Amsterdam, Coke and Islam
Chapter 11
I flew out to Amsterdam where Clive had left some bags containing phonebooks and spare passports. I turned up at an old, narrow Dutch house near Rembrantsplatz and met a northern English woman with dreadlocks and tattoos. She eyed me up and down with some hesitation but finally relented and opened the bolt on the door to let me in. She showed me where Clive’s bags were and her welcome began to warm as she saw that I was calm and sane.
“They stayed here for weeks and weeks and baselined coke in this room.” She complained. “ I told them I didn’t want that kind of shit here but after they left I found burnt foil everywhere and leftover wraps of smack.” I was getting used to finding a trail of debris behind these two.
Amsterdam was cold, wet and gray in the short days of December and once I had the phonebooks there was no point in hanging around. I caught a flight to the Gulf and traded the rainy gloom for one of the brightest, driest climates in the world. As I strolled through the customs channel a large, Sudanese officer caught my eye.
“Hello, sir. And what brings you here?”
“Oh, just a little Christmas shopping.” I told her, doing my best to sound wealthy. Rich tourists are welcome in the duty-free zones of the world.
Although Clive and Natasha had been caught in the capital they were being held out in provinces a couple of hours away. I took a two hour taxi ride there and checked out the new scenery through the window. The overall impression was that of sudden concrete rising up from the sands like some surreal dream of the eternal desert. The architecture was as ostentatious and gauche as the land was flat and arid. With the arrival of the black gold, the Gulf States grew their cities like a tourist might dress himself in the tropics; loud, tasteless and with sunflowers all over it. The buildings looked like they’d been grafted onto the sand with superglue while the dust curled around the edges, promising a return to rubble and ruin within a century or two.
This part of the world is really in the arse-end-of-nowhere on the great Arabian peninsula. The deserts were barely passable until the last century and most trade routes went via the sea rather than through the sands where the Bedouin waited to rob them. The Bedouin themselves were hardy nomads who lived in harmony with the harsh elements, somehow eking out a living with the cultivation of dates or as expert smugglers. Once they took hold of merchandise from the Red Sea none could follow them through the desert and not die of thirst; the Bedouin had secret water cache’s hidden in caves. To get an idea of living conditions you have only to read Wilfred Thessinger’s accounts of his travels with the Bedouin. Often they would spend the better part of an evening blowing on the labia of a female camel in the hope of extracting a small glass of vaginal fluids for sustenance.
Once the great oil boom hit these camel pushers discovered that they’d become fabulously wealthy overnight. They reacted to richness with exactly the maturity as you might expect of a fifteen year old who winds the lottery. They traded their tents for villas and high-rises, their camels for imported sports cars and Russian prostitutes and otherwise carried on exactly as before. The local women kept their veils and their place in the kitchen, the men sat around drinking coffee and gossiping, whilst a few million Pakistanis, Sudanese and Filipinos were brought in to do the actual work. In the fortnight I was there I never saw a Gulf Arab lift anything heavier than a glass of tea.
I was arriving in the middle of Ramadan which is not exactly the holiday season in the Muslim world. Between sunrise and sundown no one was allowed to eat, drink or, if they were especially pious, swallow their saliva. (perhaps this explains why Islam was never a big hit in Norway or Finland – when Ramadan would fall during the summer months the sun barely sinks before it’s back up again).
Upon arrival I could see I was going to be pushed for entertainment I this small, out of the way town. Men of all ages in long white robes hung around the dusty streets but there was not a female face to be seen anywhere. The populace was only broken up by the Pakistanis and Indians who worked in the shops, hating the Arabs with a vengeance but doing the dirty work so that they could return home rich men.
Intuitively siding with the underdogs, I took a room at a hotel managed by some Christian Indians. It was also probably the only place where I could hope to order breakfast or lunch this time of the year. The waiter who brought me room service was a Muslim, however and I had to tip him well for enduring the aroma of cooked food.
From my hotel window I could see smoky, red mountains glowing in the last of the sun and I resolved not to leave without climbing them. Shortly after the sunset call to prayer a collective wave of relief could be felt across the continent. Mothers and daughters across the land were laying the table with sumptuous victuals for when their sons and husbands returned from the mosque.
Life in the street seemed to have picked up a little and I decided to go and see what this town had to offer. Street vendors were now grilling strips of chicken and beef which they wrapped up in a thin nan bread. There was no music to be heard in the street and the only sounds come from the passing traffic and the conversation of the men walking off their large suppers.
The pavements were full of billowing white kaftans as the Arabs strolled along like cartoon ghosts. Young guys chewed on street food and spat into the gutter without ever staining their clothes. The shop fronts were gaudy and dull but I guessed I could entertain myself looking for clothes. Just then I felt a heavy, sweaty hand on my shoulder. I turned to meet a gorilla in white smiling at me. He grabbed my hand in greeting.
“Salaam aleikum!” He grunted.
“Aleikum salaam.” I responded. Then he leaned close and whispered heavily:
“Come to my room!” I tied to leave but he held my hand in a vice. Smiling, I employed the only trick I remembered from 3 years of kung fu – a twist that allowed him to choose between a broken wrist and letting go. He let go. In fact he was still standing there, beckoning obscenely when I looked back to make sure he wasn’t following me.
Other than flirting with the locals entertainment was limited to the Bollywood flicks at the local cinema and…well, that was it actually. There were two cable channels on the TV in my room and I prayed five times a day for something worth watching. I guessed there was no cable in the jail, though.
