Two Old Fools on a Camel: From Spain to Bahrain and Back Again

by Victoria Twead

  “Did you check it out?” asked Colton.

  “Did I check it out? Of course I did. First, I watched. Two boys got up from their table and walked, very nonchalant, to the back of the restaurant. Then they looked around, and instead of opening the door to the boys’ bathroom, they slipped through this other door.”

  We were really interested now.

  “So I said, ‘Excuse me’, to the other teachers, and headed for that door. (Dramatic pause.) Well, good grief.” Jake leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head, eyes wide with disbelief.

  “What was it?”

  “Where were the kids?”

  “Did you find them?”

  “Yep, I found them. That door, that blue door, that innocent-looking door at the back of the restaurant, that door led straight out to a nudist beach!”

  We shouted with laughter as Jake grinned, shaking his head.

  “I’m telling you, it was like another world! Like walking through the back of the wardrobe in ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’. Busy Spanish restaurant one side, then this beach on the other side! You know, sand, ocean, people sitting and lying around. And the women are all topless!”

  “Oh my...” I held my hand over my mouth.

  “Well, I look around, and our party is just standing there, eyes on ten-foot stalks. I mean, when does an Arab boy ever get to see a woman, apart from her face? They were in a state of shock! They just didn’t know where to look next, and their cameras were snapping everything. The girls were giggling hysterically, peeping out from behind their hands, and the boys, well, they just couldn’t get enough.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, first I had a good look myself. No, only joking! I thought I’d better get them back in, before Rawan sussed what was going on. All I could think about were the complaints we were going to get from Mrs. Sherazi and the parents. So I rounded them all up and, made them pop back through that door into the restaurant in ones and twos so as not to arouse any suspicions.”

  That summer term was filled with the students’ silliness, and Daryna grew very anxious about Graduation Day. We were told that in past years, the students’ behaviour had been appalling. They’d been known to heckle the speakers, throw things, and stampede. It was rumoured that the Gulf Hotel, which hosted the event, had refused to accept this year’s booking because of the students’ riotous behaviour the year before. I don’t know how true that was, but it did again eventually take place at the Gulf Hotel.

  Daryna was in a state of nerves. She spent hours writing her speech, then rehearsing it. With help from an Arabic teacher, she even included a few sentences in Arabic. When she was happy with it, she sent it to Mrs. Sherazi for approval. Mrs. Sherazi summoned her to her office.

  “You should see that office, Vicky! It’s the size of a tennis court, stuffed with antiques, a table that could seat an army, Persian rugs as thick as duvets, and a forest of potted palms.”

  “I know, Jake told us about it.”

  Mrs. Sherazi handed Daryna back her speech and Daryna glanced down at it. Red lines had been struck through most of it, including the Arabic sentences she had so carefully rehearsed.

  “Short,” said Mrs. Sherazi. “Keep it short.”

  “That’s probably because she knows how badly the kids will behave.” I said to Daryna.

  “If I were you,” said Joe, “I’d just say a couple of sentences, and keep walking as you talk. That way you’ll be a moving target when they throw stuff.”

  Daryna smiled thinly. I don’t think Joe’s comment helped.

  “As I was walking out of Mrs. Sherazi’s office, across those Persian rugs, she suddenly calls me back. ‘Your blouse,’ she says, ‘Change it.’ I said, ‘Sorry? What’s wrong with my blouse?’ She points with her pen, and I suddenly understand what she’s saying. You know that black and white top I have with the geometric design?”

  I nodded. I remembered it, and it was very nice. The back had a tiny slash that briefly revealed a minute glimpse of bra-strap when she moved.

  “Well, that slash at the back must have offended her. She said, ‘Jasim will drive you,’ and waved me out of the office. She must have phoned him straight away because he was waiting for me when I left the building.”

  “With the bus?”

