RIYADH, 2 February 2005 — Greed can be one of the worst habits with which people can be afflicted. There are some stories about greed you couldn’t possibly believe to be true. The problem is these stories aren’t about the poor but people with 10-digit bank accounts. Some of these misers have accounts that exceed the budgets of African countries. Still the stories about such halala hoarders persist. Fact or fiction? You decide.
One of the strangest stories comes from the family of a man who died five years ago. He lived in poverty and total misery. People who saw him in his tattered clothes would never imagine he was a multimillionaire. They donated food and clothing to him thinking that he was very poor. But the pauper had a bank account that exceeded the budget of three African nations.
It turned out he was a land baron with many buildings and other properties — and a billion riyals in the bank. He never owned a car; he’d move around using public transportation. Even then he’d haggle with the bus driver to knock down that SR2 fare to SR1. If he wanted to visit his relatives, he’d travel tens of kilometers on foot to see them. He’d also travel on foot to collect the rents or to remind them to pay rent. He wouldn’t buy a computer because it was an unnecessary expense. He’d rely on his strong memory to keep his accounts straight.
Marriage was out of the question because a wife would cost him money, too. When he died, it took a lot of time to convince his relatives that he was a billionaire. They got hundreds of millions of riyals in inheritance money.
One expects a miser to keep his money on ice, but some don’t stop there. One man with tens of millions of riyals locked his refrigerator to prevent his children and relatives in the house from eating food. This man gave a refrigerator key to his wife and kept one for him. He claims that if he left the refrigerator unlocked, then all the fruits he bought would disappear. He wasn’t all bad, though. He’d put a pitcher of cold water outside the fridge before lockdown — just in case one of the children got thirsty during the night. The pitcher wasn’t even padlocked!
Sometimes when somebody makes you an offer, it’s best to sit down and do the math before accepting it. At least that was the case for a Riyadh restaurateur who rented an eatery from a real-estate millionaire.
While negotiating the rental rate for the building, the landlord offered to knock SR2,000 off the yearly fee if he could get a free dinner everyday. The restaurateur thought that the millionaire was joking so he agreed to the condition and signed the contract.
When the restaurant opened, the first customer was the millionaire landlord demanding his free meal. For three months, the millionaire never missed a meal. If he was invited to dinner elsewhere, he’d ask for the meal for take out.
After a small calculation, the restaurateur knew that it would have been a lot more profitable if he paid the SR2,000 instead of a free dinner everyday. He demanded that the millionaire review the contract once again because he never thought he could be that greedy. He was wrong.
One greedy millionaire who lives in an apartment building plunged to new depths. The story goes like this.
“On my way to the apartment building, I saw light coming from the underground sewerage room,” said Fahd, a building tenant. “I thought there were workers working inside that room. When I went to look, I saw the owner of the building swimming through the sewage, searching for something. I had to see it with my own eyes to believe that the millionaire owner of the building was down there.
“When I asked what he was doing, he told me that he was searching for something important but did not tell me what it was. In a place like that, I thought someone would only jump inside if his son had fallen. After 10 minutes, he finally found what he was searching for, a SR100 note. I couldn’t believe it when I saw that he was after SR100.
“I know that he was greedy, but I never thought he was that greedy. He told me that he accidentally flushed it down the toilet, and it was worth searching for.
“I wonder what he would have done for a SR500 note?”
Our readers should be thankful that we aren’t as greedy as some of the misers mentioned above, otherwise, we never would have shared these stories with you.
