June 17, 2004
On Freedom, and Camels

The Religious Policeman (who is, it should be remembered, actually neither) has a couple of good posts. First, we have a nice breakdown of Saudi Arabia's religious policies, and their idiosyncratic consequences:

No non-Muslim may enter the cities of Makkah and Madinah. (However there is one unpublicized exception. Our national bus company, SAPTCO, runs Mercedes buses. Naturally, being a nation of managers and civil servants, we haven't learnt to maintain them ourselves. So we import German mechanics. What happens when a bus breaks down in one of those cities? We send in an infidel German mechanic to fix it, under cover of darkness.)

And, on the lighter side of being a Saudi, we have this picture-filled commentary on the Saudi national pet, the camel:

I once suggested to Mrs A that I liked the idea of keeping a camel out at the Souk. She said "That's alright, if you'd rather spend your spare time out there with your camel and other men, rather than here at home with me and your family."

Like I said, if you dig deep enough, most people are all too alike in many scary ways. Substitute "camel" with "Alfa Romeo" and you'd have an eerily familiar conversation heard occasionally in our house.

Posted by scott at June 17, 2004 11:52 AM

eMail this entry!
Comments
Post a comment
Name:


Email Address:


URL:


Comments:


Remember info?