  “Yes, he opened the door and we drove off, even though I was late for a meeting. Anyway, as I’m getting in, Jasim asks if I’m thirsty. I thought that was nice of him, but I said, ‘No’ politely. ‘Are you sure, Ma’am?’ he says again, and I say, ‘No, thank you’. Well, he looks really disappointed, but carries on driving. Then, instead of going back to the apartments the usual way, he swings off to this area I’ve never seen before. It looks really run down with little poky shops, you know what I mean?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m looking at my watch and wondering where on earth we are going, when Jasim pulls up outside this little old shop. He jumps out, and I see him buy a brown bottle and slip it into his pocket.”

  “What was it?”

  “I have no idea! So we drive home and I run inside, up to my apartment, and quickly change. Then I come out again, and see him in the bus, taking crafty swigs from that bottle.”

  “I’d love to know what it was,” said Joe.

  “So would I! But I’m guessing it’s something frowned upon by Muslims. He drove even faster than usual, that’s why I’ve got this bump on my forehead. I banged my head on the window when he was driving across the sand. I think he was trying to break some speed record.”

  When the time came, Jasim drove us to the Gulf Hotel. Attending the Graduation Ceremony was compulsory for teachers. Joe and I were allocated seats amongst the students, in the vain hope that we could keep order, should it be necessary.

  Me, Daryna and Saja before the Graduation ceremony

  Last year, the students had been permitted four invitations each, but had manufactured forgeries to invite their friends along too. This time Daryna had the tickets numbered. Colton was asked to check off each invitation as the guests arrived in their Aston Martins and Porsches. Jake, ever confident and a fine public speaker, officiated as master of ceremonies, a task he performed flawlessly.

  Thanks to Daryna’s preparation and organisation, the ceremony went fairly smoothly, with very little heckling and no missiles thrown. When it was over, most of us retired to the bar in relief.

  ۺۺۺ

  Colton and Jake had told us that ‘Skip Days’ were common in the US, but I’d never heard of them before. Students took a day off, en masse, the idea being that the sheer numbers of absentees would prevent them from getting into trouble for playing truant. The younger ASS High School students decided to hold a Junior Skip Day. Jasim and the security guards were alerted, expecting trouble, and it came.

  Taking advantage of a moment when only one guard stood at the school gate, the truants, wearing hats, masks and fancy-dress costumes, stormed in. They stampeded into the school shouting, blowing horns and letting off industrial-sized party-poppers that fired countless bits of glittery paper into the air. In the courtyard, the wind lifted the shimmering paper squares in clouds, glinting in the sunlight, higher than Joe’s classroom window on the second floor.

  In ran the students, through the High School building, up one flight of stairs and down the other, the security guards, teachers and Saeed in hot pursuit. Mrs. Sherazi appeared and could do nothing but watch, hands on hips, her face set in a severe frown.

  “I c-c-c...” said Saeed later, in Smokers’ Corner.

  “Couldn’t believe it?” suggested Colton.

  “No, I c-c-c...”

  “Called the police?” helped Joe.

  “No, I c-c-c...caught one on the stairs and locked him in the stationery cupboard,” said Saeed.

  The Junior stampede ended as soon as it began, leaving the poor Nepalese staff to sweep up the swirling pieces of metallic paper and remove the silly-string from the walls.

  Removing unwanted stuff was also
a problem in my classroom. I was sick of my fingers making contact with revolting globs of chewing gum that my little darlings had stuck under their desks. I decided to do something about it.

  29. Brent and Camels

  ‘Tepsi (Aubergine, Onion and Potato Bake)’

  Chewing gum was banned in school, but some kids always flouted the rules. They tried keeping their jaws motionless if they thought I was looking in their direction, but soon forgot, and the chewing action would attract my attention.

  “Mohammed, are you chewing gum?”

  “No, Mees!”

  “Mohammed, are you sure?”

  “No, Mees! I swear to God!”

  Of course, within minutes, I’d catch him again and order him to spit the gum into the bin. The girls were even more guilty than the boys.

  Worse still, the little urchins stuck the plugs of gum under the desks and chairs, which infuriated me. Kids from my next class sat down and found it sticking to their clothes.

  “Do wha’ I do!” said Hawa, her eyebrows shooting up into her mauve embroidered hijab. “If I see them chewing, I make them stay in lunch time. I say to them, ‘You have a lunch date wi’ Miss Hawa today,’ and I tell them bring rulers.”

