As regular readers of this Web log know, Gretchen and I make special preparations for visits from my client “Ahmed.” These involve scheduling him as the last consultation on a Friday, preferably before a long weekend such as this one, which includes Labor Day on Monday, installing new filters in the office air purification system, and making sure there are sufficient supplies of high thickness, low gas exchange oversized sealable plastic bags, impermeable polymer gloves, and activated carbon canisters for the gas mask Gretchen bought with her own money, all of which she needs in order to dispose of the filters on Tuesday morning, and to subsequently replace them with fresh ones before the first client takes their seat in the reception room. An hour prior to “Ahmed’s” arrival, Gretchen covers all the furniture with clear plastic, every scrap of which later is taken off and likewise disposed of in oversized sealable plastic bags. Meanwhile, I prepare myself for the ordeal by eating a limburger cheese sandwich with shallots and onions on garlic bread made with yak butter.
As might be expected, despite the fact that my consulting practice is located in an energy conscious office building in downtown Washington, DC, I make sure the HVAC system is set to run on high circulation for the entire three day weekend. Believe me, all these measures are beyond being simply necessary. Yes, I know that in the previous post my friend from Lebanon described, with graphic, nauseating detail, what Beirut smells like these days, and it’s certainly not my intent to ruin anyone’s breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea or afternoon snack here, but in the interest of Truth, I must confess that although I have not, in fact, been to Lebanon and experienced its current pinnacle of stink, there is not the least scintilla of doubt in my mind that it pales in comparison to “Ahmed’s” regular body odor, to which Gretchen and I have been subjected for what now amounts to a significant number of years. It is, Dear Reader, a true apotheosis of olfactory insult. A sniff of this gentleman’s aroma would not simply knock a buzzard off a Turkish latrine wagon; no, it would not merely render comatose a maggot squirming amid the festering entrails of a rotting Tennessee skunk; nor would it just paralyze a worm feasting on the pustulant, bloated, blackened and cadaverine redolent corpse, hypothetically speaking, of a Vladimir Putin or perhaps an Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; no – it would, I dare say, even make the most absurdly insensitive, least empathetic and esthetically impaired human being possibly imaginable – Dick Cheney, for instance, want to puke their pathetic guts out.
So, was I ready for this unusually fragrant visitor? Yes, indeed, I was. On Thursday, I had quoted him six times my usual rate for the consultation. He acquiesced to it without the least hesitation, and the money was wired to my business bank account less than ten minutes later. Now, everything was in place and there was nothing for me to do but wait.
Per her usual adamant demands, Gretchen left thirty minutes prior to “Ahmed’s” appointment time. Not that she needed to worry about that, since he’s invariably at least forty-five minutes late. So I had plenty of time after finishing that limburger sandwich to smear pathologist’s camphor under my nostrils and breath deeply prior to his arrival.
“My dear friend Tom,” he exclaimed, snatching me up from behind my desk and giving me an eye-watering hug and kiss, “how good it is to see you again!”
“The feeling,” I lied, gesturing toward the couch in front of the picture window overlooking the White House, “is mutual.”
He immediately sprawled on the couch and began digging in to an assortment of baklawa, ballourie and burma I had ordered earlier, strategically placed next to a large carafe of hot Arabian coffee and a silver cup on the low table in front. “Oh, my good friend Tom,” he chortled, “you are seeing inside Ahmed’s mind exactly, and Ahmed is thanking you so much!”
“You are likewise welcome,” I prevaricated.
“These are so tasty!” he said, stuffing pieces of baklawa, ballourie and burma simultaneously into his mouth and then attempting to speak to me while chewing them, tiny flakes of crisp dough flying out of his mouth in a billowing, golden cloud. “Please, you must send to me the shops here in Washington where you got them.”
“Certainly,” I responded in a tone dripping with irony which I had no fear of being comprehended, “they will be absolutely thrilled to receive a visit from you.”
“And it will be Ahmed’s pleasure to thrill them!” he confidently stated as he swilled down an entire tiny cup of Arabian coffee and wiped his lips on the sleeve of his trademark lilac burnoose.
“And how,” I inquired, “may I be of service today?”
“Ah, my good friend Tom,” he began, “as you know, Ahmed has for many years, inshallah, been of service to the people of Iraq, and thanks to your advice, Ahmed and his friends have made much money doing that. But now, Ahmed has received an offer for even more money from some new friends.”
