SHAIKH-DOWN: Brits need tits

BRITS NEED TITS (to pass an Arab driving test)

With a certain amount of "literary licence" this is exactly how I obtained a driving licence in Bahrain a few years ago.

An Extract from SHAIKH-DOWN (my one published novel)

* * *

24-year-old Londoner Eddy Lawrence has arrived on the Persian Gulf island of Belaj to run a training project at the National Bank.

* * *

Chapter Five: WAZDA

To drive in Belaj you needed breasts or a full licence from your country of origin. Eddy, unfortunately, could meet neither of these criteria. He’d failed a driving test in London two days before his departure. Now he started failing them in Belaj.

* * *

The driving test track was inside the Police Fort, next to the Amiri compound. Test appointments were not staggered: two dozen hopefuls - Eddy was the only European - waited on benches under a corrugated iron roof. By the time his turn came, after almost three hours, he was light-headed from dehydration.

The examiner, a dark-skinned Belaji in white military uniform, failed Eddy for his reversing, which he’d been practising three times a day for ten days - with Amin, his Palestinian instructor, during banking hours, with Rupert Devonshire in his clapped-out Mazda at lunchtime and with Cass McBride in her brother's Jaguar on early-evening dog runs with Helga.

Eddy was not the only reject: everybody failed - everybody except the one Belaji girl who’d been the first candidate tested. In an effort to limit congestion of the city’s roads it was now Traffic Police policy to fail all learner drivers. Not girls: the flower of Belaji maidenhood could not be subjected to repeated parading at the Fort; the last woman Amin could remember failing was the wife of a spice merchant who began the test with an unsolicited reverse that pinned her instructor against another candidate’s car, breaking both his legs.

Eddy’s next test would be at the end of October. ‘You okay next time,’ Amin promised as he dropped him off at the bank, adding the standard escape clause: ‘Insh’Allah (God willing).’

* * *

‘You should have offered the bloke a baksheesh,’ said Rupert Devonshire a few minutes later in the Project Office. Ahmed Jabri in Personnel advocated driving without a licence, but a more practical solution was proposed in the training room by Ali Qassim Qamber, a Belaji teller of seventeen or eighteen who was the ineptest of those whom Eddy was inducting into the mysteries of computerised banking:

‘Mister Eddy,’ he said, ‘you need wazda.’

Small and chubby with the face of a dusky cherub, he was listed on the training roster as A.Q. Qamber, which is pronounced ‘a cucumber’ (Eddy had attempted to explain the linguistic pun, raising only an uncomprehending smile).

Wazda, the solution he advocated to Eddy’s driving-test problem, is ‘clout’, not a uniquely Arabic concept.

Eddy went back to the Personnel Office. Ahmed Jabri admitted that using wazda to obtain a licence might be safer than driving without one. ‘I’ll get your licence, no test, no shit,’ he said, showing off his slang and eliciting titters from two Egyptian ladies who had defected from their typewriters on another floor to the unofficial coffee bar that was the Personnel Manager’s office.

Half-an-hour and four phone calls later he informed Eddy with no show of embarrassment that his intervention had brought the second test forward to next Saturday.

‘But I thought -’ Diplomacy deterred Eddy from completing the reproach. This, clearly, was the limit of Ahmed’s ‘clout’ with the Traffic Police. It wouldn’t do to shame him in front of the secretaries.

‘Don’t worry, Eddy,’ he said. ‘This time you’ll pass easy, no sweat, no shit. This test’s only for show.’

* * *

Eddy failed this second test. So much for Ahmed Jabri’s confidence - and his wazda.

This time Eddy was faulted, by a different examiner, on the hill start, which he’d performed faultlessly on the special ramp provided (Belaj City boasted not so much as a slight incline). The examiner patted his knee. ‘Pass next time,’ he said - ‘insh’Allah.’ That word again. Eddy doubted that Allah - or even his mother’s more liberal-minded Methodist deity - was interested in the outcome of his driving tests.

Two Belaji girls were tested that morning. One of them, Amin reported, took a record fourteen manoeuvres to complete the three-point turn. They both passed.

Ahmed was now a little shamefaced and admitted after a phone call to the Fort that the Commandant of Traffic Police had decreed no passes for male drivers until further notice. Ahmed’s wazda did not extend to Shaikh Ibrahim bin Sayed.

‘Well,’ Eddy said over a commiserating lunch with Cass McBride at the Palm Beach Hotel (which the bank would be getting the bill for), ‘it looks as if nothing short of a sex change is going to see me with a full licence.’

