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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

 



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