Resigning: Day 3

 The next morning I woke up early to sit in the lobby and use the Internet because the signal was really weak in my room. I was surprised to see a young woman there with no abaya on. It's amazing how quickly something that used to be perfectly normal becomes jarring when you haven't seen it in a while. She saw me, and came to ask me some questions. Her name was Jennifer, from Texas and she had just arrived from the airport where no one from the company had come to meet her, so she had waited there 5 hours. Finally, she found the driver just by chance, and he brought her to the hotel where she had been waiting to be checked in for nearly 2 hours. Apparently the front desk couldn't check her in without confirmation from the company and no one was at the office yet to confirm. She was jet lagged and confused and worried because no one from the company had told her what to do when she arrived, or where to go. I told her not to worry, and that she could come on the bus to the office with me at 9am if she wanted, or she could take a day to sleep and catch up on jet lag and go in the next day and it wouldn't make any difference. She asked me some questions about the company, and since she already seemed nervous and frightened, I didn't want to scare her too much, but I told her whatever you do, don't let them have your passport. Finally, they gave her a room, and she went off to sleep and recover from the 36 hours of traveling she had just done to get here.

Wajda and I were on the bus to the office together again that morning and we chatted about weather and camels and traffic problems and hijab wrapping and all the typical Saudi conversations you find yourself having. I'd only known her a few days, but I really felt good around her. She was calm and friendly and warm hearted and understanding and I found myself wishing we had ended up together in the same city instead of just meeting by chance like this in the office. I had been told by a few people that I should bring the guys in the office small gifts. Not bribes exactly just small things to show I appreciated them. Since I knew Osama had kids, I'd gone out the night before and bought some balloons to make balloon animals for them. I also bought a whole stack of sticky notes for Faisal (I wanted to get him different colors, but all they had was yellow). I couldn't think of anything really special for Mohammad, mostly he talked about his dodge charger, so i got him a car freshener. It was pretty lame, but it was something.

Unfortunately that morning, Mohammad was late, Osama was in a meeting (as usual) and Faisal was running around trying to cover both of their jobs. So I  went with Wajda to her office instead and we continued our chat while I drew a small stick figure in the corner of each page of the post-it pad so that when you flipped through it it looked like he was doing jumping jacks. I thought Faisal would get a kick out of that. Around 11, I went back in and Mohammad was there so I asked him for an update about my passport, and he told me it was with the immigration office, and that if all went well, I would have it by 3pm. I asked him to check on my vacation days for me, and if I had enough if we could move the final date up to end immediately, and that way I wouldn't have to wait till Sept. 4th (I knew the other job really wanted me to start as soon as possible). He told me that I would be foolish to do that because no matter what my final date was, they weren't going to issue me a final exit visa until the iqama had been processed. "Right now you are getting paid, but once your final day comes, you won't be paid anymore. So, since you have to wait anyway, wait and get paid." This seemed more or less logical to me, so I didn't push the issue. I did wonder what would happen though if my last day came and went, and I still had no iqama. Would they issue a final exit without it? Wouldn't it make more sense never to issue the iqama? I wanted to ask him these things, but he had already moved on to the next person in line.

I settled into my usual chair to wait, and pulled out my kindle to pass the time. I will tell you something though, it is impossible to concentrate when all around you people are desperate and anxious and frustrated. Every conversation you overhear is loaded with barely hidden tension. The teachers are all keenly aware that they are being screwed somehow or another, and the staff is doing their best to mediate a system that is inherently problematic. It's almost an us, them, them dynamic where the English speaking staff act as go betweens for the Saudi staff upstairs that handle finance and government relations. They say to us, we are trying for you, but it is out of our hands, the people upstairs will take care of it. Sometimes that is true, and sometimes it isn't. I've seen to many stacks of paperwork shoved to the bottom of piles after heated arguments to think otherwise.

