HAVE you ever had a sensory stimulus that triggered a flow of visual memories, as if someone with a remote control had clicked the Play button in your head and glowing images appeared in full HDTV format? It could be any kind of stimulus: something you see, hear, smell, or even taste, like the narrator in Proust's “Remembrance of Things Past” for whom the taste of a ‘madeleine' and a sip of lime flower tea unleashed enough memories for seven long volumes of prose. It happened to me the other day in the supermarket in Jeddah – not seven volumes worth but vivid enough to stop me in my tracks. I was pushing my shopping cart to the check-out counter when I was blown aside by the tailwind of a gentleman and his wife rushing past, each with a giant trolley filled to Himalayan heights. As you know, these hypermarkets (as they are now called) sell everything under the sun, and this industrious couple had left no stone unturned in gathering at least two of everything. Their trolleys were veritable Noah's Arks of merchandise, and despite the fact that it has not rained in Jeddah for a very long time, I began to look at the paltry collection in my own trolley and wonder if I should be buying something else. And that was when my memory Play button was pressed, and I was instantly transported back to the days in January, 1991 just before the start of Operation Desert Storm in the First Gulf War. In those days, the supermarkets in Jeddah were merely “super”, not yet “hyper,” but their shelves were always full of everything we needed, and in our ignorance of what the future held, we thought them to be very large indeed. People who remember those days (which demographic figures tell us would be much less than half the Saudi population) know that they were uncertain times. Rumors, like hawks or falcons, swooped down upon the city's inhabitants who scattered in panic like a flock of shrieking crows or frightened doves. The rumors like viruses mutated, and men and women who developed immunity to one version were often struck down by its newly mutated incarnation just when their resistance was low. For those who know little of that time, suffice it to say that there was a deadline (January 16, 1991) by which certain conditions had to be met or the fighting would begin. There is of course nothing like a deadline to focus people's attention. There were many in Jeddah who believed that the city would be bombed, electricity would be cut, and food would be hard to find. If you were of this persuasion, it meant turning your home into a virtual fallout shelter where you could survive for months on end to finally emerge to a brave new world when the war was all over. Masking tape disappeared from the shelves in an instant, and no doubt there was probably a thriving black market in the stuff and even today some young men are probably driving around town in fancy cars bought with their father's profits in the great Masking Tape Bubble of 1991. The tape was applied to all of the windows of a house to prevent injury from shattered glass. Flashlights, flashlight batteries, matches, candles (anything that could provide light in the dark) were also hot items. Tailors did a brisk business in sewing up blackout curtains, and people had trucks deliver enough bottled water to see them through several months of drought. And then there was the question of gas masks. To buy or not to buy that was the question. There were those strongly for and against on this issue and others who swung back and forth like so many indecisive Hamlets. Finally, there was food, and that was when the sight of today's couple with their shopping carts overfilled with goods took me back to that earlier era. In those days, I was firmly in the camp of those who said life would go on as usual, nothing need change. But then two days before the deadline, I began to think that perhaps I should at least buy a flashlight and a couple of extra cans of tuna could always be used. So off I went to one of Jeddah's largest supermarkets. I have to admit that my confidence was a bit shaken as soon as I entered, for as far as the eye could see, there were huge gaping empty spaces along the shelves. It was as if the Shelf Stockers Union has called a general strike. Some bars of soap could be found, along with some cleaning liquids, and the fresh fruit and vegetables of that day were relatively undisturbed. But as for canned goods – tuna, mackerel, and especially corned beef – they were long gone and only a distant memory. One member of staff told me that they were simply out of stock everywhere in Jeddah, no doubt awaiting the arrival of the next convoy of corned beef supply ships to sail down the Red Sea. And, of course, as you know, the war came and went and Jeddah was never disturbed. Some people did barricade themselves and their families indoors behind taped windows, but after several days had gone by, they sheepishly emerged. And when your memory is triggered and you think back on it, you have to wonder: Who ended up eating all of that corned beef? Really, you have to laugh. __