Cass laughed and said: ‘Shall I ask the chef to lend us a carving knife?’ Another thought occurred to her:

‘All you really need is boobs,’ she said.

‘I can hardly do a driving test in a pair of falsies,’ Eddy protested.

‘They don’t have to be yours.’

He caught on quickly. ‘You’d do this for me?’

‘Well -’ Cass hadn’t realised what she might be letting herself in for - ‘I suppose I could, though I can’t say I fancy the idea of a load of sex-mad Arabs gawping at my chest. Actually, I think you need some younger boobs than mine. What about one of the stewardesses you met at your boss’s party?’

‘From what I could see, most of them expect men to pay to gawp at their boobs.’ Now a thought occurred to Eddy. He began grinning from ear to ear. ‘I know who to ask.’

* * *

‘I’m not having my wife get raped by some rampant rag-head,’ Rupert said alliteratively.

‘I’m sure she’ll be perfectly safe,’ Eddy said. ‘This Shaikh person isn’t going to do any more than gawp.’

‘Perhaps I could come along,’ Rupert pondered. ‘You know, as a sort of minder.’

‘That might be a bit counterproductive,’ Eddy said.

Sammy-Jo-Ann tugged at Rupert’s arm. ‘Rupie, you know I can take care of myself. Come on, baby, we’ve gotta get Ed through this test thing.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said Rupert. ‘I do not like it.’

* * *

From the moment they entered the Commandant of Traffic Police’s office on Wednesday morning, Eddy knew he had it in the bag.

‘Well, hi there, Shaikh honey,’ Sammy-Jo-Ann Devonshire breezed in with a daring excess of informality. Shaikh Ibrahim, who’d risen to his feet as an adjutant ushered the visitors into the room, sat down quickly, almost collapsing into the chair behind his desk. His mouth fell open. It was to remain open for most of the next sixty-five minutes.

Sam was wearing a pair of skin-hugging scarlet hot-pants, although she would probably have had to be naked below the waist before the Commandant’s gaze could be deflected from her upper torso, upon which she wore only a man’s sleeveless white vest (Rupert’s) that allowed substantial top and side views of her substantial poitrine. Her breasts tangoed inside the skimpy top as she sashayed across the room on high-heeled open-toed sandals.

‘It sure is nice to see y’all,’ she said. She had abandoned her normal Pennsylvania drone in favour of a Scarlett O’Hara drawl with occasional echoes of Mae West. As she bent over, lifted one of the Commandant’s limp hands and gave it a shake, his eyes visibly bulged. When she let go his hand it lay lifelessly on the blotter for a few moments before he remembered to retrieve it; both hands disappeared below the desk.

Eddy’s function at the National Bank was too humble to justify his presentation to Shaikh Mubarak, the Chief Executive; the Commandant of Traffic Police was Eddy’s first Shaikh.

Shaikh Ibrahim bin Sayed al-Khazi was in his mid to late twenties. A large nose, large teeth (not as irregular as the Amir’s) and his height, before he’d fallen into his chair, proclaimed him a member of the Ruling Family. His uniform, white like the junior staff’s, was lavishly - too lavishly - decorated with gold braid, giving him the air of a night-club commissionaire.

‘E.T. Lawrence, Your Excellency, good morning.’ Eddy wasn’t sure that the Commandant of Traffic Police qualified to be an Excellency but a degree of grovelling could only help his cause.

His presumed Excellency, already rendered speechless, remained silent; his eyes flickered briefly in Eddy’s direction before returning to Rupert’s vest. Eddy seated himself in an armchair slightly behind Sam, whose hot-pants groaned ominously as she plonked herself down in a straight-backed chair and leaned forward to rest her elbows and forearms on the edge of the desk. With her eyes on the Commandant, she gave her wet-look-lipsticked mouth a casual but provocative lick.

Shaikh Ibrahim licked his own dry lips and gulped audibly. Ignoring a cigarette already smouldering on the edge of an overflowing ashtray, he lit another with shaking hands. The adjutant, whom his superior dismissed with a snap of his fingers without taking his eyes off Rupert’s vest, backed slowly out of the office; the crotch of his trousers pulsed with a life of its own. A rumble of resentment accompanied the closing of the door from the crowd of policemen, instructors and candidates that had followed Sam and Eddy into the building and up the stairs to the first floor.

