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shortfatuglyman-blog · 7 years ago

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#Banks: The Biggest Thieves in History

When they start talking about the huge amounts of money we owe I can’t really get my head around it. I mean, you can’t quite grasp the concept of a trillion can you? Britain owes over one trillion pounds while America owes over seventeen trillion dollars. A trillion is a one with twelve zeros after it. A trillion seconds is over thirty one thousand years or, how about: a trillion stacked pennies would reach 870,000 miles high. Come on! An easier way for me is when they talk about Britain owing £30,000 per head. It’s a tiny bit more difficult to work out the amounts for America because no one knows how many people are in that country and anyway America already owed trillions and trillions of dollars before the banks got on the bandwagon…Got to get me some of that!

£30,000? That seems a mite more acceptable, most of us could see the possibility of paying that off in the next ten or twenty years, stick it on the end of your mortgage and you will hardly notice it! But, when you think about it a bit more closely it is more worrying. Take a man with a wife, who doesn’t work, and who has three kids, that means they owe more like £150,000! And what about the parents? Do we add them into the equation? After all they are unlikely to be still earning.

No one ever seems to ask the obvious question when these absurd amounts are discussed: who do we owe it to? Or, to be more grammatically correct: to whom do we owe it? If you ask that question at a dinner party say, in America, you get the immediate answer: China. Well hey ho, I think that is rather splendid of China to lend America all that money in the first place, I know they are rich, but seriously? The same question in Britain gets another just as confident answer: the Arabs (or more likely: the bloody Arabs). That is invariably given by people who haven’t been to the Middle East in the last couple of years. And to keep your confidence I’ve asked that question a dozen times on both sides of the Atlantic and I have been in the Middle East twice in the last three years.

So who do we owe it to? (Screw grammar). The answer’s easy: we owe it to ourselves. Well, we owe it to a small number of people living in our countries…yes we do!

The Western World encourages the novel principal that inherited money is a good idea. Okay if it’s you inheriting your parents’ house but consider: great swathes of Britain (80%) are owned by a bunch of idiots whose great-great-great-grandfathers sent the king some soldiers to fight Cromwell. Okay, you voted for it so you must want it. The deal was that these people with huge amounts of money invested it in businesses. The millionaires on Dragon’s Den are doing exactly what they should be doing: investing in burgeoning businesses, helping them grow, creating employment and adding to our balance of payments. They receive profits on their investments in good years but risk losing their money in bad years. This system worked well. It gave us the Industrial Revolution.

Then a gang of crooks, sorry, I mean I mean a group of financial whiz-kids in the city, created Hedge Funds. These are closed investment groups (you can’t join one matey!) which are basically unregulated and exist solely to make rich people richer. It occurred to said whiz-kids that the rich investors would be much more secure by investing in mortgages. The thing is with a mortgage that the bank makes most of its money in the first year with all the extra bits you have to pay for: arrangement fees, transfer fees and all the other ploys they dream up to take your money. After that the banks’ money is tied up for thirty or forty years. If they could sell the loan on they would have that money again to offer to some other poor sod desperate to house his family.

What the hedge funds did was to buy up great bunches of mortgages…your mortgage might well be owned by someone in Sweden or Australia, or even your next door neighbour, you won’t know it of course because he or she will hide behind an official sounding name. Everybody’s happy: the poor sod has got his house, the bank has got its money back and the investors have a long term safe investment for their capital because property is the safest investment. Sad about those new businesses though isn’t it? They suddenly found no one was left to lend them money to help them grow. And the youngsters who were going to work in those businesses, sad about them too. Still never mind, everybody else is happy!

The next problem came when they literally ran out of mortgages to buy up. Easy, the investors and banks came up with another little plot: just take the controls off mortgages…and hey, yes: we can charge extra for that as well! Hurrah!!!

I worked at an Estate Agents in the late Sixties. In those days a man could borrow up to three times his yearly salary, three and a half times if his wife worked. I’m sure that is changed now with the different status of women in work. It was annoying but it stopped people over borrowing, not letting them get carried away by the idea of owning a house that was too expensive for them. In 2007 I was working in Iraq and my wife and I came back to Scotland for a holiday and while we were there we had a look around a holiday cottage. When I told the agent that we would have difficulty proving our salaries he grinned and promised us that he could get us a mortgage within twenty four hours just on the strength of a verbal declaration of our earnings…it was slightly more expensive of course.

So house buying in Britain and America went through the roof, so of course did house prices, but that was all to the good: everyone had a house and everyone was making money.

