Working from Home

My new company had assured me that since they had given me the three letters, the had to transfer me, and that the best thing to do now was just lay low.  They would get tired of having me hang around on their visa, and eventually would want to transfer me on their own, especially to avoid paying the cost of the plane ticket back to America for me.

So I didn't contact anyone at Al Farabi, and it seemed for all intents and purposes that they had forgotten about me too.  Two weeks went by and I had not heard anything from them.

Then I was called in to see the boss of my new company.  I knew something was up when both the admin guy and May (who doubles as human resources) were there.  I thought I had done something wrong already, even though I hadn't worked there for long and started wracking my brain for things I might have done.  So even though it was still bad news, I was relieved when the told me that actually, the problem was with immigration, not my job performance.

We have a few people who work at the National Water Company full time, and turns out, the NWC recieved a visit from the authorities.  Normally this would be fine, except that it just so happens that the two guys who work for us over there happen to have issues with their iqama's.  One man's iqama needed to be renewed, which wasn't a big deal since the company had the paperwork in for him already and it was just pending, but the other man was here on his son's iqama, and it is technically illegal to work for the company full time unless you are under their iqama, so my new company would have to pay a huge fine, and transfer him to their iqama, which is something he may not be willing to do, since it means that he could only stay in Saudi so long as he was working with the company.  If he stays on his son's family visa, he can come and go as he pleases and he can stay as long as his son stays.

The company was understandably concerned that they were now under a microscope, and that even though we had the transfer letters, and the application for transfer was in and pending, meaning that we were 100% correct and legal, they didn't really want to take any chances of incurring any more fines.  Since I couldn't come into the office, in case immigration came and demanded to see everyone's iqama, they were sending me to work from home for today.  Tomorrow, I was supposed to go in to Al Farabi, and try to meet with them once again to see what could be done about the transfer, but for now, I should just go home.

So I packed up my laptop and headed for home.  I suppose I should have known from the get go that simply not doing anything couldn't have worked as a solution for long.  Still, I was worried.  On the taxi ride home I felt a little like I was on the uphill part at the beginning of a roller coaster.  I was excited to be working from home; you can always get more done at home. But there was that feeling of dread about what will happen when you reach the top.  There have been so many swings in fortune for me during this whole process, I can't help but feel that this one might be a downward turn somehow.  I guess I will find out tomorrow, when I go back to Al Farabi and see what more can be done.

Still Transferring...

I talked to the publishing company over the weekend, and while they were willing to pay the fees associated with transferring my iqama to them, understandably, they wouldn't pay any of the previous fees.  They advised me that I could take my first company to court and try to recoup those fees, which is something the bald Egyptian guy also told me I should try to do.

So, I decided that I would go ahead and cough it up and pay the money, knowing full well that it wasn't likely that I would ever see that money again.  To get the reward, you have to be willing to take some risks.  So I went to the college Sunday morning, with some hope that perhaps everything would get completed that day.

I started in HR and told my bald Egyptian friend that I would pay, or more accurately, that they would deduct it from my December salary.  He ignored me and launched into his usual diatribe about why I hadn't learned Arabic and finally, after about 20 minutes he called in Dr. Abdullah who took me to see Dr. Salah for final approval.  He told me that they needed me to rewrite my resignation letter without all of the negative things in it, that just said I was resigning for personal reasons.  Even though all of the things I had said in my previous resignation letter were true, the biggest reason I wanted to leave was more or less personal, because I wanted to take this other job, so I agreed to re-write it.

We found a computer and I typed up a quick resignation, but that computer was not hooked to a printer, so while someone took it on a flash drive to find a printer, I wrote it by hand and we took it to Dr. Salah, who passed it on to Dr. Salem, who sent it back to Dr. Salah.  It seems no one was really sure what the process should be.  Finally, they both signed it and we went back upstairs to the HR office.

The bald Egyptian greeted me again, and even though we had already been through it this morning, proceeded to chastise me because I hadn't managed to learn any Arabic between now and when I had last seen him.  Finally, he checked to see if the man who needed to sign everything and approve this issuance of my check was in.  He was not.  So we waited.

We waited until 3:30 and finally, the bald guy told me he must not be coming in that day.  He told me to bring a request letter from my company the next day and they would finish everything.  Since I was still teaching at night, and had to come to Al Farabi in the evenings anyway, I asked him if I could give it to him tomorrow night instead of during the day.  He said that would be fine, but the man who needed to sign everything wouldn't be there at night.  So I asked him If I needed to be here for him to sign the things, or could they just have him sign the things and issue my final pay, and then I would come pick it up at night.  He seemed to think that could work out, so I left.  Only 6 hours late.  Not so bad for Saudi.

Transfering

After I got the amended offer from May, where the agreed to an increase in salary, I began feeling out if I would be able to transfer or not.

I went to Dr. Salem, with whom I had originally met with to sign the contract, and who had told me to let me know if there was anything I needed.  So I went to him and explained that my classes had been taken from me since the students didn't like how strict I was.  I told him that the final straw for me had been when in the meeting with the man (whom I still do not know his name or title) had basically agreed with me that everything I was asking of the students was correct and best practices and the right thing educationally, but that there bottom line was that they couldn't loose any tuition over it. I told him that he had presented the college to me as a place wanting to change, as an educational institute dedicated to improving educational standards, but that from all of the actions I had seen so far, they were really only dedicated to lining their own pockets. I told him that we had given it a good try, but that it was clear that the college wasn't ready for western staff or western style teaching.  I said that I would like to transfer to another job, away from teaching, to the publishing company.

He expressed great concern over this meeting with this guy.  He wanted to call him in at once and berate him.  I told him I'm sure he was only following orders and repeating what his bosses had told him.  I explained that individually, a lot of people at Al Farabi had helped me out a lot and were very kind, but one of the biggest problems was that everyone was working individually and there was no coherent structure.  I pointed out how I had been at the college for nearly 2 months and had only been introduced to the head of the English Department a week ago.  He asked who that was, and I told him some woman, since I still didn't know her name.  He looked confused and told me that she wasn't the head of the English Department at all and called some other man, Abdullah into the office whom I had never met.  This, he said, is the head of the English department.  Case and point, I said.  I have never met this man, and some woman obviously thinks she is in charge, so no one really knows for sure.

He assured me they would fix everything.  He asked me to write down all the things that I thought were wrong or needed improvement and to bring it to Dr. Abdullah, and then we could talk about this.  I spent the whole afternoon and came up with a four page list of suggestions.  I showed it to Dr. Abdullah, who asked me to show it to another person, the head of academics in general, and they both said that they were all very good recommendations and that they would try to implement them, and I told them I was glad they were willing to try, and I hoped it would work out for them, but that I still wanted to transfer.  So they sent me back to Dr. Salem, who had gone home for the day.

