Even though I didn't end up taking the FATE job, Caroline, the British woman who initially interviewed me kept in touch. We were both westerners new to Riyadh, and it's nice to be able to talk to someone who is in the same boat as you are.
We decided to meet up on Friday for lunch. Even though this sounds like a simple thing, it actually requires a lot of planning. We both have to secure a driver. Then we have to find a place with a family section so that we can eat there. We settled on a mall near the Diplomatic Quarter where she lived, there was a nice Café she knew of there, and since I didn't know anywhere to go, I deferred to her judgement.
A series of unfortunate events guaranteed that our day wouldn't go as planed. One of the problems was that I had asked them to install internet in the housing. Actually this was a point of contention, since in the initial interview and a few times after that, they told me that internet would be included in the housing, and then when I pointed out that there wasn't any internet, they told me that I would have to pay for it. When I pointed out that it was in the contract, they begrudgingly relented. So initially they told me that they would come to install it Thursday night. Thursday came and went and they didn't come. Friday morning I went to ask about it, and they told me they would come after prayer around 1:30pm. This was unfortunate, since Caroline and I had agreed to meet at 12pm, and it was probably 30 or 40 minutes away from my house, making lunch a tight squeeze.
I called Caroline to see if she wanted to reschedule, but since she had already booked a driver, we decided to just go for it. After all, what were the chances that they would come at all, let alone come on time? We figured we could chance it.
I hoped in a taxi and told him the name of the mall. When we arrived, the place was deserted. He asked me if I was sure, and I wasn't, but I paid him and went in anyway. Friday mornings in Saudi are the quietest part of the week because Friday is the day of worship, so most people stay home with their families or go to the mosque to worship. No one really goes out until after 4pm. We sort of forgot to take this into account when we made our plans.
So I walked into the mall and it was completely empty and all the stores were closed. I felt like I had just walked into an apocalypse movie. I resisted the urge to call out, Hello? Is anybody there? I walked toward the escalator since Caroline had told me the Café was on the second floor. I was walking slowly and cautiously, expecting someone to come out and tell me the mall was closed and I needed to leave. It was eerily quiet. Suddenly I heard a noise and I jumped three feet into the air. It was just a man at the other end of the mall clearing his throat. He was the only other living thing in the place, or so it seemed, and I didn't want to stick around to see if he was coming closer. I took the escalator steps two at a time. Going up an escalator when it's off is a weird enough experience on its own, but taking them two at a time with the feeling that someone is after you is really strange. Logically, I knew I was being silly. But you walk around a deserted mall alone and see if it doesn't jangle your nerves.
When I got to the second floor I relaxed a little. Caroline would be there waiting for me at a Café and then it wouldn't be so strange. The mall wasn't that big, just a long skinny rectangle. I made my way to the far end to what looked like a coffee shop but turned out to sell candy. When I made it all the way to one end with no Café and no Caroline, I started to worry again. I headed to the other end of the floor, hoping there was a Café there. It didn't take long to realize there wasn't at least not anything that was open. I called Caroline. She insisted she was there on the second floor waiting for me. I told her I was on the second floor and didn't see her anywhere. Now, this was extra strange since there was literally no one around. I suddenly got the feeling maybe I had gone to the wrong mall. I confirmed with Caroline, "You are at the Granada Mall, right?" "Yup, she said. Second floor. I'm near a cafe with a green and white logo... I should be able to see you...." Having already walked the whole length of the second floor, I knew there was no cafe with a green and white logo. Something was wrong. Suddenly, It came to me. "Wait, you must mean the British second floor, right?, cause I'm on the American second floor. I'll be right up." I can't believe that I forgot the British have the strange habit of calling the first floor the ground floor, and the first floor the second floor and so on. So Caroline had been waiting for me on the third floor the whole time. Silly Brits.
Turns out, there wasn't really any rush. The cafe was closed and wouldn't open until 2pm. We decided we could hang around in the mall for a little while, then head back to my place just in case the internet installers showed up. I had some pasta I could make, or there was a shawarma place near my house. I had never actually been there, but I figured it couldn't be so bad. Besides, Caroline wanted to see how the other half lived, those of us not lucky enough to be in the Diplomatic Quarter.
When I showed her my apartment, she was quiet taken aback by my digs. I could tell she was secretly jealous of my amazing furniture. Before she could get over her initial shock, there was a knock on the door. They had come to install the internet, and they were more or less on time. We were both amazed. We put our abayas back on and stood back to watch. Three guys came in with a long spool of blue cable and a handful of tools. This seemed much more complicated than was strictly necessary. The quickest and probably cheapest internet solution was to buy a wireless router like they had installed at my old company. Caroline and I speculated that they needed the cable because they were splicing in on someone else's internet.
They came into the room and spent a lot of time speculating on the best way to run the cable. First they tried to snake it through the air conditioning unit itself into the outside. Thankfully one of them had the sense to point out that it wasn't safe. So instead, they pulled back the trim around the AC unit and threaded it through the considerable gap there. Then one of them opened the window and leaned half way out feeding cable outside. The third man ran downstairs to catch the cable from the outside and connect it to, who knows where. All this went pretty smoothly, until they took the router out of the box and tried to actually connect it.
For reasons unknown, Saudi outlets are consistently inconsistent. Sometimes they are the large three pin plugs common in the rest of the Middle East, sometimes they are the two-pin European style, and other times they use American plugs. The basic rule to follow seems to be that whatever plug style the thing you want to plug in is, the outlet will be incompatible. I offered up my small stash of adapters. I had a European to US, a US to Middle East, but not what we actually needed which was Middle East to European. The three men looked at the plug situation and did what all men faced with an obstacle do. They thought of the most difficult, complicated solution possible and decided to try it. They were on the verge of cutting off one of the pins on the plug so that it would fit into another adapter which they would then fit into a third, and then finally plug it into the wall, when thankfully, one of the men stopped the guy. He said some things in Arabic, and then left, presumably to buy the correct adaptor.
The two men and Caroline and I sat and stared at each other in uncomfortable silence for a while while we waited for the guy to return. It didn't take long. He brought the longest extension cord / power socket known to man, and thankfully, It had all three plug styles built in so it was guaranteed to work. With everything finally plugged in, it was time for the moment of truth. We powered up my laptop and he typed in the password and just like that, I finally had internet! Woo Hoo!
The guys tacked the trim around the AC unit back into place using the side of a wrench as a hammer. Then they piled up all the extra cables and wires in a corner in an attempt to tidy up and left.
Caroline and I just looked at each other and laughed. "Thank you for giving me a truly Saudi Experience." she said. "When you live in the DQ with Embassy parties every weekend, you can forget." I nodded. "You'll have to invite me to one so I can see what it's like." Sure thing, she said. And we left to eat our long delayed meal at a Moraccan Restaurant with a nice view of the Kingdom tower.
When we parted ways, her climbing into her trusted drivers van, and me waiting for a random taxi to swing by, she told me how much she enjoyed seeing my neck of the woods. And I'm sure she had. But I'm also sure that the unspoken end of that sentence was, "but I'm happy they aren't my woods."
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