THE KATES HILL PRESS, DUDLEY,
ENGLAND
SYNOPSIS of THE GULF
by GREG STOKES
One
night in 1984 I was to meet Yvette White for a drink in the Red Lion “pub” in
the Nihal Hotel in Abu Dhabi. She was
late. While waiting the thought came to
me that I should write a collection of short stories, half of them set in the
Middle East, and half in the English midlands.
Over the years that collection has been added to and these stories are
the result.
The first five stories span both
locations. The following twenty four
stories are set in pairs, looking at a subject firstly in the Gulf then in the Black Country. As with my other collections of short
fiction, The Gulf is a mix of full stories and shorter vignettes which are
snapshots of either places, events or characters.
At a time when Islam is treated
with distrust by the west The Gulf shows that a huge welfare principle runs
through the religion, a fact that is overlooked when fundamentalists are making
other claims for it. A theme runs through
stories in The Gulf that it is difficult to fully understand the ways of other
cultures and that this can be seen as a gulf, or no gulf at all.
The Gulf The title story of the collection uses two historians who
meet by chance in an Abu Dhabi hotel to recount the stories of two seemingly
disparate regions, the oil rich Emirates and the decaying Black Country. As the two tales unfold the initial gulf
between the two narrows, both were based on mineral wealth, and both were
fought over for centuries by local lords who hadn’t a clue as to the wealth
beneath their feet. Written in 1996,
completed August that year.
The Equaliser Of all the stories I’ve written, this
remains my personal favourite. One cold
afternoon I sat in a Sandwell Council van in Smethwick about to enter a
foreboding block of run down flats. I
noticed that the pay check for the week’s driving was equal to the sum I
received for working two hours in Sheikh Zayed’s Beach Palace medical facility. This story is a the result of that
experience. The poet is an invention,
the rest is largely true. The first
part, set in the Sheikh’s Palace, was laid down in the driver’s rest room at
Causeway Green, in March 1985, I got to write the second part of the story set
in Sandwell in the Sheik’s Palace in May 1985 when I found myself back in Abu
Dhabi.
Anna, Angelita, and the
Lebastine When living in Leicester
with Anne Fishenden, she used to tell me of children from the school she taught
at going to Birmingham at the weekend as captives of the sex industry. There was an attitude among male expats that
white women shouldn’t fraternise with Arabs, and those who did were “gold
diggers”. Anna, Angelita and the
Lebastine paints the story of two very different women contrued as gold diggers
and a group of men who apply different values to themselves. Written in Perton, November1984
Barbershop Quartet Having a haircut in Abu Dhabi was a very
different experience to having a haircut in Dudley, just as having a haircut as
an eighteen year old was a very different experience to having a haircut as an
eight year old. Barbershop Quartet
looks at four hiarcuts in different places and different times. Written April 1988
Two Teenagers As a clinical chemist in Abu Dhabi
I investigated infertility in teenage girls who were married but not yet
biologically capable of bearing children.
The consequences for them were huge.
As a children’s centre manager in Sandwell I looked after teenage girls
who were on the game and at great risk.
The consequences for them were huge.
Two teenagers takes the story of one girl from each scenario. Written July 1995
Feuds:
An Eye for an Eye One Friday night, after spending the one
day weekend over on the east coast, we went to the Mandarin Chinese restaurant
in Abu Dhabi. It was a departure, we
normally just crashed. That night Ed
Buller told this story of a Pathan tribesman who had been murdered by a
sheikh’s son. The young man was
eventually meted justice by the brotherhood.
There was a way of doing things to which we were not party and which we
didn’t understand. Written April 1986
Family Feud One night in JBs rock club in Dudley
someone was talking about the scrap there’d been on his estate between two
families who had been feuding for years.
He likened it to the wild west.
This story is the result.
Written May 1996.
Would be Artists:
The Dauber An expat, out of favour, dabbles at art,
and is seen as a dauber. But then he
becomes recognised and his stock rises.
