When Religion was Meaningless

Posted on December 29, 2025 by khobar95

I found a letter of mine stuck in with photos I’ve been scanning. I obviously “borrowed” Mom’s typewriter for this, but judging from the folds, the letter was never sent. Still, it is another “long lost” piece of history. I’m not sure if “down to visit you” means down from Alaska, but it probably does. Oddly, though, opening with “How are you? I am fine” is how I learned to begin my letters from boarding school, so I’m not sure when this was written other than a long time ago.

Mark was a dear friend in Bethesda, where we first settled in 1967 after being forced out of Libya in the violent wake of the Arab/Israeli war. Though Libya wasn’t directly involved, the Arabs went on a rampage, targeting the Jewish community and any “infidel” they came upon. Dad was out of the country at the time, so Mom had to deal with having no power, little food and few supplies alone as our once friendly and helpful neighbors now cursed us for being alive. Fortunately, Mom was resolute and Dad creative, and we were able to eventually escape, first to Malta, then Ireland, and eventually America.

I met Mark when his mom found me wandering around our neighborhood with a plastic bag over my head (which probably explains a lot – the plastic bag bit I mean). Amazingly, I knew where I lived, and she returned me to Mom. They became friends (a good thing, too, as Mom was a bit lost at first in this new country), and so Mark and I became friends, too.

Mom probably did get “the” job, but I did not return to Bethesda to visit my friend. Instead, the extra money was saved as Dad’s job in Alaska was ending with the company shutting down. Being proactive, Dad contacted a friend from the old Libya days who said he should come to Saudi Arabia. And that is how we ended up there in 1978.

I did get to see Mark once more, in August 1979 when we returned to the US for my grade equivalency assessment to satisfy some company bean pusher who thought I could have gone to school in Saudi for a year and thus deducted all school fees and travel costs from Dad’s paycheck. There’s a lot more to it, but suffice to say Dad won, and I went back to Northern Ireland to find that a friend had been blown up in the Mountbatten “assassination” just days before. That is another story.

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First Public Reading from The Troubles

Posted on December 21, 2025 by khobar95

In recent months, I’ve been finalizing my memoir The Troubles (subtitle to be added later), sending it out to various beta readers who have been enormously helpful in catching all kinds of stuff that slipped through. The intention was to prepare the manuscript for professional editing. If I can make the editor’s job easier, they’ll be able to better focus on what matters rather than simple stuff like grammar or punctuation. Editing costs money, and I want to make sure I get my money’s worth.

Back in October, I found out our local library put on a “Writer in Residence” program featuring author Marc Mason. There were sparse details, but I thought, what the hell, and signed up. I thought I would show him some of my work and get his take on things, maybe get some advice. If nothing else, it would force me out of my shell. And it did!

We talked about my book, and in the end, Marc asked if I would come back and read a sample in front of an audience. I agreed.

Yesterday, I read an excerpt from The Troubles about my first trip to Saudi Arabia. I was nervous and forgot to put my introduction sheet on top, which would have given some context. Like it was 1978, I was thirteen, that we had moved from Alaska to Saudi Arabia, that Roger was my older brother, and that I was in Ireland during the Troubles. I at least introduced myself as Richard Nixon and added I was not named for that Richard Nixon. Just as well, because I apparently went over time. Thankfully, I was so intent on my reading that I didn’t see Jesus in the back making the “T” sign with his hands. But I read loud and clear, got laughs at the right times, and when I finished, the audience of about twenty applauded enthusiastically. I’ve one more beta reader to go, and then the real fun begins. Barring some unforeseen disaster, I think 2026 will be a good year.

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The Day the Music Died

Posted on September 11, 2025 by khobar95

“Hello, wee son. This is Mom.” She sounded shaky, on the verge of crying. I bit my lip. “I’ve bad news, son. Roger’s been in an accident.”

“Did the oil rig explode?” My heart raced as the words came out.

Mom said no but offered no details beyond that he was in hospital in New Orleans, and she was with him. Was she holding back? No, I decided. If it were that bad, Dad would have had me booked on a flight out first thing. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Mom reassured me again that Roger would be all right. Wait and see, she said without hinting she needed or wanted me with her. The call ended with pray for him and the usual stay strong, love you, and love you, too. When I hung up, I was numb, like everything in me had short-circuited.

