But Fem beat him by a day

There are some things in life that, in retrospect, you are glad you have experienced – once. Though possibly not at the time. Such an experience happened a few weeks ago, when we found ourselves camped, Saudi style, close to the airport and just off the highway. Having grown accustomed somewhat to the noise of airplanes departing, the incessant hum of the traffic and the highway lights blazing along two of our four horizons, we fell asleep, only to be woken in the wee hours of the night by young Saudi men going dune-riding in the dark, packed ten to fifteen in an open-backed truck. Our tents, full of seven sleeping children, were close to a road the young Saudis could have used, but didn’t, preferring, instead to traverse the desert, back and forth, in search of some excitement in their otherwise mundane lives. I suppose there is only so much coffee that you can drink in large, sprawling malls. After that you have to do something with all the caffeine in your system, so you may as well head towards the desert and take your chances there.

After the initial shock of waking with the sound of a thump, and then a series of high-pitched admonitions in Arabic, and much revving of engines and grunts of moving the obviously stuck vehicle back into commission again, Vincent and Fem sprung out of their tents to investigate since the truck seemed to be heading straight towards the tents and the kids. After a while, satisfied that the truck’s lights worked, and having satiated their curiosity, the men went back into their tents – Celine considered her underwear too skimpy and hence missed the view of not only that, but other trucks piled full of dune-riding, death-defying Saudi males. I, on the other hand, was by now also outside and so keyed up I just couldn’t get back to sleep for hours, mistaking every airplane take-off (and in desert lands night-time is flight time) for a truck about to plough into our tent. So we had a wakeful night of it, since Fem found my restlessness contagious, or at least not sleep-inducing. At last the young men stopped negotiating the desolate regions surrounding us and went, one assumes, back to their own beds, at which stage I finally succumbed to slumber. All this took place from about midnight until close to 4am, by which time the sky was lightening. 

Shortly thereafter, of course, it was morning, and the children having slept through it all, woke up at about 530am and hence woke us up. We went out to survey the region in which we had camped, chosen primarily since Vincent, heading off into the area said in response to Fem’s query as to letting down the tyres – “No, we’ll just go until we get stuck.” And stuck we duly became shortly thereafter since it hardly rained at all last year, so the sand is particularly deep and soft.

It was dark already when we headed into the area, crippled as we were by Vincent’s over-heating Land Rover, and hence did not notice the multitude of dead camels and sheep carcasses, fortunately desiccated by the sun, that littered the landscape. We never worked out why there were so many, but just packed up shortly after breakfast and started heading off to the big dunes Vincent had been trying to get to in the first place, and we would have been closer but for a wrong turn, or two, or three.

As to why we ended up there? Well, that’s easy. We were following Vincent, of course. His children happily and laughingly informed us on a previous trip to the desert when they were ensconced in our big Suburban, which we couldn’t afford to drive anywhere but Saudi where petrol remains cheap, that their father is a Big Troublemaker! A Very Big Troublemaker! And they squealed in delight at the thought. When we duly informed him of his children’s’ character assessment, he just grinned and Celine queried, “But how do they know?”

But life with Vincent is certainly full of exploration and adventure. Just ask my mum and aunt, who spent half of one day exploring Hofuf in Vincent’s wake, when he was wrongly convinced he knew his way around, at least to where he wanted to go. Fem was driving behind him with the new GPS (and no, for the record, Saudi doesn’t have up-to-date electronic maps nor ones that are well labelled, well, apart that is from every single mosque - no matter how tiny - and hence you pretty much have to plot your own course and enter in your own co-ordinates once you have gotten where you wanted to go via trial-and-error). Fem noted that we were driving around in circles – literally. Some were expanding and some contracting, all assumed somewhat elliptical shapes though some were more clearly oval and some not; our overlapping courses were not unlike the orbits of a planet around a sun, except that we didn’t know where the sun was. Except that if we had been able to hazard a guess, we’d have figured it was kindof where we ended up, except that Vincent’s snap decision to go his own way left no room for more cautious guess-work and calculation.

The fact that he kept intercepting passers-by and interrogating them as to directions, sometimes even having Celine squeeze into the back so as to give his latest travel advisor a prime front seat all the better with which to direct events, possibly prolonged the agony, since the one man seemed to take it as a free ride and after duly heading all the way back again to the outermost limits of our orbit, his brother or friend hopped into his place and finally, we attained our destination, some long hour and a bit later. That was our worst trip, in terms of time taken and frustration. For the most part, we see things we would never see again, and are glad we have seen, if only the once. And as they say, you have to take the rough with the smooth.

