How the Other Half Lives

This weekend we were invited to visit the Oasis compound.  Compounds are like gated communities for expats.  And by gated, I mean, gated, walled, barbed wired, armed guarded communities. You might say that is being a little paranoid, but this particular compound was attacked by terrorists in 2004 who killed about 27 people.  Since then they have added an extra layer of walls with electrified fences and a ton of other safety measures including face recognition software and big brother cameras everywhere.

So we got picked up from our regular Friday night shopping trip bus stop at the supermarket by a couple of American guys who are here working on contracts and staying in the villas on the compound.  We drove through three separate gate checks before we were officially on the compound, but even after the first gate, I could feel the difference.  There was so much greenery everywhere for one thing.  The other is the architecture of the apartments and "villas" looked like some thought had actually gone into planning the place.  The streets were laid out in typical suburban style with date palms lining the sidewalks.  We parked right in front of the villa they shared between five guys.  We walked into the entryway, which was the size of two of my bathrooms, and then into a living room dining room that was bigger than my whole apartment.  there was a second living room, just for the TV, a kitchen (with a dishwasher!) and then a completely separate laundry room that was bigger than my kitchen/living room.  There was even a room just for the maid with it's own private bathroom!  (They didn't actually have a live in maid, but they could have...)  There was also a back yard porch area with a grill and lawn chairs and everything, even though at the moment it is too hot, even at midnight to hang out out there.

Gemma and I were stunned.  We probably looked like idiots standing there with our jaws hanging open.  They all just sat back and watched us like we were crazy while we oohed and ahhed over the simplest things, like a toaster and coffee maker, an oven, the fact that there was more than one electrical outlet in the kitchen, and that they had real chairs instead of stools, the fact that the ceilings were a good 10 maybe even 15 feet high, all the ways this place was just superior in every way to where we were staying.  Then they dropped the bombshell.  This was just the first floor and there were two more stories of this paradise.  It took us over a half an hour to get the whole grand tour of the place, it was that big.  One guy had a hallway of closets longer than my bedroom and living room combined leading up to his bathroom.   Another guy had 2 TVs, and all of them had their own bathroom (with bathtubs!).  It was all so overwhelming.  I felt like we had been dropped right into upper middle class America.

And just to solidify the impression, we were offered a glass of wine.  This may not seem like much, but you have to remember that Saudi is an alcohol free country.  So to give us this glass of wine, grape juice, sugar and yeast had to sit around for three months in water jugs, then be bottled and sealed up for another little while before it made it into our mouths.  They called it "Shower Wine" because they used the maid's spare bathroom shower to store all of the water jugs while they were brewing the wine.  The wine was impressively good for having been made in a shower.  With an actual fancy wine glass in hand, we had now become fully immersed in little America.

And Gemma and I would have been more than content with just that, but wait, there's more.  This compound has not one, not two, but three swimming pools.  Of course, we had to go swimming, so the boys took us over to the fitness area, which was less than five minutes away, and the best part was, we didn't have to wear our Abayas!  We passed through a really long fancy looking dining area and then down some stairs to peek into an indoor tennis court.  Actually, two indoor tennis courts next to each other.  Then we went down another flight of stairs to an ice-skating rink.  Can you believe it?  In Saudi, an ice-skating rink?  How much refrigeration equipment do you think it takes to keep ice frozen in year round temperatures of 85-120 degrees fahrenheit? There was also a whole gym with cardio equipment and weights and basically any exercise stuff you could think of.  Finally, we went back up a level to the olympic size swimming pool.  It was crazy.  There was a diving board, and a ceiling that had to be three stories above us.  Suspended from the ceiling were bunches of large fiberglass dolphins, usually in families of three.  I counted at least 27 dolphins, but there may have been more.

And the best part of all of this?  We were the only people there.  There was absolutely no one around.  I couldn't believe that more people weren't spending their Friday night swimming in a pool.  If we lived in a place with a pool, I would be going swimming every day.  No, twice a day.  You would have to drag me out of the pool kicking and screaming. Nowhere on earth has swimming ever been more on my mind than here, where the heat and the dust constantly make you dream of water.  We swam until 10pm, when the pool officially closes, but there was no one there to kick us out, so we could have gone on swimming forever if it weren't for the fact that we were hungry.

We went back to their villa, and they were kind enough to offer us the use of their showers to rinse the chlorine off.  They even let us use their towels!  I was happy to have a shower, but I was ecstatic when I discovered the water did not taste salty.  For the first time in three months, I was bathing in fresh water!   Just when I thought nothing could top that, they offered to wash and dry our bathing suits for us right then and there.  They had a washing machine and a dryer!  I can't believe how lucky they are!  They can't believe how easily impressed we are.

So we made our way to the restaurant for a buffet.  The restaurant was large, and because it was one of the only places in Dammam where women were allowed to smoke shisha, the place was full of women.  It was oddly decorated in a weird combination of traditional Arabic designs and patterns crossed with neon colors and high tech tables lit with rotating colored lights.  So when we sat down our table went from blue to green to red and back before we had even decided who would sit where.  This was cool at first, but got to be somewhat distracting when we were trying to eat. There were a lot of Philipino and Indian staff waiting at every turn to be helpful.  One woman followed me around the buffet, and at first I thought she was following me because I wasn't in thier face recognition software so she was worried i was a terrorist or something.  I did my best to pretend I didn't notice she was there.  I focused instead on the many kinds of meat and hummus and salad, and only after I had already filled my plate did I notice that they had a chef making fajitas and another chef making mongolian noodles.  The woman who had been following noticed my plate was now full, and insisted on carrying it back to my table for me, while the chefs insisted on cooking me up some fajitas and noodles.  I told them what I wanted added to each dish, and then they sent me away.   I thought that was weird, but maybe I hadn't used the secret code word or something and chef-made dishes were only for people who actually lived here, but after a few minutes, someone dropped off both dishes to our table.  Every time I started to get up to get something, water, more juice, knapkins, someone was right there to get it for us.  They were so attentive, I was beginning to wonder if they would even go to the bathroom for me.