  “Do you make them do extra Maths?”

  “No! Not do Math! They clean off gum from under desk! They scrape i’ off with ruler. If they don’ bring ruler, they mus’ use hand!”

  What a good idea! I warned my classes and started a chewing gum punishment-list. At the end of the week I held my first chewing gum detention.

  Reluctantly, the kids arrived, clutching their rulers. First I made them turn over all the desks and chairs, revealing the nasty blobs of gum.

  “Mees!” Ameena complained. “That’s disgusting, Mees!”

  “Yes, it is. Perhaps it’ll teach you not to chew gum in my class in future.”

  It wasn’t easy to supervise. Protesting loudly, they began to scrape the gum, but not for long. Soon Cheeky Mohammed and Mustafa Kamel were chasing screaming girls around the classroom with revolting globs of pink gum stuck to the end of their rulers. Eventually, I was satisfied. We put the room back to rights and the kids ran out into the courtyard to enjoy the rest of their break.

  But it wasn’t only the students who were badly behaved. In fact they were saints compared with some of the High School teachers. A group of younger teachers frequently played truant, nursing hangovers, or simply deciding to take days off. Some of them even flew to Dubai to a rock concert, much to the fury of Jake, Colton and Joe, who had to cover their classes.

  Always short of teachers, Daryna was forced to use crazy Brent, but soon regretted her decision. As usual Brent insisted on spelling each name out and the students were losing patience. He did a head count, compared it with his list, and discovered there were more students in the room than there should have been. Some of the students, although not supposed to be there, had come to sit with their friends. More students tried to come in, and Brent lost the plot. He sprang to the door and slammed it shut, preventing anybody else from entering. Legitimate students, arriving late, tried to open the door, but Brent was having none of it.

  “Meester Brent! Let us in!” they called. “We’re supposed to be having a lesson in there now!”

  “Go away! No more students!”

  The students knocked on the door. “Meester Brent! Open the door! Let us in!”

  “Go away! No more students!”

  Brent jammed the door closed with his foot. The students already in the room were becoming uneasy, and the illegal ones decided it was time to get out.

  Brent refused to move. The students outside were now banging on the door, shouting to be let in, and the ones inside were shouting to be let out. Brent just kept his foot in place and blocked the door. The students inside began to panic.

  The commotion in the corridor attracted Daryna’s attention and she demanded an explanation.

  “We’ve got a lesson in there, and we can’t get in,” the students complained. “The door is blocked!”

  “Stand aside,” she ordered, and rapped on the door. “Open this door now!” At that point she believed students were preventing entry, and that they were unattended. It never occurred to her that it was the teacher.

  But Brent’s foot stayed in place.

  “Meester! It’s the Principal! You’ve got to open the door!” the shocked kids said from inside.

  “Meester! It’s the Principal, open the door!” yelled the kids outside.

  Whether Brent didn’t hear, or didn’t understand, we’ll never know, but his foot remained in place. Daryna shoved the door as hard as she could, assisted by a couple of burly students. A gap revealed enough of Brent’s shoe for her to realise he was blocking the door, not the students.

  Reluctantly, he opened the door and allowed her in. She sent him to her office to calm down, and found someone else to cover the lesson.

  Brent was one of our favourite topics at Bennigan’s. He was always doing something for us to marvel at. And on the bus, Saja made us laugh with yet another crazy Brent story.

  “Brent was in the next classroom,” she began, “and the noise was just awful! I could hardly hear myself speak. He’s got no control, you know.”

  “That man is dreadful,” Joe grumbled. “I don’t know what he’s doing in teaching.”

  Saja nodded. “Ralph, the Geography teacher, is opposite and the noise is disturbing him, too. So, Ralph walks across, and politely asks Brent if he’d mind keeping the noise down as his kids are sitting an exam. Brent just ignores him, and the noise continues, worse if anything! So Ralph goes over again and complains. Brent looks at him and says, ‘I’m perfectly aware that you don’t like me, but there’s no call to take that tone!’ Well, Ralph gets annoyed and it soon breaks into a slanging match between the two of them. Ralph is swearing, and Brent is shouting. Both of their classroom doors are open, and their kids can hear it all.”

