s forces had lit as a parting gift to their Kuwaiti hosts. Even this far down the Gulf the oil smoke blotted out the sun, and when it rained the drops left oily black smudges.
British soldiers and airmen were a common sight in Bahrain in the spring of 1991. I used to play backgammon with some of the RAF Tornado pilots round the swimming pool at the Sheraton once they’d come back from their sorties over Iraq. It must have been bizarre for them: a couple of hours of sheer adrenaline over enemy territory, followed by lunch in swimming shorts surrounded by off-duty air stewardesses in bikinis. A few days after the end of the Gulf War I bumped into a bevy of Royal Scots officers I remembered from a friend’s wedding. They had been training hard in the Saudi desert for six months before seeing some of the most ferocious hand-to-hand infantry action of the war. They had not had a drink in all this time and now they were looking for fun. I volunteered to show them round, so we started with some fiery Thai green curries washed down with ice-cold beer, then went on to the island’s most popular bar, Henry’s. Undaunted by their six months in the desert, they kept drinking into the small hours before crashing out on my floor, apparently no worse for wear, while I was finished. I made a mental note to never, ever go drinking with Scottish soldiers again.
The short war over, Rupert Wise set out to teach me the ropes before handing the office over to me and returning to London. Impeccably proper in front of his staff, he only once looked a bit rattled. Isobel, the Scottish office manager, rang him one day on the intercom to tell him, ‘Rupert, it’s a hoor on the line fer ya.’ ‘A what?!’ snorted Rupert. ‘A whore? Impossible!’ ‘No!’ she protested. ‘It’s Zuhour from Sheikh so-and-so’s office, he wants to go over the contract.’ Rupert was an incredibly focused and driven individual, having worked in several Gulf capitals, and I had much to learn from him. He had memorized a number of classical Arabic proverbs, which always brought a smile to people’s faces and could defuse almost any situation. Rupert knew how much personal relationships mattered to Arabs and he rightly guessed that our clients would be impressed at our visiting them in these dark days of war and uncertainty.
‘By God, you have come all this way to see us? Then you must really be hungry for business!’ exclaimed one client in Jeddah, laughing as he strode across the thick pile carpet of his office to welcome us.
I loved these meetings. We hardly ever did business at them, it was all just getting-to-know-you stuff. Business may or may not flow at a later date. We would settle back into expensive leather armchairs, while a smiling Sudanese would bring us steaming glasses of lemon tea, or tiny cups of bitter Arab coffee. The conversation would range everywhere. What did we think of the war? Was Saddam finished now? Why weren’t the Americans pressing on to Baghdad? How is life amongst all those Gulf Air stewardesses in Bahrain? Why did Britain force Al-Sitt Al-Hadeed – meaning the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher – out of office?
But getting to see these movers and shakers of the merchant world was far from easy. Often it was the end product of months of trying to outmanoeuvre ‘the blocker’, a mid-level employee whose prime role seemed to be to test the perseverance of Western bankers in netting an audience with Mr Big.
‘You see, Mr Gudnerr,’ he would say with what he assumed to be a disarming smile, ‘the sheikh is very busy these days, he is not really investing, you understand.’
Sometimes we would give up on the middleman and look for another approach; the ideal was always to get on good terms with the sheikh himself. One of the
delightful things about doing business in the Gulf is that so much of it is based on personal friendships. It must be one of the last places in the business world where the art of good conversation really counts. If the client likes you and trusts you, he will eventually do business with you. If you try to talk business too soon into the relationship he will make sure he is unavailable next time you are in town.
One of the tricks I picked up from Rupert Wise was to visit Saudi clients during the month of Ramadan, and after he left I did this often. Most Western bankers in Bahrain thought I was mad. Ramadan was a month to be avoided, they reckoned, a time when business slows to a crawl, when tempers can be frayed by a whole day of fasting, and when anyone caught breaking the fast in public risks going to prison. But Ramadan is a very special time for Muslims and I found it a wonderful opportunity to get to know Saudis at their most relaxed after dark. As one of the five pillars of the Islamic faith, Ramadan forbids all eating, drinking (even water) and smoking between the hours of dawn and dusk. Slander and sexual intercourse are also proscribed, making this a time to test one’s faith, rather as Lent is for some practising Christians. But in the Middle East Ramadan is an experience shared by the whole of society, with families donating gifts and food to the poor, adults offering up special prayers in the mosques, and families holding vast nightly banquets to break the fast at dusk.