Everybody knows what happened next. It seemed the whiz-kids weren’t quite such whizzes after all: the whole damned edifice came crashing down. The bankers had over extended themselves, the investors had lost their money. Fair enough, like the Dragon’s Den entrepreneurs they had gambled and lost.

Only they hadn’t because the thing is the banks and the super-rich own the politicians. They finance the political parties and ex politicians and civil servants infest the banking Boards of Directors. Immediately President Bush was rushed onto television saying that it is essential for the economy that the banks are protected. Gordon Brown is dancing to the same tune: of course we have to protect the banks. Not for the banks, not for the super-rich, but for us! All is lost if we don’t bail them out, they can’t be expected to pay their own debts! Good Heavens, banks exist to make profits not to pay debts! We have to cough up, it’s all our responsibility. Faced with an array of politicians all preaching the same doctrine we fall for it, nobody questions it. And I would like you to bear in mind at this point that the entire front bench of the Labour (!) party, let alone the Conservative party, were millionaires in these days. I expect the same applies now but I really cannot be bothered to check it will only depress me more.

The Bank of England responded to the crisis by a process they called quantitative easing. Funny thing, my spell checker didn’t recognise the word, it couldn’t mean that they made it up surely? It means printing more money than the country is worth. This incidentally is the primary cause of inflation, without the overprinting of money inflation simply cannot happen. This will all come out in the economy of the country sometime in the future, we’re not sure just where but you can bet it won’t be out of the bankers’ pockets.

How much did they print? 350 billion! This is not a loan or a gift, it is a tax and you will have to pay it back. Where did it go? To the old age pensioners to heat their houses? What about (my choice) to the young marrieds to pay for child care? Or, how about to first time home buyers as a deposit? Any of these would have stimulated the economy. But the super-rich can’t go letting ordinary people get given money. No, no, don’t be silly, ordinary people have to earn their money! So instead the Bank of England gave it to the banks and they sat on it and refused to lend it on because it was too risky in our volatile economy. That same volatile economy they had created. The government tried to put pressure on the banks to lend more but they can’t do that can they? The slave can’t put pressure on the slave owner.

Americans had it even worse, their pensions aren’t protected in the ways ours are. My mother-in-law had been working as a legal secretary in Minnesota, all her life, over forty years, and paying into a fund for all of that time. Every damned week for forty years she put her money into that scheme. She was sixty five, tired, ill and about to retire when the banks came along and said that the money had disappeared and they took her pension just like that! When I say took, I actually mean stole. They stole it just like a mugger taking your wallet in a back alley. She later told me that she would now have to work until she was eighty seven and she would lose her house even then. Bear in mind that Americans don’t have our social system to fall back on.

What a brilliant plan it was. Think of it, the rich investors never lost a penny. The banks did even better, they got rid of having to pay that annoying interest on accounts, sorry, they still pay a generous one percent…and the government rewarded them with a 350 billion pound bonus on top.

The greatest war criminals are usually reckoned to be the Nazis, they raped a continent. But at least they had the courage to do it with guns, the bankers raped the world and hid beneath their desks while doing it. But, I hear you protest, think of the millions of people the Nazis killed? Yeah, but gentle reader, how many millions of people are going to die in the third world because of reduced aid? Think of the millions who will no longer be able to afford the inflated prices of life giving drugs. Think of the kids who will die of cholera because they can’t buy chlorine tablets. Think of the wars that will be fought over the limited availability of resources.

The super-rich and the bankers who took part in this plot have the morals of a whore and all the viciousness of a street thug, without the bravery of either. The Mafia is a church group compared to them, the Kray Twins were saints.

Let me leave you with one more statistic: if every person who possessed more than 50 million pounds in the country was made to hand over a third of it then it would pay off the financial loss twice over! But that’s not going to happen is it? It would only leave them with about 30 million to play with…so instead you’re going to pay it!

I’ve been accused of running a pornographic website, I actually think that says more about the accuser than it does about me. But if you want real pornography then it’s right here in this article!

For more of Nicholas Walker’s writing click on: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nicholas-Walker/e/B00PI0XDAG/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

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shortfatuglyman-blog · 7 years ago

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#Banks: The Biggest Thieves in History When they start talking about the huge amounts of money we owe I can’t really get my head around it.

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shortfatuglyman-blog · 7 years ago

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Can you face the truth about the war in #Syria?

