I got up early the next morning so that I could have the photos to Sulaiman by 8:30 so he could take them to the labor office by 10am. It wasn't easy since I had stayed up late the night before celebrating my good fortune by watching movies.
I had no trouble finding his office since I had been there before and it wasn't that far from the hotel. When I arrived, Sulaiman was still not in, but I came prepared with a book to read and settled in to wait. When he arrived he yelled at his tea boy for not bringing me water, then yelled at the tea boy for bringing the wrong water. He pulled a different brand of water out of his thobe pocket and explained to me that he only drank this kind of water. It was from an Aquafur 300-500 meters deep about an hour from Riyadh. He didn't trust the water that was brought in from other areas in the middle east. I was really thirsty and badly wanted to drink the water the tea boy had brought, but didn't want to drink it in front of Sulaiman for fear he would think I didn't trust or value his opinion on bottled water.
He explained that he was late because he had driven his kids to school. "I have 2 drivers." he said, "but I like to take my kids to school whenever I can because in the morning they are fresh and can't think of lies, so I get to know about their lives that way." I smiled and asked how many kids he had. "5, Two girls, three boys. The oldest girl is 18, she is studying to be a doctor like her mother, and the youngest is six. He is such a trouble maker." He talked more about them, and his hopes and dreams for them. He told me he was sorry I would be in Khobar and not Riyadh, because then I could tutor his girls. He talked about how hard he worked, sometimes coming into the office at 6am. Sometimes not leaving until 5pm. (I know, that doesn't sound late to us, but trust me, for a Saudi, that is an impressively long workday.) He said he worked so hard, so he could also take 4 or 5 vacations per year. And when he went on vacation, he turned off his phone, he didn't check email, he didn't do anything. I told him his family was lucky to get so many vacations. He told me he didn't bring them. "They come maybe once or twice a year, but the rest of the time I need a vacation from them. They are a lot of work, and driving them around and caring for them is really a lot of work." I asked if he also gave his wife a vacation or two of her own without the kids and he asked what for. "She doesn't do anything, she has a maid and a nanny. So what more does she need?" I thought that was almost fair, until I remembered that she was also a doctor and probably also worked really long hours. When I pointed this out to him he just shrugged and said it wasn't tiring for a woman to handle kids because that was what she was meant to do. I decided to let that one go.
He handed off my passport and the photos to one of his workers and told him to do something with them and continued to talk to me. I didn't want to take up to much of his time, but he appeared to be enjoying our conversation. He asked about me and my family in American, and why I was still single, and didn't everyone in America have a boyfriend or a girlfriend because that is what it was like in the films and the media. I tried to explain diplomatically that America was large and there were a lot of different people in it with different values from what you see in the movies. I told him it was the same thing in Saudi. I told him I had one idea of what it was like here from the media before I came, but that now that I am here, I see it differently. He seemed to like that answer. He told me that true muslims were not IS and would never set out to kill people, or force them to pray or do anything like that. He told me it was more about doing good works and charity. As an example, he told me how he became so successful. He explained that in the beginning he had earned only 1500 SAR a month ($400) per month. But that even with this little money, he always gave to charity and helped other people, and for this reason, he became successful. Now he sponsors many companies in Saudi Arabia including British Airways, Lufthansa, and an American medical supplies company. He had built two mosques, one in honor of his father and the other his mother. He had two houses and was building a third. Clearly, this man had wasta. I was so grateful to have him on my side.
Eventually Suleiman got up to go back to work. I asked him if I needed to stay in Riyadh, or if I could go back to Dammam now. I still didn't have my passport, but I didn't want to miss the start of classes on Sunday. He said sure no problem, he would mail my passport back to me when he got it all straightened out. I felt very confident that he would and left his office feeling more hopeful than I had in a really long time.
I flagged down a taxi and told him I needed to go to exit 5 and negotiated a price. Then I climbed in. When we got to exit 5 I started to worry. Nothing looked familiar. There should have been a McDonald's and a Red Lobster at the first intersection after the exit from the highway, but I didn't see either. I thought, maybe it is because I was now coming from the opposite direction. Foolishly, I hadn't brought the paper with me with the name of the hotel and couldn't remember it. I did happen to remember the name of the street it was on, but that was about it. The driver didn't recognize the street name I was telling him, and I didn't recognize anything at all. I asked if he was sure this was exit 5 and was there another one coming from the other direction? And so we turned around and went left at the intersection instead of right and still nothing looked familiar. I tried calling the driver that had brought me to get my photos last night, but he didn't answer. The driver was getting impatient. we pulled over to ask about the street I remembered, but the man at the gas station didn't know the road. He asked if I wanted to go to the mall, and I recognized it as the mall I had gone to on the shopping trip, but knew it was about a 30 minute bus ride from the old hotel. I definitely didn't want to go there. I tried a few more numbers in my phone, and finally, luckily, I got ahold of someone.