It did not occur to the Commandant to question Sam’s presence (they had concocted a story that made her Eddy’s improbable half-sister). She recalled his having been on a London night-flight last month and treated him to a few scandalous stories of cabin-crew capers in Heathrow hotels, tales which were, Eddy surmised, airline folklore rather than personal experience. She continued to call him ‘Shaikh honey’ and larded her speech with interjections of ‘land-sakes’ and ‘lordy-me’ lifted from Margaret Mitchell. Each time she turned round on her chair to include Eddy in the conversation there was a flurry of activity in and around Rupert’s vest as of two small (not too small) animals burrowing together for warmth or companionship.

Shaikh Ibrahim smoked six cigarettes in succession and made no more than a few short hoarse contributions to the discourse; he would surely have been just as happy to hear her recite airline safety procedures so long as she didn’t sit still during the recitation. His eyes burned remorselessly into Rupert’s vest as if by some act of will he might cause it to burst asunder telekinetically. From time to time he squirmed on his chair as though his uniform was becoming uncomfort-ably hot or too tight.

His two adjutants took turns at bringing up cups of scented coffee and over-sweetened tea, a task they would have deputed to an Asian minion in normal circumstances; when Eddy wiggled his empty cup to indicate (according to Ahmed) not wanting more, the adjutants took it away and brought a fresh one. Each opening and closing of the door onto the landing produced another chorus of growls from the excluded audience.

After half an hour Sam heaved a theatrical sigh, her heaving breasts commanding the Commandant’s attention. She said: ‘Well now, Shaikh honey, how about this here boy’s drahvin’ test?’

Shaikh Ibrahim barked into the intercom. Following a shout up the stairs, the door opened and Eddy’s second examiner entered, a burly man the colour of an American Indian. He stood to one side of the desk, slightly stooped as if he too was experiencing some discomfort, and saluted his commanding officer with a cross-eyed expression, his gaze focussed on Sam’s side elevation.

‘This is the guy who failed me last time,’ Eddy whispered. Sam turned round in her chair. A series of creaking sounds emanated from the examiner’s uniform trousers as he received the full frontal effect. ‘This is one hunky redskin,’ she remarked sotto voce, ‘but I think we oughtta go for broke. Shaikh honey -’ raising her voice - ‘we-all had it in mind for you yourself to take Ed here.’

This was not what Ed here had in mind at all. He’d had his eye on the only examiner who’d not yet taken him, a shifty little runt to whom he was sure a 500-dirham inducement (with or without a hint from his CO) would guarantee a pass certificate. He gave Sam a ‘what-on-earth-are-you-up-to?’ look and received a ‘trust-me’ smile in return.

Shaikh Ibrahim’s olive complexion paled with indignation. ‘Madam,’ he said in the lofty tones of a Harrods floor manager, ‘I do not do driving tests.’

‘Oh, but couldn’t you do it jest this once an’ all, as a special favour?’ And she brought her elbows together across her abdomen, squeezing her breasts outward and upward to the point where Eddy was sure they must pour over the top of her vest. The red-skinned examiner’s uniform creaked again and the Commandant swallowed several times.

‘Very well,’ he said in a voice that conveyed both condescension and surrender, ‘especially for you I will do it.’

‘Why, thank-you, honey-pie.’ Sam’s bust shivered with gratitude. Shaikh Ibrahim stubbed out his cigarette. After some rustling adjustments beneath the desk he rose to his feet. Eddy also rose.

‘Those natives out on the verandah sound mighty restless,’ Sam said. ‘I hope a poor white girl’s gonna be safe while y’all are gone.’

‘Quite safe,’ the Commandant said. He had come round the desk and was casting unsurreptitious glances into her cleavage, now so much nearer and yet so far. ‘This man will be in charge.’ He gestured at the creaking redskin. ‘Any trouble, he will be shot.’ Eddy started to laugh, then stopped when he realised this was not a joke. The redskin, he noted, no longer creaked.

Pushing past the examiner, Ibrahim ushered Eddy out of the office and across the landing, which was held by two dozen robed or uniformed men, a tense panting throng which the Commandant parted with his swagger stick only to have it reform behind him, facing the office’s flimsy door. Eddy began to fear for Sam’s virtue and the poor examiner’s life.

At the head of the stairs Ibrahim stopped and tucked the stick under his left arm; Eddy couldn’t help observing he had another one tucked down the right leg of his trousers. In fact, swagger sticks were much in evidence, Eddy noted as he pushed his way through the crowd and followed the Commandant downstairs.

In the adjutants’ office two Belaji girls, abandoned by their chaperons, giggled together behind their masks.

