Home | Sonnets | Pushkin | Onegin Book I | More King Stories | Gypsies | Chekhov |
FRANCES KING Up the Creek without a Battery.
UP THE CREEK WITHOUT A BATTERY | |
We were looking for The Creek, a 400m. long inlet from the sea, leading to
a salt water marsh inland, deep in the Neutral Zone on the Kuwaiti/Saudi
border, 2 clicks from the road. It had been a hot and sticky drive from Kuwait
City (where I was stationed working for The British Council, and we were all looking
forward to pitching camp and plunging into the comparatively cool sea water,
when someone in grubby robes and Arab head gear leapt out from behind a dune
onto the track and flagged us down. Could he borrow our battery? "Of
course". Both my wife and I thought of the 2kms across the increasingly
hot desert to the main road and any chance of summoning motorised assistance,
but a plea for help in the desert, has to be answered positively. Arab rules
apply. So we parked up on a patch of sand overlooking the creek, where we had
camped some weeks before, and told the grubby robed Kuwaiti gent to help
himself and we'd see him shortly, "insh'Allah".
My colleagues at the Embassy maintained that insh'Allah had all the
force of the Spanish 'manana' but without the sense of
urgency. We were much reassured therefore when half an hour later our new
friend chugged over the dunes in his Land Cruiser, disgorging wives, kids and
camping gear 100m. further down the edge of the creek. Our tent was fully erect and a pot of coffee merrily bubbling on the
charcoal fire when two ladies in black abayas and three small children, the
same size and gender as ours, paid us a tentative visit. The oldest child and
one of the mothers spoke enough English for us to get by. "Ahlan wa sahlan", we welcomed them,
"Beiti beitak", - my
house is your house (well tent in this case). The Mums got cups of coffee, Arab style, thick
and black with piles of sugar and lots of ground cardamom. The kids got as much
Scottish shortbread as they could stuff in their mouths before being sent off
en masse, brown and white, to the creek to build sandcastles and splash. We now
noticed that one of the ladies was bearing a large plastic bowl in which was a
shoal of freshly caught small fish which the Arab ladies expertly transferred
to the griddle on our fire. The husband drove up to us in his Land Cruiser ,
politely averting his eyes from my wife's bare legs, though judging by the
tightness of his wives' abayas, he preferred the meatier variety. Apart from
the car battery under one arm, in his other hand he bore a large brown paper
bag of warm chapatti bread. As his two spouses (spice?) deftly grilled and
filleted fish flesh into the bread, he fitted and tested the battery. Our
engine roared healthily, the children were all herded up and had their hands
washed, first in salt, and then in sweet water, and sat on a blanket in the
shade, and we started the banquet of a lifetime: freshly caught and grilled
fish in warm chapatti bread. Yum! Anyone want to borrow a car battery? Francis King, Oxford Oct 2013
|
Home | Sonnets | Pushkin | Onegin Book I | More King Stories | Gypsies | Chekhov |