The next day I spoke with him again and he told me, that if I didn't like it here, they could send me to Jeddah.  This was a little bit of a surprise.  In the beginning I had asked about Jeddah because Suleiman told me they needed teachers there too and it seemed like a better place to live than Riyadh.  At the time he said there were no positions open in Jeddah, but now suddenly there were?  Hmmm....
I told him I would think about it.

On the one hand, I really wanted to try something other than teaching.  On the other hand, the pay would be higher if I stuck with teaching and I could still have a change, and see a whole other part of Saudi.  On the other hand, I had no idea what I would do about housing if I transferred and I'm sure they would want me out ASAP after I transferred.  If I went to Jeddah instead, the housing and transportation would be sorted out for me.  On the other hand, I had just started to make friends in Riyadh and I was even doing activities, and I was just settling in.  I would have to start all over again if I went to Jeddah.  It went on and on like this in my head all afternoon.  Every-time I felt like I had made a decision, I would think of something that would push the scales back another way.

That night I consulted some of my new friends in Riyadh.  One of the girls I had met through a friend from Dammam, Alison, offered to let me stay with her until I could find a place of my own close to my new job.  She was planning on going home for a month for Christmas, so the place would be empty in a week or two anyway, and she told me she would rather have someone staying there than let it be empty all the time.  That was the thing I needed to finally push me over the edge.  I committed.  I was really going to do it.

So the next day, I wrote out my letter of resignation, detailing all of the reasons why I didn't want to stay with the college, and asking them to let me transfer to the publishing company.  Dr. Salem didn't want to take it.  He asked me to reconsider and think about it over the weekend.  I told him I had made my decision.  I was sure, and I wanted to start work at the new company on Sunday morning.  He seemed surprised that it would happen so soon.  He told me to take the letter to HR.  In HR, there is a bald Egyptian man, who whenever he sees me yells at me for not knowing arabic.  He likes to brag that he went to America and learned English in a month.  Of course, he has to do his bragging through a translator because he can't say more than about 5 words in English.  It's all good natured teasing, but it means that every interaction I have with him takes 3 times longer than it should because we first have to have this conversation, and then he usually gives me a little mini-lesson in Arabic, sometimes he teaches me numbers (which I already know) or words for objects in the room, like stapler, or stamp.  Normally I would enjoy this kind of thing, but time was slipping away and i wanted to try to clear everything today.

So we waited to see the Head of Finance, and finally we went in to see him, and a third man did some calculations.  He told me I would have to pay 5,650 SAR if I wanted to transfer.  I asked him why, and he told me that the college had just paid 2,000 Riyals to transfer me from my old company, a standard fee, and 2500 Riyals for a work permit, since my initial work permit / visa had expired, 650 in fees for renewing my iqama (strange that there were renewal fees when I had never had one in the first place), and a 500 fine because the old company had not issued the first iqama on time.  I told them that all but the 2,000 should have been paid by the old company.  He agreed, but said that the college had agreed to pay them so that they could facilitate the transfer more quickly.  He said if I just wanted to take a final exit, then I wouldn't have to pay this.  But that if I wanted to transfer, I would have to pay since it had only just paid the fees and now I was leaving.  I could see why they wouldn't want to have to pay this money, but it seemed arbitrary to me that I would only have to pay it to transfer, but not to take a final exit.  After all, they were loosing out on having me as an employee either way...

By now it was almost time to go home.  I told the HR guy I would think about it, 5,650 is nearly half a months salary, so it's not a small amount of money.  I would need to see if Alef would be willing to pay any of it.  So it looked like I wouldn't be able to start Sunday after all, at least not Sunday morning.  At least I would have the weekend to figure it out.

I Finally Got My Iqama!

So, maybe it was my conversation with the old company, or maybe it was my conversation with Suleiman, but whatever it was, Sunday morning first thing, I was called into the HR office and given my iqama.  I felt like crying and dancing all at the same time.  I held it like it was a precious gem.  I put it in my wallet, but found myself taking it out to look at it again every 10 minutes or so just to be sure it was real.

One thing that made me suspicious about the whole thing, is that they got the iqama for me without needing my passport.  My passport has been with me the whole time since I left the old company.   So that means either, a). My old company was lying about needing the passport just so they could keep it under their own control, or b). Suleiman had so much wasta he could get the iqama without my passport (but if this was the case, why didn't he do it sooner.)  Anyway, it didn't really matter anymore. The important thing was I had my iqama.

The first thing I did was call May from the publishing company, and tell her that I had finally gotten my iqama, and that perhaps it was possible to transfer now.  I told her I would feel them out and see if they were open to it and let her know.  She told me she would send me an amended offer after they discussed the finances of my proposal for a higher salary.

I felt so free!  I could finally do things like, open a bank account. And buy a sim card for my phone (even though I already had one). And, best of all leave the country (though I would still have to wait to get an exit re-entry visa for this.  Hm... other than those few things, I guess that is pretty much all that I need my iqama for, that and being here legally.  Kind of anti-climactic really.

There is one thing though, the picture on my iqama is the one they take of you at the airport when you first enter the country.  In it, I look confident but nervous at the same time, and I look about ten years younger than I feel now.  It's hard to imagine this was only 8 months ago.  I feel like I have changed so much since then.  It's weird, staring at myself, so innocent, so unsuspecting, would I still have come if I knew then what I know now?  I think I would have. Maybe it's the bad experiences that we learn the most from.   I don't think I would want to go back to being the girl in the photo, too much has changed for me. But I'm also not sure I like who I am becoming here.  True, I'm more patient, and I've seen a lot of things, and I've learned a lot.  But I also feel myself becoming lazy, starting to mimic the work ethic around me.  I'm starting to let these negative interactions with a few people, like Suleiman, who seemed so generous and kind, but who turned out to be greedy and spiteful, and the man who told me the bottom line for the college was getting the tuition money, not what was best for the students educationally, get to me.  I can feel my frustration and disappointment with these situations coloring my day to day interactions unfairly, and that isn't good.

So I think its time for a change.  Maybe all I need now is to finally take that long hoped for trip to Bahrain and clear my head for a weekend.  Or maybe something more.  Maybe it's time to take a chance on the publishing job, even if the pay is less.  Or maybe it's just time to come home.

Still No Iqama

Tuesday came and went, and big surprise.  No iqama.  So I started to take steps toward the long process of getting out.  I called Suleiman and reminded him that he had broken his promise, that there was no iqama, so now I just wanted to leave.  I wanted to get my final exit and go.  Suleiman insisted it wasn't his fault and that the problem was with my old company and that I needed to talk to them.  It was a familiar story.  He insisted that if they couldn't make the transfer, they also couldn't make the final exit, so I might as well stay and get paid in the meantime.  He makes a good point.
I still called the old company anyway.  They told me next Sunday they should be able to do something for sure, but at the moment they couldn't do anything.

