Brownies and Kalashnikovs Read online

  Brownies and Kalashnikovs

  A Saudi Woman’s Memoir of American Arabia and Wartime Beirut

  Fadia Basrawi

  SOUTH STREET PRESS

  Brownies and Kalashnikovs

  Published by

  South Street Press

  8 Southern Court

  South Street

  Reading

  RG1 4QS UK

  www.garnetpublishing.co.uk

  Copyright © Fadia Basrawi, 2009

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  First Edition

  ISBN: 9781902932354

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Typeset by Samantha Barden

  Jacket design by David Rose

  Cover illustrations used with permission of Fadia Basrawi, istockphoto.com/ Stephen Mulcahey (gun), istockphoto.com/Felix Moeckel (bullets), istockphoto.com/Royden Juriansz (flags), istockphoto.com/Sandra Nicol (brownies), Nicholas Holroyd (passport stamp) and George Baramki Azar/Saudi Aramco World/PADIA (Beirut street scene).

  Printed in Lebanon

  In memory of my parents-in-law Im Bashar and Abu Bashar and my mother Zeina

  Acknowledgements

  A large part of the raison d’être for this book has come from my life as the daughter of Fahmi Basrawi and Muzayyan Kotob as they faced life in the brave new world of an all-American Aramco in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia without losing their identities; and as the daughter-in-law of Salaheddine Khayyat and Munira Fawaz as they faced civil war in Lebanon without compromising their integrity or love for their country. One day in 2003, I casually mentioned that I was thinking of writing a memoir to my husband Adnan and five children: Munira, Amer, Ghassan, Yasmine and Rola (ages ranging from 31 to 25). No sooner were the words out of my mouth than this manuscript was dug up from my bottom drawer and my nose stuck firmly to the grindstone.

  With the willing enlistment of Munira’s husband Heiko, they all took precious time away from their various jobs and studies to edit my book very, very candidly. Despite our ‘frank’ editing sessions that usually ended with me in time-outs and my toddler grandson Nessim as the only common focus of affection, I am indebted to them for insisting on ‘getting it right.’ Thank you my family for your unwavering faith in the potential of my story.

  I am equally grateful to my dear friend, Vonnie Nasr, for doing what she does best: ‘saying it like it is’ as she reviewed and re-reviewed my book in its various stages over the past three years.

  My publishers South Street Press were notable in their patience with my slow progress as one failed deadline followed another while war, peace and war once more in Lebanon took their toll on my concentration. To them and to all who have touched my life indirectly or directly in large and small ways, I thank them.

  PART I

  ARAMCOLAND

  1

  Desert Suburbia – Desert Kingdom

  Home

  The Saudi Airlines Boeing 707 banked to the left and began its descent to Dhahran International Airport. I peered out of the airplane’s window to catch the flickering orange-yellow flares that dotted the sea of red sand below. They said home to me, these flares that defined the skyscape of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province. From above they winked and glowed so prettily in the oncoming dusk … on the ground they filled the air around us with a nauseating stench of rotten eggs … pungent testimony of Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth that kept the industrialized world so well-oiled and so well-heeled.

  A flurry of traffic suddenly crowded the airplane’s aisle as the Saudi women on the flight, clad in the season’s light summer attire, disappeared into the bathroom and reappeared incognito enshrouded from head to toe in voluminous black abayas. Glancing briefly at the mounds of black that now occupied the seats around me, I turned quickly back to the window to hide my anger at this enforced double standard of veiling.

  We touched ground. I was home for the summer of 1970 from my sophomore year of university in Beirut. At the exit from the airplane’s cool interior, I paused to inhale a fortifying deep gulp of oxygen before plunging into the airless furnace of Saudi Arabia’s summer. I’d lived here most of my life but had yet to become inured to that first initial blast of roasting heat and humidity. Clutching my green Saudi passport tightly, uncovered by abaya or veil, I headed towards the Saudi Arab ‘nationals’ passport sector, bypassing a long winding line of ‘non-nationals,’ largely from the third world. I felt a wave of empathy with them as they waited with resignation for the airport official to ask them the most inane questions just because he could. My being a Saudi Arabian female traveling alone did not make my entrance into Saudi Arabia, or exit for that matter, much easier.