Toad met me outside his office and asked if everything was okay. No, it wasn’t, but I didn’t feel like explaining. He looked dour as ever, so I didn’t know what he knew. Maybe Mom had explained things, maybe not. He didn’t press for more information or offer a comforting word or understanding pat on the shoulder, and I didn’t expect it.

~The Troubles

Up to then, November 10, 1979 had been a pretty good Saturday for fifteen-year-old me. I’d bought a bottle of vodka in Enniskillen earlier and had drunk half of it in a park before returning to school in time for tea (evening meal). I was on top of the world despite being on table duty, charged with bringing food from the kitchen for the table. My nemesis kept digging me over a bet we’d made about Belfast Airport being large enough to handle Lockheed Tristars. He wouldn’t shut up, so when I came back with the bowl of pink strawberry mousse for the dessert, I plopped it upside down on his head, congratulated him, and tossed him a pound note. I was sure a prefect or master would yell at me or stop me leaving the dining hall.

After prep, my housemaster sent for me. I thought I was in for it, but Toad said I had a call from home. He was quiet, almost somber closing the door as he left.

That’s when I found out my brother had nearly died.

After leaving school, Roger had been working the North Sea oil rigs until August, 1979 when he secured similar work in Louisiana. According to his boss, he worked hard and conscientiously and was doing very well. Until that fateful night when he made a mistake that would change all of our lives.

On Saturday, November 3, 1979, my brother came off a 60-hour work week and made an improper left turn against a red light. He was pulled over by the police and subsequently booked into a local jail at approximately 11pm. At 3am, November 4, he was admitted to the intensive care unit of the local hospital in extremely critical condition.

My parents rushed from Saudi Arabia to Louisiana, arriving November 6, and found Roger dazed, confused, and unable to recall anything of the previous two weeks. He was transferred to a better equipped hospital in Houston.

During subsequent phone calls between Saudi Arabia and the United States attorneys, it came out the chief of police told my dad he would pay the hospital charges and other expenses connected with The Incident and drop the charges (possession of a single Quaalude and suspicion of DUI) if my dad signed a document absolving the City of New Iberia of all liability growing out of The Incident.

No medical tests were run at the hospital in New Iberia, either before or after The Incident in question, and the police allegations were unsubstantiated by the attending physicians.

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Boarding School or Mental Institution?

Posted on August 25, 2025 by khobar95

In 1976, my brother and I went from Anchorage, Alaska, to an Irish boarding school. We’d been to Ireland before, got on well with the local kids, and even went to school there. Coming back to Ireland didn’t seem that big a deal, especially since I’d have my big brother to protect me. Mom came over too to get us sorted and settled, and before she left that first night, she took us into town for dinner and a movie. Ironically, we saw “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Never could any of us imagine Roger ending up in The Cuckoo’s Nest a few years later.

The first time I visited him at Holywell Hospital was during a half-term break in early 1980. Mom took us up by taxi. I had no idea what to expect. After we arrived and checked in, we followed a staff member up some stairs to another level. We passed a fellow masturbating in the hallway. The orderly led us to a waiting room, left, and a short while later, returned with Roger. He looked pale, but that might have been the contrast with the dark blue down jacket he was wearing. We talked some. He didn’t know why he was there. Mom explained it was for his own good. He’d threatened to open the airplane door halfway across the Atlantic.

When the visit was over, an orderly came for Roger, but said we were welcome to see where he was sleeping. I didn’t want to, but Mom urged me to follow. We came to a locked door with security glass. Ward 10A. There might have been a second similar door we had to pass through, too. It opened onto a sort of hallway surround, with security glass on the right, beyond which were the beds and men. Offices, I presumed, lined the other side. I felt no life. Mom asked Roger if he was okay. “Do you need anything?”

Roger burst into tears. “Get me out of here. Please!”

I wanted to cry, but I put on a brave face like I was supposed to.

In the taxi, I said to Mom, “You’ve got to get him out.”

“Oh, dear son,” she said. “In time.”

I think that’s when I realized my troubles were nothing compared with what my brother was having to endure.

