In Jeddah With The Big Cheese Knife
In Jeddah With The Big Cheese Knife
Scrambling for bread crusts in Budapest began to pall after a while as usual. Working for the local Economic University was economic for the local economy, because the Budapesti Gazdasági Egyetem - (B.G.E.) didn`t pay foreigners until the period of their employment was over. Thank God for an entire semester dodging ticket inspectors, thought Yours Truly, with the prospect of an initial journey from Budapest`s Northern railway station, Kelenföld pályaudvar, to the Eastern railway station, Keleti pályaudvar, looming in prospect, as the long voyage to the outpost of the bastion of former Communist thinking about money sought some good advice from the notorious rastafarian Capitalist thinker on the same subject - Dr Usher I. The students were the usual bunch of largely disinterested monied aristocracy forced to go there by their parents, or they`d disinherit. But it was the impossibility of the journey that`d keep my readers` eyes riveted to the page, I knew. How to get there with a single transportation ticket. It was all I could afford, and no sign of the moneywise `budgies` at the B.G.E. affording the travel costs. At least until it was time to break their own fingers to force themselves to part with the coins.
There was a route under the city via the new green Metro 4 (2014) from Kelenföld pu. railway station to Keleti pu. railway station, then onward via the older red number 2 Metro (1970) towards Örs Vezér Tere, which meant the square of the leader, Örs who, according to legend, was a chief amongst seven others in 895 A.D., when the Magyar (Hungarians) settled the Carpathian Basin surrounded by its mountain fastness. The local suburban railway at Örs Vezér Tere went out of the city towards the city of Vasvár, which of course meant `Iron Castle`, because it was almost impossible to penetrate; even if you were employed in its environs. The German National Socialist Party would have been proud of this railway system, and the various modes of transportation that could have serviced its octopus-like movement of Jews in the 1930s, was my guess.
I knew Vasvár, because I`d been there for some major surgery on the vocal organs subsequent to an infection contracted in Arabia, while being forced to provide conversational English by the local `death camp` operators there, and who were feigning the provision of English teaching to mask the true nature of their mafia activities. I was told by the receptionist in the local GP`s surgery that the old lag, who`d invaded my air space, while the GP was giving me a consultation, was a Hungarian (Magyarul) traditionalist who was insisting that my uvula be removed, so that the true denizens of Hungary (Magyarország) could practice their tradition of ritualizing the extinction of the English patience by first forcing me to lose my capacity for speaking in my own native tongue. Bullied off to Vasvár, Yours Truly ended up having his uvula extracted by a surgeon, whose after care consisted of saying there`d be some `white stuff`. Arriving at Örs Vezér Tere would be difficult, even though avoiding Vasvár was a certainty, because getting a train there wasn`t logically inclusive within the proposed itinerary, but who knew? This was Hungary, where hungry people don`t make fixed plans about anything except following the meat van waiting for a thrown foreign bone.
If I bought a 300 HUF ticket, about a `jeep` (GBP), I could travel three Metro stops. That meant I could go from Kelenföld pu. green 4 Metro to Keleti pu. red 2 Metro and then on to Örs Vezér Tere for the price - or did it? The open conjecture was that the three stop 300 HUF ticket was for Metro hopping, that is, such a ticket could take someone from the blue 3 Metro (1976) to the `world heritage site` yellow 1 Metro (1896) by hopping across Déak Tere (Square Students), for example, where there was a confluence of red 2, blue 3 and yellow 1. The alternative hypothesis was that the ticket buyer could remain on the Metro car for as long as they needed to but getting off at a third stop was the maximum afforded by the 300 HUF ticket. Best not to inquire, thought Yours Truly, and opted for the riskier option. Traveling by tram as much as possible, and getting off as soon as the ticket inspectors appeared. It made the journey slower but cheaper, although the equivalence in terms of terror was obviously intentional. At Örs Vezér Tere It was necessary to get tram number 3 for two stops, and although there was a bus to take me on to the `Budgie` (B.G.E), where I`d parrot the daily nonsense for the incarcerated, the prospect of being terrorized by ticket inspectors on a crowded mode of transportation that made it difficult to see the security forces getting on or off persuaded Yours Truly to hobble on regardless to the gates of the guarded citadel of financial wherewithal without a ticket.