  The passports officer, dark and scrawny with a pointed scraggly beard, stared dourly at my uncovered head. His censorious eyes darted over the giant square buckle in my short hair, psychedelic orange tunic, low slung leather belt, white bell bottoms, and leaned forward to continue on down to my red cork platform sandals. Lifting his frizzy eyebrows, he asked derisively, “You are a Saudi?”

  I rolled my eyes and with an exaggerated sigh, pointedly nudged my passport closer in his direction. He scrutinized my photo-less passport closely to check if I was from the ‘first tier’ of Saudis, i.e. those born from a Saudi Arabian father, or second tier, i.e. those who had been naturalized.

  “Really?” he said, answering my silence sarcastically. “And from Medina al Munawara? You don’t look Saudi Arab!” he spat, throwing the holiness of the city at my uncovered face. I rose to the bait.

  “Yes I do … I am a Hijazi.”

  “Why don’t you speak the dialect? Eh? Eh? You sound Syrian. Answer me. What kind of a Hijazi are you?”

  I lost my struggle to contain my temper and pounded the counter defiantly, “IT IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. YOUR JOB IS TO STAMP MY PASSPORT.”

  His voice rose into an enraged squeal, “Woman, SHUT UP!” Well, I’d come this far and I wasn’t about to back down: “No, YOU shut up!”

  In the split second that the officer’s face froze in confusion between shock and fury, my father grasped the situation from where he was standing behind the barrier. He spoke briefly to the police officer next to him and materialized between us, smiling his famous smile. He was a television celebrity in the Eastern province due in large part to his good looks and that smile.

  “How are you? I’m Fahmi Basrawi,” he greeted the passports officer in lilting Hijazi Arabic, shaking his hand. Caught mid-sneer, the passports officer hastily passed his hand over his face in embarrassment.

  “Fahmi Basrawi?” he croaked as he gaped at my father, the perfect image of modern Saudi elegance with his clipped moustache, immaculate white thobe and gold cufflinks, his white ghutra flipped neatly over the agal, falling in picture-perfect alignment down the other side of his face. Delicately clearing his throat, the flustered officer continued in what he hoped was a more mellifluous tone of voice.

  “This is your daughter?” he asked, then added with an ingratiating grin, “I would never have guessed … actually, yes, now that you mention it … I do see the resemblance. I simply was doing my job but your daughter misunderstood me.”

  “Hah!” I threw in with all the indignant fury I could muster. My father, continuing to smile, firmly took me by the arm and walked us away from the passports division. As we rounded the corner, the smile disappeared.

  “Do we have to go through
this every time?” he exploded in exasperation, shelving his charm for people other than me.

  We drove away from the airport in an uncomfortable silence. My relationship with my father was a strained one. We had never been able to reach a middle point where we could see eye to eye on life matters and my education abroad was not making it any easier.

  “Why should I keep my mouth shut when he didn’t shut his mouth?” I blurted, still smarting from the passports official’s disrespect. Keeping his eyes rigidly on the road ahead, my father did not answer leaving my outburst to dangle awkwardly in the prickly air between us. I settled back resignedly in my seat and turned to stare at the drab desert landscape, rusty billboards and the odd nondescript cement block building slipping by. I had not expected my father to engage in any sort of critical dialogue with me. He was a Saudi senior staff employee of Aramco (formerly Arabian American Oil Company – Saudi Aramco today), the largest oil company in the world, and his long years there had effectively sealed his mouth and any independent form of thought that he may have had as a young Hijazi. Born in Medina in 1922 when it was under the Hashemite Sherif Hussein’s Kingdom of Hijaz, he was ten years old when Saudi Arabia (and everyone in it) was internationally recognized by the world community as the property of King ‘Abdel ‘Aziz Ibn Al Sa’ud. He rarely mentioned that period of politics in his life, or any politics for that matter.

