Wandering Thoughts: November 2007

the peace

the melbourne alley trip

Australia, lake eildon

Hungary, budapest

On the difference between Saudi & Aussie flies

by Michael Quin

Melbourne’s Saudi community, or at least the few I know, have an issue. They told me so. Perhaps if I call it an‘integration issue’, as it could well be called, you will read on.

It’s the flies, you see. I’d always imagined Saudi Arabia to be a hot, dry and dusty flyblown kingdom. I thought Saudi Arabia was like how Australia is in the middle of summer. I fancied that this searing sun, this burning of the skin, this rape by gangs of flies, was something we shared with Laurence of Arabia himself. Apparently I was deluded.

Saudi flies, the Saudis explain, are simply different from Aussie flies. For starters, Saudi flies don’t really like people. The fetish Aussie flies have for human eyes, noses, ears, and corners of mouths leaves Saudis feeling violated. They are at a loss to explain these intimate insectual relationships they find themselves in each day. With desperation in their eyes they ask me, ‘But why are your flies like this?!’

Saudi flies are much more man-shy, preferring the simpler companionship of rubbish heaps. What in Saudi Arabia only licks trash, in Australia will lick your face. You can imagine their horror.

Moreover, they exclaim, the flies here have real balls of steel. Cowardly Saudi flies are set flying in panic by the slightest twitch of an eye, so they claim. I have witnessed displays of this slight twitch of the eye from more than one Saudi eager to explain the point, and the movement was indeed slight, almost imperceptibly so. It was far from the waving, blowing, and slapping we learn to do without knowing. I’ve noticed an Australian will even do this while explaining how flies don’t bother them. The Saudis are no doubt confused.

To their grievances the Saudis add more. Next it’s the sheer number of Aussie flies unsettling them. Wildly inaccurate numbers are thrown about in such conversations. These numbers are often multiples of flies that have just been counted on backs. They are learning quickly, these Saudis are, that black or white shirts are to flies like red is to bulls. They count them on each other like sightings of dangerous animals. They talk about the numbers. In these numbers they see persistence, even invincibility, in a ‘resistance is futile’ kind of way.

At home they see one over there, another over there. But never here and never en masse!

I’ve heard the sun being blamed for whipping the flies into frenzies, and driving them on like some relentless charioteer. I remind them our sun is the same as their sun. They reply that it is hotter here, and meaner.

In the face of all of this, the rest of integration seems easy. Slang is learnt, so is surfing and to avoid King Street. Friendships are made and mutual respects developed. ‘But those bloody flies,” they say, “are just different!”

Labels: saudi students