Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2005/10/21/barretts_mixology.php
Friday, October 21, 2005
Saudi Soda
Pour 3 oz. of homemade whisky or passable equivalent into a highball glass over ice. Add soda. Stir
In Saudi Arabia, they hooch on the sly. A family friend who had lived there for a good decade apprised me of as much. His desultory, Belgian beer-fueled yarn skipped from vignette to vignette, but his observations boiled down to three essential points: (a) There are (perhaps egregiously) copious instances of frottage in Saudi supermarkets. The perpetrators are women, burqa-clad. The ‘victims' are men. ("It's how they get their jollies," he explained, "The men are usually too surprised to report anything.") I can't, of course, confirm or deny this report. (b) Saudi men make their own liquor in bathtubs. "It tasted very poor," he said, "We added woodchips for flavor. We sold it often to friends, for a decent rate. A handle of Jack, after all, went for $85 or so in those days. But the liquor, as I said, was very bad. Once, a friend—no, a friend of a friend of a friend, you know—" He winked and shrugged. "He came over, had small shot of the stuff, first shot of the batch, and went instantly blind." He slapped the table. "Bam! Like that. No eyesight. We threw that batch out, and of course we were more cautious later." I asked him what happened to the man who went blind. "Fired the next day by his boss," he said, "Later, he was stoned to death for an unrelated offense. The desert is very beautiful in Saudi Arabia." He took a hearty gulp of the Chimay. (c) While on business trips, Saudi men behave like pea-greens during orientation. He recalled one particularly memorable trip to Zurich via Swiss Air. Expense accounts were active—in particular, that of Ahmed, a very important man in the national construction cartel who also ran a very lucrative, ‘classy' smut operation on the side. Ahmed ordered up a profusion of whisky-and-sodas for the gang. The result was rather unsustainable. Various examples of sexual harassment were happily laughed away by the culturally sensitive flight attendants, but broken glass shards proved decidedly harder to rescue from the carpeted floor. The aforementioned Ahmed, naked save his headdress, decorated the restroom with his own stomach lining. By the time the plane's wheels touched Swiss soil, half the group had passed out and the remainder sobbed like infants. The Chimay ran out at this point of the story, and he stopped regaling. All in all, this strengthened my resolve never to visit that country.