  Joe and I listened, agog.

  “So I thought I’d better get out there to try and intervene, calm them down, if I could. I go over and say, ‘Guys, guys, there’s no need for this, you know.’”

  Joe and I smiled at each other. We imagined the scene. Ralph and Brent, two huge angry men, dwarfing the gentle and softly-spoken Saja.

  “Now my class are listening too,” she continued. “Well, it takes awhile, they’re shouting and insulting each other, and I’m trying to stop them. Eventually they calm down a bit and walk off into their own classrooms.”

  “I’m glad it didn’t come to blows,” I said.

  “I think it nearly did,” said Saja. “Anyway, I went back into my classroom, and my class are all big-eyed, because they’ve been listening, and ask, ‘Miss, which students were fighting?’ and I have to say, ‘Er, it wasn’t the students, it was the teachers.’”

  Strangely, Brent and his new roommate, Ibekwe, managed to co-exist quite well in their apartment. Daryna guessed that was because Ibekwe was a bit of a bully, and left rules and labels pasted everywhere. Perhaps Brent had met his match.

  ۺۺۺ

  The weather grew hotter as we hurtled into summer. We’d be gone before the real heat set in, the heat that could melt the glue holding one’s shoes together. The days in Bahrain were slipping through our fingers like desert sand.

  “Joe, we still haven’t been to see the King’s camels,” I said as we sat with Colton and Jake in Bennigan’s.

  “Hey, why don’t we go this weekend?” Jake suggested. “An outing with the grandparents.”

  They often referred to us as ‘the grandparents’ because of the huge age difference between us.

  “I’d love that!” I said, and looked forward to it. “Perhaps we could ride on one!”

  It worried me that I’d told my readers, jokingly at first, that my book about our stay in Bahrain would be called ‘Two Old Fools on a Camel’. The title had stuck, but we hadn’t ridden, or even seen, a single camel. I felt as if I’d been fraudulent, or transgressed th
e Trades Description Act. Perhaps here was an opportunity to set that to rights with a ride on one of the King’s camels.

  Colton and Jake drove us there and we sang songs, including ‘Afternoon Delight’, which still made me squirm. Was it really almost a year ago since that joke began? How much had happened since then!

  The King keeps 450 camels on a farm that is open to the public every day. Perhaps ‘farm’ is not the best description, as the place is just dry sand, and the ‘farmhouse’ is the King’s palace, hidden by trees, behind extremely high walls. However, astonishingly green plants grow in fields alongside the camel compound, fodder, I assumed, for the camels. How water is provided for the trees, crops and camels, I do not know, but when money is no object, I guess anything is possible.

  The heat hammered us as we left the cool of the air-conditioned car and walked through the entrance gates and past a sign that read:

  NOTICE

  1) PLEASE KEEP SAFE DISTANCE FROM THE CAME S.

  2) THROWING UNWANTED MATERIAL OR HITTING CAMELS ARE STRICTLY PROHIBITED

  3) PHOTO RAPHY TO BE TAKEN BY KEEPING SAFE DISTANCE.

  4) FEEDING OF CAMELS ARE NOT ALLOWED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

  5) FREE ADMISSION.

  BY ORDER SECURITY

  Camels, the colour of desert sand, were everywhere. Some were tethered, others hobbled, their front legs loosely tied together. Small herds milled about in separate enclosures, and the sound of camel grunts and flatulence filled the air. I expected the place to smell, and the flies to be a pest, but that wasn’t the case.

  “Why would the King want so many camels?” Joe wondered. “Do they race them, or eat camel meat?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, having researched a little. “Camel meat is very strong, I don’t think it tastes nice at all. I think he keeps them because they are a symbol of wealth and position from bygone days.”

  We walked close, but not too close, to big tethered males in the centre of the compound. They reared their heads as we passed, looking down at us from hooded eyes. Indian staff in mule carts forked out piles of green vegetation for the camels to graze on.