I usually chose Jeddah for Ramadan, it being the friendliest city in Saudi Arabia. I would let people know I was coming, then on arrival I would just switch over to a Ramadan timetable, sleeping till late in the morning, then holding a few desultory meetings before heading back to the hotel for a siesta. The hotel concierge would hand me a phone message: ‘Sheikh Saleh’s office called. They will send a driver to collect you for Iftar at six p.m.’
To be invited to share Iftar, the Ramadan banquet, is a happy privilege. There I would sit, awkwardly cross-legged, the only non-Saudi in the room, my shoes discarded at the door amongst the pile of patterned sandals. Nobody would even think of touching the food until the muezzin gave the dusk call to prayer, the all-clear to pile in to the banquet. On a low table would be arranged over thirty dishes, loaded with food. Stuffed vine leaves, deep-fried cones of spicy mince, a subtle paste made from pulverized aubergines, all competing for space with an Arabian speciality called ouzi. This was a whole stewed sheep, served at the table skull and all, on a bed of flavoured rice. After gorging ourselves silly, men would burp, rinse their hands in a bowl of lemon water, rise from the table and file into a room strewn with cushions and couches. There the sheikh, or whoever had invited me, would always try to draw me into the conversation in Arabic. Now was the time to socialize, with everyone staying up well into the small hours. But when I returned later in the year, it would be remembered that I had made the effort during Ramadan and doors would open that might otherwise have remained closed.
Back in Bahrain I realized how lucky I was. I was not yet thirty years old and I had been given all the trappings of a playboy prince. I drove a five-litre Mustang convertible sports car that growled like a tiger whenever I turned the key in the ignition; I lived in a traditional white-walled Bahraini villa, with slowly turning ceiling fans, its own private swimming pool, all utilities paid for and a houseboy who looked after it. I had a tax-free salary with nothing to spend it on, and I had first use of the company speedboat, which I had chosen then kitted out with a two hundred hp outboard engine, enough to lift even corpulent bankers from London up out of the water on skis.
Despite all these material comforts, I was decidedly lonely at first. While embarking on an endless circuit of client visits around the Gulf, I was all too aware that I had left my friends and parents behind me, and I missed having a girlfriend. University friends now working in the Far East socialized freely with Singaporean, Thai and Japanese girls, but in the conservative Gulf any contact with local women seemed out of the question – or so I thought.
One evening I was taking the shuttle flight from Riyadh to Jeddah, a journey of about ninety minutes. I settled into my spacious window seat and helped myself to the sweet Hassa dates and bitter cardamom coffee that were being offered round. Shortly before take-off a billowing black shape descended on to the seat next to me and fastened the seatbelt. All adult Saudi women are obliged by custom to cover themselves in public with the abaya, an amorphous, all-enveloping black cloak designed to disguise their figures. Some go further, covering their hands with black gloves and their faces with sheer black veils through which they can see out but no one can see in. Contrary to what many in the West think, most Saudi women welcome this anonymity, which protects them from unwanted attentions.
I had no idea whether the woman sitting next to me was an eighty-year-old grandmother or a teenager. It didn’t matter; I played by the rules and modestly averted my eyes. Once airborne, I pretended to doze. There are many conservative Saudis who would be outraged just at the thought of one of their women sitting next to a foreign stranger, but this woman appeared to have no male chaperone. Suddenly she turned to me and asked if I could reach down and retrieve her boarding pass, which she had dropped to the floor. Her voice was soft and silky – this was no grandmother.
‘There you go, you’re welcome,’ I said in Arabic, handing her the ticket stub.
‘Ah, but you speak Arabic!’ she exclaimed, clearly delighted. ‘Then we can talk.’
She then did one of the most sensual things I have ever seen in Arabia. Slowly she lifted the veil from her face so that only I could see it, a sort of private viewing for one. She was young and breathtakingly beautiful. Her eyes shone beneath immaculately groomed eyebrows, her lips were wet with gloss, revealing perfect white teeth. A few minutes into our conversation it emerged that she was royal by marriage. As a princess – of which there are several thousand in Saudi – she told me she enjoyed a privileged life, but she was bored.
