A SCROLL OF HONOUR

While I worked and lived in Saudi Arabia I received a special certificate that I treasure. As you all know I’m known, affectionately, just about everywhere as ‘Brian, the utter asshole.’

Tomorrow, or one day soon, I’ll begin posting excerpts from my journal that you will find utterly dumbfounding, because they show in a frank way how I earned the appellation. But let me start at the beginning.

In Saudi Arabia during the sixties and seventies, I set up the communication system that allowed the Royal Palace to have instant communication with the prison for pederasts and the supply train of young boys and concubines. Among my many accomplishments while dealing with the royal household, I met and became fast friends with Osama bin Laden who was also trying to give them the business. This has nothing to do with this story but it illustrates how I quickly I make new friends when I move on to new career opportunities.

In Riyadh, the people I had business dealings wi­th, Bell Telephone executives, Royal Princes, mullahs running the administration of King Faud, etc., quickly slipped into the habit of referring to me as ‘half-assed Wales’. They were speaking Arabic, of course, but I was picking up the language quickly, and whenever the sobriquet was uttered, I would reply in a jesting tone, suggesting they were the spawn of an Egyptian whore and a rabid dog. It was all in good fun, of course, and it never got beyond playful slaps on the buttocks with the flat side of the blade, and kicks and punches in the groin area with a tassellated foot.

But one day in my Buzhkazi Court, my life changed completely. On a Buzhkazi court, usually the size of football field, teams of horsemen with polo sticks kick around the headless body of an executed criminal that has usually been soaked in water all night to make the hide tough. But owing to size restrictions, my gym had to serve as my Buzhkazi court and players (usually just two of us playing on foot) knocked around just the head of an executed criminal.

On this day my opponent was Prince Abdul Abubal Amir, one of the Desert Kingdom’s five thousand princes, and our game consisted of kicking around the head of a communications equipment supplier who had foolishly insisted one being paid. (You just DON’T do that here when you are supplying the Royal Kingdom with equipment or services of any kind!)

After our game (I won by playing a tight game), we relaxed in my gym’s reception area. Arabs don’t drink, at least not in public, but this night, Prince Abdul, got roaring drunk on an experimental home-brew I was developing at the time (an early version of Ducksplatt del Pantherpiss). I kept my consumption moderate, as usual, but in his inebriated state Abdul became quite funny and gave voluble expression to his suggestion that I had graduated from half-assed to FULL ASSHOLE status! I had been hoping for such a change in status ever since arriving, because elsewhere before and after working in Saudi Arabia, my appellation had always been in more fulsome terms.

I knew he was serious and not just buttering me up, when he pulled out from within his robes, a folded scroll tied with a yellow ribbon. Beaming, he unrolled it for me. The elaborate scroll was in gold-embossed Arabic, but as noted above, I had been studying the language and could read and understand much of it. Everything I had hoped for was on the scroll! Not only was my status as FULL asshole acknowledged but, in addition, I was henceforth to be known as Wales, LORD Asshole!

It was at this moment of high emotion, I asked the Prince to accompany me to my wife’s quarters so that he might in person relay to her the good news. After introductions, I excused myself for a moment as I felt a bit tired after the game of Buzhkazi and felt a few minutes lying down was in order. I left the Prince with my darling wife, feeling she was safe and in good hands.

Well, an hour later I returned and I understood what the word betrayal means. The Prince and my wife were on a settee and he had a hand over hers while they were deep in conversation. In Arab countries and especially in Saudi Arabia, an Arab speaking privately with a married woman, not his wife whether veiled or not, in such a setting is as much as asking her to commit adultery with him.

I have a placid disposition but when I surveyed the scene, I confess my normal, calm demeanour deserted me for a moment. I drew myself to my full 6’ 2” height, threw down my glove, and facing Prince Abdul, said, “Sir! I suspect your intentions are not honourable! I demand you meet me in the jousting pit at 6.00 AM, tomorrow, for a fight to the death, which contest will decide who is the better man!!!!”

Of course, I have a Buzhkazi Court (a house-sized one) but a jousting pit is not something I can conjure up, overnight. And my wife, jabbing and blabbering away as usual, interjected,

“But Brian, we don’t have a jousting pit!” Furious, I turned to her and cut her off with a thunderous look. I said, “ENOUGH Woman! Go to your room!” I would deal with this in my own manner.

When I turned again to Prince Abdul, to my astonishment he had disappeared! Despite his flowing robes and inebriated state he had managed to escape my presence in the second or two I had turned away from him to reprimand my wife. Arabs can sure move fast when caught in a compromising situation by a real man!

But it was clear I could no longer remain in Saudi Arabia. I had challenged a royal prince to a duel, but he had cowardly run away without accepting. In such a situation, the only honourable thing for the Arab to do, royal blood or not, is to have his opponent’s neck slit within 24 hours by a denizen of Riyadh’s underworld.

As it happened, that night my friend Osama bin Laden was in charge of a camel train departing for Afghanistan. My wife and I hitched a ride as far as Riyadh’s International Airport where we caught a plane for Spain. In our hasty departure, we had time enough to pick up only our papers, passports, and the day’s cash receipts of the communication company I worked for. But I also had the embossed scroll that Prince Abdul had presented me! I will treasure it as long as I live. It now hangs in the place of honour over my desk in my Pata de Gallina office.