I decided I would visit my old friends at the US embassy and see if anything could be done.  After all, I had officially resigned from this company in August.  It was now mid -October.  Surely there was a way to get me out by now.  So I made an appointment to see them on Wednesday.  Still, I didn't have much faith that they would be able to do anything.  After all, they had already told me once before that basically, all the could do was call and nag the company.  I was hoping though that since my contract had been over so long ago, they might take my complaint more seriously now.

Luckily, I wasn't teaching yet, so I didn't feel guilty about leaving work early to go to the ministry of labour and start the paperwork for a final exit complaint.  By now I was an old pro at getting taxi's and navigating through the lines of Philippine workers to get to the women's office. The woman recognized me and welcomed me back.  I get the feeling a lot of people spend months coming and going from this office to get what they need from their employers.  She handed me the forms I would need to fill out, which were all in Arabic, and she told me they would need to be filled out in Arabic.  She told me they weren't allowed to help translate the paperwork or to fill it out for us.  I thanked her and told her I would bring it back filled out tomorrow, inshallah.

By the time I got back to the college, it was nearly time to go, so I couldn't find any of the other English Teachers to help me translate the forms.  I figured that I could do my best with Google translate at home, and have them help me fix everything the next day.  I made two copies of each form so I could scribble all over one of them and make a rough draft of another and save the original for the final copy.  Turns out, most of it was pretty simple to translate.  Name, name of company, iqama number, address.... Turns out the hardest  part of the form was actually figuring out what it said, but finding the information to make it complete.  Addresses here are pretty much non-existent, so I didn't exactly know what to put for the company, let alone my own address.  It was pretty frustrating.  I also had no iqama, and therefore no iqama number.  Crazy.  There was a box to list your demands.  A teacher from my new now old company who had been through it all before had advised me that I should not only ask for an exit visa, but also a ticket home and payment for the time since August I had been waiting.  I thought that was kind of extreme especially since I had been working in the meantime, though they didn't know that. She explained that it gave you bargaining room.  In the end I would probably only get the ticket and the final exit, but that way they would feel like they still came out ahead, and I would get a ticket home.  Sounded like good advice.

The next day was Wednesday and the women at work were impressed with my Arabic writing.  I was sure it wasn't any better than the average first graders, but I was still flattered.  They helped me reword a few things, and told me the name of the road I lived on so I could add that to my address.  By the time I copied it in pen to the original, I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing.  I decided that I should probably wait until after I spoke with the embassy to submit the paperwork in case they had a faster route.  The woman had told me it would probably take about a month to assign a court date for my complaint.  I figured there wasn't much difference if I submitted the paperwork on Wed. or on Thursday.  No matter what, it looked like I was in for a battle, and probably not a short one.

Resigning Part 2: Day 3

I was tired of waiting for the old company to do anything, and the HR lady from the new company assured me that their "fixer" was working on it.  The "fixer" is a Saudi man with a lot of wasta or power & influence who helps out when there are problems with the government and the company.  Since the company is British, and technically no foreign companies can operate on their own in Saudi, my new company is being sponsored by him.  Of course, it is in his best interest to make sure everything goes smoothly for the business because if they do well, he gets a kickback.  If they go under, he looses money.  Anyway, I was assured that he was working on it, and that he had my contact details and would call me to speak with me about my situation.  That was on Sunday, and it was not Wednesday and I hadn't heard from him.

Even though the embassy had been less than useful before, I thought it would give it another try since now my contract with the old company was officially ended.  So, I made an appointment for 2pm with the embassy.  I also called and asked the HR manager of my new company to send me Suliaman (the fixer)'s number so that I could try to reach him.  I went to the office as usual,  made my morning rounds to all the pertinent offices to ask if any progress had been made and as usual, got the same conciliatory head shake and promise of "later".   I figured I would give it until 1pm, then go to my appointment at the embassy.  Mohammed kindly arranged a driver for me to the embassy so that I wouldn't have to take a taxi.  Meanwhile I finally got HR on the phone of my new company and asked her again to send me Sulaiman's contact info.  She told me he had a contact at the embassy, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to name drop while I was there, but I needed to know who his contact was.  She promised to text it to me.  I waited an hour, and when there was still no text, I sent her a quick reminder.  Finally, she sent me his number at about 12:30.

I gave him a call, and he answered on the first ring.  He recognized my name and I told him I was going to the embassy and could he please tell me the name of his contact because I had already been and they told me they couldn't help in labor disputes.  He told me the name of the man, but said, it isn't a labor dispute, it's an exit visa issue and I explained that when I went before they told me there was really nothing I could do but wait for them to process the iqama.  He told me that was a lie, there was no need for an iqama because if it was a visit or business visa they couldn't give me an iqama no matter what.  I told him I didn't have a visit or business visa, I had an iqama visa.  He said, are you sure? and I said yes I am sure and he said, well, that changes everything.  And I was surprised because I sent the HR lady a copy of the visa page from my passport on two separate occasions and both times she had sent it to Sulaiman, so I just assumed he had already seen it and knew what kind of visa it was.  He asked me to take a picture and send it to him so he could be sure.  Thankfully, I had my tablet, and also thankfully, the staff had taken pity on me by now and given me the password to their wifi which is guarded as sacredly as the recipe for Bush's baked beans so I was able to send it.

Within five minutes Sulaiman had called me back and told me to forget going to the embassy, and to bring my passport to his office and he would sort everything out.  I told him my passport was still at the labor office with the company representative and he told me not to worry that I could come any time.  So I cancelled my appointment with the embassy (which probably looks bad since it was only an hours notice instead of the 24 they ask for) but forgot about telling the transportation staff I wouldn't need to go to the embassy after all, and went downstairs to await the arrival of my passport.  Thankfully the guy returned five minutes before one o clock, which is when I was originally supposed to leave.  They gave me my passport and I as I was walking downstairs, Faisal grabbed me and said the driver was waiting for me to go to the embassy.  I did still need a ride, just not to the embassy, so I improvised.  I told him my appointment wasn't at the embassy after all but at another office at exit 7.  Riyadh is encircled by a giant ring road and everywhere you need to go is dictated by it's exit number on the ring road.  It's actually a pretty efficient system.  I expected them to just say, well, forget it, find a taxi, but instead they said no problem, and off I went to the great Sulaiman.