I passed the phone up to the driver, who talked angrily with the man for a while, and then when he felt he knew where it was, he handed the phone back to me and began an angry lecture that lasted the entire trip back from Exit 5 to Exit 8. He had picked me up at Exit 7. I have no idea what happened in my head that made me so sure I was staying at Exit 5 instead of Exit 8, but I had been sure. The driver didn't speak much English, so luckily, the most I was getting out of his rant was "Exit 8 not 5, 8! Stupid woman." Which was fine because I doubt it was possible that anything he could say would make me feel more embarrassed and frustrated with myself than I already did. I had planned on giving the man more than our original agreed on price for all the trouble, but the longer the lecture went on, the more resentful I felt, and the smaller my gratitude became. By the time we finally reached the hotel, I had been berated and called stupid for at least 20 minutes. I suppose he was trying to be helpful by repeating exit 8 over and over, so that next time I would know what to tell the driver, but I had had enough and was pretty sure I know knew the arabic word for stupid, and maybe a few other choice curse words. So I handed him our agreed on price, quickly got out of the taxi and went inside. I had the worst luck with Riyadh taxis.
Once home, I had a new challenge. I had to book a train ticket back to Dammam. I think I have mentioned before my love of the Saudi Railways website. Today was no exception. I booked a ticket for the 1pm train, which gave me about 3 hours to eat, pack up and make it to the station. I called a friend of mine and asked if he could pay for the ticket for me online since I still didn't have a bank account. He said he would. I reminded him about the window, and that if he didn't pay y 11:45 the ticket would be cancelled. He said no problem. 11:45 came and went and I got no confirmation of payment. I called him up and he told me he was sorry, he had forgotten. Frustrated, I tried to make a new reservation, but that train was now sold out, so I booked the next one, a 5:20 train, and called him again. This time, instead of going to an ATM to pay, he set up his online banking and paid that way. He sent me a screenshot of the bill paid screen. I relaxed and set about making something to eat and taking my time with packing.
I knew it would take about 30-45 min to reach the station and that I should arrive about an hour before hand so I figured if I left by 3:30 that should be fine. So at 3:20, I headed outside to flag down a taxi. There were a lot on the road my hotel was on, so I figured it wouldn't be a problem. It didn't take long. I asked about the price, and he said he would use the meter. I was shocked. No driver had ever used his meter before. I had no idea that they even worked. I agreed and got in. The last time I had paid 30 to get to the train station, so I figured it would be something like that. We got on the road and things went pretty smoothly at first, and then we ran into some traffic. It suddenly occurred to me that it was Thursday (our Friday) and it was then end of work hours for most people. We could be stuck here a while. I was watching in dread as both numbers on the dash, the clock and the meter, steadily increased. Why hadn't I anticipated the traffic! I sweated it out for a while in the backseat, pretty literally since the air conditioning was barely functional in this taxi, but eventually we made it to our exit and had more or less clear sailing the rest of the way to the train station.
He pulled up at about 4:50 with the meter at 57 SAR. I had 53 SAR exactly or a 500 bill. I took a chance and asked the driver if he would take 53. He told me no problem and I thanked him. I rushed inside to the kiosk where you can print your tickets and entered the reservation number. It told me there was no reservation. I tried again. Again it told me there was no reservation number. I was starting to panic. I tried it a third time. No luck. I waited in line to talk to the ticket agent. I showed him my reservation number and the screenshot saying it was paid. He looked for it in his computer but told me he was also showing it wasn't paid. I tried calling my friend to ask him about the payment he sent to his bank, but was horrified to see I was out of phone credit. (It's always when you need it most). I asked him what I could do. He shrugged. I asked if I could buy another ticket, and if I did, would they reverse the charge for the one I already paid for. He shrugged and told me he didn't think there were any seats left. I thought I might cry. The next train wouldn't leave until 10pm and I really didn't want to spend five hours in a train station and then another four hours on the train.
I guess he could see my panic and took pity on me. He brought me around to another man and explained the situation to him. Then he went back to his post. This new man didn't speak much English, but he was sure trying. He asked me a few questions, but seemed to have a hard time understanding the answers. I kindly bespectacled old man had been eavesdropping and offered to help. He took my ticket and my screenshot of the paid online bill. He and the man shook their heads and spoke in alternately pitying and angry tones. Apparently this kind of thing happened a lot. He asked if I could call the bank and I told him that since I had no iqama and no bank account yet, I had had a friend pay for it for me. I told him I would call him, but I needed to buy credit first. Time was running out on boarding this train, so the old man kindly offered to let me call on his phone. I did, but there was no answer. Finally the man behind the desk told me he would book me another ticket if I could pay now, and I told him that would be fine. so I took out my 500 SAR bill, which posed another problem because it seemed no one had change. After all, we weren't at the ticket booth, I was essentially talking to the guy taking tickets as people boarded. The old man found change, then rushed me to the kiosk to print my new ticket and then back to the ticket checker, who waved me on through. I thanked them both repeatedly and quickly as I passed through to the metal detector. My faith in Saudi's had been restored. There was no reason for any of them to be so helpful, but they were, and I was eternally grateful.
Things were sure looking up. The visa problem was practically solved, I had a new job that paid great, Saudi's had shown me their hospitable and helpful side, and I was on my way home.
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