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Authors: Hilary Mantel
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Andrew says he is on the Ministry payroll, though not often seen there, and no one is sure what he does, if indeed he does anything, and this state of affairs is quite usual. I notice that this diary is full of “Andrew says” but I have no other source of information yet. Every day he comes home with something else to tell me, usually something funny. Expatriates do have this habit of laughing at everything. I suppose it is the safest way of expressing dissent. Sometimes I think we should be more open-minded, and not think that we are the ones who are right, and that we should contrive to be more pious about other people’s cultures. But after all, as Andrew says, we’re not on Voluntary Service Overseas.
The company has given us a warning about our Arab neighbors. They say they are very religious, and like to keep to themselves,
so we shouldn’t make overtures to them, just be quiet neighbors and polite, and if we meet on the stairs — which I’m sure we will now the doorway is unblocked — we shouldn’t strike up a conversation, but wait until we are spoken to, and meanwhile just nod and smile, but of course, if I am on my own and I meet the husband, better not smile too much. Eric Parsons came round one morning just to tell me this. I said, I know how to go on, in Africa I met the Queen. This is true, but the remark didn’t go down well.
Jeff Pollard has been round as well. He came to show us how to make wine. We are going to begin on our social life, it seems, dinner parties and barbecues, and you must be able to give people something to drink. It is true that brewing liquor is illegal, but there seems to be a concept of some things being more illegal than others. So although it’s very foolish to try to import proper stuff, you can make it in your home for your own consumption secure in the knowledge that the Saudi police do not enter private homes on a whim. They’ll come if you attract attention to yourself—by, for instance, having a violent death on the premises—but if you manage to avoid that you’ll probably get away with it.
Everybody knows it goes on. The shops sell grape juice, white and red, by the case. You pick up your sugar and your yeast and your plastic jerricans and off you go, some kind friend like Pollard comes round to instruct you, you brew the stuff up in your bathroom, say, or wherever you have room, and just watch it for a day or two to make sure the yeast hasn’t died, and then four or five weeks later you draw off some of the results and see if it’s fit to drink. There are some people who go into it very seriously, of course, and strain it and clarify it and bottle it and declare vintages, and compete with each other in undercover competitions, but most people are content with something clean and drinkable, with no offensively large bits floating around in it.
You can brew beer, too, from the cans of nonalcoholic malt drinks that you find in the supermarkets. A few years ago these were banned for a time, because the religious authorities were afraid that the smell and taste of them might make the faithful imagine
that they were the real thing—and that would be a sin. There’s also a spirit called siddiqui which you can get expensively on the black market. It’s just sugar and water distilled but when people try to make their own they usually blow their apartments up. And if you want it, and know who to ask, and are prepared to pay about ten times the UK price, you can always lay your hands on whiskey or gin.
I am glad I have got that down. It will be sure to fascinate my cousin Clare, and she can tell it to her pitiful suburban neighbors when they have their Beaujolais Nouveau parties this year.
As Pollard says, you have to drink something. Here you are amongst all these people with whom you don’t necessarily have anything in common, except that perhaps you work for the same outfit, and you’re drifting through each other’s lives, in transit, trying to make a
The company has given us a warning about our Arab neighbors. They say they are very religious, and like to keep to themselves,
so we shouldn’t make overtures to them, just be quiet neighbors and polite, and if we meet on the stairs — which I’m sure we will now the doorway is unblocked — we shouldn’t strike up a conversation, but wait until we are spoken to, and meanwhile just nod and smile, but of course, if I am on my own and I meet the husband, better not smile too much. Eric Parsons came round one morning just to tell me this. I said, I know how to go on, in Africa I met the Queen. This is true, but the remark didn’t go down well.
Jeff Pollard has been round as well. He came to show us how to make wine. We are going to begin on our social life, it seems, dinner parties and barbecues, and you must be able to give people something to drink. It is true that brewing liquor is illegal, but there seems to be a concept of some things being more illegal than others. So although it’s very foolish to try to import proper stuff, you can make it in your home for your own consumption secure in the knowledge that the Saudi police do not enter private homes on a whim. They’ll come if you attract attention to yourself—by, for instance, having a violent death on the premises—but if you manage to avoid that you’ll probably get away with it.
Everybody knows it goes on. The shops sell grape juice, white and red, by the case. You pick up your sugar and your yeast and your plastic jerricans and off you go, some kind friend like Pollard comes round to instruct you, you brew the stuff up in your bathroom, say, or wherever you have room, and just watch it for a day or two to make sure the yeast hasn’t died, and then four or five weeks later you draw off some of the results and see if it’s fit to drink. There are some people who go into it very seriously, of course, and strain it and clarify it and bottle it and declare vintages, and compete with each other in undercover competitions, but most people are content with something clean and drinkable, with no offensively large bits floating around in it.
You can brew beer, too, from the cans of nonalcoholic malt drinks that you find in the supermarkets. A few years ago these were banned for a time, because the religious authorities were afraid that the smell and taste of them might make the faithful imagine
that they were the real thing—and that would be a sin. There’s also a spirit called siddiqui which you can get expensively on the black market. It’s just sugar and water distilled but when people try to make their own they usually blow their apartments up. And if you want it, and know who to ask, and are prepared to pay about ten times the UK price, you can always lay your hands on whiskey or gin.
I am glad I have got that down. It will be sure to fascinate my cousin Clare, and she can tell it to her pitiful suburban neighbors when they have their Beaujolais Nouveau parties this year.
As Pollard says, you have to drink something. Here you are amongst all these people with whom you don’t necessarily have anything in common, except that perhaps you work for the same outfit, and you’re drifting through each other’s lives, in transit, trying to make a
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