Rude Ethnographies: Rude Ethnographies, #2

By Joseph W. Kuhl

The second volume of stories takes us deeper into the dark side of the Arabian Gulf with a sordid collection of creative non-fiction, fiction, and outright lies. From Atlanta to Dubia, the offbeat ensemble of characters collides head-on with the same unreliable narrator stumbling through hazy landscapes trying to escape his shattered past. A diverse and engaging collection of tales from an underground writer unafraid of telling a true story no matter how distasteful. Shunned for decades by mainstream publishing, this is a work of revenge. And we sense there is more to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph W. Kuhl
• Release date: Mar 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393591641

Joseph W. Kuhl

Dr. Joseph W. Kuhl was born on the move living in a dozen different cities before he was 10 with his carney family before being sent to the Grease Wood Boys Home in Hezbollah, Georgia from which he escaped at age 15. He spent the next 12 years digging holes, raking leaves, painting historic homes, pouring drinks and agitating as a Neo-Marxist among redneck cadres.  A compulsive peripatetic, he expatriated to Morocco, Andalusia, Niger, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Ecuador, Afghanistan and Lao PDR. He divides his time between a trailer in rural Georgia and a caravan in what was once Europe.

Book preview

I Was Just Looking

First Published in The Atlantic Unbound Fiction, February 21 2001.

Discreetly, Chad withdrew an expensive American cigarette from his top pocket. No one on the bus noticed. No one, he thought, paid much attention to him any longer. Sporting a Vandyke beard (a zero, or sefer as the young Moroccans called it), wearing locally tailored jackets, together with the carefully trimmed black hair and his dark complexion, he moved as one of them through the crowded medina, having mastered the accent and phrases that marked him as a northerner from the Riff mountains.

The barren red plains of the Chaouia outside Casablanca rolled past as the sun dropped below the horizon and smoldered, spreading a deep orange glow over the peaks of the High Atlas Mountains. In less than five hours, Insh’allah, Allah willing, Chad would make Marrakech and be in Lisa's bed, making love and sipping the bootleg Johnnie Walker.

The old man across the aisle, a shameli from the north, he could tell by the brown-and- white-striped djelleba and the yellow rizah wrapped tightly around the man's head, tapped out a thick line of dark-green snuff onto the back of his trembling hand. He lifted it to his nose and snorted loudly, wiping his nostrils carefully with a handkerchief and replacing the wooden snuff box inside one of the deep pockets of his robe. "B'saha, El Hadj, to your health, pilgrim," said Chad.

And may Allah give you health as well, my son, came the polite reply.

As the bus chugged up through the steep and winding passes, Chad heard a child several seats behind him begin retching, then a loud splatter against the floor. The odor rose, and he bit hard into his cheek, willing away his own nausea. The air was thick with foul, acrid smoke from a dozen cheap Tabac noire cigarettes, Casa Sports, one of the few luxuries afforded the impoverished classes of men. No matter what the temperature or circumstance, Moroccans in every part of the country refused to open taxi or bus windows, believing, illness to be borne on swift winds. Chad opened the window anyway, taking deep breaths of the fresh air and then turning to explain to the veiled, older woman behind him that he was feeling ill. He knew it would make little sense, for anyone who was feeling ill would never stick their head out a bus window.

She nodded and remarked that it was a treacherous road. A few moments later, the woman's orange, henna-stained hand reached over his seat and closed the window. Shutting his eyes, Chad buried his face in his coat sleeves and nodded off.

He woke up as the bus slowed and pulled in at a rest stop. Alhemdoulah, thank God, he muttered, stepping into the cool mountain air. He walked about stretching, filling his lungs with clean, moist night air, and decided to try his luck with a bit of dinner. The nap had settled his stomach.

The severed heads of two sheep, eyes glaring dully, lay on the butcher's stand, lit by bright naked bulbs. The remaining parts and organs were neatly displayed for inspection. Two large testicles hung from a rusted iron hook. Chad heard the snap of bone under the butcher's cleaver and decided on soup.

