YANBU, 26 February 2008 — Ah, the complexities of having multiple wives. Some may think this makes life easier, considering that multiple wives means multiple housecleaners and multiple food-preparers and if one gets on your nerves you can go hang out with the other one until the first one behaves properly. But in fact it’s not as easy as it sounds to have a number of women in your life: life ain’t easy for a player, as some might say. So it may come to no surprise that — according to the daily Al-Madinah yesterday — a man lavished his first wife with a grand fête filled with expensive gifts and jewelry when she did not dispute his desire to marry a second woman. Perhaps there is no better way to reward a woman for allowing you to marry another woman than to give her lots of shiny things.

Camel Compensation Goes Wrong

RIYADH, 26 February 2008 — Saudi authorities recently announced that contaminated feed was the official cause of death for over 5,000 camels in the Kingdom last year. Subsequently, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah ordered the payment of SR20,000 per animal to the owners of camels that died after eating the toxic feed. When a local Bedouin went to collect SR40,000 for his two dead camels, the bank employee made a mistake and transferred SR400,000 into the man’s bank account, the daily Al-Madinah reported yesterday. By the time the bank discovered their mistake -— at the end of the day — the man had already withdrawn the money. When they summoned the man to the bank, he was defiant and refused to hand over the money saying that he rightfully deserved the extra money as compensation for his herd of goats that had also died after eating the toxic fodder. Bank officials decided not to argue with the man and asked him to sign a piece of paper acknowledging that he had withdrawn the money from his account. The man signed the paper and bank officials turned it over to the police who arrested the man.