But it is obviously great fun to go out with the Pauchards; they have a similar value system to us, even more children than we have - in roughly the same number of years - and it’s wonderful to go out into the desert with people for whom the focus is always on the children, and seldom on the camping. So for every scenic camping spot we may not have camped at a second time, we have interesting adventures – and a few mis-adventures - to report instead. I do enough organising as it is, it is nice just to sit back and let things happen and Fem quite likes the excitement of not knowing where we are going, though his GPS gives him assurance that wherever we do go, we can always get back. This as he says, is the most important thing anyway.

In August this last year the Pauchards relocated back to France, the kids and Celine anyway, to re-settle there, with the idea that Vincent would follow later, but they were all here over Halloween weekend for a ten-day visit. Upon their return to the Kingdom, all the Pauchard kids wanted to do was go out in the desert in the dark with torches. I think my husband is to blame for that; he is a magical conjure-upper of torches and other kinds of equipment to delight the minds of small children and particularly boys. Gadgets! Fem’s a gadget man of note. Conall in particular takes after Fem in that regard, and like a mystic, he peers at every icon on every package, intent on scrutinizing its meaning out of it, as if staring at it for long enough will cause it, in distress, to pop up and tell him what it means. It seems to work on a telepathic level and he’s uncannily good (i.e., generally better than his parents) at ascertaining what the icons depict, but then again it’s one of the few things in life to which he chooses to pay close attention. Still, he’ll point to icon after icon in turn, asking us, “What does that say - and that - and that - and that and that and that and that” until he is done and then he learns, by heart, what it means. Woe betide you if, in a flurry, you say the wrong thing or don’t actually think about it – he’ll catch you out, sure as nuts.

From the perspective of torches in the dark, the night out was a rip-roaring success, and the kids ran around with torches flashing into our eyes and Fem attached a flashing bicycle light to Bethany’s back so he could always track her, while we erected our tents in the intermittent light (the youngest kept running away with the big lights), had our picnic dinner and settled down for the night as best we can. But in the morning we were thankful to depart from the place as rapidly as we could.

Mind you, the worst camping trips are always the most memorable and the most fun to recall. Then again, we haven’t really had any terrible trips, but then again, if your only aim is to please the kids, you pretty much get full marks when you all just get into the car. Vincent’s Land Rover, admittedly pre-owned, has, from the beginning, given enormous trouble, despite the time and care taken over it at the Triple A (Arabian Automobile Association). I remember when Fem was talking to my brother Nils once, BC (before children), about buying a 4x4, he mentioned possibly buying a Land Rover and Nils strenuously objected to this choice. When Fem asked Nils why he then drove one, the reply came that it was only because he was fortunate enough at Mala Mala to have an in-house service centre at his disposal, but that for reliability, they weren’t the best, and certainly Wikipedia and multiple consumer analyses seem to back up that assertion. Well, so does our own, admittedly very biased experience. In fact, we haven’t yet had a weekend without Land Rover trouble. I don’t think.

One weekend it just stopped dead, and needed towing all the way home. Fortunately, it broke down on the way home, rather than on the way there, so the kids had had their fun and run around and up and slid down the dunes on sleds that Vincent had brought back from France – one toboggan per family – with brakes which Conall abuses, mostly because I think he can. More fortunately still Fem had a tow rope that worked, since Vincent’s broke shortly after putting it on. But Fem was pretty irritable after he’d finished the extra two-and-a-half hours it took to get home and Vincent’s leg was in spasm. So Fem’s not a saint, despite what my family thinks of him, but he doesn’t get overly het up over what he can’t control, which is a fairly important attribute in any camping partner.

He’s also very well prepared, mind you, they both are, with water and petrol and so on. But Fem tends to take the engineer’s approach with regard to redundancy, so always has more than we need, lest one breaks, or even two – which, of course, has happened. In other countries, it may not, but things like tow ropes and the like get sold in Saudi shops without any form of quality control occurring anywhere along the line, so you pretty much have to take your chances there. Of course, sand ladders and shovels are also required, since getting stuck in the sand is a fairly obligatory experience for the Saudi desert, except that Fem prefers not to mire himself deep in the soft sands, but when Vincent chose to do precisely that, he willingly helped him out, with nary a complaint – though he did laugh at him first for a long, long time. He told the boys that it is a very good attribute to have, to laugh at others who have chosen to get themselves into trouble. I used to find it offensive, and it’s definitely far more an attribute of Afrikaner culture, but after 8 years of marriage I have grown accustomed and don’t mind the fact that the boys are now mimicking him, since there is no malice involved. And dignity and pride can be over-rated. 