“And who,” I asked, “might these new friends be?”
“Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates,” he proudly proclaimed. “In each one, Ahmed is welcomed and praised! Ahmed’s deeds – the many arms deals, the oil arrangements, the sales of the coalition military vehicles, supplies and medicines, the many female slaves captured by ISIS and sold to buyers in the Gulf, the great laundering of the money taken from the Americans, and all of the other things Ahmed has done for the benefit of his many, many friends in Iraq, all this is welcomed and praised!”
“Congratulations on your continuing accomplishments,” I dryly responded. “Now, as to your new friends in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, upon which issues do they require… expert advice this evening?”
“Syrians,” he replied, in an off-handed manner, as if discussing the price of pistachios. “And some from Iraq, Libya and even Afghanistan, too, but mostly Syrians. Much of a… how you say… nuisance… yes, that is the word… for Ahmed and his new friends in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the… U… A… E… is that right?”
“Correct,” I confirmed. “Here in Washington, we call the United Arab Emirates the ‘UAE.’ You might like to note they also call it that at the United Nations in New York, where, I suspect, you will soon be visiting.”
“My good friend Tom,” he chuckled, “Ahmed must agree, since you have been right so many times before. It is amazing, it is not, just to think how, Ahmed started out with his small friendly nightclub in Baghdad, paying baksheesh to Saddam Hussein, making dates for his officers with the girls upstairs, spinning the roulette wheel, running the dice tables, taking the sports bets, pouring the Scotch whiskey and the London gin and the Kentucky bourbon and cutting the lines of Peruvian flake for the VIP customers, and then came the great George W. Bush and his American soldiers! And all the money Ahmed and his friends got after that made their friendly nightclubs and heroin factories and smuggling operations look like… how do you say? Look like mother [expletive] chump change?”
“Mother [expletive] chump change, indeed,” I concurred. “But what of today, with respect to your new friends in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE? Turkey has accepted nearly two million refugees already. Jordan has accommodated over six hundred thousand; Egypt over one hundred thousand. Lebanon has over one million, and even the current Iraqi government in Baghdad allowed two hundred and fifty thousand refugees into the part of it territory still under Iraqi control. And even though they are culturally, physically and politically remote from the problems in the places those refugees come from, all over the EU nations are responding. Sweden has committed to accepting thirty thousand refugees this year. Germany has announced it will accept eight hundred thousand refugees. Iceland, with a total population of just over three hundred thousand, has volunteered them shelter in twelve thousand of its citizens’ homes. Even the Pope has become involved, asking that all Catholic monasteries throughout Europe provide food and shelter for these people. But as of this morning, at least, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE haven’t accepted one single Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan or Afghan refugee. So how could your new friends have a refugee problem?”
“My good friend Tom,” he insisted, “they are not refugees!”
“Not refugees?” I sought to confirm. “If not refugees, then, what are they?”
“Migrants,” he declared. “And Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE all have plenty of migrants from Syria, as well as from many other countries!”
“Oh, yes,” I acknowledged, “your new friends have quite a few foreigners working in their countries – people from Pakistan, India, the Philippines… and Syria, of course; and no doubt many Iraqis and even some laborers or domestic servants from Afghanistan and Libya. I suppose, in that context, one could even say that the American and British engineers with the petroleum companies in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE, and the European finance and banking employees in Qatar are ‘migrant workers’ in some sense of the word. But come now, that’s not what the news media are referring to when they mention Syrian refugees. And when you speak with the diplomats at the UN, you will find that there has been a very precise definition of what a refugee is, and it is explicitly stated in the 1951 International Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. It’s a UN document which…”
“Ahmed knows about this document,” he interrupted. “And Ahmed also knows that Saudi Arabia has not signed it, and Kuwait has not signed it, and Qatar has not signed it and also the UAE, they have not signed it, either! This idea, of the ‘refugee,’ it was invented by the United States, it was invented by the British! And how many of these people from Syria who call themselves ‘refugees’ has the United States taken? Ahmed hears it is less than two thousand! You have three hundred million people here in the United States, but you take less than two thousand Syrian ‘refugees?’ That is almost nothing! And the British, they, preach, preach, preach about how civilized they are… and… how you say… what great humanitarians the British are, but they take nothing! The British take no Syrians at all, just like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE! You tell Ahmed, what is the difference?”