The cramped stone building was crowded with travelers hunched over steaming bowls of soup and plates of grilled meat. Taking a seat, he called to the qahuwaji for an order of soup and coffee. A few moments later, he was served. This is not harrira, he thought, dragging his spoon through the lumpy white fluid. He pushed it aside and sipped at the hot glass of frothy café au lait.

Scanning the room, he suddenly met with an intensely seductive gaze from a girl of no more than sixteen or seventeen. A slight smile flitted briefly across her face, and she quickly lowered her eyes. An exquisite beauty, he thought. Flawless, light-brown skin, deep-set green eyes, hollowed cheeks, and a mane of dark hair flowing from beneath a silver sequined scarf. Her scarlet djelleba was torn slightly at the hem. He gazed at the smooth, graceful curve of her calf, deliberately revealed, he was sure, for his eyes only.

She looked up again briefly and smiled. An older woman, her mother probably, gave the girl a stern glance as a man in faded military fatigues at their table turned around to glare at Chad. Chad avoided the soldier's stare and searched for his cigarettes.

For the next few minutes, he smoked his way through the glass of sweet coffee and played a pleasant game of eye-catching with the young Berber girl. It was a harmless

sport he had grown fond of over the years. It broke up the monotony of the dull hours spent waiting for buses and taxis, sitting at sidewalk cafés, or wandering aimlessly through the winding streets to the old medinas.

The driver sounded his horn outside, and the restaurant began to empty. On the way out, he went around back to piss. He knew the bathroom would be filthy, but it would be at least another two hours before he reached Marrakech. Taking a deep breath, he pushed open the wooden door into a dim and stinking closet-sized room with two holes side by side in the sagging concrete floor. And holding his breath, he relieved himself.

He was buckling his pants when the door swung open. A man stood in the doorway, blocking his exit. Chad expelled a chest full of air, excused himself politely and tried to get by, but the broad-shouldered figure refused to move. The close stench of the tiny outhouse bit into Chad's sinuses and stung his throat. In the gloom, he recognized, with a jolt of fear, the military fatigues just at the moment the soldier grabbed him by the neck, pushing him back against the wall and squeezing his throat.

You were looking at her, I saw you. You were looking, weren't you? His Arabic was an accent he barely recognized. 

I don't know what you're talking— Chad's words were choked off.

The horn sounded just outside in short, impatient blasts. The stale reek of hot, alcoholic breath struck Chad's face as he struggled to speak. Okay, okay! he rasped, grabbing the man's arm. I was just looking!

"Rifi dog!"

The soldier's other arm raised up, and Chad saw the silvery glint of the blade before it smashed into his face. In that moment between the shock and the pain, he heard the soldier's disembodied voice, quiet and gentle now. You'll be more careful with the other eye. Yes, I think so.

Chad slumped to the bathroom floor and pressed his hands against his right eye, a wet smear spreading on his cheek. The horn ceased abruptly as if someone had lifted the needle from a record, the deepening quiet marred only by the drone of an engine pulling away in the distance.

Tangier, 1987

The Disappearance of Darin Leary

Everyone knew Darin Leary was an aging alcoholic. Still, it seems I was one of the few who knew he was a homosexual. I suppose I was the only one on the staff he'd ever asked—and quite frequently—to sleep with him or at least show him my cock. Neither proposition interested me at all.

There are only two bars in this Arabian oasis town; consequently, running into Darin Leary outside of work was a given. The Monument we called him, in that he sat at the same spot in the bar every night, never moving, just drinking pint after pint of Guinness. After a few pints of beer, he'd start running his mouth and telling sordid stories about making young boys in Saudi and Kuwait. And having a lack of such young boys in this town, he'd found another avenue of satisfaction:  taxi drivers.

Mother O' God!  He'd exclaim in his Limerick accent. You wouldn't believe the one I saw today.

One what, Dar?

The cock!

Oh?

Long as me bloody arm!