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shortfatuglyman-blog · 7 years ago

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The war in Syria has already been going on for longer than the Second World War! Still there is no sign of an end and there won’t be unless the West decides to end it. And the big question is: are prepared to undertake the massive effort needed to end it? Or one other scenario: will our young people be prepared to allow us to end it? Because it’s the young people who will have to do the fighting!

What we are witnessing is the start of World War Three. How do we win it? Exactly the same way as we won World Wars One and Two!

America acted very well in the last World War. They did. I know it’s generally accepted that Britain was on the brink of being invaded by the Germans but this was never going to happen. Germany couldn’t invade Britain, numerous historians have analysed this and come to the same conclusion. Hitler knew it and wrote about it in Mein Kampf. The logistics show that he simply couldn’t get an army across the channel. But that didn’t mean we could win the war, only that we couldn’t lose it if we could put up with the constant bombing and blockades. Hitler was just hoping we would sign some kind of peace treaty with Germany giving him the whole of Europe as a playground and indeed this we would have had to do if America hadn’t decided to help. Now let us not get into an argument about America’s reasons, their self-interests etc., let us just be grateful that they did help us.

To win the war we needed to do exactly what Hitler couldn’t do…get an army across the channel. Churchill, haunted by what happened during the Dardanelles campaign during World War One, was terrified of the losses that would ensue, this is why Eisenhower was Supreme Commander. Churchill deferred for too long and lost the right to lead the invasion. The Allies needed the huge influx of American ground forces and the mass of munitions that the American people could provide to win that war. (NB Written before the movie Churchill was released).

And remember, gentle reader, the massive amount of resistance by the American People to their involvement…this only really faded away with the horrific revelations of the Death Camps!

The Allies won the Second World War because of America’s help, face it folks it’s true. The problem we get is that America looks on it as America won the Second World War, they never mention the Allies! That’s where the resentment comes in!

The next major war was Vietnam. This was simply America crossing swords with Russia in a minor country. This time, however, public opinion kept the politicians from becoming fully involved. America could have won Vietnam anytime it wanted by fully committing, the richest country always wins! Another annoying trait reared its head, (annoying for the politicians and generals that is) young men began refusing to go: Hell No We Won’t Go! The Generals were deprived of their cannon fodder! Imagine that happening in World War One! It would have ended in 1916!

America lost Vietnam. Public opinion lost Vietnam. Democracy stopped them winning, they couldn’t compete with a totalitarian regime where the people aren’t given the choice.

American politicians learned a lesson. They can’t go to war without the backing of the American people! And now they have another Vietnam. The Middle East is another Vietnam! America and Russia are in another face off…the old enemies are once again at daggers drawn.

America had to show it was doing something or it would indicate to the rest of the world that they were weak and afraid of Russia so they supplied munitions and advisors…just like they did in Vietnam in the first years. This has escalated into air strikes but notice how adamant they are about the specificity of their targets: it’s always terrorist strongholds or stemming terrorist attacks! This is designed to keep the mob back home quiet. But they are stopping short of committing ground troops because they know they can’t win without the massive effort they showed in World War Two. We could win the war in the Middle East, we no longer even have the problem of crossing the channel! America and Britain are the key. Forget NATO, they will just follow on behind. All we need to do is to declare total war and invade. Then keep going until we occupy the warring countries and establish new regimes and keep control of these regimes for years after the war…just like we did in World War Two in fact. The death camps are right there in Syria, we have the justification!

But what we do not have is the will of the people. Total war means conscription and that just isn’t going to happen. It might just be accepted if America and Britain were in the process of being invaded but our young people aren’t going to offer up their lives to go and fight some obscure war in an obscure place that nobody has ever even visited. And, after all, these are Arabs, strange people in silly headdresses who persecute their women and keep blowing us up! Hell No They Won’t Go!

So what’s the answer? We have to sit back and watch the slaughter happen!

For more of Nicholas Walker’s writings please click: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nicholas-Walker/e/B00PI0XDAG/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

How Do We Win The War In The Middle East? The war in Syria has already been going on for longer than the Second World War! Still there is no sign of an end and there won’t be unless the West decides to end it.

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shortfatuglyman-blog · 7 years ago

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Homework: a Foul Imposition and a Total Waste of Time!

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shortfatuglyman-blog · 7 years ago

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#Homework: a Foul Imposition and a Total Waste of Time!

It happens every year and it’s just happened again! I run the largest Martial Arts organisation in the UK and 18 of my kids have just gone up to Secondary School and guess what? 16 of them have left! The parents all said they hated taking them away but that their children now had much too much homework to do every evening.