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Friends

Posted on August 21, 2025 by khobar95

The day after we moved from the base into a house in Anchorage, my brother Roger asked me to help with something. As the dutiful little brother who loved that his big brother included him in all sorts of fun, I was all too eager.

“Dig through the trash for soda cans,” he said. “I need five.”

I pulled out a soup can. “Will this do?”

“No.”

I eventually dug down enough for the requisite number of soda cans, shook off the coffee grounds, remnants of last night’s spaghetti, and cigarette butts, and offered up the haul with a smile.

Roger had me rinse the cans, then removed the tops and bottoms from four, and taped them together with the fifth that he’d punched three large holes in the pull-tab end and a nail hole in the other. I watched mesmerized as he took the tube out to the deck, added some lighter fluid through the nail hole, and shook the assembly vigorously. “Gotta get the fumes going,” he said. He loaded a tennis ball in the open end and tapped the cannon on the deck until the ball had slid all the way down. “Watch this.”

With the cannon propped on the railing, he touched a BiC lighter to the nail hole. Kaboom! The tennis ball flew for miles. Well, maybe not quite that far, but it was in the air seemingly forever. “Well,” he said with a devilish grin. “Go get it.”

That was the price I had to pay for a moment of excitement, and while it was well worth it, the return was far greater. While retrieving the tennis ball, I noticed some kids about my age in the cul-de-sac behind ours. “Hey!” I shouted. “Can I come and play?”

The kids looked up and beckoned me, shouting, “Sure, come on over.”

I had met my first friends in the new neighborhood.

Back as a kid, it took just a little courage, curiosity, and desire for fun to make friends. Even after boarding school, and I was a fish out of water, I made friends.

Times change. Life happens. Breakups. Children. Careers. Eventually, people are comfortable with who they know. They’ve built routine and familiarity around themselves like a wall. Oddly enough, such is supposedly one of the symptoms of what some call boarding school syndrome. Funny that it would be so common among those who’ve never been. I wonder why that is?

There aren’t many reasons I would want to go back in time, but for friends, I would.

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Alaska

Posted on August 13, 2025 by khobar95

When I first arrived in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1973, I thought I’d landed on Mars. The trees were all stunted. The city was on the ocean, but the sea was gray. There was no beach to speak of, only mud flats and bluffs. Even the hotel was unlike any other I’d stayed at. Whoever heard of a hotel without a swimming pool? Yet, the Anchorage Westward was absolutely luxurious compared with the unfurnished two-bedroom apartment on Elmendorf Air Force Base we moved into a week later. Thankfully, my brother discovered Ship Creek with salmon and trout not far away. Alaska didn’t seem so bad then, and it only got better and better.

The fishing ended when school began. Summer was over. Winter quickly settled over the city, the days became short and sharp. There was nothing to do but stay indoors. All that was soon to change when we moved into a house.

I now had my own bedroom complete with furniture and toys and models from Maryland. We retrieved our dog Tiger from the kennel where he’d been staying all this time. School was a brisk walk if I was up for the challenge, or a half-hour meandering bus ride on slippery iced-over roads. And, despite the sub-zero temperatures, fun was easily had. Often, I would hike back to the school after dinner and meet up with friends and ice skate. My brother took up downhill skiing, something I wished I had done, too. I was chicken of going too fast or breaking my leg. Despite being just shy of four years older than me, with his own friends and distractions, he made time for me. While my friends talked with dread about their older brothers, Roger so often made time for me. Sometimes we had an adventure, and sometimes it was corrupting, but it was always fun.

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Memory Revisited

Posted on August 6, 2025 by khobar95

When Dad announced he was retiring from Aramco back in 1983, I thought yes, at last, I was headed home to the States for good to college, friends, girls. He then said he had taken on a job in Lahore, Pakistan, and my mouth fell open. “La what?” Dad said it would be much better than Saudi. The company offered a house, cook, maid, chauffeur, and gardener, and best of all, there was none of the Saudi visa nonsense, so we could come and go as we pleased. Since I was heading to the States, I thought he must have been talking about my brother, Roger. After all the visa trouble we’d had trying to get my brother permission to stay in Saudi, it seemed to make sense. Except Roger was living in Italy at the time, so something didn’t seem right.

