Madness at Pizza Hut

Last week as I was heading to Pizza Hut for dinner and about 5 minutes walk from arriving, it started pouring down rain. 2 minutes of running later I arrived at Pizza Hut pretty wet and all of the tables were occupied - this was the most packed I'd ever seen Pizza Hut. So I ordered a take-away Pizza and sat down on the waiting bench while trying not to offend any women by making eye contact with them. Then 5 minutes into my wait something quite out of the ordinary happened.

I stood up and looked into the eating area behind me and there appeared to be two patrons trying to fight each other while two groups were holding each of them back. Neither group had much success with holding back the two fighters and the fight began to spread as other people were caught in the cross-fire of thrown plates, glasses and then chairs and tables. It was total madness. Then the staff were also involved and they too were throwing furniture at the patrons and plates. People were climbing up on top of tables to attack other people with the sort of anger you'd expect at a riot. Other staff members ran in from the kitchen to join the brawl and began punching and throwing things too. A few seconds later the violence reached it's peak when one of the older patrons in a thoub drew out a pistol and held it up in the air. There was a collective groan of "shame on him" made by the crowd, rather than cries of fear. A small group of Russians escaped from the restaurant at that point and then many of the fighters and most of the staff crowded around the man with the gun. The group were arguing with the man with the gun and led him up to the salad bar and cornered him there as they continued to argue. They continued to argue for at least another 5 minutes and then my waiter at the counter yelled out at that my pizza was ready. I grabbed it and left.

While I was never frightened of any real danger I was really disappointed about the madness of the whole event. If these guys can see a reason to draw a gun over such a small issue how can there ever be peace in the middle east? I have almost no doubt that initial issue was something as minor a discrepancy on the bill. I couldn't help thinking that this sort of thing would absolutely never happen in Australia. Except at a nightclub where alcohol and drugs were involved. In the rare case of this kind of thing ever happening in Australia generally you can depend on the staff to be involved only to stop the violence, because in Australia any staff member involved in a fight would likely be fired and probably even taken to court.

A few weeks earlier than that there was a similar event at the school. Some young guys arrived wanting to fight with our young 16 year old guard and our guard responded by getting a baseball bat sized club to fight them with. Thankfully other people stopped him from using the club and nothing serious happened. But this whole mentality, which I'm sure is a result of cultural and legal (or lack of) influences, all explains why people are killed in this country and region over trivial matters. During the presidential election last year I heard several people died during riots near election offices. And I just found out back in 2005 many people, possibly up to a hundred according to some people, were killed during riots after the government removed their fuel subsidy which led to the doubling of the petrol price in Yemen. While Yemenis are about as friendly a people as you'll find anywhere in the world it's incredible that as people they also have this extraordinary potential for barely restrained violence.