  Turning left, we approached Dhahran through an arched gateway emblazoned with “Go in Safety,” in Arabic and English, Aramco’s ‘Arc de Triomphe.’ We slowed down at the Main Gate, a brick and glass guard post that continuously crackled with disembodied voices over a shortwave radio. Manned by a joint patrol of Saudi police and Aramcon Saudi security guards, it was the only point of entry into Dhahran, and only permitted to Aramco’s ‘Senior Staff.’ Everybody else, particularly Saudis, could not enter this ‘Forbidden City’ except through invitation. The host had to personally meet his guests with Aramco ID in hand, stating name, rank and serial number and introduce them to the guards who wrote their names down on the Aramcon host’s file.

  Juma’a, the head security officer, gave my father a smart salute and a wide grin then peered into the car to give me a warm welcome for my safe arrival. He had known me since early childhood and a kindred feeling existed between us. I was five when my father and a few other Saudi employees were singled out by Aramco to live the ‘American Dream’ in Dhahran. My father was given due esteem for his senior staff status by the Arab labor, particularly those Saudis who did the grunt work for Aramco.

  Aramco’s three oil towns, Dhahran, Ras Tanura and Abqaiq, were so insular that American employees and other Westerners could work for ‘the Company’ as it was popularly known, for up to thirty years within their barbed wire perimeter fences and not make the acquaintance of a single Saudi Arab or learn a single Arabic word, save for politically correct terminologies such as “sadiqi” (my friend), “shukran” (thank you), “inshallah” (God willing), “bukra” (tomorrow) and “ahlan wa sahlan” (welcome) … useful words of greeting for the annual functions held for Saudi Arab and American employees. Such barriers between Saudi and American helped keep a lid on unchecked Saudi voices that might want answers to bothersome questions such as “Who owns what in the oil production process?” and “Where are the profits going?”

  We drove into Dhahran past the Oil Exhibit, Aramco’s Public Relations showpiece where my father worked as an assistant manager. Turning right, we continued on down Main Street, a wide asphalt lane with cement sidewalks lined with sheltering banyan trees, mature palm trees and pink flowering oleander bushes. Single story homes with shingled roofs and well-tended gardens stood in square blocks along both sides of the road. Not a muttawa’a (enforcers of Wahhabi Puritanism) in sight. Sounds of laughter and music drifted from the ‘efficiencies’ (single bedroom studios) on Seventh Street where the unmarried Aramco employees resided in U-shaped blocks that shared a common square grass space. The singles’ housing was positioned a safe enough distance away from family housing in Dhahran’s lay-out. Many of Aramco’s American employees harked from the ‘Bible Belt’ of the American Midwest and did not approve of the liberal values of some of the unattached young employees. These Puritan Christian Americans were cut from the same cloth of religious fundamentalism as the Wahhabi Muslims in control of Saudi Arabia. But within Aramco’s oil towns, islands of exception at the heart of the Kingdom’s oil industry, the freedom of ‘to each his own’ was conveniently granted.

  At last, to both my silent relief and my father’s, we reached home: 4595-B, a duplex marked by a towering acacia tree that distinguished it from the others in the row of identical houses on Fourth Street. I ran inside to greet my mother. As I hugged Mama and kissed her soft cheeks, now flushed pink from preparing dinner in my honor, my sister and two brothers tumbled out of their rooms to greet me along with our pampered Siamese cat, TC, named after the American cartoon character, Top Cat. It felt good to be home.

  Mama had prepared my favorite food: deep dish macaroni, roast chicken basted in lemon and saffron, samboosak (fried puffs of ground meat and onions basted in pomegranate sauce) and, for dessert, apple pie. Our dinner table sounded like a translation center as my sister Fatin, my brothers Ghassan and Marwan and I chattered in American, switched to Arabic with our mother and spoke a mixture of both languages with our father, whom we addressed as ‘Baba.’ But this evening, Baba was in no mood for conversation. He was still carrying the black cloud that had perched over him since my tiff with the passports official. His unreceptive brooding did not keep Mama from smiling sweetly at me, frequently reaching out to pat my hair as if to make sure that I was truly, physically there. Just twenty years older than I was, we were beginning to be mistaken for sisters as I grew into my adult self. Not that there was any striking resemblance. Where she was petite and plump, I was tall and broad shouldered, where she had the irregular features, full cheeks and round face of the Damascenes, I had the regular features, high cheek bones and almond-shaped eyes of my father who traced his ancestors to the Sa’adoun tribe of Southern Iraq. Out of my siblings, I was the closest in appearance to my father but the farthest in character.

