Abdulrahman

The enticing waft of fragrant hashish hits me before the cavernous doors are flung open.

 

Abdulrahman’s endearing grin cleaves his purplish-black face asunder.

 

My week has been ruthless. I’ve been watching my students flamboyantly cheat their way through the midterms with increasing ingenuity. The exam I had written without incident morphs into a fiasco.

 

The audio passage was recorded by The Thing, a grotesque, self-professed voice over artist whose expiry date is in the post. I impugn his claim because, alongside teaching and this putative bowstring, the camp thespian is also a golf course proprietor, a pilot, an actor… whatever else catches his whim on any given day. Reading in a decreasing circle of needless, bizarre accents - he strives for an authentic pronunciation of burritos, epically missing the stress bullseye - all of my basic instructions are ignored resulting in undiluted chaos. He wheezes emphysemically from gun to tape.

 

Still, grades can be massaged to compensate…The gloriously euphemistic curve will be applied…  

 

Anyway, this is the precise odour, this Afghan black, that I am hoping to confront me upon arrival at the singular Abdulrahman’s house. Decompression is in order and I am not to be disappointed.

 

“He come. Finally he come. Sit down, Mr Neil. Mr Neil friend too.”

 

We both throw ourselves back onto a couch designed for nothing save comfort. I allow my eyes to wander around a vast space void of anything except seating and an expanse of carpet. The carpet breeches the accepted boundaries and covers the walls and doors. I imagine the decorator seriously considering giving the ceiling a coating to ice the cake before resignedly settling on white emulsion.

 

Abdulrahman tosses us a short, stubby joint apiece. Hash, in Saudi, flows in inverse proportion to the rain. Papers, on the other hand… Minuscule Egyptian offerings are peddled by a single daring retailer. The fact they lack glue is a severe disincentive and drove me towards bringing a brace of satisfying Bud Bombs through the feckless King Khalid customs without incident.

 

“Thanks Abdulrahman. I need this. Badly.”

 

With a comical leer, our host uncaps a transparent 330ml water bottle.

 

“Whisky. Turkish whisky.”

 

I spend twenty-five minutes attempting to convince Abdulrahman that (as he already knows) I no longer drink alcohol, haven’t done in years.

 

Like a hound tenaciously coursing a hare, he presses ahead: “No problem now, Mr Neil. No problem. We have whisky.”

 

“Problem for me, Abdulrahman.”

 

The message is entering his orbit.

 

“Big problem?”

 

“Big, big problem.”

 

The message thwacks home…

 

“Ahhh, no problem, Mr Neil. Tea?”

 

Without waiting for a response he glides up and out of the door. He returns almost instantly.

 

“This is my brother. Higher brother.”

 

Greetings are exchanged and the brother, a towering darker-hued individual on the fringes of middle age, sets about dismantling four cigarettes and mixing the tobacco with a mound of Stygian hashish.

 

As he sparks the first of the quintet of joints he’s assembled, I ask a question I loathe and loathe myself for asking: “What do you do then?”

 

Chiming in like he’d been waiting half his life to deliver this information, Abdulrahman solemnly cuts in with, “Police. He police.”

 

I probe his cannabinoid-saturated eyes for any trace of a joke, any whiff of humour. I draw a blank. He remains inscrutable.

 

“You look…you look…not good. What wrong, Mr Neil? Brother, he no mind the whisky. No problem with the whisky.”

 

I explain that the controlled drugs are higher on my list of concerns than some Aramco homebrew. I try, with limited success, to impress upon Abdulrahman our perception of the consequences of dallying with drugs in the Kingdom.

 

The gist of an hour’s verbal fencing is this: it seems fine to conduct yourself as you see fit behind closed doors.

 

As if to underscore the point, a faint tap at the door.

 

A squat figure clad in abaya and hijab enters. She sets down an elaborate pewter tea set on the low and busy table. Then, wordlessly, she exits.

 

Although he has a full glass of whisky, the arrival of the tea and mint animates the nameless brother.

 

He fusses and agitates and serves up.

 

“Why you no call Silamon, Mr Neil?”

 

These complete non-sequiturs from Abdulrahman sucker punch me every single time. I grasp backwards but come up short when searching for this (perhaps Indian?) name.

 

Abdulrahman headed the HR department of my previous Saudi company. It transpires that he had once given me the phone number of a recruiter at a notable company apparently eager to employ me.

 

My non-existent Arabic and Abdulrahman’s mangled English – “The English of the streets, Mr Neil…” – conspire to prevent me from explaining satisfactorily that the cushy nature of my job meant I was staying put.

 

“Why you no call him? Silamon, he wait the call.”

 

I see him and raise him, “So, you’ve changed jobs then, Abdulrahman?”

 

“Yes. Yes. Mr Ayed bad man. Very bad man. Low salary, big work. He mad, Mr Neil.”

 

He jolts out of his reverie and, wounded, fills Chongi’s empty glass.

 

“See, Mr Neil…in Saudi this is procedure. You go to your duty, you come in home. Drink whisky. Smoke hashish. Sleep. This is procedure in Saudi.”

 

This seems about as far from my supposition of Saudi procedure as it’s possible to get.