What a kind voice she had. It was a joy to talk to her!
She was running her rig from Austria where apparently she lives now and I instantly opened her QRZ page and checked her out. She had a link to her personal website and I found out she is a Saudi Sheikh's daughter! She's kind, educated and very well traveled and studied mathematics in the States and earned her Master's in Vienna. In addition to that she speaks three languages I know of, Arabic, German and her English is perfect, unaccented American English.
For a while she worked with special needs children in Riyadh and that takes a special kind of patience. She's a talented, attractive, special kind of woman.
Of course as an old man that watched a lot of old rerun movies as a kid the fact that she's the daughter of a Sheikh that rang a bell. Off to the Official Hollywood Guide to Old Movie Characters.
Let's see, here. S...S...S...SH..S H E....here it is. Sheikh...Sheikh... Sheikh's Aunt...No. Here it is. Sheik's daughters. Two kinds. Let's see here...Oh, yeah. Beautiful and ugly. Oh yeah, The ugly one is the daughter the Sheikh tries to force the hero to marry. The hero usually grabs a sword about two minutes before the wedding ceremony and fights his way out and joins the Foreign Legion at Fort Zindenauf and is awarded the Legion of Honor for shooting 38 of his pursuers off of the back of a camel. (Of course Hollywood never explains how they got 38 people on the back of the camel)
Here we go....Sheikh's beautiful daughter...This is the one I'm looking for. Let's see. What's her appropriate story line? Oh, yeah.
She and the hero meet and fall in love at first sight. The Sheikh finds out and has someone haul the hero out into the desert and drop him off in the middle of nowhere 100 miles from food or water to leave him to die of thirst and starvation.
In the next scene it's after dark and the hero miraculously shows up outside the Sheikh's fort wall, fit as a fiddle and rested leaving the audience to wonder how he survived. He's freshly shaven and has a meticulously groomed pencil thin moustache. His clothes have come straight out of the cleaners.
He's clad in a pair of those baggy pants, the pointy shoes that have a little bell on the tip, a white V-necked big, baggy sleeved dueling shirt a bandana on his head and a dagger in his teeth and just happened to have found a coil of rope next to the wall enabling him to lasso an abutment and scale the wall.
Sneaking past 5 or 6 lazy, sleepy guards he finds his way to her room. They embrace and decide to run away. Stealing the Sheikh's favorite horse, the gallop out the gate as the alarm is sounded and from out of nowhere 1000 shouting, sword swinging men on camels are seen pouring out the gate in hot pursuit. (I guess he kept his army hidden in a giant underground bunker of some sort because they appear out of nowhere.)
After about 6 or 8 pretty good fight scenes and several close calls they escape to Chicago or Detroit and live happily ever after.
Actually Hollywood stereotypes certainly doesn't hold true only for Sheikh's daughters. It often holds true for Americans. One of the greatest exports America has is the western movie.
Because of this one thing that is not a good idea to do is to try and clear French customs while wearing American western clothing. Don't do that and DON'T ask me how I know.
The customs inspector will take one look at you and in his mind will decide That man is an American cowboy! Cowboys carry revolvers! Where is he hiding his six-gun? He will then proceed to tear through every bit of your luggage in an effort to find one. When he doesn't he will look at you with suspicion trying to figure out where you are hiding it.
I wondered about what he was thinking. Did he think I was going to pull out an illegal pistol, fire a few shots into the air and stampede a herd of cattle through the streets of Paris?
(Personally I don't need a six-gun. I have the US Cavalry on speed dial so if I had a problem in Paris a quick call would have a bugle blaring and thundering horses charging down the streets of Paris, rescuing me in the nick of time. Never in the history of the motion picture industry has the US Cavalry been too late.)
Another thing is that during my (real) career as a seaman I surprised a few people when I let them know that most Americans were not millionaires and that I live in a modest home in a quiet neighborhood that I had mortgaged. (Now I am an old retiree living on a somewhat limited income)
Anyway, this woman apparently has radio in her blood. He father had the first callsign issued in Saudi Arabia, HZ1HZ, and she wrote that she used to sit and listen to her father communicate with people all over the world in English. I'll bet her father has JY1's call sign in his log. (JY1 was the late King of Jordan and was on the air regularly.)
When her father passed somehow she got his Saudi callsign issued to her. Her father was Deputy Minister of Communications in Saudi Arabia and she was the first woman to he issued a license in her province.
One thing Hollywood got right about this YL is she's a raven haired beauty straight out of central casting. She's a very attractive woman. One thing that Hollywood seems to gloss over is she was not born in North Africa where all of these old adventure movies seem to have taken place. She was born in an entirely different continent. Saudi Arabia is a part of Asia. Good old Hollywood. Never let the truth get in the way of a thrilling adventure story.
I think that one of the best parts of ham radio is that you never know who you are going to meet or get to listen to on the airwaves.
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Later that night I was talking to my nephew and he asked me if I had run into anyone interesting on the air.
"Yeah, as a matter of fact I just worked an interesting woman. She's a Saudi Sheikh's daughter. Wonderful woman. Spoke perfect unaccented American English, she was working out of Austria," I said.
"Oh, yeah? Cool. You know, those people take their education and travel seriously. I'll bet she learned her English in the States," he replied.
"I think she did. She studied math here. Now tell me, when I said 'Sheikh's daughter' what was the first thing that you thought of?"
I could tell by his voice he felt kind of sheepish.
"You know, Hollywood really gives us a really lousy picture of reality..." he hedged.
"Out with it! First thing you thought of." I interrupted.
He laughed. "A beautiful dark haired exotic women that runs off with a handsome stranger out in the desert somewhere."
Hollywood. Never let the truth get in the way of a thrilling adventure movie.
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Speaking of Hollywood, I had a cab driver that was born in Casablanca driving me from an airport in New York once.
When he said he was from Casablanca my smart-ass nature ran away with me.
"Casablanca, huh? Is Rick's Place still there?"
He turned and gave me the look one gives to a wise guy like I was being at the time.
"Nah. He sold it right after Elsa and Lazlo left for Lisbon and stowed away on a ship that had a stop in England where he got off. Elsa and Lazlo were already there and Lazlo was busy helping out DeGaulle organize the Free French so Elsa ran off with him and they headed to the States together settling in Chicago where they got married and had a couple of kids. Later Rick got involved with some redhead and Elsa divorced him and took him to the cleaners and when the redhead found out he was broke she dumped him. Rick spent the rest of his life a drunk living under a bridge in Cicero."
Needless to say I laughed myself silly and realized three things. First we were kindred spirits and that he had a pretty good education from somewhere and that he had seen the movie.
To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this:
http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY
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