I always think of it like this: say a man or woman is a postal delivery worker and they arrive home after 6 – 8 hours delivering mail. They have their tea then their spouse hands them another bag of mail and tells them to go out again…what do you think the response would be? Yet we expect our kids to sit all day on those terribly uncomfortable chairs learning a dozen different subjects then once they have had their tea they have to start again…give me a break!

The thing that drives me most mad about homework is the comment you always get from the parents: well, we had to do it! How is that any justification? My grandfather had to walk eight miles to school every day in his gumboots…doesn’t mean we should make our kids do the same.

I’m a teacher, have been off and on for over twenty years and hand on my heart I can tell you that homework is a total waste of time. It doesn’t help your child’s education, it doesn’t help with their creativity and it certainly doesn’t help with their qualifications. I am biased (did you get that?) so let me say that from the day I went to Brierley Hill Grammar School back in the Sixties and was informed that I would receive two hours homework a night I said no. I never did a single piece of homework in my entire school life and if you check out my qualifications you will find them reasonably impressive. They did everything to me: I was in detention night after night, every lunchtime was spent outside the Head teacher’s study, periodically they beat me. But then they did something I have always respected: they gave up. It became the accepted thing: Nick doesn’t do homework! Neither of my two kids were allowed to do any more than the most cursory amount of homework and both flew through university, indeed, my daughter is a barrister.

Time and time again I sit in a staffroom while some teacher demands of all the others what to set 4B for homework until someone calls out: tell them to write an essay on how they would steal the Eiffel Tower. Do you know what happens to those essays? Those hundreds of hours of wasted time? Well, let’s do the maths: a teacher usually has six forms they are responsible for, averaging roughly 20 kids per set. They receive homework twice a week so that is 240 pieces of written work every week. Now, say that an essay is usually about two pages long that means every teacher has to mark nearly five hundred pages of written work every week. Do you seriously imagine they do it? Of course they don’t! Teaching is a massively difficult job…I’ve done over thirty different jobs in my life from war journalist to ditch digger and teaching is by far the most stressful and time consuming. You sure as hell aren’t going to labour through 500 pieces of badly written work every week on top. What a teacher does is to flick through picking up the occasional buzz word. Then the more conscientious ones will read a bit of the conclusion and award a mark: and that’s it folks! It’s a diversion but it’s also how exams are marked and incidentally how Booker prize judges work!

Homework is an imposition, it takes away the freedom of your child. They shouldn’t be hunched over the dining table doing some crap every night they should be out playing sport, or socialising, or reading, or even watching television, they might learn something useful then. Moreover the teacher is setting you homework. How many hours have you spent helping your younger children through some garbage? Invest your time wisely, encourage them to read books (preferably mine), encourage them to play games or how about, to have a decent discussion…something other than: How I Stole The Eiffel Tower. Furthermore it is totally sexist because although most of the girls will do it the boys sure as hell won’t! They will copy it up on the bus the following morning.

In all my time as a teacher I have never set homework which makes me very popular with the kids (not so much with the teachers though) and I have been very successful. In recent years I have mainly been called in when a bad teacher has left a trail of destruction behind them and I have been employed to put it right. I am passionately concerned with the fate of my students, for the short periods when I am working as a teacher then I will do anything for them. In Iraq when I found out that none of the kids had the Chemistry needed to read science at university I put four free lessons of Chemistry on every week at the Hilton Hotel…still didn’t set them homework though.

This is just homework I am talking about here, it’s not to say I don’t get my kids to go outside at night and look at the stars or watch a certain movie or read a particular book and obviously I strenuously encourage them to revise but anything other than that: Just Say No!

For more on Nicholas Walker’s writing click on: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nicholas-Walker/e/B00PI0XDAG/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

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shortfatuglyman-blog · 7 years ago

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Homework: a Foul Imposition and a Total Waste of Time! It happens every year and it’s just happened again! I run the largest Martial Arts organisation in the UK and 18 of my kids have just gone up to Secondary School and guess what?

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shortfatuglyman-blog · 7 years ago

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Do Suicide Bombers Cry?

In 2005 I was hiding from the security forces in Iraq. They were leaning on me for the spate of articles I had been writing about the Bedoon, the forgotten people of The Middle East. The Muslim Family who had adopted me were doing the hiding and I had been living with this incredibly poor family for some three months now.

