The Sweat of Grapes

I was a callow youth of twenty when I made my first trip to Oklahoma City. The school that I attended catered to students from all over the world, and so I was exposed to not only the diverse cultures that the United States is home to, but many foreign ones also.

On the bus, I met Greeks from Athens, Vietnamese from Saigon (before the war), Englishmen, Ecuadorians, and a host of Arabs. They came from Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and all points Middle Eastern.

I soon learned that appearances meant little or nothing. The fellow from Ecuador was blonde and spoke fluent German (his parents came from Germany) and the Greek resembled Stalin.

The Arab in our class was the director of the Damascus Airport, and his name was Riad Sha'ban. For reasons that remain a mystery to this day, we became friends.

His English was quite good, and he was at least as easy to understand as the Southerners from Georgia. He was not a large man, but he was as strong and hard as a ball bearing.

Werner (he pronounced it 'Verner') was the Ecuadorian, and we met several times in Riad's apartment to drink what he called coffee, as black and thick as drain oil, but very sweet, and discuss the affairs of the world. Usually, that meant football, "what you call soccer in this country."

On one of these occasions, I went into the kitchen and got a glass of water. I came back and took a drink, only to be startled by both Riad and Werner screaming, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

I looked at the glass. "Just getting a drink," I told them. "What's the matter with that?"

"But you just poured it out of the tap, didn't you?"

"Yeah, so what?"

They informed me that in both Ecuador and Syria, one does not drink water that hasn't been boiled. To do so was to get sick, almost unto death. The little amoeba, don't you know, is a world traveler.

I never took potable water for granted again.

"What do you drink, then?" I asked. Werner was a proponent of beer or wine, but Riad said, "I'll show you what we drink."

Riad went in the bedroom, and returned with a Mason jar that was about 3/4 full of a perfectly clear liquid. I thought he had bootlegged a jar of Okie moonshine, but he said, "No, I brought this over on the plane with me. This is the last of my supply."

He poured about two fingers into a small glass, and started to hand it to me when he changed his mind. "Just a minute, I'll be right back."

He went in the kitchen and added about two fingers of water to the clear liquid, which then turned a milky white. I sniffed at it suspiciously. It smelled like licorice. I took a mouthful and swallowed it down.

My eyes bulged out, my hair stood on end, and fire shot from my nose and ears. The top of my head felt like it had lifted off and landed again, not quite in the same position. It throbbed for a few minutes. When I finally caught my breath, I asked, "What is that stuff? It smells like licorice, but it tastes like fire."

"That is Arak, (If you know better, forgive my spelling.) which means 'The Sweat of Grapes'. We drink it in Damascus, only we drink it without water."

I was grateful that he hadn't given it to me that way, I'm not sure I would have survived. When his supply ran out, he switched to a Greek poison called Uzo. It was only a shadow of Arak, but still pretty tough.

It was an educational trip. I learned a few words in Arabic (most of them naughty), that South American women didn't shave their legs, and people are much the same the world over. The water, however...

Somewhere I still have the little brass pot in which we brewed "...Arabic coffee; the Greeks call it Greek coffee, and the Turks call it Turkish coffee, but it started in Arabic countries."

A few years later, I saw "Never on Sunday", and when Homer ordered coffee, American coffee no less, the Greek waiter said, "Men drink Uzo." I was the only person in the theater who laughed.

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