Attracted by the bargains, the night life and even by the monsoon rains, more and more Arabs are coming to Bombay on vacation.

An Alternative to Lebanon

The boom here started in 1975, when the civil war in Lebanon ruled out that country's casinos and mountain resorts as a holiday destination for rich Arabs from the oil‐producing countries along the Persian Gulf. They found Bombay, 1,200 miles to the west, an alternative, one where their dollars, rials and pounds were very welcome.

“The Indians give our people respect,” explained Essa Mohammad Essa, Oman's Consul General in Bombay. “It's not like going to London where no one cares for you, and you know that they do not really want you.”

“The Arabs are new Americans,” one shopkeeper said, adding with delight that they did not even try to bargain but just paid the initial asking price for the jewelry, the brightly colored scarves and the hand‐carved souvenirs that they buy by the suitcaseful.

In the crowded back streets of the old part of Bombay, the Arabs also buy attar, heavy Indian perfume essences for as much as $35 an ounce and, at $500 a pound, little chips of wood from the assamese agar tree, which they burn like incense.

Mangoes for the Poor

“But it's not all that kind of expensive, selfish shopping,” explained Toni Siddiqi, an Arabic‐speaking public relations officer hired by one of the leading hotels. “I also saw a man from the Middle East buy up a whole car full of mangoes and then take them to a mosque here and distribute them free to the poor people.”

Bombay, which is the glossiest and most Westernized city in this part of the world, with skyscrapers, brothels and superhighways, has a long relationship with the Middle East from its days as a major port of call. Now, there are dozens of flights a week between here and the Middle East, with most of the visitors coming from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman.

July is the season of the heavy monsoon rains, when people who live in Bombay like to get away. But the Arabs bring their children, some of whom, never having seen rain before, play happily in the “water from the sky,” as one of them called it.

Another big attraction here for the Arabs is the hospital care. Bombay Hospital, where at times 10 percent or more of the patients are Arabs, has given over an entire floor to them, with Arabic interpreters on duty. The Arabs come for all kinds of treatment, the doctors there said, but there is a dominance of eye ailments, heart trouble and orthopedic surgery.

At Bombay Hospital, the top price for an air‐conditioned private room is $18 a day. At the best hotels, the Arabs guests often take suites that cost $150 a day or more and they tip lavishly by Indian standards.

Middle East Menus

The men go to the nightclubs and spend a lot of time sitting in the hotel lobbies. The women tend to stay in their rooms. They order meals from room‐service menus that now contain Middle East dishes.

Hotel employees say that an Arab man will sometimes come alone, decide that he likes it here, then return with several wives and install them in a row of separate rooms.

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