Pearsall's Books

I've only just been introduced to the awesomely fun blog Chase Me Ladies, I'm in the Cavalry, but poking around his archives I found this (presumably quite old) post about drinking in Gaza:

We had a lesson the other day in which the word "pub" cropped up in some context or other. What were these "pubs", they wanted to know. I did my best to explain how pubs work.

They doubted it would catch on in Gaza: "If anyone opens a "pub" here, I will kill him," said one man, shaking with rage. It wasn't clear to me what he meant by he would "kill" him, whether this meant, "give him a piece of my mind," or "butcher him like a goat." I am thinking of going one step further and opening a massage parlour, selling whisky, pork chops and copies of the Satanic Verses. I'll make a fortune if they don't chop my head off for me. They wanted to know if I had ever drunk beer myself. I admitted that yes, on a couple of occasions, I had experimented. In the world beyond Gaza it is very popular, I explained. But why, they asked. Why do people drink beer? I thought about this for a moment. "It makes you feel... optimistic," I said," although in the long run it makes you fat and stupid." I think I summed up the pros and cons rather well.

Go read the whole thing.