What does one reply to that?  With Dan, you didn't need to.

I love 'em. Jesus, these Afghani lads are magnificent. Not a one of 'em you see has a wife over here, and I can tell right off if their game.

What do you do in the taxi?

Free rides, luv, free rides!

Good for you.

Great for me!  Ha!  No, really, you see, I just like to take a look and grab hold a little. Don't want to get the milk up. Too messy. You know they don't wash those robes more than once a month. But let me tell you something. These bloody brutes, these Afghanis...did you know they live in caves.

Caves?

Honest to God in Heaven. Up in the hills behind the industrial zone. Couple of weeks ago, I felt this boy up, you see, and so we make a date for later. He picks me up outside the flat and drives me up into those hills with him. Up a bloody dirt road to this camp. There must have been a half dozen living there, on the ground in the open inside these small caves. Like fuckin' gypsies, sitting around in their filthy robes and turbans drinking homemade swizzle.

Darin's eyes, which tended to bug out under his thick glasses, were bloodshot and filmy, a wicked leer on his booze-bloated, blotched face. You see, luv, they earn what maybe $400 quid a month and send every last penny back home to save up a dowry over ten or fifteen years to buy a 13-year-old virgin bride.

That right?

So, let me tell you, darlin', that night I got it good. Screwed properly by the whole pack of those filthy buggers. On the ground like the dog that I am!  Hah!  But you never saw such dicks. They had me put on a raggedy old polyester dress.

What?

That's right. Forced me. It was rape.  He gulped down his beer and laughed out loud.

Second time up, there must have been a dozen.

That's just insane, Darin.

Animal!  Ha!  I'm a dog!  God, I love it. Cocks as long as your arm, hard as a broomstick spouting in buckets all over—

Enough, Leary.

Never!

Always there came that point when I couldn't listen anymore. I'd reached it once again with Darin Leary and left him.

Several weeks after he told me this story, he didn't show up for work one day. Our supervisor rang him and went by, but no one had seen him. After three days, it was suspected he'd absconded, so inquiries went out to passport controls at the airports. After ten days, the police were callin' it a missing person case. 

A few weeks later, with still no word of his whereabouts, I suggested to Captain Sultan, the undercover CID agent who hung around the pubs every night playing darts and drinking his way undercover with the westerners, that Darin might be in the San'aiyah, industrial area. Captain Sultan said he'd look into it and bought me a round. I heard nothing until about a month later when Captain Sultan bought me a pint and took me outside to the balcony.  He confided that Darin had been found a few days after my tip.  His badly decomposed, castrated corpse had turned up in the desert beyond the hills of San'aiyah. The genitals, he laughed, were still missing, but no search was on for them. A trophy, I figured, on the wall of some taxi driver's cave.

40 Lashes:  Taking the Cane from a Holy Man

Lashes are the most common form of punishment. It doesn't sound so bad. Better, anyway, than six months in an un-air-conditioned tin-roofed prison surrounded by hardened and horny tough guys from all over the third, fourth, and fifth world. I make enough money that I don't need to steal or deal, and being a non-Muslim, I am issued a liquor license enabling me to buy $125 of booze a month. Hardly enough, but the rest is legally had at criminal prices in the local pubs and bars.

I'd never been arrested for smashing up the idiot's who've crossed me (usually I was defending a women friend's virtue) during my tenure here, primarily because most of those altercations were with drunk Arabs, meaning they are Muslims and being drunk Muslims they are lawbreakers before they even started the fights, so most tend run, stumble or are dragged off about the time the cops arrive. I was a fast and fearless featherweight boxer through high school and college, and the ones I left standing never pressed charges. Nobody wants trouble with the shorta, police, in any Gulf country no matter your nationality. 

So, it was a charmed life with good pay, easy work, desert sunshine, the Olympic-size pools, and the bars overlooking them-up until I befriended Bubba, a hard-drinking, western- educated Moroccan 20 years married to an American. He claimed he could talk his way into or out