I had never met a man with wasta before so I was a little nervous.  He gave me directions over the phone and told me his office was at exit 7, go straight and it's above the Al Abdula bank.  I had never heard of Al Abdula bank and neither had the driver, but we did our best.  We drove on the exit 7 road for a long way, an uncomfortably long way, so I gave Sulaiman a call and handed the phone over to the driver to get directions, when literally, right in front of us, we saw the bank.  It was really kind of  funny, but it made me feel bad for having called him again.  He was a little frustrated because he said, I sent you the location by phone, and I had to explain that I didn't have internet on my phone, so I hadn't gotten it before I left.  The driver dropped me off and this time I was smart enough to ask him to wait.  I told him I would go up and if it was going to be more than 30 minutes I would call him and tell him to go.  So I took his number and went inside the bank.  I immediately felt strange.  There were only men inside, and a quick recon told me there were no stairs to the upper stories.  I hurriedly went out.  Most banks have a ladies branch and a male branch.  I clearly hadn't gone in the right entrance.  I went around to the back and there was a shady looking alleyway, but I didn't see a door at the end of it so I didn't go down it.  Then I went back around to the other side, but it was a strip mall and there were only other stores.  I really didn't want to bother Sulaiman again, but I also couldn't find the entrance so I really had no choice.  So I rang him again and he told me to go down the alley way and sure enough, at the very end, there was a door.  I went up and found door number 18.  It was large and imposing and I was sure no one would ever hear me knocking, but I knocked anyway.

After a moment I heard someone coming to the door and they ushered me into a sleek modern looking office and offered me a seat on the couch and fresh dates and coffee and water.  Sulaiman was at his desk, smoking and talking animatedly on the phone.  He looked like a regular guy, but with a definite confident air.  I could tell he was important, but I wondered how much of that was because I knew he was important.  When he was finished on the phone, he came over and sat in the arm chair opposite me.  I showed him my passport and the letter that said I was finished with the company and the application paper for my iqama that I had finally gotten Saeed to make a copy of for me.  He took it and looked it over and told me the application form said it was rejected for non-payment, not because of any name change in the company.  He asked for Saeed's number and I gave it to him.  He didn't answer.  I gave him Osama's number and he didn't answer.  Then I gave him Mohammed's number and Mohammed explained that everyone was in a meeting with the VP at the moment which is why no one was answering.  We talked some more and I tried to explain the situation including what the old company had said was the problem.  Finally, he called again, and while it was ringing he said, this time he will answer, and as if by magic, Saeed did pick up.  They had a long talk in Arabic, and I heard my name several times, and after about 10 minutes or so, he hung up.

"Jennifer," he said, "Here is what I will do.  They have some problem with you and the other four ladies who can't get iqamas.  I will fix this issue for them at the labor department and they agreed to transfer you to my sponsorship.  Hallas (Finished.)"  Just like that.  Solved.  Almost a month of stress and turmoil and everything was solved after one phone call?  I wasn't sure whether to laugh or to cry.  Not only that but all the other girls who couldn't get their iqama's would be helped too!  It was a perfect solution. I thanked him and he told me all he needed from me were 2 photos and he would take care of the rest.  I asked him if he needed me to stay in Riyadh or if I could go back to Khobar.  He told me to stay, because it was prayer now, so I wouldn't be able to bring him the pictures until tomorrow.  You have somewhere to stay? he asked.  I told him I was in my old companies housing and that they would let me stay there.  Good.  He said.  So tomorrow come back and I will go to the labor office myself, and everything will be solved.  Don't worry.  For the first time, I actually believed that that was true.  We shook hands and I told him I would see him tomorrow.

I went downstairs, and my driver was still there.  I asked him to take me back to the hotel, and I asked him if there were any photo places nearby and he pointed out the road they were on on the way back and told me that after he got off work at 4:30 he could take me.  I said that would be great and thanked him.  Promptly at 5, he called me and I went downstairs to meet him, he took me to the photo place, and waited while they took my picture and then photo-shopped the heck out of it.  I was fine with it the way it was originally, but apparently he felt the white background wasn't white enough, so he erased the background and did a little airbrushing while he was at it.  Honestly it will be the best ID photo I will ever have.  Then I asked him to take me to the bank so I could make sure I had been  paid, and sure enough, I had been paid.  I withdrew the maximum amount since the finance guy had told me all of the companies Al Raji bank cards were going to expire at the end of September.  I didn't want it to expire before I got all of my money out.  Then he took me back.  I asked him how much, and he told me nothing.  I tried to insist on paying him, because it was after work hours, but he just smiled and told me no thank you, that it was his pleasure, and so I thanked him and then went inside.  It had been a really really good day.

Resigning Part 2: Day 2

Tuesday morning I packed up all my stuff and was ready to head to the office for the usual day of waiting around and nothing happening.  I could have left my big bag of stuff for the week at the hotel, but ever the eternal optimist, I wanted to have my stuff with me so that I could go straight to the train station if I needed to.

I went downstairs at 8:30am to ask what time the bus would come, and he asked me when I wanted it to come, and I said, whenever, 10, so I can sleep a little more.  He laughed and said that was fine, and so I did just that.  When I came downstairs at 10am, he was gone and there was just a security guard who spoke very little English, but good for him, was quite keen to practice it.  He wanted to know where I was teaching, and I explained to him that I was leaving.  He asked me why and I told him simply that the company was bad.  He nodded, it's an accepted fact.  But then he asked again, why? Because, though a lot of teachers complain, few actually leave.  He asked me if it was because I didn't like Saudi, and I told him, no, it wasn't Saudi, just the company and he shrugged.  He wanted to talk more, but during the night my cold had migrated to my nose, and I had a slight headache so I made a show of pulling out a book, hoping he might get the hint.  He did not.  So we ran through all the simple questions about family and where we lived, and I asked him to check again about the bus, which he did and promised it would arrive.

Arrive it did, on Saudi time, which means it was about 10:20.  There were two girls already on the bus and they were new teachers.  They were so excited and nervous I didn't have the heart to warn them about what would happen next.  I felt I should warn them, but at the same time, I didn't want to color their experience.  They would find out soon enough.

At the office things were crazy.  They had decided to reduce the salaries of about 50 teachers without warning.  About half of them had shown up in person to complain.  Since I wouldn't know anything for sure until the labor office closed at 2pm.  I sat in the auditorium area they usually used for interviews and professional development.  It was quiet in there and only a few teachers were  around, so I was able to use my computer and do some lesson plans for my new job.  I would start teaching on Sunday so I wanted to be prepared.  After a few hours I ran into two of the girls from Dammam who had also decided to resign.  They were both sick of fighting for the housing and had just decided to quit.  The were embarking on the adventure I had started a month ago, and it was clear that they were not handling it well.  I went up with them to the finance office to show them the guy they would have to speak with to do their final clearance.  He wasn't in at the moment and so they sat around for a while to wait.  Heenal, who has a bad temper anyway, was getting more and more upset.  She was talking to the receptionist and since I was talking with Jackie, I didn't hear what they were saying until she suddenly shouted "It wouldn't be a problem if you would just do your fucking job you useless Sudanese!" and stormed out.  Jackie ran out after her and I just sat there stunned.  I couldn't believe she had said that.  I turned and gave an apologetic glance at the receptionist, and then left too.  It's true that most of the people who work at the company are lazy and don't do their jobs, but it has more to do with the culture of work ethic in the country than anything else.  I didn't see any point in yelling at them, particularly not in this way.  I was sure they were going to be waiting a lot longer thanks to that little outburst.

