A Family Tale of Expat Life (and Alcohol) in Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Early 1970s, Somewhere in the American Compound at At’Taif, Our House.
It is illegal to produce, possess, sell, or consume alcohol in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and because of that fact, it was everywhere and it was certainly at our house.
My family lived in the Kingdom when I was a child. As expat Americans it was our duty to uphold certain culture ties to our homeland; in my father’s case that meant alcoholism and brewing beer and wine in massive quantities to support his chosen lifestyle.
Our pantry was my father’s alcoholic workshop. There were always large plastic bags bubbling away in the dark over trashcans full of foamy liquids that stank up the house. Dad wasn’t alone in his little hobby. Most of the American and European men felt it was their inalienable right as Alpha Males to concoct the devil’s brew regardless of the tenets of Almighty Allah. My Dad’s only problem with finding booze in dry Saudi Arabia was that he usually ran out of beer before his next batch was complete. In this situation, “close enough” was “good enough”.
Production time was a family affair at our house. Dad would dip the beer out of large plastic trashcans and carefully funnel it into large brown and green bottles. I never saw my father more engaged and focused as when he was pouring beer. My little sister would take these bottles to the kitchen table where I had the job of using the capper to attach the bottle-tops to each one and then place them into wooden cases. Once all the beer was bottled, the cases would go back into the pantry. Bottled beer required that the pantry door remain closed at all times. This was a necessary precaution as Dad’s beer was often still fermenting inside the capped bottles and the science of fermentation has a way of becoming explosive in a contained environment. Many of our thousand and one Arabian nights were shattered by the sound of a shotgun blast only to realise that yet another of Dad’s beers was now plastered against the pantry walls and ceiling.
Besides making your own home-brew, you could buy any kind of alcohol on the black market if you had the money. As my father was a fallen catholic from Kansas and not an extended member of the Saudi Royal Family, he had to go with the local hooch aka “My Friend” — Sadiki — the Arabian White Lightning rather than wildly expensive contraband like Johnny Walker Red or Gordon’s Dry Gin that set on display in the liquor cabinets of all upscale and connected Saudis.
The Sadiki my Dad purchased came in Avian water bottles. It was clear, 180 proof, and would take all your cares away and strip the oil off of your carport. Dad usually kept a bottle or two in the fridge for casual drinking. It was much better chilled as it tasted like something you’d treat at a poison control centre. My sister and I knew not to drink the bottled water because it wasn’t; our drinking water was always in the water cooler next to the fridge.
Large quantities of alcohol make one generous and gregarious. My parents were all about sharing their bounty and they did this through alcohol-fueled parties. Yes, my Dad’s beer and wine was not technically good but it was alcohol and it was free, hence my parent’s parties were always well attended. My sister and I weren’t thrilled with these raucous evenings as the events tended to carry on into the wee hours of the morning when we typically liked to sleep. It was not uncommon for us to hear the hoots and hollers of drunken expatriate adults up and down our hallways as Ike and Tine Turner Live at the Apollo blasted from the stereo at Zero dark thirty.
A morning after one such fractious shindig, my sister and I were stumbling around the kitchen trying to find something to eat for breakfast. Our parents were still asleep/passed out so we had to fend for ourselves. I filled two bowls with stale imported cornflakes and topped them off with a greyish-white liquid know as instant milk. The powdered milk was pretty much undrinkable but it was all we had and not too awful on tasteless cereal. My little sister was thirsty so she grabbed a cup and went over to the water cooler.
She stopped and turned to me, “Hey, the water is red!”
I looked at the cooler and saw she was right. On the counter next to the fridge were several empty wine vats, their remaining contents pubbled onto the counter and dribbled down to the floor.
“Dad must have put wine in the water cooler.”
“Why would he do something like that?”
“I dunno. I’m sure it was for their party. Just drink some tap water. It won’t kill you.”
“No way. That water is gross — it tastes like the swimming pool!”
She was right. The tap water tasted horrible and you really had to live in a desert to be tempted to drink it, so my tired and thirsty sister put her cup down and walked over to the refrigerator. She reached in and pulled out a half-full Avian bottle, tipped it back and took several deep gulps… and then her eyes got very wide and she started to hop up and down and cry. Along with her tears came a violent eruption of 180 proof vomit.
I tucked my sister into her bed with her Raggedy Ann doll and assured her that she would survive and that the world would eventually stop spinning. I then marched down to my parent’s room at the end of the hall.
I knocked on the door. No answer.
I knocked again and thought I heard something akin to a growl or maybe a whimper.
My mother’s groggy voice pleaded from behind the door, “… sleeping late today. Go back to bed, honey… please...”
“Mom. Elizabeth is sick and I think she’s pretty drunk too.”
“…wha…?”
“She drank some of that stuff in the fridge by mistake — Dad’s water — and she hurled it up all over the kitchen floor. She’s pretty sick. I put her in her bed but I think you should get up now and check on her.”
Silence.
I was about to knock again when the door creaked opened and my very hung-over and sleep-deprived mother emerged and stumbled past me toward my sister’s room. I looked into my parent’s dark bedroom for other signs of life. My father was laying on his stomach with a pillow over his head and snoring.
“Dad.”
No movement.
“DAD!”
Still nothing.
I closed the door and went back to the kitchen to look for the mop and finish my breakfast.
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