The food was just as good as the service, but unfortunately, because of Ramadan and all the fasting, I couldn't eat half of what I wanted to eat.  I didn't even have room for dessert even after sitting around for an hour after we had all finished eating so we could smoke shisha.  Normally when we smoke shisha, we get one or two shishas for the whole group.  But here, shisha automatically comes with the buffet, so we each got our very own.  And they had some unusual flavors too.  I got watermelon, which was pretty great, but not quite as good as grape mint.  Gemma got grape cherry, which I thought tasted like feet, but which one of the guys insisted tasted like lifesavers.  By the time we had finished it was nearly 2am, and I didn't ever want to leave.

Lucky for us, the guys offered to let us stay the night on one of the four couches in their two living rooms.  Sadly, those couches were ten times more comfortable than my own bed.  I had probably the best night's sleep I have had since arriving on that couch.  I'd like to attribute all of that to the softness of the cushions, but at least some of it was the shower wine, and the rest had to have been just knowing I was free of all the Saudi restraints so long as I was tucked up inside this amazing Oasis Compound.

In the morning, they offered to make us breakfast, and who would turn down eggs served up Mexican style by our very own in house chef?  After breakfast, I asked reluctantly asked about getting a taxi, but the guys insisted we should stay since we hadn't experienced all there was to do on the compound.  Even though it was the weekend, some of the guys still had to work, but a few of them were off, so they took us to the bowling alley.  That's right, the bowling alley.  We went to another part of the compound, which was also somehow only 5 minutes away (how is everything so centrally located to their villa?)  The bowling alley was attached to a pool hall with six pool tables and an arcade area.  The best part?  It's all free!  The arcade games don't take coins, the bowling is free, the pool is free, it's all free!  I have no idea how they can afford to pay the indian man with a suit and bowtie who took our food orders and brought us drinks when we don't have to pay for any of the activities.  I want to make this perfectly clear, it wasn't free because the guys were nice enough to pay for us (even thought they were nice enough to pay for dinner the night before).  There was no need because the activities were all free.  Completely free!

We played two games, and I lost both times, but I really didn't care.  After we finished we decided to waste a few hours in the arcade.  I played pinball and packman and some weird virtual sword slashing game that didn't really recognize arm movements.  Then I played a basketball shooting game and I managed to get 61 points in 40 seconds!  I beat Gemma, but was outdone by one of the guys who managed to get 85.  Believe me, I spent at least a half hour trying to beat his score.  My arms got tired before I came close.  I've never been that into video games, but Gemma is, so while she played every game to her hearts content, I wondered next door to the indoor soccer field.  I had only worn flipflops, but the soccer ball was made out of tennis ball material so we decided it would be okay to play barefoot, so we did some one on one for a while, and then slowly a few more of the guys joined us and we kicked the ball around for a while. I really hit my toe hard on something at some point, maybe the ball, maybe somebodies shin, I can't remember, but it has a nice purplish tint to it now.  I also started to get a blister on the ball of my foot after a while, so I called it quits. Sadly, that little bit of swimming and soccer and shooting hoops was probably the most activity I've been able to do since arriving in Saudi!

 It took a little longer to pull Gemma away from her games, but eventually we managed it.  The crazy part was, with all this free stuff to do, we only ever saw one other person come in that whole time.  What is going on?  How can all these great features be free, and no one takes advantage of them.  I can only suspect that most of the people are away at the moment for the Ramadan and Eid Holidays and it will be busy again in August.

Somehow we managed to waste that entire day.  When we left the arcade I was surprised to find it was already dark.  In fact, it was nearly ten o'clock.  The guys offered to drop us off at the mall, our pick up point for the bus back to our crappy lives.  Before we left though, they let us raid the maids bedroom, which they had been using to store all the stuff they didn't want.  I got an awesome rice cooker, a can opener, some measuring cups and a tupperware container.  Gemma got a pan, a cheese grater, an alarm clock and a vegetable steamer.  We made out like bandits.  The hardest thing was putting on our abayas to leave.  They don't weigh that much, but when I slipped it onto my shoulders they felt instantly heavy.  There is no way we can ever repay these guys for that beautiful escape from reality.

But as we drove back out of the three gates, and nearly died in several completely normal near misses in our drive back to the mall I started thinking about how bored the guys are living there in their expat bubble.  I thought about how little they knew of life outside of the compound walls and beyond their office. For them, there is no amazing great escape from Saudi for a weekend.  For them, it is all the time.  So, there is nothing to look forward to but leaving.  It got me thinking that I'm glad I live in such a crappy apartment.  I'm glad I get to experience both worlds, so that I can appreciate both what I have, and what they have.  Maybe someday we will take them to see our pool, our teenage mutant ninja turtle green cesspool that is. Somehow, I don't think that is the best way to express our gratitude.  Still, we got to see how the other half lives.... maybe they would like the same chance?