For the interested, a 450 HUF ticket is valid for a single journey, that is, between Metro stops of any distance, and it`s possible to get off one Metro line (1, 2, 3, 4), and onto another, without purchasing another ticket, so long as you don`t leave at any of the Metro stations for a sojourn out in the fresh air. There`s also a time limit for the use of the three stop 300 HUF ticket, which affords egress to do some shopping or whatnot, but woe betide the holder of the time expired ticket (30 mins) if the Metro guards spot it. Most people buy a monthly pass for 9, 500 HUF (30 jeeps), which affords them the unlimited use of any mode of transport within the city of Budapest`s limits, and so the affluent forget they`re kept in terror by the smiling inspectors, who`re plotting their extinction as Communist `labor camp` slaves in a calculatedly monitored Russian-stlye Gulag replete with CCTV hideouts to detect a dip in clothing allowance indicative of a future rag and boneyard denizen if the ghoul hags with their guard dogs can get their teeth into you.
One of the tricks is the `backstage pass` routine, where the employed and the employer feign an understanding based on the notion that the local security admit teachers without let or hindrance to the institution where they`re nominally ensconced as honored guests. In fact the guards perceive it as an opportunity to cast suspicion and aspersions, not to mention the asperity of comments encouraging local polizei to follow the ELT pro around like a bad smell preparing the accusative. Without a pass to get in and out of the workplace, you`re a target for hit men devoted to thinking of you as an espionage agent working for a foreign power, or just a mugger`s victim, because you have no protective plastic announcing you`re legitimacy, and so no status as anything but a killer`s target, or a hoodlum`s `mark`. Asking for the key to the classroom, or a board rubber, is fraught with death`s auguries. And heaven fore fend if you should require a computer screen linked to your laptop to be used as a projector of a lesson carefully created at home, or even the activation of the Bored`s Smarts to facilitate the educative process. Ridding oneself of the chalk that reminds you of your `native speaker` primitivism, in comparison to the technologically advanced Aryan supermen and women you`re entertaining with your futile antics before the bored, requires the activating of the IT `death squads`, whose remit it is to deny foreigners access to things as secret as Yahoo e-mail.
Having completed the contract with the `bácsi` (uncle) at the `Budgie` for a semester of English language provision from the coursebook, New Insights Into Business English, and supplementary matériel, supposed wannabe U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law Enforcement) agent, Dr Russia, was told, `the cheque is in the post`, and that he`d not be needed for the following semester, because ELT from a `native` wasn`t a part of the upcoming B.G.E. menu for the ensuing period of cloistered studies. Unconsumed by the Eastern European paramilitarized zone, I contracted with Questionable Unauthorized Access Consolidated (QUAC) for a stay in the heat of Arabia`s `devil`s kitchen` where the fleeced all go. The QUAC doctor summarily arrived in - Bahrain - for a medical enroute to the capital city of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh. Authorized to spend up to 400 US $ there, I arrived without any. The Phoenicia hotel was a goodish place, but it wasn`t clear whether breakfast or anything else was paid for, and I`d been authorized to spend 400 US $ I didn`t possess. Dodging the waiters, I bagged as much grub as I could during the limitedly patrolled breakfast period, and starved the rest of the day. Stunned as often as possible by X-Rays administered by purportedly medical personnel, I staggered about the proximate environment until I found a dry cleaners that`d do a couple of shirts for a US 10 $ note.
My contract said `Dammam University`, so I remained unsurprised when told I`d been booked on the airline Flynas to go to Abha city, and that I was authorized to take 400 US $ with me. Leaving the Flynas plane with its mooning logo, I discovered in Abha that I`d be employed as a purveyor of English usage at the Khamis Mushayt college attached to the King Khalid University`s Preparatory Year Program (PYP), an Intensive English Program (IEP) for University admittance for those studying medicine and electrical engineering. Khamis Mushayt translated as `fish market`, so I was again unsurprised to discover I`d be the QUAC at the men`s, rather than the women`s college. The students were amenably indifferent to such things as language laboratories without the capacity to deliver audio material, but I created a deal of furore when downloading MP3s from an Open Forum 2 coursebook website where supplementary tasks for each Unit could be had and, putting it on a flashdrive, which I then gave to the students, told them they`d be studying this in the absence of the official CD that went with the coursebook, but that the administration couldn`t find. Turning up brusquely for the session, I discovered the door locked, while be-thobbed faces scurried about looking worried that a teacher had asked them to listen. After a second such session I drew the locked door to the attention of management and - `Open Sesame!` - I strolled nonchantly inward with audio transcript, worksheet, question sheet, and answer sheet. Just in case the kids had forgotten the books. If the audio wasn`t playable, thanks to the prevalence of the IT death squads globally, they could read the transcript, answer the questions on the worksheet, and I`d give them printed copies of the answers, so that they couldn`t say I was unintelligible, although they might complain that they couldn`t read, but then I wasn`t responsible. I was only in charge of improvements, which they hadn`t.