At two o-clock I went to the government relations office and spoke to my now good friend Saeed.  He told me they had paid a little over 2,000 SAR ( $550) to someone at the labor office today to help speed the process.  So now they had something to take to the immigration office tomorrow, and hopefully that would solve the problem.  I felt a little uncomfortable knowing the details of the bribing that was happening, but thanked him and said we would try again tomorrow.

As I was doing my disappointed walk back downstairs, I ran into two more teachers from Dammam, this time male teachers.  Apparently, there were too many male teachers, so one had been given a choice, go to Al Jouf, or go home.  He chose to go home.  The other was Syrian and was going to join his family in Beruit and seek refugee status in Canada.  They had lost their land to fighting over a year ago and the three family businesses that had once kept them afloat were now either destroyed or closed because there were no more customers.  Syrian's were not being given visa's to middle eastern countries anymore, and his contract with the company was ending, and they would not renew it because they could not renew his iqama as a Syrian.  I was really glad I saw them again.  I hadn't really gotten to say goodbye to anyone properly with all the sneaking about with the new company.

One of them was staying with a friend, but the other was going to be at Rayatona with me.  We both lamented the fact that we had come from a really crappy area in Dammam, and now were sent to the worst company housing in Riyadh.  We decided we should ask for an upgrade in housing.  I wouldn't mind going back to the hotel I stayed in last time.  Since I was hoping to only be here one more night, it didn't matter that much to me, but he would be here for a month at least, so he didn't want to get stuck in a crappy place.  We went to Osama who sent us to Mohammed who passed us on to Babi.  After circling the office and going between them a few more times, we were ushered downstairs and told which bus to get on.  He sent the guy to Rayatona still, and I was taken to a new hotel, Massarat.  I was a little disappointed not going back to the Saudi Ramada, since at least there I knew a few girls already, and had made such good friends with the reception staff, but it would be nice to see a new place.

The rooms in the new hotel were brand spanking new.  I mean, still have the plastic wrapping on them new.  They were a lot smaller than the other hotel, but I actually liked that better.  It felt much cosier.  Also, there were a lot of things the other place didn't have, like a table and a desk and a washing machine.  These are key things.  Trust me, you never know the value of a washing machine until you don't have one.  And since my nose was now in full drip cold mode, the kleenex they put on the coffee table and in the bedroom were also much appreciated.  It's the little things.

Resigning Part 2: Day 1

Finally Sept. 4^th rolled around, my official last day of work with the old company.  Before I left last time, Mohammed had assured me that they could take care of everything in Riyadh without me there, and that I could stay in Dammam, with the exception of getting my final exit for which they needed my passport.  The head of HR had also told me that they legally had 2 weeks from my final working day to issue the final exit.  Two weeks would be the 18^th, but the week of the 18^th would be the start of classes.  I decided If I was going to have to go to Riyadh, it would be better to do it this week since it was only student orientation I would be missing and not any actual teaching.   I ran it by the new company, and they agreed that it would be best to try to get it done this week, and that they would not doc my pay if I had to be in Riyadh.  I thought that was pretty generous of them.

Knowing how crazy the office is on Sundays, I decided I would stay and work Sunday to see what I could find out by phone first, then go up on Monday if I needed to.  If the labor office hadn’t agreed to give the final exit yet, there wouldn't be much point in my going to wait around for them to change their minds.  On Sunday the 7^th, the first working day after my last official day, I called to see if there had been any progress with getting me an iqama and or a final exit.  Mohammed told me that everything was ready and I just needed to mail them my passport, and they would mail it back when it was finished.  I asked him if they had gotten the iqama or the final exit and he said that they would when they got the passport back.  I asked again if they were sure they could get it and I wouldn't have to wait around for it.  He said yes.  I told him I would come to Riyadh the next day.  He told me I didn't have to I could just mail my passport.  I told him I didn't trust them to mail it back at all, let alone in a timely manner, and that I would rather come in person.  He said, as you wish.  So I booked the train again for the wee hours of the next morning, packed for more than one day this time, and braced myself for what would likely be another frustrating week of waiting around in the company office.

When I arrived in Riyadh, I tried to get a taxi to the office.  The cheapest fare anyone was willing to give me was 100 riyals, which was crazy seeing as my train ticket had only been 60.  So I took a chance and called The company to see if they would send me a driver, which they did.  I spent the time waiting for him to show up using the electronic booking station to book seats on every train leaving Riyadh for Dammam for the next 4 days.  I didn’t want to end up being stuck in Riyadh for an extra night like last time.  I was hoping that all these precautions, packing for a week, booking tickets, would work like remembering to bring your umbrella.  If you are prepared for rain, it doesn’t.  If I’m prepared to stay, I may not have to.

The driver that came to pick me up happened to be the same one I had tried to learn Arabic with back when I first arrived in April.  He remembered me, but thankfully not my name, which I had led him to believe, was ‘mirror’ because of a small language miscommunication.  This time I discovered that he was from Yemen and that he liked driving but didn't like traffic, which pretty much exhausted the language I had learned so far.  Then I asked him if we would be passing an Al Raji bank ATM on our way to the office.  I wanted to find out if I had actually been paid for the month of August.   He said he would look for one, and I watched for one too, but since I had been up since 3am and only slept for two hours on the train, I didn’t stay awake for long.  When I woke up, we were pulling into a gas station with an Al Raji ATM.  I thanked the driver and while he waited in line for gas, I jumped out to try to use the ATM.  Unfortunately, this particular ATM wasn’t working.  The windows loading screen was frozen on the teleprompter.  Perfect.  I thought.  At least we tried.  I got back in and told the driver it was broken, which I felt pretty proud about because I had actually learned the word for broken in Arabic.  Then I told him no problem, another phrase in Arabic I had learned and found myself using a lot lately.  We finished filling up and then headed back out again. 

It had already been about a half an hour since leaving the train station, so I figured we must be nearly to the office by now.    I thought I recognized the intersection with the McDonald’s and Red Lobster near the hotel I was staying in last time and I wondered if he had misunderstood that I needed to go to the office and was taking me to the hotel instead.  Actually where he was taking me was another Al Raji Bank, bless him.  We pulled up behind another car and someone else jumped out, obviously also to use the ATM, I fell in line behind him, but he made a frustrated sound and walked away.  This ATM was also out of service.  What are the odds?  I was starting to wonder if a) the bank’s entire systems were down, or more likely, b) the entire universe was conspiring against me ever getting paid.  I got back in and told the driver the machine was broken again, and shrugged, trying to convey that it just wasn’t to be.  I thanked him for trying, but he got this look in his eye and drove off again.  We turned down several side-streets and winded our way past mosques and schools and compounds for another ten minutes or so.  I guessed we were taking a back way to the office since he had gone out of the way to find the ATM.  But instead we pulled up in front of another ATM.  I laughed at his determination, and thanked him again, saying inshallah this time it will work and jumped out.  Sure enough, third time is a charm.  I had been paid and I was able to withdraw the maximum daily amount.  I got back in significantly happier and a little richer and thanked him again. 