“Well,” I opined, “first of all, Britain is a democracy, and therefore it probably won’t be long before Prime Minister Cameron caves in to public opinion and lets at least a few thousand Syrian refugees into the United Kingdom. Secondly, we should recognize that the British haven’t been constantly pressuring the United States for years to side with the Sunni factions in Syria, as have your friends, who were the ones constantly pushing for overthrow of the al-Assad regime. But now that the strife they desired, and in many instances paid to instigate, has created four million displaced persons, they appear unwilling to own what they did.”
“Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE own many things,” he sniffed, “but Ahmed does not think they own Syria.”
“Then they have,” I concluded, “no particular sense of responsibility for all the… displaced persons created by four years of Syrian civil war?”
“Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE did not place anybody,” he shrugged, snarfing another hand full of pastries, “and they did not displace anyone, either.”
“All right then,” I probed, “it seems that your new friends do not feel the least bit responsible for the Syrian refugee situation. Moreover, they deny that there are actually any Syrian refugees and, furthermore, express great doubt as to whether, in fact, anything called a ‘refugee’ even exists.”
“You are correct, Tom my friend,” he confirmed as he greedily slurped down another tiny silver cup of coffee, again wiping his lips on the sleeve of his trademark lilac burnoose.
“In that case,” I challenged, “why are you here?”
“Because,” he explained, “Ahmed’s new friends worry that no one will understand them when they say these things.”
“Oh, no,” I disagreed, “there’s very little doubt they will be misunderstood. I, for instance, have had no difficulty comprehending their position.”
“No, no, my good friend Tom!” he objected, leaning forward over the edge of the coffee table toward me for emphasis, “Ahmed knows that the Americans, the Canadians, the Japanese, the British, the Germans, the Italians and all the others will understand the words. Ahmed and his new friends know they will understand the words very well. What my new friends worry about, Tom, is that all of them – even the French – will think bad things about Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE because of how those words sound.”
“So while your new friends are unwilling to lift a finger to help their fellow Arabs from war-torn Syria,” I sought to confirm, “they are nevertheless concerned about their… image?”
“Yes, yes,” he nodded, spewing another cloud of crisp dough flakes as he spoke. “How you say? The PR, the optics, the impact on the brand, yes?”
“You’re telling me,” I skeptically inquired, “that Saudi Arabia contributes an aerial fornication what anybody else thinks of it?”
“Ahmed does not know, exactly, what this thing that you say Saudi Arabia will not contribute,” he shot back with a puzzled look.
“You’re telling me,” I rephrased, “that, with all of the oil it has, Saudi Arabia actually cares what America, Europe and the rest of the world think about it? That the Saudis have developed enough conscience, at least, to have become concerned about… public relations, image and so forth?”
At that, “Ahmed” reared back and cut loose with a belch that rattled the rafters, followed by an expulsion of flatulence that resonated throughout the room, hitting at least ninety five decibels. “Yes, yes,” he assured me, “since they got the new King, Salman bin Abdulaziz, in January, Saudi Arabia wants very much to have good public image. This is why they contact Ahmed and ask for his help. And Ahmed thinks you have no problem believing Qatar wants good public image?”
“No,” I agreed, “with their aspirations to Western style, it makes sense Qatar would want to avoid anything that might make it seem like a place that is, despite all its pretensions to the contrary, a culturally backward, barbaric and quintessentially selfish society.”
“Exact, Jack!” he exulted, punctuating his remark by downing another cup of Arabian coffee. “Now my good friend Tom, you are getting the pointed thing! And Kuwait does what Saudi Arabia does! And the UAE, they do what Qatar does! So now, we agree that the migrant Syrians, Iraqis and the others, they make very bad optics for my new friends. Now, you tell Ahmed, what they should do, so Ahmed can tell them and please his new friends very, very much!”
“Understood,” I told him. “Okay, we know the negatives. What are the positives?”
“Ahmed’s new friends,” he bragged, “have given much, much money to help Syrian migrants in Jordan and other places, too. The UAE give five hundred and forty million dollars. Kuwait give three hundred and forty million.”
“So far, so good,” I opined. “What about Saudi Arabia?”
“Saudi Arabia,” he mumbled as he fumbled for another hand full of sweets, “they give… um… eighteen million.”
“Oh, boy,” I remarked. “Talk about [expletive] chump change. All right… and how much did Qatar kick in for… you will excuse the expression… “refugee relief?’”
“Ahmed not know that one,” he admitted. “I ask, they say they get back to me about how much.”