‘I am just twenty-four years old, ya Frank,’ she purred, ‘but already I have been a widow for many years. I was married when I was a very young girl to a prince, but he was old and soon he died.’
‘So what now?’ I asked. ‘How do you fill your time?’
‘I want to start a gym for women. We need this here in my country. Too many women just grow old and fat as soon as they marry. Now,’ said the princess, changing the subject and shifting subtly closer, ‘I would like to ask you a favour.’
‘Er, certainly,’ I replied, feeling very far from certain as to what I might be letting myself in for.
‘You live in Bahrain. It is easy to buy music there. Could you get me some tapes of romantic music?’
‘Sure, I can send them to you.’
‘No,’ she replied firmly, displaying for the first time the signs of someone who is not used to being refused. ‘I will give you my number and I will come to your hotel room tonight in Jeddah.’
There must have been a long pause during which I said nothing. I was speechless. I was remembering what a friend had told me, that in this highly conservative society it is automatically assumed that if two young and unrelated people of the opposite sex are left alone in a room they must be having sex. The princess raised an eyebrow at me and a dozen thoughts crowded into my mind. I was young and single and she was beautiful . . . Wait a minute, I thought, are you mad? Sex outside marriage is totally taboo in this country. All it would take was a sharp-eyed concierge, a phone call, then a rap on my hotel-room door from the religious police and that would be it. I would be carted off to jail to face a hefty lashing, and heaven knows what would happen to her.
‘OK,’ I said, taking her neatly folded phone number, ‘I’ll call you tonight.’
When the plane landed we acted as if we had never met. I headed for the taxi rank, she for her chauffeur-driven limo. By the time I reached my hotel I had made up my mind. In the privacy of the hotel bathroom I carefully tore the princess’s phone number to shreds and flushed it down the loo. This was one Saudi experience I was going to give a very wide berth.
But I did m
ake some excellent platonic Arab friendships. The all-male Bahraini crowd I fell in with were kind, hospitable, amusing. They welcomed me into their circle without judgement, pleased that I spoke Arabic although they frequently broke into Farsi, the language of Iran which is spoken by so many in Bahrain. My Bahraini friends, who were all on the cusp of thirty, knew that their families would soon be steering them towards a selection of possible brides from suitable local families, and they were determined to have fun while they could.
The driving force behind Bahrain’s social life in this circle was Gulf Air and its 1,500 foreign stewardesses all based on the island. While those recruited in Asian countries tended to keep their heads down and stay out of trouble, the British and Irish girls knew how to party hard. Their ‘Wings’ parties on completing their training courses were legendary for getting out of hand. Inevitably, some of them fell in love with their Arab boyfriends, believing they were destined for marriage and a life of leisure in some white-walled villa. For a very, very few this actually happened, but many of their boyfriends simply played the field as soon as Sharon or Siobhan had flown down-route to Bombay for a few days.
One thing I learned early on in the Gulf was that you must have wasita, meaning influence or connections. Technically, nobody but the ruler was above the law, but in practice anyone from the ruling family was highly unlikely to fall foul of the police. The closer you were to senior members of the ruling family the more the magical wasita rubbed off on you. Certain Gulf Air flight attendants from England loved to boast that they knew Sheikh so-and-so, ‘And he can have you thrown off the island, so there.’
The ultimate wasita was knowing the ruler and his immediate circle. In Bahrain this was the diminutive and affable Emir, Sheikh Isa Al-Khalifa, who must have been the friendliest monarch in the world. On Fridays, Jack, as he was known to the British expats, would stroll around outside his beach palace, where he would invite picnicking Westerners to join him for tea. The first time I met him he was in his full robes of state and I was in my surf shorts, but Jack was used to this. ‘I don’t like London,’ he said to me with a twinkle in his eye as a servant poured out the tea. ‘You don’t?’ I asked, surprised. ‘No,’ said the ruler of Bahrain. ‘London’s too full of Arabs these days!’ I had the impression he had made this joke before, but it certainly broke the ice.
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