We had just eaten some of the wonderful food that Amera, the mother, had cooked for us and were collapsed all over the room watching Clint Eastwood on the TV. The two sons, Adel and Fouad were working on a part for the car they had just struggled to buy, a carburettor I think it was but don’t quote me…they had much more sense than to ask for any help from me with anything mechanical! Hidari, the eldest daughter was still at the table working on her Open University Degree, soon she would bring it over for me to go through with her. Ahoud and Aeida, the next two daughters in line were sitting in a single armchair doing their homework, from time to time they would shout over a question. As always Fatma was doing her job, one she was proud of and one which she fiercely guarded: she was the maker of coffee and served up a constant stream of it to the men. The huge figure of Emad, my best friend in the world, and the best friend I have ever had, was lying flat out on the carpet propped up on one elbow so he could watch how Clint was getting on. Wrapped around him were his two youngest daughters, Zennor and Kadijah.

I had some of the happiest times of my life with these wonderful people, we used to laugh so much in those days. What I remember most about those times were the warmth and good food and the genuine love of those people towards the stranger in their midst. But now I was much more than a stranger for I had been fully adopted and was privileged to be in their home when the girls were not wearing their Hijabs. Emad and I had gone through the blood brother ceremony the year before in that very room, you could still see the blood on the carpet for this huge man, braver than a lion, had totally baulked at cutting his own arm open. I’d managed mine okay (the Brit in front of the foreigners syndrome), but he just couldn’t leave his arm there for the cut. I have seen this man, roaring like a bull, wading into a mob of Arabs with a recycling bin in either hand laying them out on all sides. But he was literally terrified when it came to losing a drop of his own blood. I took charge:

‘Get him girls!’ I rapped and immediately his six daughters threw themselves on him pinning him to the floor. I sprang forward with the knife but as I tried to cut his arm gently he jerked away and suddenly there was blood everywhere.

‘Oh, you kill me Dr Nick,’ he howled, ‘you kill me!’

All was pandemonium as Amera tried to get hold of him to bandage the cut while his daughters rolled around laughing.

Tonight though was very different, much quieter. But things were about to change: suddenly there came a break in the programme, a news flash! It was the 7th of July 2005 and the London Bombings had just taken place.

I sat there quietly watching. But sadly it didn’t hit home as much as it should have. We have seen so much and even though it was London and places I knew in London what should have shocked more just depressed. I was waiting to hear the death toll and it was bad, really awful and obviously it was going to grow.

I felt a soft, little hand creep into mine and came back to consciousness to find Kadijah staring into my face with a look of such concern from a eight year old that I still cry when I remember it to this day. Then I realised that everyone was staring at me, and more than that, everybody was crying. That huge, wonderful face of Emad was covered with tears and he was wiping them away with his wrists but his body was almost convulsed with the sobs that were wracking him. His daughters were all around him now and they were just as bad, Amera was huddled in her chair. Even the two boys were holding onto each other for comfort.

‘Hey, hey, what is this?’ I asked truly concerned. ‘What’s the matter? It’s just another bombing campaign.’

‘It’s by Arabs Dr Nick,’ said Hidari quietly.

‘Probably. It’s hardly a surprise is it?’

‘But don’t you see, Dr Nick?’ said Emad, wiping his nose on his sleeve, ‘the whole world will think we are all like that!’

Do you?

Extract from: Going Crackers in Kuwait by Nicholas Walker http://a-fwd.to/6itB0lE

For a full list of all Nick’s books click on: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nicholas-Walker/e/B00PI0XDAG/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

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shortfatuglyman-blog · 7 years ago

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Do #Suicide #Bombers Cry?

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shortfatuglyman-blog · 7 years ago

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Honour Killings in The Middle East

‘Well, what happens Sir,’ said Noor, arranging her hijab in that elegant automatic manner Muslim women have, ‘is that the girl’s father takes her into the desert where he pours petrol over her and sets her alight.’

‘He does what?’ I demanded horrified.

‘He sets her alight, then he buries her body in an unmarked grave.’ Noor supplied the information in her usual friendly manner, always eager to please.

‘He burns his own daughter alive?’ I said incredulously.

‘Well, yes Sir,’ Sarah added helpfully, ‘he has to, you see, it’s the only way to restore the honour of her family.’

I gazed around at my year twelve class of Muslim girls wondering if their wonderful sense of humour was leading them astray. These were the girls I adored after only six months of teaching them, they were the most loving, caring, mischievous and funny pupils I had ever taught in twenty years and to hear these words spoken so casually was simply sickening.

