Without A Song

Foreword

Foreword

I've been very fortunate to wander this big old world and experience many things. I was born with an eclectic taste in music and a nomadic take on all that life has to show me. The stories that form the Without A Song Trilogy are centred within the expatriate world of the defence contractor. My stories are set in the mountainous south western region of Asir at a mountain airbase. Close to Saudi Arabia's southern border with Yemen I spent thirty months in this wonderful countryside and within these pages you will find many scenes that I witnessed or was part of from my time within that world. More than one observation has been rewritten to safeguard the innocent, more than one character created to prevent the assassination of another. My characters are compositions of many who have entered my life, places are fabricated from my travels in Saudi Arabia, England and beyond. As you visit the stories of my days you will meet many more events, places and people from holidays in Australia, Europe and Indonesia who have impacted my life before and since I left Asir. Love, life, death and more appear as pure creations however three central characters with few original bonds between them shall appear from amidst many others. Tenuous links forged in love and life, will cement permanent friendships. Just as any one of us, each of my central characters travels a different path. Each of them has true friends and family who support, love and care for them. Each has his or her own life entwined with others.

I'll take you into a world where few others have trod, even today. In 1996 most of the British compounds that sat along the edges of The Escarpment were idylls of solitude, impromptu oases of western life. They still exist. Safe havens for liberated western civilisations where major international conglomerates lured the western engineers with promises of tax-free wealth and fertile escapism. Once they were the homes of liberated communities of like-minded souls many became outdated carbuncles that were finally bulldozed to the ground. These days they exist, if they exist at all, as multinational pleasure domes who count all who reside therein as part of their own communities. Rebuilt, re-engineered probably re-everything with the Saudi's oil dollars. The concept is always the same. Get in, get out. Do the job and rest at your leisure. I've never forgotten the good times, the comradeship or the support we all enjoyed in those calm places high above an uncongenial land. I chose the leave and move on. Others prefer to stay, they have that mindset. Folks may have families back home or wherever than get along without them, families whom they themselves can also get by without. For others they are the only ones that matter, they make their own luck, their own fortunes and their own happiness, wherever they lay their hats. This state of mind would become mine also.

When I first put pen to paper and began to recollect my life on The Escarpment I never intended to highlight the plight of the many LAM sufferers around the world. LAM was simply a vehicle I found on the worldwide web to move my story along. If you feel encouraged to know more please use the links and details at the end of this book to take your journey further.

There is one community without whom I could not have written any of this. They are the unsung heroes of my story. They are the many technicians, children wives and staff who shared my experiences on The Escarpment inside Nassim Compound, Khamis Mushayt. Without you none of this was possible, without you now Akhbar City aka Khamis Mushayt, would never be a home to any of us today and in the future.

You've got to live to feel alive.

Finally my thanks go to my sisters and to my parents, and to my wife Sue. You have each contributed to who I am and how I write. I must also add my thanks to Bethany Rivers who was my tutor of Creative Writing at Coleg Harlech, Newtown in Wales. Without Bethany's enthusiasm and encouragement I'd never have started Without a Song, let alone complete the additional books these initial chapters were originally intended to be. Without Bethany's own special kind of patience, creativity and vision I could never have got this far.

Rhiw Sider