JEDDAH, 22 April 2003 — There was a London when cheerful dread-locked “gangstas,” singing tonelessly to obscure rhythms emanating from surgically implanted earphones, would offer to clean your windscreen at traffic lights. Accepting or rejecting the service didn’t disturb their tranquillity.
Refusal usually met with a grin and a wave. They were often unemployed and out to try and con a bit of survival money out of passing motorists. They preferred to offer even the slightest service rather than beg.
Then it all went horribly wrong. Real “gangsters” saw an opportunity to turn the quaint practice into an industry. Windscreens were threatened with ice picks, women drivers asked very sternly to contribute to their cause while a colleague stood by the passenger door. Fortunately, the constabulary addressed this swiftly. The practice has generally disappeared, but so have the innocent gangstas.
There is a road bridge in Jeddah where, if you are very unlucky, you will be presented with the opportunity to buy a pair of freshly spray-painted blackbird, a plastic nodding donkey and a handy ear-hair clipper.
Initially these souls, probably overstayers but trying to raise some cash by selling rather than begging, plucked at the steel whipcord that forms the heartstrings of the average motorist. People were seen to buy a fluorescent green blackbird or two and negotiate for a handy in-car rubber-snake entertainment system.
As in London, there has been a change. I noticed that the traffic lights on the bridge seemed out of phase. Delays to traffic increased, as the red lights seemed to take longer to change and salesmen approached greater numbers of cars at each phase.
I didn’t at first connect the gent leaning languidly by the control box with the delays. Then the number and intensity of the salesmen increased, as did the variety of shoddy goods.
It all clicked when a yellow-eyed youth pressed his nose against the side-screen and offered me a string of shells that smelt like boudoir. As I drive a car, not a bedroom, he had no chance, but he gently eased open the door. It was interesting that he thought he had the time — and he did. Mr. Languid was by the control box.
The gist of the conversation with the lad was: “No.” Next time we met, he came armed; “going equipped” I understand is the correct phrase.
I had locked the doors but he sidled up, tried them and thrust the same, dirtier and still useless, boudoir decor at the car. It was when he glanced down that I became alerted to a large and very pointed key resting idly against the paint work. He didn’t own a car and wasn’t going to drive mine, so the only conclusion was that we had entered a new style of negotiation.
The initially tolerable inconvenience of stray lads trying to garner a few riyals from passing wayfarers has transmogrified into an outright threat. This is not casual selling but a subtly organized campaign. Implied threats and actual intimidation can be answered with an equally physical response — as several of the less agile screen cleaners of south London will confirm.
In Jeddah however, we have been put on notice. So do something and do it now.