The Pauchards are French and have restored an old farmhouse in the countryside outside Lyon. Vincent is a research chemist and Celine a thermodynamics engineer turned school-teacher turned full-time mother and builder. They both had this dream of living in the country, and in early 2001 they bought a house that had been built in 1905 but never maintained since, with a half-fallen down barn by now semi-attached to it. The place was certainly uninhabitable. They were recently married, in their early twenties, and, as a joke, the wedding cake had been emblazoned with a picture of a farm. But when they shortly thereafter sunk what little money they had (which wasn’t much) and saddled themselves with a mortgage - all for a ruin of a house, albeit with a nice little bit of ground (enough to contain a few rare-breed goats and hopefully now a black pig) bordering on a forest, and with a wonderful view of Mont Blanc in the distance. Both sets of parents came and visited and nearly platzed on the spot. Celine reports that they were very angry, all of them, and then gives the French shrug. Oh well.

So, they lived in a caravan, and the kitchen was finished just in time for Mathilde’s arrival into the world, and shortly thereafter, the first bedroom was completed. And so it went, with each child, born in fairly quick succession, another bedroom was finished, just in time. Apart from laying the new floor of the barn, which required structural engineering, and which furnished them with the family living room with the magnificent view of the mountains, all the work was undertaken by them. As Vincent puts it, for years and years they took no holidays, had no spare money, no free time, since everything they had they sunk into the house, working nights and weekends. So when the opportunity of working in Saudi Arabia came up, they took it, always with the aim of returning within two to three years (it’ll have been two-and-a-half), but with the cash to finish the house finally, just the way they wanted it, including a swimming pool.

Of course they bought a few carpets too – mostly Amjad’s special commissions of which he is so proud. We still have carpet shows in our house, virtually monthly – we were introduced to Amjad Ali of Eastern Carpet House via someone who had been in Aramco for many, many years, as she found him ethical and well-priced – and in turn, Amjad was introduced to the Pauchards. (Of course, Vincent and Celine nonetheless did their homework, and went to Oman and compared prices in Jeddah ... and came back to Amjad and his special commissions in particular). So we’ve worked hard for our carpets by giving up our house to carpets and strangers for entire weekends, from Wednesday mid-day sometimes to Saturday mid-day. But he and his staff are great with the kids, play ball with them in between customers, allow Bethany to roll out all the carpets on the floor and point and run on them ... and most of all, he and his wife have become our friends. Our kids have a pretty debonair attitude to the finest Persians – they pass prestigious places in South Africa and say to us excitedly, “A carpet shop! Let’s go inside and jump all over the carpets!” since they are used to treating them as forts and jungle gyms and rolling on them and running across them, jumping from pile of carpets to pile of carpets ... Of course, since we ourselves have a mild addiction to carpet-buying, our hard work and effort translates into really good prices.

Anyhow, Amjad’s special commissions are a fascinating intersection of politics and geography and history. He hails originally from Lahore, and his father set up the carpet business many years ago, such that from loom to shop-floor room, they control the process. Now, in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, mostly known for its porous mountainous border and Taleban activity – it’s in those wonderful mountains that Osama bin Laden is reputed to be hiding – he and his brothers have their carpet business set up, distributed through various families and villages. Our regret is that we have been unable to visit the region, for obvious political reasons, and particularly lately (had Bethany not be born when she was ... ) In many cases, Amjad and his brothers have even bought the looms for the carpet makers, they buy the wool, mostly imported from New Zealand, they commission the designs in Lahore, and then, when the carpet is done, they are brought back to Lahore to be washed and cut since the water quality is inadequate in the mountains. They also often overlay a “gold wash” or tea dye onto the carpet. But the Kazaks, as he terms them, and which the Pauchards have fallen in love with, are actually made in villages of Afghani people who, in response to turmoil there, have crossed the border and taken Pakistani citizenship but apart from that lead essentially Afghani lives, down to culture, language and so on. So while Amjad markets them as Afghani, like most things in both the current and the ancient carpet business, they’re an malgamation of cultures and a result of trade.  

I even managed to commission my own design, a wonderful Caucasian pattern which I couldn’t afford (US $ 30 000.00 for a 2m by 1.3m carpet), but the designer in Lahore worked with the basic design and made some simplifications to the border, then it was made up, the entire carpet with kurk wool (the most expensive wool, taken from the neck of the sheep, and hence, one assumes, least damaged – given that sheep wool is the same protein as human hair but 1/10 the size so highly prone to stress) and then given a gold wash. 18 month later I had my carpet, and it was a gift for all the shows we had here, but like me, they did also love the design and I was kindof pleased to re-introduce a beautiful design into the carpet world, since Mother Russia, through excessive intervention and mass-production, managed to destroy the Caucasian carpet market after the First World War, and hence the premium price on all Caucasians, which are by definition pretty much all antique anyway.