Today I met a man who was here with his wife and two kids. He had a flight in two days, and had his kids Iqama's but he and his wife's were missing. He wasn't sure if the company had them or not, and neither was the company. There were discussions about the possibility of bribing an official to make the three week process of replacing a lost iqama shrink to two days, but even the Saudi's seemed doubtful. He was remarkably calm about it all, but I suppose he had been through it all before. He said he had been trying to leave for three months. And that he had worked here for over 3 years, so he knew his way around. He asked about my situation and I told him what they had been telling me, that my passport wasn't even here, it was with the government offices. He laughed and said it was so untrue, which I had suspected. He said they never hold passports at the immigration / processing office. The company rep went with a stack of passports and applications, the guy processes them, or rejects them and returns them all to the company rep. The whole thinks takes like 15 minutes and the passports are never out of the company reps sight. He told me they have to at least show you your passport if you ask to see it.

"Come with me," he said, and took me upstairs to visit the government relations office. There was a little glass window with a hole in the bottom like a bank teller window or something. He told me to ask for my passport. I told him my name, and he went back into a little room and came back a few minutes later with my passport. He held it up for me behind the glass, and I said, no, I want to take it with me. He asked for my iqama (you are supposed to do an even trade). I told him I didn't have one yet. He told me I couldn't take my passport then. I told him I needed it to take the train home, which wasn't a complete lie. A copy might be enough, but there was no guarantee. He shook his head and made a tisking sound. The teacher who had brought me up here said something in Arabic, and the guy turned and came out of the office with my passport and began walking downstairs with it. He never said anything to me at all about where he was going or why, but I followed him and all three of us went back downstairs to Mohammad. The two of them discussed something in Arabic, and the teacher kept looking at me and giving me looks that more or less said, they aren't saying anything. Finally, Mohammad said, "They can't give a final exit without an iqama."
 And I asked, "They can't, or they don't want to?"
More discussion in Arabic, and then Mohammad said, "Can't."  I asked if it was because they had let my visa expire and would have to pay 10,000 riyals if I left without the iqama and Mohammad said, "Don't worry about the cost, the company will pay for everything." The helpful teacher started to tell me something, which I didn't even hear properly because Mohammed cut him off and started yelling at him. "This is not your issue, we are here trying to help her and you keep butting in and telling her things that aren't true, we never said anything about 10,000 riyals and now you have her worrying about this... Go away."
The helpful teacher muttered, "I was just trying to translate for her," and walked away, giving me a meaningful look that I took to mean 'I will talk to you later'.

In reality, he hadn't told me about the 10,000 riyals, it was something that I had read online. I asked Mohammed again and said, "It isn't about the money, I'm worried about the time. It has been 5 months already and I will not sit around and wait another 5 months while you guys sort out my iqama just to leave." There was more discussion, and all the while I was eyeing my passport which the government relations guy had given to Mohammed, who was waving it around and pointing while he talked. Finally, Mohammed said, "No, don't worry, he is going himself tomorrow and everything is ready now so he will have your iqama by 3pm." I asked if I could see my passport. I wanted to check and see if they had renewed my visa and they let me touch it and look through it, and I asked them why the visa wasn't renewed and there was more discussion in Arabic, and in the meantime, the helpful teacher was gesturing to me from the hallway to pocket my passport while they weren't paying attention. So I slipped it into my bag and waited for them to finish. Mohammed said, "There is no need to renew because the application for the iqama was started before it expired so it's ok." While Mohammed was explaining this to me, someone grabbed the government relations guy and took him off to another room. I thanked Mohammed and snuck off to Wajda's room to wait for the bus back hoping no one would notice I still had the passport.

