In 'these places' (= such expat. haunts as KSA, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, etc.) there are as many sorts of drinkers, 'habitual', 'heavy', 'binge', 'social', etc. as you would find examples most anywhere or anywhen. But, the 'archetype', the 'Ur-alchoholic' that gravitates to these places to regulate his drinking, to bring it under control, ends by doing it more in a very focused, very 'high relief' manner as in painting, the background history of the drinker becomes unfocused, at least to the sympathetic observer who meets this person without really knowing him but as in a tranche de vie, his drinking coming into high relief due to one's ignorance of his personal history (I have yet to encounter a woman in this category, though I may suspect one of my female colleagues), the sympathetic observer becoming sometimes the secret sharer of his sickness, watching him clinically and partaking in his drinking at the same time as in participatory anthropology. I have known a few in my years in the Middle East. There was the handsome, greying Bostonian of thin brown cigarettes, JS, who I did not know very well, but witnessed the rapid change come over him once after a few beers, at least in the beet redness of his face and the increased acerbity of his usual pointedly ironic, almost bitter, remarks. This was at the end of the academic year, and so he lost his usual composure and dapper dress, but managed to get through the following day. That was just a fore-taste of 'to come'. And there was AP, probably the most unusual and interesting case because there were added prankster and pervert faces to his usual, calm, business-like exterior and comportment at work, every hair in place. Some other time, perhaps, will I describe AP.

I suspected H and expressed my concern to G today after the latter knocked on my door to ask if he could borrow a book, if I had one, on the American Transcendentalists. We had both recently drunk with H. I agreed with his cogent remark that one did not have a hangover in the usual sense of the word in these places, whether it was the heat or not we didn't go into. But I had noticed on a number of former occasions that if I had a hangover at all, it was rather delayed till the day plus one after. If you are an occasional drinker, as I am, there usually is a marked transitional period back to sobriety that you can gauge as a parasitologist would take slices of tissue cultures to find evidence of parasites and thus arrange and look back on previous states of gradual inebriation followed by a gradually increasing feeling of well being as one increased his intake of water. I think the bio-physiology of this process would be an interesting study comparing the body's state of inebriation in a desert climate to one's body in a temperate climate. I think it has a lot to do with hydration and dehydration, the Prophet Mohammed being very astute in banning the drinking of alcohol in these places. It's just not healthy. The whole evening and long protracted night of drinking last night illustrated H's self-contradiction, that whitmanic saw, his major theme of talk last night being his spiritual well-being or lack thereof and no mention of his unusual drinking habits. I told G that I was concerned because of H's remark last night that he had got up to have wine and bread for breakfast that morning. Later I finished off another bottle of wine with him. It doesn't seem like much, two bottles of red wine, but, as I said, the weather here is hot and we are approaching the most inferno-like months of the year when it gets up in the 40s, or the 100s. (Fortunately, a/c environments give one respite from the infernal waves that swathe you in the heat radiating from the macadam and pavements, sparing you from the Gehenna that it is by simply beckoning from the indoors, though one time I was not spared a Pakistani taxi driver's harangue once about chosing between Islam or Gehenna--I didn't have to understand him word for word, proselytizing having the same universality despite the language barrier--his old taxi's a/c not churning out much cool air). Perhaps, H, it has just occurred to me, drinks in a regimented way such that he constantly puts off the inevitable hangover, remaining in an insomniac state, as he said he is usually in, much as it was said to me once that aliens are creatures who never sleep, H wanting to attain a kind of ascesis that is otherwordly. I'm a bit concerned about myself frankly. I stood at the door talking to G and I couldn't keep my gaze from falling away from his eyes and back to his intense stare of concern. (I just went into the kitchen to gulp a glass of water from the dispenser.) We decided that we should be concerned about H but that we could not exactly reprimand him, slap him on the hand like a child. That's the thing about being in these places, the utter impersonal nature of living with people who really you've only just met despite having worked with them for, say, a year, or often more, and the artificial almost stilted social engagements one makes with others, a really great workplace conviviality, on the one hand, unless you engage in politics and gossip at work (whose possible nefarious repercussions are neutralized by the transient nature of expat life, you may not see a person the next year), and on the other, more than ample opportunity for socializing after work at health clubs and bars and house parties where you can observe colleagues get stumble-bum drunk, and next day greet them with more than civilness, a wry grin breaking out in the memory of having witnessed what the other may not have remembered at all. So I felt a little twinge of offense at G's cavalier attitude despite his facade of concern for H. Why not reprimand him, isn't that what a genuine friend is for, I thought? G broke into a feigned paroxysm of laughter, his shoulders, in that way he has, starting to jerk up and down, and then he just as quickly contained himself, after his remark concerning H's dire condition as illustrative of an interesting person to indulge who unfortunately has a drinking problem, when my gaze fell from his eyes. Don't characters in these places make life interesting? Oh, yes, indeed, I thought. Brits have a tendency to take their feigned humanity too far. Perhaps I'm being maudlin? Before G dashed up the stairs back to his flat and wife and kids, he decided and I feebly followed suit, that it would be only encouraging H to drink if we did give him the attention he needs. He added his usual litany of books he was reading that I was always interested in hearing, this time including Emily Dickinson and Thoreau and I made a half-cocked invitation to watch a DVD about Afghanistan called Kandahar. A suggestion? he hastily said before I could respond, my usual nonplussed state in making invitations with G usually being thwarted with a dose of my own medicine coming back from him with something between an asseveration or a preverication of "we ought to..." that never bears fruit. (G will never understand that Midwestern concept of 'standing invitation', one that my father never took up from one of his brother-in-law's for decade after decade in my father's dreary exile from his in-laws, all nine of them and their respective families.) He quickly dashed up the stairs as if Tom Sawyer was called by his aunt Pollie away from that bad Huck, me. He was off the hook again from me.

