So, tonight I was the last to leave the school after my evening class. Usually there are a few girls still waiting for their drivers, but tonight, they had all left before me. I was trying to remember how to say "I'm the last one" in Arabic to the guard to let him no it was safe for him to go in the women's section and lock up, so I was deep in concentration and didn't notice the crowds at first. Then, one of my students who was already outside grabbed me and pulled me over into the crowd. I saw a bunch of men gathered around one car, it looked like they were trying to calm someone down, but it was mostly just chaos so it is hard to tell. I could see there was a broken back seat window and glass everywhere, and I thought, oh, big surprise it must have been an accident.
I asked one of my students (I think she was one of mine, it's hard to tell when they are wearing the niqab) if it was a car accident, and she said, no teacher - a gun! I was so surprised. For one thing, guns - apart from the ak-47s the guards have in front of compounds - are pretty much unheard of here. For another, if someone has a gun, why on earth are we all crowded around trying to get closer?! I didn't get the chance to follow up on that because I was being pulled further into the crowd by what I hoped was another one of my students. I was close enough now to see that there were no bodies on the ground, so that was a good sign. Just broken glass and some men shouting. A woman turned around and asked me what was up in Arabic, and I half panicked. I thought for a minute they were looking to me as the teacher and supposed authority figure here to do or say something. I was completely unprepared to react, especially since I really didn't have any idea what was going on. So I just stood there like an idiot, speechless.
As it turned out, it was just the mother of one of my students. I can only assume she was in the car with the driver waiting to pick up her daughter when everything happened, and like everyone else, she had gotten out to take a look. My student must have wanted her to meet me, so when she saw me, she just pulled me in. It was an odd time to be meeting the parent of one of my students. On the one hand, I felt I should be professional and friendly, on the other hand, there may or may not be someone with a gun less than ten feet away from me. It's hard to make small talk in these circumstances. We shook hands and I said it was a pleasure to meet her, which she didn't hear over the shouting going on around us. I said it again a little louder and she nodded this time and gave my hand a little extra squeeze. She may have been about to ask me something or say something else, but I will never know because we were being herded by some men in suits back into the building. I had to wonder why our security guard, who from what I could tell wasn't doing anything but grandiosely narrating events like a sports caster, hadn't thought it smart to move all the women inside before now.
Inside again I asked the girls what had happened. From the broken English and confusion, I was able to piece together the following scenario. There was a small accident. One of the drivers or a passenger of one of the drivers was drunk (this detail, even more than the gun, was the piece of information my students seemed to relish most in the retelling). So there was an argument about whose fault the accident was, and suddenly the drunk man had a gun and was waving it around. So some people who were watching called the police, and when the man heard the police were coming, he locked himself in the car, but oddly enough didn't drive away, he just sat in the back seat with his gun. When the police came, he refused to get out, so they broke the glass on the window in the back seat and pulled him out and took him away. This is where I came in. I saw the broken window, and what I now assume were the other guys in the car with him yelling, and people all around trying to calm them down. Eventually they all drove off, but I have no idea where they took the man or anything. I thought it was strange that I hadn't seen any police outside, so I asked the students about this. They said that they weren't real police, just kind of like security guards. This might help explain why on earth they would break a window and physically grab a guy who had a gun and could have easily shot anyone of them at any time. I was trying to imagine a scenario where someone would say;
"Hey, that drunk man locked in the car has a gun!"
"Really? Let's see if we can get the gun from him in the most violent and dangerous way possible!" "Ok, hmmm.... I know, let's break a window and yank him out!"
"Yeah! He definitely won't try to shoot us if we do that!"
The only thing crazier than this would have to be the inner monologue of the guy with the gun:
"Wow, I really screwed up, I'm drunk, and I have a gun, and it's Saudi Arabia. I guess I'll just lock myself in this car. Yup, I'll curl up in the back seat of this car here, and have a good cry. No point in trying to leave. I'll just stay here. In this car. In the middle of the street. While tons of people gather to watch these men break in my window... hey..."
I don't know, it doesn't make a ton of sense to me. And maybe I haven't got all the details quite right, in fact, I'm sure I don't have all the details right. Still it was an eventful night, and not just because of all the excitement about this man. It was eventful for me because I could see how far the girls had come in just one month of classes. While we were all gathered in the front entrance of the school, waiting for our drivers to finally make their way to us from this chaos, the girls were all speaking English. In their rush to be the first one to tell me what happened, they were throwing words around they never even knew they had learned. They were spouting out irregular past tense verbs like champs. The same group of women who four weeks ago couldn't even tell me that they had forgotten their book at home without a translator were suddenly giving me a blow by blow breakdown of what happened, and asking me what I thought of the whole thing. It was amazing. Sure, they weren't perfect, and sure, I didn't understand all of what they said, but tonight, these girls made the giant leap forward from learning English, to using English. I couldn't be more proud.
So thank you crazy drunk man with a gun! You made my day.
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