Written May 1988
The Fame Dream (Number Two) Dudley has a wealth of would be
musicians. This vignette of some of
them replaces The Fame Dream, a work of novella length, which follows a band to
the brink of a break though but was too long for this collection. Written November 2001
Racism:
Knowing the Bedu A stolen wallet is returned, with all its
contents. A never heard of occurrence
in the UK. Written in Appledore, July 1992
Knowing the Bedu (NumberTwo) A group of old men spout vitriol about Arabs,
they know the Bedu. Written in
Amsterdam, February 1988
Extra Marital Affairs:
Gulf Wife Life in the gulf can seem from an outsider’s point of view
idyllic. For many women who followed
husbands there life could prove tedious, with other distractions becoming
necessary. Single men were plentiful,
but they weren’t always necessarily that single. Written during lunchtimes in Walsall, January 1997
Playing Away (NumberTwo) An affair on a council estate becomes public
knowledge and the community takes the moral high ground. Whether they in fact hold it is open to
question. Written April 1997
Local Elections:
Mutton on the Menu As a member of The British Club in Abu
Dhabi I witnessed an election for the committee in which two locals were vying
for the one post. One of them had
killed four sheep as part of election campaign and his agent couldn’t
understand why the ex-pats didn’t quite grasp the significance of this. Written October 1993
Much of a Muchness Philosopher Robert Thouless has written that
people who do not use their vote are no different to some one with learning
difficulties who wouldn’t know how to use their vote. Set on the day of the 1987 General Election, this story has one
voter from each of the main parties who watch an anarchist, who won’t vote on
principal and a man with learning difficulties who would love to vote, but
never quite gets there. Dedicated to
the guys with whom I spent most of the 87 election campaign on ward C10 at
Russell’s Hall Hospital. Written July
1995
Treatment of Victims of Crime:
A Welfare Case This story, of a Sheikh who looked
after the children of his daughter’s murderer, did the rounds when I was in Abu
Dhabi. Written December 1991
The Con’s Wife “We’re the ones who have been given
the life sentence” is an argument that is frequently reeled out when murder
victim’s families are interviewed. I
have always held the belief that if I was ever “sentenced” to life, then it was my mother and father
who passed it. According the man who
killed dad with metaphorical judicial clout would create a prison of my own
making. The Con’s Wife, in which the
spouse of an armed robber seeks absolution from the wife of one of the victims
was written in response to the “life sentence” mindset. Written March 1997
Lost Underwater:
MS Dara MS Dara was steam ship that ran between Bahrain and
Bombay. It sank off the Ajman coast in
1963 when a bomb on board exploded. The
bomb was believed to have been planted by Omani rebels and timed to go off in
Muscat. The Dara was however delayed at
Dubai having to ride out a storm at sea.
There were 268 lives lost making it at the time the world’s biggest
peacetime maritime disaster. I dived on
Dara several times. It was an eerie
Davy Jones Locker of a wreck steeped in intrigue. This ghost story arose from those experiences. Written December 1987
The Smithy There’s a tale I’ve never verified that a
village was inundated when Netherton reservoir was flooded. The village had a smithy. This sketch is dedicated to Eggy who lost his
life to the Rezza in 1974. Written
March 1996
Employing Violence:
The Confession Sheikh Zayed is revered in the UAE
by locals and expats alike. His
predecessor, Sheik Shakbut had to be deposed to bring this about. Stories ran through the Emirates from old SAS
men that the British were far more involved than the history books would
suggest. This is one of them. Written November 1993
The Enforcer In 1973 Dudley Tech had a number
of students from Iran. Their presence
wasn’t welcomed by all the local youth.
The Enforcer goes into that era and follows the lives of a couple who
meet, and eventually marry amid a vibrant social scene. Many years on they are confronted with a
face from their past, the enforcer. Written July 1992
Attitudes to Age:
The Boy on the Roundabout Expats had a tendency to refer to the men
from the Indian sub continent as boys – whatever their age. A young Brit who is far more PC than Abu
Dhabi is accustomed to challenges the norm when a “boy” meets a tragic end. Written November 1987
No Age in Him In the Black Country a man’s opinion
is worth Dudley until a certain undisclosed age is acquired. Before that he “has no age in him.” No age him is the counterblast. Written in Torremolinos, February 1996
Attitudes to Royalty:
The Pot I was once called upon to do a culture and sensitivity on
Sheik Zayed’s urine. The Pot describes
that incident. Written November 1995
The Paint The British are an eminently sensible bunch – until there’s
a royal visit. The Paint describes a
visit to Tipton. Written November 1995
Tricks of the Trade:
The Toffee Tin
Abu Dhabi Sub Aqua Club once went on a dive to Sir Abu Nair, a dessert
island in the middle of the Gulf. The
dhow skipper navigated using a compass encased in a toffee tin. That trip is described here. Written
February 1997
The Tin Foil On a day when the Baggies had gone down
7-0 at Ipswich, and the electrics on the car were fading fast on the way back,
uncle Des called on a trick he’d learnt from the lorry drivers. Written February 1997
Beginnings and Endings:
From Grave to Cradle Abu Dhabi Sub Aqua Club’s 1984
holiday was to Kenya. We were to spend
the second week on the coast diving, having done a safari in the first
week. The safari took us through the
Rift Valley, the cradle of humanity, but the week before we’d gone through the
Musandam Peninsula, south of the Straits of Hormuz, where the metalled roads
and helipads showed us it could be the grave of humanity. Started in Mombasa April 1984, completed in
Dudley, January 1985
From Cradle to Grave The Black Country could be
described as the cradle of the industrial revolution. George, the narrator in the title story, walks past the mighty
Round Oak Steel Works with his mate in 1968 when all is well with the world. The west midlands is thriving and the
Baggies are in the Cup Final. Nearly
thirty years later they meet again with industry gone and a shopping mall is
seen as the answer but they see only the grave. Written March 1997
Greg Stokes
Kates Hill, June 2004