After a lesson observation by marched-in colleague, Augie, I wrote to Fart, who was in charge of the audio sessions from his desk in his office, and thanked Augie `Snuff` Tin, who`d been promoted to `supervisor` for just that very special occasion, for his assassination attempt on me, a fellow professional: `... he did scaffold them`. As the US army similarly `scaffolded` Saddam? Augie also remarked on the Bingo: `T told the Ss to go to pay 19 on the textbook. It was a writing exercise.`2 Personally, I only ever pay 21 when it`s Pontoon. It reminded me of a lesson observation I`d had from `halls of Moctezuma to the shores of Tiipoli` Bren Gunn, before the teachers all had to leave due to Libya`s civil war in 2011, `Unfortunately, this lesson did meet the standards required by Bull language school.` As the QUAC instructor at the Fish Market college, Abha, I hadn`t been told I`d need a DUKW to bridge my ad hoc Navy Seal exercises, but as Douglas Adams` dolphins wrote when they left Earth in The Hitch Hikers` Guide To The Galaxy (1984), `So long, and thanks for all the fish!` My debit card indicated that I`d received cash from the Budgie in Budapest, and it was only March, which meant that since I`d begun teaching at the University of Economics in Budapest in September, only 7 months had passed before I was cashed up by the Budgie. It must be something of a record, I conjectured. Shortly after my debit card stopped functioning, and it wasn`t until my return I was told that a `suspicious transaction` for 291 HUF (79 p) had resulted in the blocking of the card`s usefulness in, for example, paying online for an entry/exit visa to afford me egress from Saudi Arabia whenever I chose to leave.
Promoted to Regional Director by QUAC, under the auspices of Asim Kurd, the head honcho, I bridged it over to Riyadh Telecom and Information college on another Flynas plane, while marveling at the mooning arse logo, and recollecting that the moon is masculine in Arabia. A sim card wasn`t to be had even for cut diamonds at the Telecom and Information college, of course, and the Saudi Telecommunications Company (STC) next door on Abdulaziz street were happy to provide a modem for 320 SAR, but baulked at the sim needed to make the gizmo functional. Hairy scenes of an irate authentic visa holder complaining at being mugged by STC for 320 SAR ensued. I was told my passport was `out of order`, because the number for the visa appended by the border patrol guards wasn`t accurate. It`s necessary to have a valid visa to obtain a residence permit in Saudi, because it`s unlikely that anyone with an iqama would be refused a sim. After getting my iqama without a query, I got a sim from another STC outlet, and QUAC head honcho, Asim Kurd, demanded immediate access to my Google e-mail account, so he could `line manage`.
I was around the corner from QUAC head office at the hotel Taran -tula? The journey from the college was so labyrinthine and besotted with scaffolding, I could only suppose that the richer folk were playing `crazy Gulf`, and that the balls wouldn`t go into the holes unless there were major construction works resulting in seriously insurmountable diversions. Though diverted, I understood that I wasn`t going to win any prizes as the ball, and I kept a wary eye open for the tarantula, which I supposed might be looking to have one for dinner, and thereby thwart the trapdoor spiders, generically labeled euctenacidae, which is pronounced `a new Dana CD` and there were some in the stores, because Dana `Dinner` Halabi is a born-in-Kuwait (1987) blonde and boobed Lebanese pop Princess with big hits. Who are you? for example, that is, Enta Min? (2006) is the platter containing `I`m Dana` (`Ana Dana`), with its lyric: `You'll see my dance, and my coquetry, and you'll be my precious; all my love.`1 Precious, of course, was the name of the ring in Tolkien`s The Lord Of The Rings (1954) carried by Frodo into the lair of Shelob, the giant spider, before being unmade in the fires of the volcano, Mt Doom, so causing the fall of dark Clod Hopper, the security guard. Frodo killed Shelob, because he didn`t want to be her million hairies, so Dana only looks good enough to eat: `... open your eyes and you eat Turkish delight.`
Ibraheehee was the administrator at the Riyadh coll, and my tasks were to supervise the program at Heil and Burydad by communicating management`s orders to the head teachers there, who`d pass on the instructions to their hapless minions. I had an office to myself but it locked when closed on the inside, which meant either keeping it open so that anyone could drop in for a bull session while I was trying to function as an administrator without a printer, or photocopier, or internet, or phone, or paper aeroplane to throw out of the window with careful spidery handwriting. Ibraheehee suggested that the teacher`s register be kept in my office, rather than where it was available to the teachers to append their signatures to anytime in the room set aside for the teachers to use for their own administrative work, so that I`d have to let them in. It was a curiosity repeated in the transport department, where the driver explained that the door couldn`t be unlocked from the inside by the transportees, but they had to wait for him to get out and open it for them when the vehicle reached its destination, that is, the College for Telecom and Information, or the Taran ( -tula?) hotel. The prisoners would then disembark, released into the fear of being eaten by the advertised large hotel spider, or as the unreleased `chain gang` work detail at the coll. As QUAC Regional Director, I was assigned the role previously filled by Augie `Snuff` Tin, and observed the teachers` classes without finding anything remarkable to criticize. I understood it was a serious oversight when I was summarily sent to Jeddah on another Flynas mooner, and the Mohamed Bin Knife college for Sciences and Security Studies to teach English to the border patrol guards, who wanted someone to teach them nautical English for their new torpedo boats, and who immediately sentenced me to sit in the kitchen for a week before asking, `Who are you?` Not an euctenacidae, thought I. Asseverating that I hadn`t a contract through QUAC, or permission to be there in Jeddah, the big cheese, Knife, was out to pare a few strips off me.