The next day I arranged to meet Dr Al Khalif, the lawyer appointed to defend Clive and Natasha. He came out to meet me at the hotel and turned up early at my hotel room. I had just finished dressing up in white shirt, black trousers and shoes and had probably managed to look more like an unemployed waiter than an international trouble-shooter. As all my possessions were strew across the room like an adolescent I ushered us both into the elevator so that we might talk in the lobby. We descended five floors and took our seats on the leather couch downstairs without uttering a single word.
Al Khalif was a heavy bear of a man with thick, black hairs lunging out of his nostrils and eyebrows to meet his Islamic beard. His chest was wet with respiration and it seemed that his caftan stuck to him as he walked. He seemed to be more apprehensive than I was which was funny, seeing as knew so much more than me about the whole situation. Maybe he thought I was part of the international smuggling ring.
We observed a thoughtful silence for a minute or so during which time he stole furtive looks at me and it seemed as though he were composing his thoughts in his mind. Finally he took a deep breath and resolved to cut straight to the chase.
“The weather here is very dry.” He suggested.
“Yes, indeed. In my country it is raining much.” I replied, taking care to speak slowly and carefully. “And now it is Ramadan.” I observed. His eyes brightened.
“Yes! Very holy time for Muslim people! You are Christian?” I knew from past experience that it’s so much easier just to say yes. Taoism hasn’t reached the Middle East.
“Yes, Dr Al Khalif but lailahahillalah – God is One.”
“Very good. You know Arabic?”
“No but one day, enshallah, I shall learn.”
We continued in this way for around fifteen minutes as though I’d flown all the way out here just to make small talk. When in Rome. Slowly, painfully we got round to the point. I learnt that my friends hadn’t been caught with drugs at all. Friends/associates of theirs had, however and the police arrested them in their hotel room. Tests were made of their urine and blood and traced of the coke and heroin they’d taken in Amsterdam showed up. Apparently this was enough to press charges.
Dr Al Khalif explained that while the prosecutor was pressing for the death penalty this was highly unlikely given their nationality. Probably they would serve no longer than 5 years and might even get a pardon before that. Every time one of the important sheiks returned home safely from abroad he thanked Allah by releasing a batch of prisoners. Al Khalif would represent Clive and Natasha for the duration of their trial – around 9 months – and would continue to solicit on their behalf to the powers that be after that. For this he wanted 15,000 dollars.
“This jail business is not Islamic.” He sighed. “My father was imam. In those days imam was also teacher and judge of village. When someone break law they whip him 100 times. Then finished. No jail, no problem. Fast and cheap.”
We arranged to go and meet Clive the next day at the jail and in the meantime I arranged to meet a pair of New Zealand missionaries who were helping out. Brian and Jennie were a sweet couple in their 50’s who had been stationed in the Gulf for over twenty years now. Not a fact that encouraged them to learn more than a few words of Arabic and lunch in their home was shepherd’s pie with boiled green beans on the side.
They told me about an Australia woman who had been murdered in the region around ten years ago. The police responded by arresting her daughter as prime suspect. The son flew out from Sydney to try and straighten things out and they arrested him on the first day of his arrival. The same fate met the first friend who came to help and thereafter concerned parties negotiated by telephone.
Right. That evening I made an arrangement with a friend in England that should two days go by without receiving an email he’d know I’d been apprehended and could start posting me food and books.
The next day Dr Al Khalif turned up in his chauffeur-driven car to take m to the jail. I made every effort to appear like a smart, presentable gentleman with no connection whatsoever to international smuggling rings and the like. My story was that I was an old friend of the family helping out, a consultant by trade.
Normally in these kinds of jails the visiting hours consist of families shouting across five metres and two sets of bars to all the prisoners on the other side of the fence. You wouldn’t believe it until you see it. Fortunately our lawyer had arranged a private meeting in the warden’s office – Clive and I could talk without anyone listening.
Dr Al Khalif left me in the office while he went to find Clive and I found myself alone in a room with desks, papers and armchairs. An open window gave onto a corridor and suddenly around 50 pretty young women passed at once. One of them stopped at the window and smiled at me in surprise.
“Hey! Who are you? What are you doing here?” She whispered but before I could reply a guard nudged her along. She gave me a parting wink and was gone. They were Soviet bloc prostitutes who had overstayed their visas. They were waiting to be deported, given new fake id’s by the Russian mob and imported again.
Clive was escorted into the office and though his face betrayed no emotion his eyes shone with appreciation to see me. Aware that time was an issue we got straight to business. First of all he confirmed with me that I’d remembered to refer to both he and Natasha under the fake names under which they were caught – the authorities hadn’t yet learned that the passports weren’t genuine. He wrote me a list of all the friends/associates who owed him money or who might be willing to help. The lawyer had to be paid somehow. He signed over to his bags, cell phones and money that the police had confiscated and then heaved a sigh of relief.
“It’s fucking awful in here, Tom. The men are 90% homosexual and I have to be on my guard 24/7.” He clenched his fists to make his point. “The TV’s all in Arabic and they won’t let me have paper and pen to write with. I’ve got no soap and I sweat like a pig all day. I’m bored out of my mind. I even offered to clean the cells for them – the place stinks – but they wouldn’t let me. “ He looked me in the eye. “Thanks for coming out, man.”
Natasha came in and her eyes opened wide to see me in smart clothes. “Tom! You’ve cut your hair short and you’re wearing a tie! You look professional or something. But your fly is undone.” I looked down and understood why the guards hadn’t looked as impressed as they should have.
Her smile died though when she remembered where she was. “My life is over.” She said, holding her head in her hands. To cheer her up I asked if she was getting any sex from the other Russian girls. “Every night” She laughed. “The guards have no idea of the things we do!”