By the time we finally reached the office it was noon.  I was concerned that I had arrived too late in the day to actually get anything done, but as it turned out, one of the guys I needed to see had only just arrived.  I asked why he was late, and the secretary looked at his phone, and shrugged and said, oh, his isn’t really so late.   Saudi time prevails.  Mohammed told me to see this man in the finance office because before they could issue the final exit paperwork, I needed a document from finance saying we were all settled up, that I didn’t owe the company anything and they didn’t owe me anything.  So I went to finance.  Turns out, he was waiting on the attendance records from Dammam, so they could know what they needed to pay me.  So I went to the man who collects all the fingerprint records.   He printed off my attendance for August to Sept. 4^th, and another final clearance paper.  I thought it was odd because the attendance sheet was absolutely blank.   But he signed it and said it would be fine, so I took it to HR to have it signed, but he told me I needed finance to sign off on it before he could, and when I went to finance they said they couldn’t sign off on it until someone in HR signed off on it first.  The whole system seemed purposefully built on a system of catch 22s.  They also needed, as I originally suspected, the print outs from the fingerprint machine for the last month that said whether I was there, or absent or on vacation.  So I went back to get the attendance record, and as it turned out the fingerprint machine in Dammam only worked about 50% of the time, because most of the attendance records were missing.  So he asked me when my final day in Dammam was and I told him the 21^st was the last time I was there and that I had come to Riyadh on the 24^th to begin sorting out all the iqama business.  He said, okay, and then said, how about this… I will say your last day in Dammmam was the 29^th and that the fingerprint machine was malfunctioning so there was no record of it, and that you have been in Riyadh since then.  Fine, I said.  I had been expecting them to use my vacation days for the last week since I wasn’t at the University or in Riyadh, but he didn’t seem to care, and I wasn’t going to argue with them that they should pay me less after all of the stress they had been putting me through.

So I had him sign it and I took the form back to finance, who had me go back down and get a second signature, and then over to HR for another signature, and then back to finance.  I felt a little like a ping pong ball all afternoon going from office to office and back again.  Finally, everything was done with finance, and I was ready for the last piece.  I went to the government relations office and presented my final release from the company, the holy grail of paperwork, the last step before the final exit.  There were a group of men all waiting in the hallway for that same piece of paper, and they had been waiting for weeks to get it.  They looked on with thinly veiled envy.  I wasn't sure where in the process they were held up, or why mine had been streamlined, but I was very grateful.  I suspected that my sticky notes and car fresheners had paid off. 

The government relations guy asked me for my iqama, the same guy who I had asked the week before for all the paperwork regarding my delayed iqama.  I was just getting ready to start over with the whole explanation again, since he obviously didn't recognize me when the head of government relations invited me inside the sacred layer.  He sat down with me and said it was too late to go to the labor office today (it was already 3pm) but that he would go himself personally the next day.  He explained what a headache it had been for him dealing with the labor office because of the six visas that had the wrong name.  He said he changed the name and they still weren't happy.  He said they had done everything the labor office had asked them to do, but they still weren't happy.  He showed me a stack of papers, about a sixth of a ream of paper if I had to guess, of just my documents that they had submitted.  Ah hah!  I thought, so they do keep copies.  I eyed them and tried to pick up the packet but he quickly took it back.  I asked him If I could have a copy of all of this, but he said no, he would need it when he went with my passport to the labor office tomorrow.  I said, just a copy, and he said no, and because I could see that he really was frustrated, and really did seem to be trying to get the final exit, I decided not to push the issue.  He told me tomorrow they would get it any way they could, on top of the table, beneath the table, any way they had to.  I had to smile at his mixed up use of prepositions for the idiom and his genuine determination.  I wasn't at all convinced that the final exit would be issued tomorrow, but I was convinced that he was doing all he could to make it happen, and that now it really was in the hands of the ministry of labor.  So, reluctantly, I handed my passport back over so that he could take it first thing in the morning with the promise that I would have it back tomorrow, with or without the final exit.

I went back down to Mohammed who told me that if they didn't have it tomorrow, they would make a request to reinstate me so that they would pay me for my time while I was waiting for the final exit.  While I wouldn't mind an extra week of pay, the thought of signing any new contract with them after I have finally gotten that holy grail paper saying the company and I are square and finished made me feel slightly nauseous.  No way I wanted to go through this all again.  I told him we would see, and that inshallah the final exit would arrive tomorrow and it wouldn't be an issue.  Then I asked him to put me up for the night, and he told me to wait and said he would arrange it all.

Helpful teacher from before was still around.  I wish I could say that either one of us was surprised to still see the other still here, but we had both been around long enough to know better.  He offered to tell the housing people for me because if I waited for Mohammed to not be busy it would be ages.  So he went and spoke to them and sure enough after about 10 minutes the guy came to tell me I would be staying in Rayatona  and to wait downstairs in reception for the bus to take me.  I could feel a tickle in my throat and suspected I was getting a cold.  I would be very happy to get to a room and lay down, and hope it was going to be a mild cold, and not one of those really bad ones.  I honestly don't think I could handle being sick and the company at the same time.

Resigning: Day 5

 I woke up feeling desperate and discouraged. This was my last chance to get my passport before the weekend, and I really really really did not want to stay in Riyadh (as nice as the apartment was) for the weekend. I was missing all of my friends, and despite it's many faults, my crappy apartment had started to feel like home. Besides, My new company wanted me to start with orientation on Sunday, so If I didn’t get my passport, I would have to wait until December to start and since I had already given my notice with my old company, I would be left without a job for three months.  The stakes were high, and every time I thought about how much I really wanted this all to work out, and how unlikely it was that it would, I felt myself tearing up with frustration.  I knew there was a high risk that I would lose it today, and I kept having to remind myself to stay calm and not get angry or emotional.  I needed to be calm and firm to get what I wanted.

So I spent the morning planning a strategy. I had the phone numbers of several lawyers, and the number refering to the section of Saudi law that says employees must be allowed to keep their passports. I hoped I wouldn't have to get nasty, and reminded myself that those who got angry rarely got what they wanted. I told myself over an over to stay calm, but my nerves were warn pretty thin by this point, and everytime I thought about what I would do if I didn't get my passport I felt tears of frustration start to well up in my eyes. I was still researching labor laws and official complaint procedures in the lobby of the hotel when 9am came and went. I hadn't seen any bus to the office yet. I asked at the front desk, but he knew very little English. Finally, I spotted Wajda's husband and I asked if there would be a bus to the office this morning. He told me yes, but we were waiting for his wife to come down. This morning there were about 5 new male teachers. Wajda finally came down at about 9:15 and we all made our way to the bus, including a woman from the lobby that I hadn't seen before.