Resigned to fate, I mooned my fifth nation crossing plane ride on Flynas and returned to Riyadh. Entombing myself at the Al Manzil Nokhba hotel on Abdulaziz boulevard I awaited developments. I was on my fourth blender, and third water heating jug. Although that might seem excessive to the inexperienced traveler, it`s far more comfortable to buy new equipment for everyday use than to moon on aboard a Flynas jet with pots and pans stashed away in the luggage rattling like a lawnmower. In Abha I`d paid 400 SAR for a printer with actual ink bottles to produce color pictures on the printed matter I`d distribute to the students to make my job easier, and I`d bought another supply of ink bottles for 180 SAR before I left for Riyadh as QUAC Regional Director. Impossible to transport, I`d left it in the accommodation provided by QUAC, who apparently didn`t consider relocation costs for their managerial staff a thing to ascribe any importance to. Given 2 hours to leave Abha mooning aboard a Flynas jet, I managed it, but had to leave a shirt behind. Was it a shirtlifter conspiracy? After some discussion about the entry/exit visa with prices ranging from between 200 to 400 SAR, eventually I was stiffed by QUAC admin for 600 SAR before purchasing an e-ticket back to Europe for 2, 300 SAR from Somee, an arranger of trips.
Mooning through the airways with Flynas well past midnight from King Khalid International, Riyadh, I arrived at Turkey`s Ataturk Airport, Istanbul, around 5. 30 am, while the Haj pilgrims were beseeching the transit area for passage home far and near after fulfilling the obligation imposed upon Moslems in Islam to visit the shrine of Abraham in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, at least once in their lives, and so I had to wait perforce from 5. 40 to 7. 00 am for my flight onward, which I missed because the queue didn`t get me there `til 7. 15 am. No worries for the airport heroes. I would pay 454 US $ as a penalty, or 320 US $ for a new ticket from Turkish Airlines, who`d once managed to lose my baggage between Dammam and Budapest after a previous stopover in Istanbul. As the impoverished owner of but a single black mournful suit, because Turkish Airlines lost my other green, I was doomed to cut a graveside figure as I passed along with the rest of those who`d been meat for the Abha tour.
Onward to Budapest, Ferihegy airport, where my luggage was destined to be lost again as confusion reigned over which bag was mine. Getting home for 50 US $, the taxi driver opened the boot to reveal a bag not Yours Truly. Frantically, we raced back to the airport for another 50 US $, while the yellow cabby assured me with some aplomb that he`d wait to ferry me back to my abode, that is, the converted shoe-box with toilet installed that I call Bide-A-Wee, and of course for another 50 US $. Pleading ignorance and stupidity - to no surprised looks from anyone at all - I found the miscreant black holdall with the luggage lady, who`d in fact told me where I should look as soon as I arrived. Perhaps it was something to do with The Burly Character, who`d insisted on carrying my luggage to the taxi when I arrived? No matter! Weaving cheerily away from Luggage Lady with the prize, I strode out to the sunshine cab. Thankful that those tremulous darkling hours mooning at the Earth with Flynas were well and truly behind me. My neighbors were as usual most welcoming with suggestions of pest controllers to keep down the bug population pouring out of my walls and into theirs. The darlings. I got a spray can of Zappo Bug Extinguisher, and cremated several insect corpses with a ritualized blow-torch amid a pile of old Page 3s from the UK`s `Soaraway` Sun newspaper, and in front of a beetle-browed crowd representing the block.
1 Halabi, Dana `Ana Dana`, 2005.
2 Tin, August ` `Dr Robin`s Observation`, 4/3/2017.