Cultural Night

Last weekend, the teachers and I were all invited to a cultural night for women.  I felt so lucky to arrive just in time for this event.  One of the things I've been most disappointed in here is the fact that I work with and live with only foreigners, and haven't had any chance to interact with any Saudi women, aside from the students with whom I'm not allowed to talk about anything but the weather with.

So all week I worried about attending. I wanted to go, but since they still haven't paid me, I could not afford to get a taxi.  If enough women from work were planning to go, we could have the company driver go, but it seemed as if most of the other women weren't interested in attending, or going away for the weekend.  I was contemplating if I would have enough food to last me to the end of the month if I used my remaining grocery money to get a taxi when we got an email saying they were going to let us use the company van and have a driver take us.  I was so excited.  Now I had a new problem, what to wear?  It was a women only event, so I imagined we would be allowed to take off our abayas, but I didn't know what would be acceptable to wear underneath.  Could I wear pants? Was it a very fancy event?  Should I wear a dress?  Eventually I decided to wear my only skirt and a new button down collared shirt that one of the other teachers had given me because it was too small for her now.

I went downstairs and was surprised that of the 20 or more women living in our apartments, only four others had decided to come. I was particularly surprised since a) everyone always complains about how there is nothing to do, and here was something to do, and b) It was a rare chance to experience Saudi Culture, and c) free food.   Chris was hoping one of us had a cell phone with GPS since she did not know where it was. Unfortunately, none of us did.  I guess the type of women who are interested in free food are not the ones who have the money for a smart phone.   Even though she had looked it up on Google maps, and copied down the map onto a paper since she didn't have a printer, the driver didn't recognize the area and wasn't sure where it was. Funny, I hadn't bothered to even look at the address since I was obviously not going to be driving, but now wished I had looked more carefully at the invitation.  Armed with only our wits, and a hand drawn map, we set off into the night in the general direction of where it was.  There aren't really any proper addresses in Saudi Arabia, instead you have things like, "Between King Saad and Prince Faisel streets, across from the DaWaan Pharmacy."  So normally, that might be enough to go on, but there are more pharmacies in Saudi Arabia than there are pubs in Ireland.  And the only thing they have more of than pubs, is members of the royal family, and since every street is named after some member of the royal family, we were basically looking for a needle in a haystack.

We drove down to the area we thought it was in, and we found a King Saad street, and we found what was either Prince Faisel, or Prince Tasel street, and we drove the blocks between and around it for about a half hour, with no sign of anything saying culture night, or any indication that we were anywhere near where we were supposed to be.  We tried calling some of the teachers who didn't live in our apartments and said they were going to attend, but got no answer on the phone.  Finally, we pulled into a Best Western (in fact, it was the nicest looking Best Western I had ever seen) and asked the concierge inside if he knew where the address was.  Chris went in, hopefully clutching the invitation and her hand drawn map, but returned despondent.  The man inside had no idea where the place was, but didn't think it was anywhere near by.  We had driven about 45 minutes to get here, and had now spent another 45 driving in circles.  The event had already started and was only scheduled to last for two hours anyway.  I could tell we were on the verge of giving up and heading back.  I couldn't let that happen.  I asked Chris, if she had the phone number of anyone who was organizing the event.  She didn't, but thought it was in one of the emails they had sent.  I asked if she thought the concierge would let her use the Internet to find the email.  She seemed doubtful, but I wasn't ready to give up, and pleaded, offering to go in myself to ask, though I hadn't gotten the email so it would of been useless without her going in too.  Finally when everyone else agreed with me that we should give it one last try, she went in.  This time she was gone for longer, finally they came out.  She had a phone number and the concierge was going to explain to our driver how to get to the area we needed to be in and find the McDonald's and then the woman on the phone was going to explain how to get there from the McDonald's.  The trouble is, our driver only speaks Urdu, and the concierge only Arabic and English, so he had to call over a third man, who had been trying to get these giant marble balls in the front rolling in the the water fountains.  After some very confusing and animated attempts to give directions, our driver thought he knew where they were asking him to go.

We pulled out of the Best Western with renewed hope, and started driving, and driving, and driving.... Turns out we had been very very far off in our guess as to where it was.  Finally, we got to the McDonald's and Chris called the woman who was trying to explain the directions, but she was pretty fuzzy on how to get there, seeing as how she never drove there herself, but only sort of paid attention as her driver brought her places. "You turn right after the McDonald's, and then you take the third, or maybe fourth right, and then you will see a big patch of empty land, and then you turn..."  Chris was trying to relay these directions to the driver, who's English wasn't great, while still listening to the other directions the woman was giving her, and after a while, no one knew at which stage of the directions we were, where we were at, or where we should go next.  So we turned around and went back to the McDonald's to try the whole thing again from the start. This time she told us to turn left at the third or forth street, and we wound up in front of some very beautiful houses, but not the ones we were looking for, so we turned around again, and went back to the McDonald's, this time to wait for a driver she was sending to lead us to the place. Encouragingly, he arrived very quickly and within five minutes we arrived at the cultural night, an hour and a half late to a two hour event.

The private garden where the cultural night was hosted.