Wajda's husband reminded us ladies that we should sit in the back so that no men would have to sit next to us. This was especially important because Wajda had told me the story of how one woman had gotten angry when someone asked her to move before so he wouldn't have to sit next to her. Wajda's husband had tried to explain that it was for her own sake, so he didn't accidently touch her as the bus went over bumps or anything. But the woman was angry about being told what to do and having her rights infringed upon. I can understand Wajda's husbands point of view that it is easier if the sexes don't sit together just to avoid potentially embarrasing situations, but I wondered why the men got to sit up front closer to the air conditioning? Really, any row of seats could be designated male or female, just so long as they weren't sitting directly next to each other. So the three of us women sat in the very back, and the men sat in the three front rows. As we were pulling away, the third woman received a text from some other women who also wanted to go to the office. They had just missed it. We asked the driver to go back for them, and two more women got on and squeezed into the back row. Now there were only two seats left. One in a row with women, and one in a row with men. There were two more women who were apparently supposed to be on the bus as well. But they had agreed to meet in the lobby at 9:15 and it was now 9:30.  The boys made the argument that we should leave them because we didn't have enough "female" seats left for them anyway.  Wajda pointed out that we could easily switch around so that she was sitting next to her husband leaving two "female" seats vacant, enough for both of them.  The other girls argued we should leave them because they were late and not answering their phones.  We waited another 10 minutes or so, and when no one else arrived we took off.  I tried to pay attention to the conversations around me with some of the new women.  I even tried to get excited when a truck full of camels passed us.  But it was only going through the motions.  My head was spinning with ideas and what if scenarios.

I decided that what I needed was a plan.  Plan A was to bypass Mohammad’s office this morning and head straight to the government relations office and ask for my passport.  If they had it I would know for sure Mohammad had been lying about the company representative having it with him over night.  If they didn’t have it I could go back to Mohammad and figure out a plan B.  So I went upstairs and knocked on the glass.   At first the men ignored me.  After a few more knocks they waved to signal they were coming.  One of the men was in the middle of texting someone and the other was checking something on his computer, probably facebook.  I waited another ten minutes or so before they finally came to the window.  He asked for my name and I knew right away my plan wasn’t going to work.  He recognized my name and said, no, we don’t have it, ask Mohammad.  So they were in cahoots!  I wasn’t going to be dismissed that easily.  I asked him for copies of the paperwork they were submitting to the ministry of labor on my behalf.  He said they didn’t make copies.  I asked him where the originals were, and he told me the only copy was with the company rep at the immigration office.  I asked him to clarify.   “You mean you never make copies of any applications you submit to the ministry?  No copies whatsoever?” Nervous and noncommittal affirmative nod.  “So what happens if he looses it?  Or the Ministry looses it?  What do you do then?” 

He decided he should switch tactics.  “Well, it’s all online.” He said.

“Great!,” I said, if it is online, you should be able to pull up my application by reference number and show me the status and everything that has been done so far.”  He shook his head and said that it was a paper application.  So I asked again for copies.  He said they never made copies.  I asked him if he was in charge, if he would make copies of important documents before they sent them off to be processed.  I could tell I was exacerbating him.  He and I both knew that they did have copies, but they had been instructed not to give them to us.  We had a stare down, which was ironically broken by a man coming into the office to make a photocopy of an official looking document.  He wouldn’t even look at me after that, he just kept saying, go see Mohammad. I was trying to ask for clarification about where my passport was and who had it and when I could get it back, while he was trying desperately to get me to leave and go downstairs to Mohammed.  A man passing by must have heard this one sided exchange while passing by.  He approached the window and stood next to me.  “Do you want me to help translate?” He said.  I shrugged.  I knew it wasn’t a communication problem so much as a policy problem, but I thought maybe there was something I was missing, so I said, “sure, go ahead.  Ask him when I will get my passport and to please give me the photocopies of my application for Iqama so far.”

The man translated and the guy behind the glass got angry and said something in Arabic that I took to mean, “Butt out you jerk, I can speak English just fine, this lady is just asking for something I can’t give her.”  I’m not sure what it actually meant though because the helpful guy retreated saying, oh, sorry, I guess you have it under control.  The man behind the glass shouted one more time for me to go see Mohammad and then he also retreated to an inner office.

I decided it was time for plan B.  I went to Mohammad.  Not surprisingly, he was busy dealing with a new crisis.  They had said before that they would pay a week holiday during Eid, but now after everyone got back, were suddenly deciding that no, they weren’t going to pay anyone after all.  So there were about a dozen teachers all demanding the pay.  It was as if they were kids lining up outside the principal’s office saying “No fair! No take backs, you said….” complaining that the bully promised to give them all a quarter if they did this one thing, and then when everyone did it, the bully said, well, I had my fingers crossed so it doesn’t count. 

Mohammad called me to his desk and then leaned in conspiratorially.  “Here is what you will do.  Go to the head of HR.  Tell him you need to speak with him.  Then tell him they are lying to you and won’t give you your passport.  But don’t tell him it was my idea to send you.  Just go.”  So I went.  His door was closed and someone was inside, so I asked his secretary If I could see him.  He said sure, just have a seat.  So I sat.  I sat for a long time.  And while I sat, I stewed.  I stewed over the absurdity of it all, over the chances I would get it sorted out, and the more I thought about it, the more concerned and frustrated I became.  I could feel tears starting to well up in the bottom lids of my eyes, so I took out my kindle to try to read a book and take my mind of waiting.  It was a good plan since It ended up being just shy of an hour before he finally emerged from his office. 

I stood up and waited for him to invite me into the office.  He didn't, so I just stood there and started telling him the situation.  He didn't wait for me to finish, he just nodded a few times and then walked away.  I turned to his secretary to see if he could tell me what had just happened, but his English wasn't great.  He motioned for me to have a seat again and said “I think he is going to help you now.”  I would have felt a lot better if he had left out the “I think” part.  I sat down and felt the tears coming on again.  I hated this feeling of being at the complete mercy of people you clearly knew were not interested in helping you at all, but were only interested in how much money they could scam from you.  The secretary must have seen how close I was to crying, because he slid the tissue box across his desk over to me.  I might have been able to keep it together, but that one small gesture, that one small sign of kindness put me over the edge.  All the stress and frustration and anger and fear I’d been holding in the past week came pouring out.  It felt good and part of me wanted to just cry and cry.  But the other part of me was keenly aware of the scene I was making and was trying to pull it together and stop crying. So then it was like a laughing in church kind of scenario, where the more you know you shouldn't the less control you seem to have.  Of course, the whole office seemed to have chosen this moment to come looking for the HR manager.  At least five people came in and stared at me crying.  A few of them asked what was going on and did what they could to try to help.  One guy said he would let the vice president know what was happening.  Another guy offered to call his friend in the Labor Office.  I thought, man, If I knew tears would get me this much help I would have cried on Sunday and skipped the whole long ordeal.