Celine also took the move to Saudi Aramco as permission to have a fourth child, since she just loves having children. She came along, a newcomer, to Baker House, the Women’s Group facility, where I had started up a playgroup for mothers and their children, and I remember that first day how she told me she was hoping to have a fourth child. Her youngest was not even two and her eldest at that stage, five. But she said, “This is the easy life. There is nothing you have to do, so why not?” Why not indeed. One can but assume it’s a whole lot easier than rebuilding a house.

One of our favourite programmes is Grand Designs. Even though we no longer subscribe to any channels, Fem still downloads what he terms his soapies through the internet and we have taken recently to looking at past episodes of Grand Designs. Certainly episode after episode underline the fact that no-one who isn’t absolutely determined and has immense stamina and who is prepared to spend more than they ever think they have and have everything take much, much longer than they think it should, should ever undertake restoring a ruin or building their own house. But if I were ever to look for a partner in such a venture, I definitely would look no further than Celine in particular. She is absolutely indefatigable. She volunteered once to come and help me paint the children’s chairs in various shades of enamel for the playroom we were doing up at the Women’s Group. Sarah, her youngest was only about 2 months old, but this didn’t stop her in the least. Nor did the fact that it was 42C outside at the time and of course we were working outside. She pretty much worked flat-out for the entire day, only stopping every now and again to breast-feed when Sarah was brought to her by Vincent, who had stayed at home looking after the kids for her. She worked like a machine, all day long, virtually without pause. And then at the end of the day loaded up all the soft toys to take them home with her and put them through the washing machine. Amazing.

Celine is also a superb baker, and being French, makes everything, as the Americans would put it, from scratch. It is always a study in contrasts for us at the Women’s Group – you have Celine and Mathilde, both French, who have come and given baking demonstrations, and then Maya, who is Lebanese – all of them are superb cooks and bakers. But, invariably, someone from the audience, generally American, and generally not small, after remarking in astonishment on the amount of sugar in a cake (like if they don’t see it in a cake mix it’s not there) and query as to whether there is a low-fat substitute for the oil or butter. Every time, the response is exactly the same. These very slim, healthy women wrinkle up their noses, literally, in a mixture of puzzlement, almost distaste, at the question. Celine was the most succinct, she just said, “No.” When Ilaria, our Italian simultaneous translator turned organiser of Olympic events turned full-time mother and Women’s Group organiser of the Monday Morning programme, asked her to clarify her response, for the sake of our audience, Celine gave an engineer’s reply, again with a French shrug of the shoulders, “There is no substitute,” she clarified. And went back to beating her mixture. Maya laughed and said, “I’m a full-fat girl myself,” and then added, “It’s for the taste, you know - it does taste better.” Mathilde simply said, “If you want to watch your weight, don’t bake a cake.” And yet all of them are absolutely rigorous when it comes to no Trans-fats, healthy fruit and vegetables and so on – the kind that read all the labels in the rare event that they buy processed food, since generally they just always make their own. But it certainly makes for interesting audience-watching.

Anyhow, we have missed the Pauchards very much indeed, their four and our three used to love to run around naked and swim and shriek and play in what we euphemistically termed our gardens but were more like large sand-pits - partly because it’s hard to grow anything in Saudi, since the desalinated water they use in the gardens is toxic over time to any plant that isn’t salt-tolerant, and partly because the kids like playing in sand. And water. And water and sand. However, discovering that we had very similar value systems, and a similar, child-centred and relaxed approach to going out into the desert, into the desert we ventured to go with them and it certainly expanded our universes.

The up-side on any multi-cultural expatriate community is the wonderful friends from all over the world that you make. Of course, the down-side is that your community is fragile and always transient. Certainly the fact that so many of our dear friends have left for pastures new, not for money (it’s hard, in particular, to beat Aramco pay, especially since it’s tax-free, though of course other companies in Saudi can in fact abuse their workers and under-pay or not even pay at all), but for lifestyle, has helped us focus on our values. Not that we ever viewed this as a permanent move, but we see so many here become addicted to the lifestyle, to the money, but not be particularly happy, but without a definite plan or end-point in sight, just keep on keeping on, year after year, until finally they hit retirement and have no idea where in the world they want to live. Seriously. We knew a couple who’d lived in the Middle East for 27 years and had never planned their retirement, including where they might live – so a week before departure, they will still arguing – Wales? Spain? Bahamas? But always, if you don’t define for yourself what is important to you, then circumstances define them for you.

For as Vincent said, again with a shrug, when queried by Aramcons as to why they are even thinking of leaving, and leaving this lifestyle and money behind, “Well, our dream was not to become really, really wealthy and travel the world, our dream was to live in the countryside in France, with our children.”

Which is why he resigned on the 30th November. But Fem beat him by a day.