Quote:
Originally posted by Jon Skagfeld
Aiwa, sidiqi...mafi mushkeela!
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Malesh.
Which reminds me, as well as meaning my friend sidiqi has become slang (in Saudi at least) for moonshine hooch. There was a period when somebright spark was making a small fortune retailing teeshirts with a heart on them and the word sidiqi - a double meaning, the unoficial one being I love a drop of booze. It took the religious police at least three weeks to spot this (those guys are not over bright and it also took them as long to work out the meaning of Madonna's hanky spany lyrics and ban that).
It was this same metawi that raided the only model shop in Khobar and confiscated all the decal sheets with crosses on them, German, Swiss markings etc., as being forbidden Christian symbols - they were quite comfortable with swastikas though.
Getting back to guns on the street - in Jeddah the police (ordinary not religious) were at one time issued with new sub machine guns (copies of Uzis if memory serves) unfortunately training etc was not quite up to the mark and there were a number of friendly fire incidents, shooting in the foot accidents etc. It was then decided (publically) to only issue magazines containing blanks. It was pointed out that the guns would not be much of a deterrent to the criminal classes. The 'brilliant' solution was to issue some guns loaded with magazines with live ammunition and some with blanks at the begining of each patrol AND NOT TELL THE POLICEMEN WHICH WAS WHICH!
Living and working in the Middle East was interesting but despite many legal inconsistencies its much nicer in the West.