Getting to Know Riyadh

I spent the next day calling Suleiman and the dental and nursing school trying to arrange a visit so that I could see the classrooms, meet some of the teachers, and see the accommodations before agreeing to an offer.  Unfortunately, in typical Saudi style, they kept putting me off.  Tomorrow, inshallah.

I also spent time searching the internet for and applying to other jobs, most of the postings on the international job sites at the moment were all for Saudi.  Go figure.  But a funny thing happens when you are on the internet.  You start off doing one particular thing, and before long, you find yourself on Wikipedia reading about the origins of playing cards.  If there were an olympic sport in which competitors tried to distract a person from a single simple task in the least amount of time, Internet would take home the gold every time.

So I found myself on this website called Internations, which is a place where foreigners living abroad can interact.  I started out on their job board, but also noticed they had an events section and saw that there was going to be a trip to visit some salt flats the following week.  So I emailed the organizer and asked if I could join.  I figured, if I was going to be stuck here in Riyadh, I might as well see some of it while I'm here.  After all, I wasn't going to be able to get my exit visa until after Eid, in two weeks when government offices opened up again.

The organizer emailed me back, and because I wasn't a paying member, he said he might let me go, but wanted to meet me first.  I said that would be fine, and so we arranged to meet up that evening.  He was a Saudi guy, whose name, oddly enough, was Riyadh.  Apparently, it means garden, or green or something like that.  Maybe once long ago there was a small oasis here and so with all the green things growing they may have given it that name.  Now it's just endless tan concrete and dust. Anyway, Riyadh had a day job doing a number of different businesses, (kind of like Suleiman), but he moonlighted as a tourguide so he wanted to show me the city and take me to a traditional restaurant.  I didn't have the heart to tell him I had already been to one in Khobar, he seemed so excited to be giving me my first experience with real Saudi cooking.

He picked me up from my hotel, and the first thing he did was show me his official tour guide license from the government, so I would feel safe.  He told me not to worry, that if anyone stopped us or there was a checkpoint, this license allowed us to be together.  Normally, mixing is not allowed, and people who are found together without a marriage license can get in a lot of trouble.  Having lived in Khobar and Dammam where the regulations aren't as strict, and where I never saw any religious police, I had kind of forgotten how strict it was here.

As we drove, he pointed out some beautiful mansions built next to a mosque and explained that they were all empty.  A very rich man had built the mosque and the houses, with the idea that he could have all of his wives and extended family live there together with him.  But when he died, the family began to fight over his assets.  The fighting escalated to the point where none of them could stand the sight of any of the others, and so, they all moved out to avoid seeing each other.  The place is completely empty now.  What a shame.

I asked him about this problem that I had notices a lot in Saudi.  Saudi's seem to put a lot of stock in their families.  They are always saying family comes first, and the spend most weekends and holidays with extended family.  They constantly talk about how important family is and how much they love their family.  Sons and daughters make huge life changing decisions based on the will of the family.  And yet, as soon as you scratch the surface just a little bit, you uncover these bitter generations long fights and schisms within most families here.  Like most things here, the family tradition seems to be mostly about appearance.  People say they love their families and are happy with their family because that is what everyone expects to and wants to hear.   The messy parts, the part where cousins and aunts and uncles are cut off, the explosive arguments, all that is hidden.  And so long as it stays hidden, it isn't really a problem.  I'm not even sure if they themselves see the contradiction in this.  I think that somehow they have come to believe that public and private are so separated as to have almost nothing to do with one another.

I've come to think of the abaya as sort of a huge metaphor for Saudi society.  When you are covered, you are what everyone wants you to be.  You are a pious woman.  You are a perfect woman.  No one can see any of your flaws.  You represent the best of Islam.  No matter if underneath, you are scandalously breaking every rule.  To the outside world, you are perfect.  The same goes for the society as a whole.  Under a cloak of uniformity and strict social rules, to the outside observer, all is proper.  You have a segregated islamic society that works well.  No one drinks, no one meets anyone of the opposite sex unless they are related or married, everyone observes prayer times and dresses appropriately.  No matter if underneath all this, there is rampant homosexuality, drugs, alcohol, sexes mixing, and corruption.  So long as none of it shows, where is the problem?

Our food, served on the floor.

We arrived at the restaurant which looked very similar to the one in Khobar, minus the cars.  This one had an open courtyard in the middle of the restaurant with a working old-fashioned water pump.  Our private dining area was separated from the others by traditional bedouin tents, and like before, we sat on the floor to eat.  The food was mostly the same, although there was a new dish that was kind of like porridge, only salty.  I can't say I cared for it much.  We also had dessert, which were these lovely wheat pancakes with honey.  I can't remember the traditional name for them, but I liked them a lot.

Sitting in an old style living room

After dinner we wandered around the place some, peaking into different rooms to see how they were decorated.  It was strange to see very traditional items, like camel saddles, and pottery, and water canteens made of sheep bladders, in the same room as relics from the recent past, like radios from the 40's.  It was like a museum had mixed up it's world war two era collection with the Arabian nomad collection.  But then, I suppose that when the oil was discovered in Saudi around that time, that is probably what it would have been like.  So maybe it wasn't so strange after all.

The watermill in the courtyard

He drove me back to my hotel and told me I had passed the test.  I would be allowed to go on the Salt Flats trip even though I wasn't a paying member.  I thanked him and told him I would see him on Tuesday for the trip.  Not a bad way to spend a random Wednesday night.  Thank you internet, I guess sometimes, distractions can be worth it!