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These fellows were usually young men from India. The original moti-
vation of bringing houseboys was that they could perform housework
and, in addition, if they were Christians, there was no religious prohibi-
tion against them handling liquor (this is forbidden to Muslims in Saudi
Arabia). At that time, there was a former Portuguese enclave on the west
coast of India (Goa) and the natives had converted to Christianity. These
men would be brought to Arabia on two-year contracts. It had to be ter-
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were able to support their families at a much higher level. There was a
separate housing area maintained by Aramco for these men. They spoke
English. A few Aramco households employed two servants, one a cook
and the other a houseboy.

For a few months in 1952, we had a fortuitous experience. I
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Jean. About a week later, an Indian man appeared at the back door and
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that he was a cook. His name was Manuel. Jean was upset with me
because Indian cooks typically did no housework and Jean had always
done all of our cooking. It turned out that the cook had been hired to
cook for the family of our new company president, Bob Keyes, but Mrs.
Keyes would not arrive in Saudi Arabia for several months. In the mean-
time, the cook was ours.

Jean quickly developed a good relationship with him. She did
not ask him to hang out the laundry. That was work considered beneath
that of an Indian cook, but when he saw that she was about to do so, he
volunteered to handle it. Manuel assisted her with some of the house-
work. He proved to be a very good cook. We proceeded to have some
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what he did with some of the groceries he would ask me to bring from
the company’s commissary store. Most grocery lists from him began
with, “1 pound butter.” He proved to be very helpful when there were
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if he could prepare lunch for additional people. He always agreed until
I called one day from the dining hall, which was about a block away
from our home. That was too little notice for him and he refused. One
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