It was on my 21st birthday. I was in a KFC in Oman. Read on….
My father had a job working in Oman. He’d bought tickets for my brother and I to go out there to stay for a bit during the summer, and being a student I had as long as I wanted. Well, only three weeks in Oman as that was the length of their short-stay tourist visa. I’d actually booked tickets to Dubai, and had the plan of staying there for a week and travelling on to Oman.
Anyway, there I was in Oman. My father was working, and I don’t believe my brother had arrived, so I was entertaining myself. I’d travelled in from the outlying town/suburb) to the major town Ruwi (I think) by minibus, and was sheltering from the heat in an air-conditioned KFC. I had my book (War and Peace, don’t-ya-know). As it was my birthday I’d decided to shave my scrappy facial hair, so there I was, clean chinned, pale faced, with my curly hair in a pony tail. Can you see where this is going?
A local chap sat down opposite me, and started to chat, or try to in very broken English. More broken than that – more a highly fragmented English. Being as polite as I am, I returned the conversation as best I could, but really failed to understand most of what he was saying. The big breakthrough in communication was when his repeated “six” was accompanied by gesticulations sufficient to let me know the word was more likely to be “sex”, and the penny finally dropped.
There you go. Propositioned by an Arabian chap in a KFC on my 21st birthday.