Dinner for 370,000, Please, James

Hardly had James unlocked the front door when the phone began to ring. "Table for six for lunch? But of course, Madame ... Table for eight tonight? With pleasure ... No sir, the menu today is tabbouleh and mulokhieh, but we'll be serving kafta mechwi* as always ... Yes, sir, of course we can provide a belly dancer..."

James Kassouf is perpetually harassed these days. He is manager of the Beirut Restaurant in London's chic Knightsbridge, and this summer his phone is forever ringing with the news that some Kuwaiti sheik or Saudi princess has just left Harrods and was last seen heading for the restaurant for coffee and mouhallabiya. Kassouf and his staff are caught smack in the middle of an Arab invasion that makes the drought-dry London streets look almost like Cairo.

The Arabs are everywhere, their tarbooshes and burnooses as ubiquitous as brollies in the rush-hour crowds. By day they can be found pressing three-deep against the counters at Selfridge's or Harrods, the women often swathed in black gowns and veils, the men in Arab robes topped by checked sports jackets. At sunset they parade along Hyde Park. Toward midnight they filter out of Mirabelle, the Hard Rock Cafe or other favored Mayfair restaurants to stroll over to one of their discotheques or gambling clubs.

London Tummy. After that it is back to the hotel for coffee, brewed to order in little brass pots right in the room. Indeed, the hotel itself may be Arab-owned: the Royal Kensington, the Park Tower and the fabled Dorchester have all been bought by Middle Eastern investors--the Dorchester for a cool $15.9 million. For those who are bothered by a touch of London tummy, help awaits at expensive Wellington Hospital in St. John's Wood, where the amenities include Arab interpreters and closed-circuit TV featuring Arab-language movies made in Cairo.

More than anything else, the strife in Lebanon is responsible for Britain's Arab influx. Most of the recent arrivals are vacationers from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, or temporary refugees from Beirut. In the past, rich sheiks from the desert states fled to the cool mountains of Lebanon for the summer; this year they went to England, only to meet an unprecedented heat wave. Many Beirutis use London as a haven for their families and a substitute financial capital while they continue to do business by jetting around the Middle East. "London was the next best thing," says one corporate director in exile. "When you leave your family here and go off on business, you can feel confident they won't be beaten up or robbed."

By the end of this year more than 370,000 Arab visitors will have passed through London, an increase of 77% over 1975. By conservative estimate, they will spend some $500 million in London's stores, restaurants, clubs and real estate agencies. Often paying in cash, Arab buyers have practically cornered the market in high-priced British real estate, swooping up castles, country manors and great town houses in one Arab grand salaam.

Somewhere to Hang. One of the bigger spenders, Mohammed Mahdi al-Tajir, a multibillionaire who is the United Arab Emirates' Ambassador to Great Britain, paid $1.2 million for the 18th century Mereworth Castle, once used as the setting for the James Bond film Casino Royale. The ambassador already owned a town house facing Hyde Park, suburban digs in Kingston Hill, a country spread in Hampshire, a $4.5 million shooting estate in Scotland and an office block in Mayfair. What did he want with Mereworth Castle? "I needed somewhere appropriate to hang my paintings."

Real Estate Agent Stuart Gold, a partner in the firm of Anscombe & Ringland, believes that just about any property in London priced over $140,000 is now going to Arabs. When they find something they like, they want it instantly. Last month Gold showed a town house to one Arab who plunked down a $311,500 bank draft overnight in full payment. Adding the private purchases to the hotel acquisitions, the total Middle Eastern investment in London property alone topped $445 million.

The Arabs are not stopping with real estate either. This month two Saudi Arabian newspapers took over a venerable Fleet Street picture agency, Central Press Photos. A group of Lebanese businessmen associated with Beirut's weekly al-Hawadess have been offering journalists generous salaries to work on a projected new English-language Middle East newsweekly, to be called Events.

Along with the Commonwealth immigrants who have arrived over the past two decades, the Arabs are helping to make the complexion of London even more cosmopolitan. Many of the immigrants are Moslem, and they support over 300 mosques in Great Britain, including a $6.2 million mosque now nearing completion on the edge of fashionable--and Jewish populated--St. John's Wood. Says Anglican Bishop David Brown of Guildford: "Islam is now well and truly planted on English soil."

*Tabbouleh is a crushed wheat, oil and vegetable dish; mulokhieh is an elaborate creation involving chicken, lamb and mulokhieh leaves; kafta mechwi is minced meat grilled on skewers; and mouhallabiya a Lebanese-style cream pudding.

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