Pigs

Middle Eastern countries have clearly always had a bit of a thing about pigs. One of the first pamphlets I was offered when I toured the Mosque was a curious piece of propaganda titled ‘Why Muslims reject pork”. It has a number of unlikely words of wisdom such as the fact that virtually every disease in the world stems from them and even Westerners dislike pig meat.
Anyway, all this swine flu nonsense is as manna from heaven you could say. The fact that poorly pig is unable to communicate his snivel once dead let alone roast, boiled or fried appears to be of no consequence. The Egyptians have elected to cull around quarter of a million pigs in one go though strangely a lot of these animals appear to be living amongst the poor of the country which is both odd and clearly bad. Bahrain has banned the import of all pig meat in an effort defend the kingdom. This has been a running debate in the Bahrain parliament for some time, along with banning alcohol, bringing in a Gulf wide currency and generally cutting off their noses to spite themselves. The only potential growth industry here is the import of residents and tourists along with expat financial business – why else build all these tower blocks of offices and accommodation? And making the place more Arab and less Western is not the way ahead.

Our local supermarket, the very satisfactory Al Jezeera, has worked out what it needs to sell. Consequently it has a non-Muslim section where you can get bacon pork and bacon/pork flavoured things like crisps, pizzas and filled pasta. Unsurprisingly it is very popular and has a steady flow of western types looking for the more normal lines of food. Hopefully supplies will not be expended before this rather draconian and unproductive move has been finished.

Now, must go and fix myself a bacon butty….