Arab Hospitality

 Chai Nana - image:Nicholas Malfait

Abdullah Zahlan had arranged my meeting with the Minister the next day, so I found myself sitting on the leather sofa outside Harb Al Hashemi’s office, drinking a little gold-rimmed glass of thyme zaatar tea as I waited for the big panelled doors to open. When they did, a little grey-haired man in a blue-grey suit shot out, a pile of papers clutched in his arm as he paddled a fussy wave of effusive thanks and effendi’s to Al Hashemi’s crisp, efficient secretary, who ignored him.
   ‘You can go in, now, Mr. Stokes.’
Olives, Page 127

Formal meetings in the Arab World often still involve little gold-edged custard glasses of ‘chai’ in various forms, from ‘chai suleimani’, a sweet bronze-coloured infusion of tea, almost certainly Lipton to ‘chai nana’, tea with fresh mint steeped in it. And then there are the herbal and fruit teas you come across, most frequently ‘zaatar’, or thyme. I remember ginger tea waiting in Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s majlis, deep-pile carpets and mirrored walls all around me. And long, painful waits for short, painful meetings at the Ministry of Information in Dubai filled with a variety of teas brought to me in a procession of diuretic little delights. Those were the meetings back in the early ‘90s when I had fallen foul of someone with wasta, something that can’t, thankfully, happen in the same way to writers in the UAE today. Or to their kidneys.

In Saudi Arabia and Kuwait you’re just as likely to be offered ghawa, green unroasted coffee flavoured with cardamom and served in little cups from a long-necked brass coffee pot or, more likely these days, a long brass-necked coffee pot shaped thermos. It’s polite to accept a refill or, at most, two and then pass the cup back with a little waggle to signify you’re done. Two fingers over the cup will do instead of a waggle.

It's a little ritual that's tied into the age-old Arab traditions of hospitality that still dictate how you're received as a guest, whether it's sitting in a Jordanian government minister's waiting room or encountering a family while offroading in the Omani mountains and being invited into their home to share coffee and dates. Coming from a culture that's instinctually distrustful of strangers, it never fails to amaze me.

Driving in Jordan

Water flicked through the car’s open window, lashing my eyes. I raced through the city streets, the engine screaming and tyres hissing on the wet tarmac. I broke out into open country and a vista of cypress-dotted hills and rock outcrops before the road looped back into the suburbs.
   I sped around a tight corner in a hilly residential area. The tyres hit a bad road repair and I slid out of control across the smooth, treacherous bitumen. The car spun a full circle before bumping against the kerb, not a damaging impact, but heavy enough to jolt me into awareness of my surroundings.
Olives, Page 191

Paul’s driving has obviously not been improved by his time in the Middle East. This is hardly a surprise, driving across the region is generally appalling and rarely less than bonkers. There are some regional hotspots – Cairo really takes the biscuit, it’s the one place in the Middle East where I’ve always managed to avoid driving, but that hasn’t really helped, as being driven around by a maniac with a clear death-wish is only barely preferable to taking matters into your own hands and trying to carve your own path through the impossible, choking traffic.

The GCC is a tad more gentlemanly these days, the UAE, Dubai in particular, has calmed down following a somewhat draconian crackdown by Dubai' radar-toting police (the Emirate features a fixed rader every 2km on most roads and mobile 'sneaks' on top of that). I do recall in Saudi Arabia during the 1980s, if you waited too long at a roundabout, the guy behind you would just shove you in with his bumper. Lebanon, too, has calmed down as drivers have become used to the fact you don’t need to avoid snipers anymore. It’s taken the best part of 20 years for that to sink in, mind you. And Beirut's traffic lights are still occasionally regarded as a pretty display to brighten up the roadside rather than an actual instruction to behave in a certain way.

I’ve never had the slightest hesitation in driving in Jordan, though. Amman’s rush hour can get pretty hectic these days and roundabouts are still an invitation to play chicken and ignore any such facile concept as right of way. The roads are still, in the main, pretty badly maintained, too. But muddling your way through the snarling lanes of traffic, the usual pile of people, choking fumes and honking horns, somehow doesn’t seem as, well, potentially fatal as Cairo does. And once you’re out in the country, windows open and cypress-dotted hillsides speeding past, you’re in heaven...