  After the dinner table was cleared, Fatin, Ghassan, Marwan and I piled into the compact bedroom my sister and I shared, a pink four-byfour-meter room with white frilly curtains, two standard wooden desks, an American bunk bed and a Persian carpet spread over tan linoleum tiles. I plopped contentedly into an easy chair by the large window that looked out onto our back yard, now awash with light from the corner street lamp. Just beneath our window was the shared bane of us all and of TC, a large cage filled with a dozen parakeets that kept up an unalleviated prattle as long as there was light. Thankfully they were under a canvas for the night, allowing us welcome peace and quiet. Beyond the parakeets’ cage was my mother’s pride and joy, her garden, a profusion of marigolds, petunias and periwinkles that nodded gently in the night air around a plush dark green lawn. The proverbial white picket fence with matching gate enclosed our pastoral patch of nature. Daily at the first streak of dawn, Mama donned a floppy cloth hat and raced with the sun to feed, weed, and water her flowers, happily singing off key to herself while she lovingly nurtured every bloom, “ya wardati, ya wardati …” (my flowers).

  TC hopped onto my lap and curled into a furry ball, purring softly. I looked affectionately at my younger siblings crowded on the bottom bunk bed. Fatin, a year my junior, was groaning about her upcoming A-Levels in England in preparation for medical school. Since the age of six, her passion had been to study medicine and nothing was going to stop her. The groaning was a smoke screen. Tiny but muscular, her physique reflected her tough inner self. With her light brown hair pulled back into an efficient pony tail that further pronounced the roundness of her face and the decidedly upward slant of her hazel eyes, Fatin was so unlike me in size, looks and character that no one ever guessed our relationship. The Chinese in England repeatedly mistook her for a compatriot and berated her indi
gnantly for not speaking her native tongue. Ghassan on the other hand was obviously my brother. He was in the UK as well, attending Lord Mayor Treloar College for the handicapped as he suffered from cerebral palsy. But that had not kept him from returning with a full-fledged Beatles haircut, his glossy pitch black hair flopping fashionably over his smooth olive-skinned forehead. He was triumphantly relating a successfully weathered storm with my father over his hairstyle which brought about a worried expression on Marwan’s face, a Beatles fan as well but far less confrontational. Marwan, the youngest, at fourteen, was due to graduate from ninth grade at Dhahran Senior Staff School in another week. He was joining Fatin and Ghassan in England to study for his GCEs at summer’s end at Bryanston School for Boys. Marwan’s copper-colored hair, freckled button nose and white skin had almost resulted in my father being carted off for kidnapping at Cairo Airport in 1960.

  At Cairo Airport, a guard had noted Marwan’s coloring and his American prattle and had asked him if he was Irish. Marwan was four years old at the time, spoke very little Arabic and did not understand the guard’s Egyptian dialect. But he had nodded politely in response and that was apparently enough proof that Marwan was Irish. Anyway, the guard had not found it credible that this American speaking, foreignlooking child could be the biological son of this Saudi Arabian man with black hair and moustache. But perhaps more to the point, Egypt was not happy with the politics of Saudi Arabia that year. As my father was getting our passports stamped, he suddenly found himself surrounded by security guards accusing him loudly of child kidnapping and pandemonium broke out. We began to cry, my mother yelled and everyone in Cairo Airport came rushing to catch the action. My mother’s blond brother, Khalo Adnan, who was studying Agriculture at ‘Ain Shams University in Cairo, was trotted out from the reception sector to show where Marwan got his fair looks from, but all to no avail. The security guards were not going to be budged from their accusation. We suffered several noisy and exhausting hours in the airport until Amti (Aunt) Bahija, my father’s sister who lived in Cairo in palatial style, contacted friends in the right places, and only then was the confusion finally sorted out.