 In Wajda's office I made the balloon animals for Osama and impressed her and another teacher. I even taught her how to make a giraffe. It was a big hit. I carried them into Osama's office and told him they were for his kids. He laughed and said they would love them. Then I dropped the post-it pad on Faisal's desk and he looked up and said, "You! It's been you delivering post its, to me!" He gave me a huge smile, and I told him goodbye and then I hung the air freshener from the corner of Mohammed's computer and he gave me a quick smile and thumbs up before resuming the heated discussion he was having with a teacher who hadn't been paid in two months. Then I made my way downstairs to get on the bus. I was starting to feel lighter and happier, I was almost out of here with my passport, and it didn't seem like anyone was going to try to stop me. I was halfway down the stairs when Mohammed ran after me. "Do you have your passport?", he said.
"Yes." I said.
"Give it back," he said.
"No." I said.
"Jennifer," he said, "Please, you can do nothing with your passport without the exit visa. He is going tomorrow to get it first thing, so he will take it with him tonight. Walla we need it, just give me one more day to get it for you and after tomorrow if there is no iqama, I will make them do everything for you. One more day. Please, Jennifer."
I asked, "Do you promise me tomorrow I will be able to have my passport, even if the iqama isn't ready?" I said, giving him that 'Don't you dare screw around with me' look I sometimes give students who I know are trying to pull one over on me.
"I promise." he said.
So I reluctantly, in one of those slow motion moments you end up replaying with regret over and over in your mind, I took my passport out of my bag and gave it to him. I made my way to the bus, and got on it. One more night, I told myself, one more night.

On the bus back with me today was the woman I had met yesterday with the baby and her husband. I could see that he was livid. She and I talked a little in the front seat about the progress (or lack thereof) with our situations while I oohed and awed over the baby. Her husband said, "I hope you don't mind if I but in, but I want you to know, what they are doing here is not Islam. I can't bear to think that you will leave here thinking that all muslims behave this way. We believe that we must be honest and just and fair in our business dealings or we will be rewarded with hellfire in the next world. That company is full of men who are not acting in accordance with the principles of islam and yet they claim to be Muslim. It is not only wrong because they are lying and breaking contracts, it is wrong because they are ruining the good name of muslims who are living the words of Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him). Do you know that lying is one of the worst things you can do in our religion?"

 I told him, not to worry, I understood that this was a business, and that the business practices were not a reflection of their religion, and I wasn't going to take the companies behavior as an example of the character of all Saudi's or all Muslims. "But that is just the point," he said, "we believe our religion is part of everything we do. If we do not honor him in all things, we do not honor him at all. There is no separating one part of our lives from our faith. I wish I had a way to tell everyone that what you are seeing in there, what you are dealing with, that is not Islam, those men who are lying to you are not true Muslims, and they will face the consequences in the next world." He would have gone on, but we had arrived at my hotel and I got out. They were staying at another one of the company housing apartments, so I wished them luck and I said goodbye to the wife and headed inside.

 I hadn't thought about the shady way the company operates before in terms of being a Saudi run company, and therefore, it being an Islamic company, and therefore a company whose reputation was a reflection on all Muslims. I wondered what that meant for the individual employees as religious people. Like everywhere else, I'm sure there are good people and there are bad people. But I wondered how the good people felt about what they were doing. Did they know they were breaking laws and screwing people out of money they earned? Or was the system so broken and convoluted that no one was really sure what was happening? Could they be that unaware of what was going on? If I had been in the office only three days, and seen all the politics, lying, scheming, forged signatures, whispered conversations to change this or that, etc... Then, could they really not see it? If they did see it, how did they reconcile that with their beliefs? Or was the job so important that they felt they had no choice but to turn a blind eye, and then get sucked into the system themselves?

I thought about us teachers, and how we had learned that we needed to "work" the system of not reporting absences and making up grades to avoid being fired, and how all the girls surely knew that when they didn't earn a grade, they could buy it with daddy's influence. I knew I had already thought about what I would do when teaching started, about how I knew the grades that would eventually be reported would not be a true reflection of student work and progress since they would be largely controlled by administrative decisions. I thought about how I had justified it for myself by choosing to focus on making sure that learning happened, rather than focusing on how it was documented. I realized we are all corrupted by our circumstances, by the systems we live in, and the only question seems to be how far you are willing to let yourself fall into it. Where is my line in the sand?  Where is yours?