Ibrahim grimly slapped his thigh with the swagger stick as Eddy drove Amin’s Ford Escort into the test ground. His tension inevitably communicated itself to Eddy who fully expected to do something foolish. There was, however, little opportunity for this: barely 50 yards into the course, at the mini-roundabout, he instructed Eddy to return to the entrance; when Eddy made to turn into the reversing zone the Commandant prodded him with his stick and had him drive on to the parking area where Eddy showed off by needlessly reversing into an empty space. Ibrahim got out of the car and set a brisk pace back into the building. Eddy ran to catch up. The Commandant did not speak.

On the ground floor the two girls were still alone and giggling. Upstairs the landing was deserted, the office door closed. No sound issued. Ibrahim thrust the door open; there was a yelp as it hit somebody.

The office was packed to capacity with a host of heavily breathing but otherwise silent men and youths. Sam’s strident tones rose from across the room. The Commandant prodded and poked his way through the crush. Eddy pushed his way through behind him.

Looking for all the world like Marilyn Monroe entertaining the troops in Korea, Sam sat perched on the front of Shaikh Ibrahim’s desk, engaged in animated conversation with one of Amin’s fellow instructors who sat, with Amin beside him, in the easy-chair closest to the desk. The red-skinned examiner stood over her with one hand on his gun holster.

Everybody watched Sam, some twenty to thirty pairs of eyes bulging in her direction. The excitement had proved too much for a few of the younger Belaji test candidates who sported damp patches in their jeans and dishdashas. But the overall atmosphere was of adoration rather than menace; Amin’s colleague was beaming at Sam in a manner more fraternal than lecherous.

‘Hi again, Shaikh honey; hi, Ed,’ Sam greeted them as they emerged at the front of the assembly. ‘Would you believe this guy used to drive a taxi in Pittsburgh! That’s my hometown, honey,’ she added for the Commandant’s benefit.

It took some time and much shouting from Ibrahim to drive the throng back out onto the landing. The two instructors were permitted to stay; the red-skinned examiner, having supervised the evacuation, stood on guard just inside the door.

The Commandant seated himself in Sam’s former chair, close to where she still perched on his desk. His eyes were now on a level with her nipples and no more than two feet from them. He smouldered but had not resumed smoking. Trying to be inconspicuous, Eddy sat in the chair nearest the door, beside the examiner. Sam cast him a questioning look. He shrugged.

‘Well now,’ she asked, in an accent closer to her re-adopted Pittsburgh than to Atlanta, ‘how did our boy do out there?’

Despite the confusion of clearing out his office Shaikh Ibrahim was in a good humour. Playing for time, he consulted Amin in Arabic; a dialogue ensued. Sam brought an end to this prevarication by suddenly bending down to adjust the ankle-strap on one of her swinging legs. Her breasts came together with a sound like a hand-clap and tumbled against the vest’s ribbed neckline, only prevented from falling out altogether when her nipples caught in the ribbing.

This movement brought her breasts some twelve inches closer to the Commandant’s face, twelve-and-a-half if one allowed for the heightened protrusion of his eyeballs. His voice rose almost an octave in mid-speech and ended in a hysterical gurgle as he completely lost the thread of what he had been saying to Amin. Beside him Eddy heard a familiar creaking.

Sam sat up again. Her breasts swam back inside the vest and paddled to and fro several times before settling to the rhythm of her breathing. ‘About Ed,’ she prompted Ibrahim who had clearly forgotten what any of them was doing in his office. He cleared his throat twice before finding his voice: ‘Mahbrook,’ he croaked.

Sam looked at Eddy. ‘Can you translate for a poor dumb broad from Pennsylvania?’

It was one of the words Eddy had learned at the bank and used to reward his slower pupils (such as A.Q. Qamber) for each little advance. ‘He said “congratulations”,’ he told her.

‘Well, kiss my ass!’ cried Sam, an invitation which everybody present would happily have accepted.

And she jumped down from the desk. This was more than her vest - and the assembled male company - could stand. Her breasts flew up and over the neckline, came within millimetres of slapping her under the chin and then fell to hang, revealed in all their glory, outside the vest - two large perfect globes with enormous off-centre nipples.

There came to Eddy’s ears, simultaneously, a gasp for which he himself was responsible, grunts from the driving instructors and a muffled splat from within the creaking trousers beside him at the door. This last diverted his attention momentarily, and he turned his head to check if there was any visual evidence of what he thought he had heard; there was not. A crash brought his gaze back to the desk.

Sam, scooping her breasts back inside the vest and whinnying with laughter, knelt beside a recumbent form on the floor.

The Commandant of Traffic Police had fainted.

* * *

Read some more Extracts from SHAIKH-DOWN at my website:

http://www.shaikh-down.co.uk

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http://www.shaikh-down.blogspot.com

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David Gee