Vinegary. That was the word G had just used to describe H's wine, but, perhaps, a code word for H's spiritual state or condition, one of the nafs or his soul? It was G's feeble attempt to censure H about his drinking. His wine was not particularly vinegary, you can get all sorts of wine here, and both bottles were okay in my estimation. G was expressing in his way his concern about H's 'physical health', that maybe beer was better because it packed a wallop that you could feel in a genuine hangover the next day. (But H a few weeks ago did not take G up on this suggestion as H intimated to me.) I must admit he's right. Perhaps winos exist as entities rather than 'beeries' because winos never get that punch of a hangover and so can exist more comfortably outdoors where they are seen as harmless philosophers at most, beeries hanging out in bars (unless you're a Navajo who has to more often than not stay outdoors and drink beer on the street) and getting violent, winos gaining for themselves a prominence indicated by a special Romantic sounding word.

So I went to H's flat located in Kuwaitat Bangladesh, the name designated by taxi drivers as the place where most of the Bangladeshi occupants of Al Ain live. It's near the center of town. It was impeccable, a clean well-lighted place. H was obviously of the old school, 'bare-boning it' as my dear friend John used to refer to those expats who saved every dime, going to the extent, for example, of hanging their clothes in a cardboard box with a hole on each side to put the pole through to hang the clothes with those thin, grey metal hangars obtained from one of the numerous Pakistani laundery shops. H prides himself in his Indian ancestory, which his father didn't like to admit, and did not like it when the Egyptian harris of the building where his flat is located referred to him as 'Afriqi' when I looked for his flat the very first time I visited H. This was my second or third visit in the three years I've been in Al Ain. H told me to use the middle switch for the light in the bathroom where I discovered the bottles of wine 'cooling' in the bathtub, he doesn't have a refrigerator. The toilet had an ample supply of comet cleanser adhering to the porcelain bowl. I suggested to him in the future to put the bottles in the water tank of the toilet, and he thought it a good idea for the next time.

Both nights have blurred together in my mind because on both occasions we listened to music and drank wine though the first night was punctuated by the meal at the Thai restaurant after the drinking and the second before the drinking session. Both times we chatted with Ali, a university professor, who we met at the restaurant though the second time there was some tension in the air when H attacked religion, especially the Catholic Church, and eating meat as cannibalism. This was the first time that I heard a note of aggression in H who is normally a very happy-go-lucky, congenial, civil person. Was he conforming to that type of drinker who gets aggressive and insulting when they got drunk? But, he had only had one bottle of wine that morning with bread and he had taken a short nap. I had come just from church where I had distibuted Holy Communion. H ate what looked like small elbow macaroni with a dark green leafy vegetable sauce that looked like spinach. The first night he had eaten pasta with a large quantity of crushed garlic with olive oil, his method of combatting high blood pressure. His theme was that we could all do without religion and the political scene would be better off without it since religion was at the root of all the problems in the world. He attacked the Muslims, too. I knew what was coming, a complacent religious person like me not wanting to get into arguing with someone who has more faith and ardor than I do in my own Catholicism. He mentioned the Pope who had blessed the Italian bombs that bombed Ethiopia as an example of man's inhumanity to man. At one point Ali was obviously nervous because he rolled up the place mat after he had finished his meal of shrimp in coconut sauce, that action commonly observed in animals who ritually paw or scratch at the ground to signal a veiled threat of attack or violence at their more aggressive opponent. He remained a cool, detached cookie, Ali did.

Ali got a call on his mobile and as it was a long one we left him at the restaurant and proceeded to H's flat for the drinking sesson. He regaled me with music again, Dinah Washington, James Ingram, Bob Marley, Diane Krau, Sam Cooke. The evening drew on and became night and he finally confided in me about his spiritual quest that he had been on for many years, puntuated by periods of drinking and women. I will not repeat it all because it was confidential, but I ended up with the impression that he was a troubled and sick man desperately in need of help. I have to admit that I am not impressed by persons who seek out gurus and the meaning of life in different systems, usually of an Eastern or Hindu nature. That smacks of charlatanism. How could I tell him, a man of his age that his life was really in a shambles despite the appearances? I don't really know him and he might get indignant, though I am not that much younger than he is and therefore not some sort of young whipper-snapper who thinks he knows it all. So I finished my glass of wine and told him I had to go and he walked me to my car and as I drove past him by the dumpster where he had emptied his garbage he cheerfully bade me goodnight.