A Visit to the Suleiman Residence

One of the reasons Suleiman was so keen on helping me out, was that he wanted me to be in Riyadh so that I could tutor his children.  He invited me over to meet his wife and kids one evening.  Turns out, he lived very close to my hotel.  I had even passed it on my way to the grocery store the day before.  I could walk there, but I didn't dare suggest it, he would have been horrified enough to know I had walked to the grocery store.  No one here walks.  There is a joke that two women were waiting for a taxi, and it didn't see them until he had already passed them, so he stopped about 20 feet in front of them.  One woman says to the other.  "Dang, he stopped where we were going."

I kind of expected Suleiman to have a large house.  After all, he was the part owner of several businesses.  In reality, it seemed pretty similar to the house of the girls I had tutored in Dammam.  One difference though was that they had two Filipino women working there.  From what I could tell, they were sort of general purpose maids / nanny's.  Maybe I was arriving just as their shift finished or maybe there were always two on duty full time.  It's hard to say.  I was ushered into the living room to wait for Suleiman and his wife to come.  Meanwhile, one of the maids brought me freshly squeezed orange juice and a plate full of little pastries with za'atar spices.    The furniture was very regal seeming, like something from Victorian England, and on the walls were several pictures, one of which was a holographic picture of a white lap dog.  There was also a little desk in the corner with a PC but no monitor, and some toys scattered about.  I wondered if this was the proper guest room, or just the sort of guest room for non-VIPs like myself that double as a playroom.

Suleiman's youngest, a six year old, kept bouncing around the corner to stare at me from behind a couch and then running off.  Suleiman popped his head in briefly to tell me he his wife would be right down.  One of his daughters came in to sit with me for a moment, but didn't say much and left quickly.  His wife, who is a doctor, spoke English very well, though she was shy about it.  She was very curious about me, and was particularly concerned that I was here alone and didn't have a family.  Eventually, she gave up on trying to convince me that I should marry a nice Saudi man and we got down to talking about the kids.  The plan would be to turor the girls and possibly the youngest son two or three times a week.  The oldest daughter attends the same college I would be teaching at, so hopefully I would be her teacher.   Suleiman must have been listening from around the corner because when he heard this, he poked his head in and said he would make sure I was her teacher.

The other daughter came down a little later.  She was still in high school and was actually going to be taking a test to try to get in to a better high school.  They wanted me to help her study for this test, but none of them know what the test would cover, so studying for it was going to be more a matter of guessing than anything else.  The six year old was at an international school.  They had half of the classes in Arabic and half in English.  He was still learning the basics, but the things he knew he was very proud of sharing.  Once his parents and sisters were also in the room, he lost some of his shyness and went around to each one of us saying "How are you? Fine thanks." all in one breath.  Only with his accent it sounded almost like "Who are you?" and for a minute I wasn't sure how to answer.  Luckily he immediately answered for me with "Fine, thanks."  so I didn't really have time to consider the full existential implications of the question.  

The younger daughter was busy on her cell phone, and barely looked up the entire time.  The daughter who would be at the same college as me, left to get some of the books we would use, and so I did my best to occupy the boy, who was proudly but incorrectly reciting the alphabet.  We were just finally getting to the point where he remembered there were some letters between L and P, when I noticed the Arabic voices around me seemed strained.  The younger daughter was crying quietly, still not looking up from her phone while her parents seemed to be chastising her.  My guess was they had been giving her a hard time about her grades or not studying hard enough, but it could have been about anything.  Maybe how she never ever puts her phone down?  

What do you do when you are a guest in someone's home, and something clearly very personal and private happens in front of you?  I mean, this is an awkward moment in any situation, let alone when you have to account for cultural differences on top of all of it.   I had no idea what to do.  When I stopped listening to the son say the alphabet, he stopped saying it, and everyone got very quiet.  I didn't want to look at her or embarrass her, and I didn't want to look at the parents, so the son and I just looked at each other.   I can't tell you how relieved I was when the oldest daughter i back with her books.  I busied myself with looking intently through the books she brought me while the six year old continued to try to get my attention by throwing out any random English word he happened to remember.

I don't know how long we all went on sitting in that room.  It felt like days but it was probably only about 10 minutes.  But I was so relieved when Suleiman told me the driver was outside.  I couldn't get me shoes on fast enough.  It would certainly be interesting to tutor the kids, and for now, while I wasn't working, I was sure it would be fine, but I wasn't sure how it would work out when and if I took the job.  At least it was an escape from the tedium of the 24k gold hotel apartments for a while.