The doctors at Al Hada Hospital were much like the doctors in Alabama. Together, it was hard to agree to evacuate a burning building, but as individuals, very nice. A few stand out even today.
Handley Coles became a dear friend, was some years my senior, had to eventually go back to Britain for a second cardiac valve replacement, and later died. Before that, I got a chance to run over to Wales from CH and see him and his wife Patty in their farm home. He was fun to play rummy with, and a classic gentleman pediatrician. He also taught me some very colorful ways to cuss out someone in "English".
Loren Ryan was also a friend. He was closer to me in age, and I never heard from him directly again. I did get hear through others that he and his girl friend, Joella, had bought a bar on a Greek island. I expect that was Loren's motivation for his contract in SA. I hope he hasn't/didn't drink up all the profits. He did show me the only case of leprosy that I ever saw. We had some good times together.
The others are nameless due to time and the fact that I did not keep a journal then. Stupid.
A quintessential psychiatrist, complete with pipe, tweeds, etc. who gave me good insight as to the princes and princesses addictions to everything. He likely had more night call than any of us by far because when the royal family calls, you go.
A funny British general surgeon with a great cutting wit who gave the hospital's administration fits.
A nice Turkish general surgeon with the thankless job of Chief of Surgery. Who besides that, had a wife and kids that almost drove him crazy.
A Sudanese internist who had trained in London and was a smart cookie.
"King Louie", a hilarious Irish-Canadian with a general practitioner wife and kids who lived in the Royal Suite at the Sheraton. He got booted when the King of Djibouti arrived. He was a gynecologic oncologist, but he did everyday ob-gyn at Al Hada.
Some nice guys from the USA who were oral surgeons. One of them was a rock hunter, and we took some interesting walks in the mountain behind the hospital while he gave me geology lessons.
A Dutch general surgeon who lived in Seattle and learned Arabic. The Dutch do languages very well!
An orthopedist from Jacksonville, FL whose name is long gone. This guy was a mover and shaker. He was in hog heaven. Polio was endemic in SA, and he ran a crippled children's clinic as good as any in the USA. He even got a ruling from the imams that a hand severed for theft could, under the Koran, be reattached. I expect that he was the happiest of us all because he had plenty to do, and he stayed out of the medical political scene.
Another psychiatrist who almost died while driving to Jeddah to pick up his wife at the airport. His car struck a camel in the dark, and he awoke with a dead camel in the back seat of a station wagon. Some English people came along and helped him, or it would have been a day or so before any Saudi would have dared.
Another GP who had a wife and several children with him. He told me it was imperative to get them out of the kingdom every three months to maintain sanity. He also has his smallest child programmed to say, "Daddy, I am going to throw up." to speed their way through customs.
A lab tech that had arrived with me who got rousted out of bed and flown out of the kingdom at two AM because he had been making some sort of illegal substance in his room. This would have landed him in jail had not the hospital management people acted quickly. Life in the compound was hard for those young people with little to do except work. There was a beautiful outdoor pool, but of course, no mixed sex swimming. Read, sleep, and work was about it. It was funny to go out to a restaurant (Some nice Turkish places there) and see a young couple with an older woman on a "date".
Random last thoughts:
Christmas and Thanksgiving when the hotel held some sort of celebratory feast. Loren asking the very nice Lebanese Chief of Service for a double Beefeaters on the rocks. He was nicely refused.
Watching baboons, yes baboons, scale the cliffs of the escarpment in the dessert near the hospital.
Talking with some young Saudi men while on a hike. Learning that a wife cost about a hundred thousand dollars paid to her family. No wonder they are considered property.
When it was time for my two month trial to be over, a Saudi man often seen in the hospital and that we all thought to be a government agent, sat down with me and very nicely asked what he could do for me to stay an extra month. The Pan-Islamic conference was in February, and the powers were so paranoid that they just had to have a neurosurgeon there. In my situation that was not possible as my partner and I literally passed in the airport, as he was leaving on his two month sabbatical in turn. In today's climate, I expect that I would have just been held there until the conference was over. I wonder what he would have paid for me to extend.
Departure time was not a thing that I had seen with dread. There were things back at home. I was going to miss my new friends there. Handley was going home on home leave, so we arranged to get a British Air flight from Jeddah that left at two AM but did serve alcohol once airborne. We booked a room at the Jeddah Hyatt to sleep until time to go the airport. Leaving was no hassle as coming in had been. I had in my possession an exit letter from the government saying that my conduct in the kingdom had been correct.
Sitting in first class of the big BA bird as it lifted off, I saw a whole Saudi family, mom, dad, and grandma stand, pull off thobes and veils, and order martinis all round. In SA you go by the rules, but outside the kingdom, apparently anything goes.
The return to London was fine. I taught the BA steward how to make a boilermaker. When I saw a woman behind a counter at Heathrow, I was shocked. I knew that I had returned from another planet.
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