It is axiomatic with expatriate workers in the Kingdom that they arrive, earn their stack and leave. As with every widely recognized truth, however, there is always an exception. Gaetano (familiarly known as Ucco) Mulfari, today celebrating his 60th anniversary of arriving in the Kingdom is very much one of them. He is inordinately proud of being the longest Italian resident in the Kingdom — and so is the Italian community. He beamed at his wife, Marluccia, whom he spent nine years courting. “My wife will only clock up 50 years next year,” he joked.
A slight, wiry and incredibly dapper man, Mulfari was born in Messina — the “door to Sicily” — on the east coast of the island — “1-13-31,” he chipped in with commendable precision. A dedicated family man, almost every shelf in his apartment holds photographs of his extended family in heavy silver frames. In both conversation and movement, he tends to dart at facts and photos with singular energy and avian accuracy, recalling dates and places with amazing precision.
He began his travels at the tender age of six when he went to Eritrea, a former Italian colony in Africa, with his father who had found work as a heavy-truck driver. There he was schooled and lived among Italian expatriates until at 17, he decided, having heard of work opportunities with Aramco in Saudi Arabia, to leave and take up a job in a refinery construction project in Ras Tanura on the Kingdom’s eastern coast.
“‘OK, you go,’ my father said. In six months you will be back. I went on 17 May 1949. I was only 17 and my father had to sign so I could get a passport,” Mulfari recalled. He did not return to Eritrea for the best part of a decade.
“The camp in Ras Tanura was just a few lines of sheds by the sea,” he said pulling out an aerial photo of what was his home for the next few years. “No air conditioning or entertainment except in Al Khobar, a long bus-ride away.” Every six months the plant was shut down and Mulfari clambered over cracking towers and chimneys to service, strip and repaint the structures. He stayed with Aramco for seven and a half years.
When he finished, he returned to Eritrea for 13 months but came back to the Kingdom in 1958. He took a position as head of the maintenance section with the US Embassy (now consulate) in Jeddah and remained there for 33 years, resigning in 1991.
Jeddah in 1958 was still surrounded by its protective walls, three meters thick and more. “They all got taken down as the city grew, nothing left but the gates now.” He recalled that between the site of the Juffali mosque on the edge of Balad and the US consulate there was nothing — “just sand and a track five meters wide.”
“When I got there, the sea lapped up against the west wall,” he recalled. “Neither the Corniche nor the land was there, it was just water.” The electrical supply was very intermittent in the early days and the generators imported to power the embassy were priority in the maintenance schedule but he was required to make and mend everything from swimming pool filters to air-conditioning to water supply.
When Mulfari retired, leaving the Kingdom was not part of his plan. “Why would I? All my family is here — they were brought up here and we all think of it as home,” he said. “I did try to live in Italy — but I found it impossible, so I came back here. How could I possibly stay away from my sons and grandsons and all my friends?” Many of his friends are in the Saudi community. “Many have married Italian women who live here now. We have many friends.”
Corrado, one of Ucco’s two sons, added that the lifestyle in the Kingdom was very attractive and was a major factor in the decision to stay here. Mulfari agreed, “It is an easy life compared with Europe — we have drivers and maids for example that we could not afford in Europe.” At one point, the Mulfari family lived in villas close to the Palestine Road bridge — they were the last on the Medina Road leaving the city. When the late King Faisal visited Jeddah he would pass the villas each day at five p.m. on the way to a hill where he liked to pray. “My sons would run to the gates but were too small to open them,” he remembered. “I would open them and we would gather on the sidewalk with passers-by and wave to the king.” He paused, re-living the moment. “He always waved back.”
The Mulfari family connections in Jeddah read like a who’s who of the great mercantile families of the Hejaz, but there is no hint of boasting at all. “My sons grew up with them, played on the beach at Obhur — almost a half-day’s journey away over sand and stones in the 1950’s — they were children together.” He recalled that to reach the creek it was a five car expedition with the last watering point at the US embassy on the way north.
When he first arrived in Jeddah, there was a much bigger western expatriate community — but over the years it has shrunk. The Italian community was large and vibrant and Malfuri has the distinction of being the founder of the Italian Club, justly famed for its restaurant which is now sadly closed.
The expatriates tended to make friendships with other expatriates as making contact with the local people was usually quite limited. Many still lived in tents and led a very simple life indeed. That, said Corrado, had changed dramatically now and relationships with the Saudi community were much more easily established.
Ucco thought that despite the changes in Saudi society and the increasing numbers of young people going abroad and returning with a western education, the traditional characteristics of Saudi friendship and hospitality have remained. “This hasn’t changed, believe me. They are really nice people — and my two best friends are Saudis.”
As the senior Italian resident in the Kingdom and knocking on his eighth decade, has he any thoughts of leaving? “No. They will have to carry us out in a box!” he said.
The family has a house in Rome that Mulfari occasionally visits. “After a couple of weeks, my wife says; ‘Come on; let’s go home to Jeddah.’” Corrado chipped in. “And can you guess where my father spends his time in Rome? The Saudi embassy — every day for Arabic conversation and coffee.” His diamond anniversary in the Kingdom today, “Ucco” is very much an exception to the expatriate rule.