You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

SAUDI VINTAGE

Alcohol is not permitted in the Moslem Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Every year countless men are arrested and put away in Saudi jails for having it in their possession. However, when the opportunity for profit is great, clever entrepreneurs will find a way to smuggle it in. I heard of one, A Kuwaiti who modified a truck to traverse the desert. He would fill his truck with cases of Jack Daniels in Kuwait and drive, across the desert, into The Kingdom to a remote desert rendezvous. Buyers would gather there to stock up. This concept of a desert rendezvous is in keeping with the Saudi tradition of camel caravans which would meet at desert locations to exchange goods according to their destinations.

Westerners, such as we on the faculty of King Faisal University, did not have connections among Saudis to navigate the elaborate and secret arrangements by which one could buy hard liquor. Nor did we have the high-level connections to help us get out of jail if we were to be caught with it.

This problem is one which has been faced by expats for many years. People who choose to work abroad are, as a class, willing to take greater risks than the average person. Furthermore, when working abroad there is always the desire to maintain some of one’s own culture. Consequently, expats had figured out a system by which they could enjoy a glass of wine with dinner.

This access to wine depended on cultural mores of Saudi Arabia in which the privacy homes a fundamental right. This privacy is so strictly held that it is a transgression to look at a residential window. You will not be arrested for doing it, but if a Saudi man thinks you glanced at a residential window he may well ask “What are you doing looking in that window?” Consequently, when walking on a residential street in Saudi Arabia, one is compelled to look straight ahead or down at the pavement. This sanctity of the home extends to the police. The police would never presume to enter a home unless there was clear evidence of serious illegal activity happening inside.

As a result if someone were able to slip booze into their home undetected, it would be safe for them to consume it. This is also true, if he were to produce it inside his home and never take it out. But it is not easy to make decent wine in an apartment. The easy part is obtaining several varieties of grape juice which, in our town, can be purchased at the Western grocery store. These are conveniently bottled with wire spring ceramic caps. These bottles could be used for making wine out of the juice. The prospective winemaker need only add yeast to the bottle and recap it. Fermentation produces carbon dioxide pressure inside the bottle the spring cap would usually release just enough of the gas to prevent the bottle from exploding. And yet the spring cap would retain pressure in the bottle so that oxygen could not enter and spoil the wine. The more advanced winemakers used water traps to release the CO2.

Some expats used bakers yeast to make there wine. This made poor quality wine. Fortunately wine yeast, could be found in small packets outside of The Kingdom. These packets are easily concealed on one’s person when entering the Kingdom. Saudi customs officers would not search one’s clothing. Saudis are as private about their clothing, as they are with their houses.

So it was, that most of the western ex-patriots, that I knew, made their own wine. These wines varied in quality. When invited to a colleague’s house for dinner, we could anticipate anything from good wine to barely palatable poorly fermented fruit juice. We had to drink it all and pretend to like it because our host would certainly be proud of his wine-making ability.

The down side, of this skirting of the law, was that if Saudi men, both friends, and acquaintences, who enjoyed alcohol, were to find out that I was a winemaker, they would show up at my door. In the kingdom one is obliged to invite a guest in and offer refreshments, usually Perrier water and some munchies such as carrot sticks or nuts would suffice. But these guys would look at the water and ask, “Don’t you have something else?” Or they would say “I understand that you are an excellent wine maker.” Their persistence would continue until I brought out a bottle, and then another until they were satiated and a bit tipsy. At which point they would saunter out expressing their gratitude for my extraordinary hospitality. Following their departure, I would be terrified that they would either be arrested for drunk driving or crash their Mercedes. In either event, the police would surely trace their source of alcohol back to me. Fortunately, these Saudis discovered my wine during the last year of our sojourn there. This kind of visit happened only a couple of times before we left the Kingdom.

Near Disaster

There are other, unforeseen risks that come with making wine in your apartment. I would store empty wire clamp bottles in the back of the kitchen cabinet. They were kept just in case I found suitable grape juice in another type bottle. I also maintained a bottle of wine yeast as “starter” in the same cabinet. The lid on the starter was held snug with a weight but not clamped tightly so that excessive pressure would not build up in the bottle. One day my wife, Maura, saw it, a bottle of juice with a loose lid. She clasped it tightly and put it back in the cabinet. Several weeks later, Maura, was doing some housekeeping. She took the bottles out of the cabinet, put them in a shopping bag, and told our five-year-old son, Justin, to take the bag down to the dumpster in the street. I was unaware of any of this until I heard knocking on our apartment door. Upon opening it, I found our Indian maintenance man, holding our blood-covered son in his arms. Justin had climbed onto empty boxes next to the dumpster and was throwing the bottles into it one at a time to watch them shatter. When he threw the bottle of wine starter into the dumpster, it exploded and glass shrapnel hit his face and arms which were covered in small cuts. Fortunately, his reflex to close his eyes had saved them. While he suffered many cuts, none were serious. This was a good thing because we could not have taken him to the hospital. The ER doctors would certainly wanted a plausible explanation of his injuries. This they would have been obliged to report it to the police. We picked bits of glass out of his wounds and cleaned him up. No greater harm came of this potentially disastrous housekeeping errand.

French Beaujolais

My family and I were in Paris on our way back to Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for another school year. I was to go a few weeks sooner than the rest of the family. Maura and our children were staying in Europe as the kid’s school did not start for another two weeks. On the night before my departure, I bought two small bottles of French Beaujolais for Maura and me to enjoy before bed. We only drank one. My intention was that Maura would be able to enjoy the second bottle the following evening. I couldn’t find a place to stash the second bottle in the small hotel room. I looked in the closet for a place to put it. The closet was stacked full with the clothing and luggage of three children and two adults. The only spot I could find to put it was in one of my shoes. The bottle was small enough that it slid down into the shoe.

I over slept the following morning and had to rush to get my things into bags and catch a cab to the airport. Some time later, when my flight was high over the Mediterranean Sea, I thought back over my rushed exit. I was still anxious with the thought that I could have missed the plane. I recalled the way, still half asleep, I had thrown all my things into bags and rushed out the door. It was then that I remembered the night before when I had put that extra bottle of wine in my shoe. Was it still there? I had not taken it out. If I was lucky, Maura had removed it. No! That was not likely. She was already in bed when I put it in the shoe and was not yet up when I dashed out. How could I have grabbed the shoes and not felt the weight of the bottle? It must still be in my shoe, on this plane, bound for Saudi Arabia where I will be arrested and thrown in jail if it is found. If I am extremely lucky, I thought, the customs officer would be rushed and not open my bags. There was no way that I could ditch that bottle in the Saudi airport as luggage and passengers are reunited at the customs table. Sitting in that plane I fought back panic, thinking of the terrible events which were sure to occur when that customs official found that bottle of wine in my bag.

The plane landed. The other passengers descended the stair to the tarmac and formed a tidy line into the customs office to claim their baggage. The line moved slowly. This meant that they were checking the contents of the bags. I was shaking when, eventually it was my turn. My bags were placed on the low steel table between the officer and myself. He asked if there was anything I wished to declare. I answered that there was not. He patted the bags as if he were going to tell me that I was free to go. He hesitated then he opened the zipper. Without removing anything he felt around in the bag. He would have felt clothing and a pair of shoes. He closed the bag and signaled, with a wave of his hand, that I was free to go. When I got home I opened my bag and celebrated my escape from incarceration with a glass of fine French Beaujolais.