The Wet and the Dry by Lawrence Osborne Read Free Book Online Page A

to know what new cocktail trends are making waves in the Arab world. You know, cool bartenders, exciting new trends—ah—new formulas for the Arab Revolution, and that sort of thing. Like, where are the kids going for their sundowners after they’ve been protesting all day?”
    “Liz, I have to go. There’s a large lizard in my bath.”
    “Jen. It’s Jen.”
    “I’ll file tonight, Jen. Thanks for getting me on the executive floor, by the way.”
    “Oh, no problem.”
    The irritation in the distant voice could hardly control itself.
    “So what did you drink?” she asked testily.
    “A thing called the Arabian Night.”
    “Cool. Was it a girl drink? Was it postgender?”
    “It was vermouth, Worcestershire sauce, vodka, sugar, crab-apple juice, lime, Angostura bitters, seltzer water, lemonade, champagne, a twist of grapefruit, and Coke.”
    “Oh.”
    “I drank it with the sundown. It made me violent.”
    “Did you go to a protest?”
    I went downstairs at noon and sat in the buffet restaurant on the ground floor, which is quite an Abu Dhabi social scene. It is one of those buffets learned from the great hotels of the East. Multiethnic, sophisticated, generous in scope and quality. A manifestation of the new middle-class culture that girdles the world and that enjoys its lunches with little reference to any specific Western origin. The women were veiled but wore mall jewelry of the highest order. Their hands were heavily tattooed in the desert way, but the shoes were Forzieri. The men sat together in groups outside, their children darting among them, in an ambience of wealth and relaxation. A self-conscious participation in modern family hedonism.
    The cuisines of the buffet were Gulf Arab, Lebanese, Japanese, Egyptian, Italian, and Indian, with a few dabs of English—baked beans and link sausages and squares of fat-drenched toast. There were counters of tropical fruits; juice bars that liquefied kiwis and mangoes on the spot. Dessert isles with dozens of handmade mousse fondants and îles flottantes and strawberry kulfi . One could discreetly order a glass of wine, but as one did so, there would be a subtle inspection by the server, an instantaneous assessment of one’s background religion.
    If you were Muslim, you would be declined, I imagine. If you were Jewish, you would be thrown out, and if you wereChristian, you would be allowed a drink. I am not saying this is the hotel’s policy, of course. Tall green cocktails indeed made the rounds, but what was in them? In any case, I ordered a Diet Coke to mix up my gourmet fuul and behind my sunglasses tried to eat and Coke my way out of the lingering brain fog, as I call my hangovers. The mists within began to part. I got up, finally, and walked through the glass doors out into the suffocating sunshine, my balance only slightly akilter, my ears ringing. I walked past the pool, where the chubby white girls lay sweating in oil like things slowly simmering in pan fat.
    There were two breakwaters of piled stones and an artificial beach between them, and across the water the cranes shone in a pall of dust. I stood on a breakwater and watched the Coast Guard launches trawl by. The day was already way past ninety degrees, and the sky was beginning to haze. All the controlled, anal emptiness of Abu Dhabi was concentrated in this single view dominated by the world’s biggest mosque. I had suddenly forgotten, in some sense, who I was as I waved to the Coast Guard, and why I was. I should have remembered, but someone remembered for me, because as I dropped onto the beach and walked along it, a man from the deck chairs rose, dusted himself down, and came toward me. He raised his hand, called “John!” in an English voice, and came down onto the sand. He was, oddly, dressed for a business meeting, though he had been sunning himself by the pool with a jungle hat. I stopped. He came plodding down, saying “Oi, John!”
    He was unknown, but he seemed to know me. In that