“Obviously,” I advised him, “we can’t mount much of a PR campaign about the Gulf states’ generosity if Saudi Arabia and Qatar are making like Ebeneezer Scrooge.”
“Who is this Scrooge person?” he asked, clearly nonplused.
“A famously tight-fisted miser,” I explained. “The issue here is, everybody knows how much money Saudi Arabia and Qatar have. By comparison, their contributions to providing support for… you’ll excuse the expression, ‘refugee’ camps…”
“These are migrant camps,” he objected. “My new friends, they call them migrant camps.”
“Well, whatever your new friends call them,” I informed him, “to the rest of the world, they are camps where people called ‘refugees’ live, even if your new friends don’t believe there is such at thing. And whatever anyone calls them, Saudi Arabia and Qatar aren’t going be able to enhance the Gulf states’ public image by announcing they have given what amounts to practically nothing. What are the chances you could talk them into contributing a reasonable amount to these… migrant camps?”
“Ah, you see, my good friend Tom,” he replied, holding up his right index finger for emphasis, “there you have hit on it. Because my new friends, they say, Ahmed will get ten percent commission on money Ahmed saves for them doing this, but also, they will deduct five percent of money they must spend. So if Ahmed says to Saudi Arabia, ‘You must match UAE and Kuwait with support money for migrant camps,’ then maybe forty million dollars get deducted from Ahmed’s fee. Not good business! So if Ahmed’s new friends cannot make big brag about helping migrant camps, because Saudi Arabia and Qatar must spend maybe four hundred million dollars each to make big brag like that, then what?”
“Given that your new friends insist on a solution which benefits them economically, and they have arranged it so you get ten percent of the resulting profits in order to give you an incentive,” I told him, “it’s pretty much straightforward. First, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE must collude among themselves to ensure that the price of petroleum goes no higher than it is now – which is to say, about forty-five dollars a barrel.”
“No higher?” he fretted, his eyebrows rising even as he stuffed another fist full of Arab pastries into his enormously fat face.
“But,” I countered, “no lower, either. If you wish, I will provide you with an econometric model which proves that, since petroleum sales are denominated in US dollars, and lower oil prices would have an adverse effect on critical United States macroeconomic parameters, continued prices at current levels will, in fact, produce considerable profits, calculated as present value, for all the Gulf states. Of which, of course, you should be due a ten percent commission.”
“And you can also provide Ahmed with an… explanation of this model, written in English, which he could show to his new friends?”
“I’ll do better than that,” I promised. “I’ll not only provide complete documentation of the model, I’ll provide you with a version of the model itself, complete with source code and some eye-popping graphics.”
“Yes, yes,” he enthused, “Ahmed would like that very, very much. Does my good friend Tom have any other… suggestions?”
“Sure,” I pressed on. “The UAE should revive the Trump Hotel and Tower in Dubai, and Qatar should fund it. Offer his organization the best terms possible. If they would like, I can consult on the deal for a flat fee to be negotiated thirty days prior to closure. Involving Trump’s organization in a deal like that while he’s basking in the stolen PR limelight of the Republican presidential race should improve the image of the Gulf states by at least thirty-five percentage points.”
“I see, I see,” he chortled, “and Ahmed gets ten percent of the profits from the hotel deal. But what about Kuwait?”
“Open negotiations with Universal, Disney and Paramount for a theme park,” I suggested. “Make sure you’re the middle man and get some serious money up front in the form of finder’s fees in case the deal falls through, but meanwhile, work with the Kuwaiti government to leak the story to the press. The worst that could happen is a lot of positive coverage that will distract the public from the… ah… migrant problem, and if it goes through, in addition to your finder’s fees, you’ll get another ten percent cut of the profits.”
At that, my client gobbled up the last bits of Arab pastries, gulped down the last tiny silver cup of Arabian coffee, leap up from the couch and gave me another barely bearable bear hug, at which I nearly retched, as the pathologist’s camphor was beginning to wear off. “Oh, my good friend Tom,” he exclaimed, “what would Ahmed do without you! You send model, you send computer program, you send memory sticks, you send business proposals for hotel and theme park to Ahmed soon, yes?”
“By COB Tuesday,” I assured him as he let go.
“Okay, goodbye, then, my good friend Tom,” he burbled, beside himself with joy as he rushed out in a cloud of stinking excitement. “You send invoice, whatever you bill, Ahmed pay up with a smile!”
I’m sure he will.