‘You don’t understand, Sir,’ this time it was from Taiba, the most loving of them all, ‘if the girl commits adultery then she has taken the honour of the whole family…it will ruin them. The father won’t be able to work, the mother won’t be able to meet with her friends, the brothers will never find a good job or a wife or anything. They have to restore the honour.’

‘And the only way to do that is to burn her,’ added Noor. ‘Well, that is in Kuwait, in Saudi they stone her to death.’

‘You’re kidding me on this?’ I still couldn’t get it down.

‘No Sir,’ said Noor, ‘nowadays they dump a load of stones from a lorry onto her…but here, it’s still burning.’

‘Sometimes the brothers do it,’ said Sarah, ‘but it’s usually the father, it’s his job.’

‘Well, what happens to him afterwards?’ I demanded.

‘On the way home he reports to the police,’ said Noor. She shrugged, ‘ he has to stay in jail for a few years.’ She looked around at the others for confirmation, ‘I think it’s about five.’

I let the silence grow between us as I tried to digest all this. The girls were so relaxed about the whole thing which had come up by accident in my Physics class, even now they were totally relaxed, all collapsed over the desks in that Arab way, like a bundle of newly born kittens.

‘And you think this is right?’ I managed after a struggle.

‘Of course, Sir,’ said Noor, and the others all murmured their agreement. ‘She has done wrong and she has to be punished. The honour of a Muslim family is based on the behavior of the women…we all know this and how we must behave. If a woman disobeys the Muslim law then she should be punished.’ She gave me her sweet smile as though she was trying to persuade me to let them off early again.

And the trouble is that adultery is rife in the Middle East. The men are forgiven, it is almost expected of them and everybody accepts it as normal as long as it is with a foreigner: an Indian or a Filipino, or a Westerner. For a poor man he is unlikely to have sex with a woman before his late thirties when he can afford a wife. If he comes from a rich family then he can employ the services of one of the thousands of prostitutes working in the Middle East from Russia, Bosnia, the Philippines and others. When he does marry he can marry up to three women, but only the very rich do this for the Koran rules that every single thing he buys one wife he must also buy the others.

I had learned a lot since coming to teach in The Middle East, the power women have over nearly every aspect of family and social life, and now I had to learn about adultery and was it the women again who were condemning their own sex to a horrific death for breaking the Muslim laws?

The same afternoon I had the boys from year twelve. They confirmed what the girls had told me but didn’t seem to care that much.

‘Well, it’s traditional, Sir,’ said Hamid. ‘It’s all to do with regaining the honour of the family.’

‘And you think it’s acceptable in today’s world to murder a girl or a woman because she gets seduced by some man?’ I demanded.

‘It’s not murder,’ said Abdullah. ‘She has broken the Muslim law and she has to be punished.’

‘Punished!’ I gave a snort of derision. ‘Listen, are you saying you could do that to one of your sisters…or daughters when you have them?’

‘Of course we couldn’t,’ said Hamid and the boys all looked around at each other in surprise. There was an uncomfortable silence, then Hurati spoke, he of the great presence and authority.

‘Dr Nick,’ he said slowly, ‘you do realize that this is never done?’

‘Never done? What do you mean?’

‘Well, no one ever actually does it,’ he said. ‘I mean, she would probably get a good whipping from her father or her husband, but they would never burn her!’

‘But the girls said…’

‘Oh, the girls,’ said Hurati, ‘they just like talking about stuff like that. No one ever does it in real life, not nowadays…it’s just what you’re supposed to do.’

‘You see, Sir, they might have done it centuries ago,’ said Hamid, ‘though I don’t suppose it happened much then either, but today, never in a million years.’

‘So you’re saying it never happens anywhere in the Middle East?’ I demanded.

‘There might be a maniac or two,’ explained Hamid, ‘but I’ve never heard of it happening.’

There was another slightly embarrassed silence before Hurati once again broke it:

‘Dr Nick,’ he said, ‘you have two daughters, yes?’

‘Yes, and a son.’

‘Well, Dr Nick, could you take one of your daughters into the desert, pour petrol over her and set her on fire?’

‘Of course I couldn’t!’ I said, aghast at the idea.

‘Well, what makes you think Arabs are any different from you?’ said Hurati. He paused then added in chastisement, ‘We love our daughters too, Dr Nick.’

I thought for a moment and felt a huge sense of shame. I nodded around the room.

‘Of course you do,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Ah, Dr Nick,’ said Hurati with his slow smile, ‘I’ve told you before, you have a long way to go before you understand the Arab.’

For more writings by Nicholas Walker click on the link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nicholas-Walker/e/B00PI0XDAG/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

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