It occurred to me yesterday while I was in the pool that it did indeed have to do with Roger. With the Louisiana trial coming up in September, 1983 and lasting for who knew how long, Mom and Dad would have to be able to come and go freely. Staying in Saudi was a crap shoot, and staying in the US was not realistic due to IRS tax BS. Pakistan seemed the ideal solution if the case dragged on for a long time.

Then again, nothing turned out as expected, but that’s another story.

It is interesting and frustrating that these “bits” keep coming to me this way. This is part of what’s held up my book for so long. So many of these details come in painful dribs and drabs.

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Church and Thanksgiving

Posted on August 4, 2025 by khobar95

Boarding School? No. That was still a couple of years off. This picture is me looking forward to another rousing hour of church, actually, in Anchorage. Oh, the joy of knowing I was going to hell unless I bribed the preacher via the collection plate.

Unfortunately, once I got to boarding school, every Sunday was filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, and Preacher would tower above us, and fire and brimstone would spew from his mouth. That did nothing to protect the wee lads from having toothpaste smeared on their privates. Maybe because when Preacher said he didn’t want to see just copper from us lot, we ignored him.

My friend Michael and I skipped church one frosty Sunday and went into Sligo town expecting, I suppose, it to be like going in on a Saturday. It was all but closed! I thought that was backward, and no way would happen back home in the States.
I was wrong! I found Sundays in South Carolina much like Ireland and, in some ways, like Saudi Arabia, too, but there were ways around it. Florida? Not so much. At least not on a holiday.

I was attending the Florida Institute of Technology. Wanda was, too, but she also had a part-time job and was working. As I dropped her off, she reminded me to make sure I did our little bit of Thanksgiving dinner shopping in the morning because the stores would be closing early. Na, I thought. This isn’t South Carolina!

First thing Wanda said when I went to pick her up – did I do the shopping? Boy, she was mad when I said no. What’s the worry? This isn’t South Carolina!

We ended up buying dining on processed sliced turkey and instant mash from 7-11. Still better than 99.9% of my boarding school food, but lesson learned in spades.

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Memory is Funny

Posted on July 25, 2025 by khobar95

Bomb Scare at Shannon Airport

“Helle” — Helene Nixon

Some years ago, my son Paul and I were at Shannon Airport and there was a bomb scare. We were staying at the hotel, but no one knew whether the bomb was in the hotel or in the airport or on the grounds or in one of the bins all over the place or whatever, and the hotel was evacuated just in case. And the people were evacuated to outside, and there was all this plate glass everywhere. If that bomb had gone off anyone standing outside would have been absolutely blasted to pieces.

As there was no proof the bomb was either in or not in the hotel, I decided I would stay in the hotel. I sat under the stairs in the hallway, and I said to Paul, “Paul, you must make your own decision, son. It’s your life. If there’s a bomb in the hotel we’ll be blown to pieces and if there’s a bomb outside we’ll be safe in here. Either way it’s kind of a chancy business but frankly it’s very cold looking out and the crowds are dreadful.” He said, “I’m gonna stay with you.”

So, we sat under the stairs, watching the people watching the security guards and all that stuff, and after about twenty minutes or so down the stairs came a doddering old priest with a bottle of gin in his hand. He was a very old man, and he looked over the banister and he said, “Why thanks be to God there’s somebody here I could have a drink with. I don’t like drinking be myself.”

He came down, sat on the floor with us, and he said, “Are you not frightened, love?”

I said, “Oh yes, I’m frightened.” I said, “I so frightened I can’t even pray, Father.”

He took one long look at me and says, “You’re from the North then, aren’t you?”

“Oh yes. I’m from the North.”

“Are you a Protestant?”

“Oh yes. I’m a Protestant.”

“Well,” he said, “Thanks be to God you’re too frightened to pray, for the good Lord would do the very opposite of what a Protestant might ask.”

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I’ve Been Hacked!

Posted on June 17, 2024 by khobar95
Argh. It seems my Facebook account got hacked. Without warning, my account has been vaporized. I sent notification that it had been hacked within a few minutes, but too late. Oh well.

It’s funny that in this day and age, these things can happen without recourse. You would think there would be an appeal process or something. I mean, I enter my cell phone number and it finds the account but says it’s gone.

Now I’m wondering if this frees me or drags me down. Hmm, interesting question given how much time I waste on FB.

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