But it was worth it.  As soon as we arrived, we were ushered through a gate and into a mini-paradise.  Everywhere you looked you saw green.  There was a beautiful stone pathway through deep green grass leading to a big outdoor tent lined with rugs and little benches and tables with tea set out.  Immediately we were greeted by helpful and friendly women who invited us to take off our abayas and even gave us little bags to carry them in.  We got name tags and were led to the first of a series of little booths lining the edge of the yard.  The first one was offering scientific evidence for some of the events in the Quran,  I was in the back of a group of women listening to someone who was talking about the medicinal qualities of bees while on a laptop images of fetuses rotated on a slide show.  I couldn't hear very well, so maybe she was saying something that would tie it all in together, or make some connections somehow, but I left before I could find out, so now in the back of my mind I'll always be trying to find links between babies, bees, and biblical events.  The next booth was a Q&A about Islam, but it was crowded, and we were very thirsty, so we skipped over it and the calligraphy and traditional dress tents to get some juice.

There were two kinds of juice, and I highly recommend them both.  One was a mint lemonade, and the other pomegranate juice.  If you've never thought to throw a sprig of mint into your lemonade, do.  It's so delicious, I think I'm spoiled for life and can't go back to plain lemonade after this.

Saudi Crepes

Saudi Doughnuts

Just beside the juice table were two women on the floor in front of gas burners. One was making Saudi crapes, and the other one was making a traditional Saudi dish that was very much like doughnut holes. Only it was like magic.  There was a big dish full of nearly boiling oil, and the woman would scoop up some dough and drop it in, and magically, the dough would turn itself into a perfectly round ball.  You may think I'm exaggerating, and that there must have been some that ended up kind of lopsided, or with weird shapes, but no, everyone was perfectly round, and all she did, was just drop the dough in the oil, and wala, perfection!  I stood watching it for a long time, and I never could figure out the secret, but one of the Saudi women has promised to send me the recipe, so maybe I'll try it.  I wonder if I accidentally burn down the accommodation in the process, if the company will move us to a better one with a laundry room.

Food from the buffet - stuffed zuchini!

Before I knew it, they were serving this huge buffet of food.  I had assumed we had missed the food, and all that was left were these doughnut balls and crapes, so I had already eaten about half a dozen balls, and at least half a crape.  I was so mad.  I would never have room in my stomach now to try all of the dishes they had arranged on the table.  Each dish was carefully labeled and included the region of Saudi where it originated.  There were even tiny little salad dishes with lids.  We sat on the benches and relaxed and ate.  Saudi women came around and checked on all of us making sure we were having a good time and didn't need anything, and did we try her favorite dish yet?  She sent her daughter to fill up a plate for us to try.  Like everything else, it was delicious.  I was stuffed.  While I was recovering in the hopes of having room for a dessert, I talked with a Korean woman.  She has been in Saudi for two years now, and though she doesn't like it here and feels trapped and isolated, she is hoping her husband will sign up for another year because he drinks too much in Korea, and here, where it is so hard to get alcohol, he is much better.  What a difficult choice, your own sanity and freedom, or what you know is best for your husband.

Using bamboo for Arabic calligraphy

After a small but delicious dessert, I rushed to the calligraphy booth.  The women helped me choose a quote from the Koran, and painted my initials over the gold leaf on the page with the quote, then they offered to frame it and wrap it up for me all for free!  They even made me take a second one because it was getting late and they had so many frames left.  I was flabbergasted.  It was all so generous!  For the second one, they showed me how to do calligraphy, and for the first time since I arrived I was glad I had bothered to learn the alphabet, so I could stun and impress them all when I wrote my name in Arabic calligraphy.  It was so much fun I didn't want to stop.  But we had told the driver we would be out by 9 pm, and now it was almost ten.  We rushed to get our things together and I stood next to the booth with all of the traditional clothing waiting for the others who had gone to the bathroom quickly before we left.  I asked to take a picture of some of the clothes and the next thing I knew the woman had somehow managed to get me into the booth and was putting a dress over my head.  I knew I didn't have much time, but it was so pretty, and I did want a picture... So I let her.

Me in traditional brides dress
from the eastern province

And then she insisted on adding the head dress with shiny gold coins, and then of course I needed the necklace as well, and then the fan, and then she wanted her daughter in the picture with me too, and by now I was sure everyone was impatiently waiting for me, so I struggled out of the outfit as quickly as I could, and back into my abaya and thanked the woman for all her help, and ran to catch up with the others, who were trying to get out of going into the tent to have tea with another very gracious hostess, and I really wished we didn't have to rely on a driver and could spend the whole night talking to these friendly Saudi women, who seemed so different from the Saudi women administrators at Dammam University who never smiled and seemed so cold and unapproachable.

As we made our way to the gate, each of us were given a carefully wrapped bundle of goodies to take home with us, and some more cookies to eat on the drive home and many many well wishes.  We couldn't wait till we got home to open our gifts, so on the ride home we examined our SWAG (stuff we all get) and found a very nice mug for tea (which is great since I had no mug at all until then) and a small bottle of perfume, and about five different books, all having something to do with Islam.  We had famous Islamic Quotes, How to raise your children based on principles of the Koran, What every woman should know about Islam, and a very detailed biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Peace be upon him). I'm sure they will make for interesting reading.  I couldn't have imagined a better night. I am so very happy that we didn't give up on finding it, though I think by the time we finally arrived home at half past 11, our poor driver probably wishes we had.