 Eventually, after another 45 minutes or so, the HR manager returned.  This time he asked me into his office and offered me a chair.  “Ok,” he said, “Here is the problem.  Your visa was issued in the name of our company as a company.  Recently we changed our name to be in the name of our company institute.  So we can’t get your iqama for you until we get that changed.”

He seemed to think he had done me some great favor by divulging this information to me even though Mohammad had already told me this.  “And so,” I said, “When can I have my passport?  I have waited for this name change to happen for five months now and I won’t wait anymore.  I need to have my passport.”  He made a few calls and asked about when my final day was, which I explained was on Sept. 4^th, but because of my vacation days could actually be any day.  He told me that legally, the company had two weeks from my final day to process everything and get me my final exit papers.  “I promise that by Sept. 18^th you will have your passport and final exit and everything you need.”  I told him that legally, the company had to give us both our passport and our iqama to keep at all times and they hadn’t done that.  He didn’t respond but asked me to trust him and told me everything would work out.  I told him I wished I could trust him, but since day one when they changed my contract the company has been doing nothing but lying to me, so he would forgive me If I didn’t believe him.  I told him he needed to show me copies of all of the paperwork they had submitted to the ministry of labor on my behalf.  He told me he couldn’t do that because there were too many employees and if everyone asked for this it would be too much.  I asked if he was worried about the paper.  I told him I would bring my own paper if the cost was too much for the company.  He said it wasn’t about the paper, they just couldn’t give me any of the documents.  I asked him if that was because they hadn’t submitted anything for me.  He insisted they had done all the proper paperwork.  I insisted that I be allowed to have copies of it.  He told me no.  I said that my lawyer (I didn’t have one) told me I had the right to have copies of the papers.  As soon as I said lawyer, he changed.  Ok.  He said, forget the papers, I will get your passport back to you.  Then, when the iqama is ready, you can send it back to us by courier.  No, I said.  I will not give you back my passport again once I have it.  If the iqama is ready, I will come in person, and go with the company representative to the labor office to process it, but my passport will not be out of my sight again.  He said, ok, fine, you can come if you want, it is no problem.  You will have your passport by 2pm.  I asked again about documentation of my paperwork for the ministry and he said, you have your passport so you don’t need the papers. 

I told myself to pick the battles.  The passport was enough, even though it was clearer than ever  that there was definitely something shady going on with the visa and the iqama situation.  So I said, 2pm?  I will be waiting.  If I don’t have it by 2pm, I will call my lawyer.  He agreed and I went downstairs to wait.  Not exactly relieved yet, but slightly more confident.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if it didn't arrive, so I focused on channeling my energy into positive thinking in the hopes that it would arrive.

I went to Wajda’s office and we talked some more which was a helpful distraction.  We talked about how it seemed strange that so many good Muslims allowed themselves to be a part of the deception and cheating the company was involved in.  Wajda said her husband figures that it happens so often, that everyone becomes immune to it.  No one really cares anymore.  I preferred to think it was out of desperation to keep the job more than simple apathy. Wajda’s view was that they would get their reward in the hereafter, and that the deepest pits of hell fire were reserved for the leaders and the business people at the top of the chain that allowed these kinds of things to happen.  Then she described what she imagined paradise to be like, where we would all be 30 years old no matter how old we were when we died, and we would be reunited with all the important people in our lives.  She said there would be green everywhere and we would have an infinite variety of food and every bite we took would be better than the last and we would never have to use the restroom or have any bodily functions ever again and everything would be perfect.  There would never be any conflict or confusion and we would know everything.  I didn't want to say anything, but heaven was sounding kind of boring to me.  I tried to imagine a life without out conflict, or challenge, or where I already knew everything and it just seemed monotonous and repetitive.  I guess it might seem weird that given my current life of chaotic conflict, the last thing I would want in paradise would be conflict, but I just think life would be completely uninteresting without it.  However, Wajda looked so happy when she was describing it, It was almost possible for me to believe that it wouldn’t be so bad.

Since it was Wajda and her husband’s final day before the moved to Al Jouf to finally begin teaching, they wanted to do something nice for the office.  So they ordered a ton of food for the whole office.  They had ordered it to come around noon, but as with everything in Saudi Arabia, it didn’t happen on time.  A few minutes before 2pm, two things arrived at once, my passport, and the food.    I had just left Wajda to head to the bathroom, when one of the helpful teachers who was carrying in the food told me Mohammad was looking for me.  I found him on his way up the stairs and he gave me my passport and made me sign for it.    I ran back to Wajda and showed her my passport.  I even did a little crazy dance.  I couldn't stop smiling!  I wanted to head off right away for the train station, but Wajda convinced me to stay and wait for the food and eat with them.  I hadn't eaten all day, because I was too nervous and worried about getting my passport, but now that I had it I was suddenly hungry and wanted to eat.  The men ate in one room, while Wajda and I, the only two women, ate separately in her office.  We ate our food Saudi style.  We spread a tablecloth out over the table and poured the rice out on the table clothes.  Then we used our hands to eat the chicken and the rice.  It was absolutely delicious and a wonderful way to say goodbye, even if we were only saying goodbye to each other and not any of the office staff.  The guys didn't even get to have a proper sit down last meal together either, they came in ones and twos whenever they could because the office was so busy.  Wajda and I had a lot left over and she insisted that I take it with me to have something to eat on the train.


I didn't think I should wait any longer If I wanted to take the 5pm train.  I asked Mohammed if they could send a driver to take me to the train station.  I didn't think he would do it for me, but in the end he said sure.  But then he got busy and forgot, so I went up to the drivers room and asked for one myself.  After a half an hour of waiting, they gave me a driver.  He had never been to the train station before, but he knew generally where it was.  The thing about the train station (and most things in Saudi) is that there is a big wall around the whole thing, so there is only one way in and one way out, and it is sort of hidden.  I had only been there once before, but I remembered how the other driver had had to take this road all the way around it and then do a u-turn to get back to the entrance.  I could see that this guy was not sure exactly where he was going, so I told him where to go, and at first he didn't seem to want to trust me, but he did and we finally arrived at the station a little before 4pm.  I didn't really want to carry a whole tray of left-over kobsa food with me on the four hour train ride, but Wajda had insisted I take it, so I still had it with me.  I thought that the least I could do was give it to the driver to take home. So I offered it to him.  I should have thought about the fact that there might not be seats left on the train so soon to departure, and I did a little bit, but I knew there was also a 9pm train, and I thought, worse comes to worse, I can take the later train.  So I didn't even think about asking him to wait until I bought the ticket to be sure it would work out.  I just handed over the food, thanked him, and got out.

Inside, I went to the ticket counter, and the man asked me where I wanted to go and looked at my passport and then did something for about 10 minutes on his computer and walking over to another window before coming to tell me that all the trains were fully booked.  I asked him if there wasn't anything at all?  Nothing in any class?  He told me there was one seat left, but it was only from Riyadh to Al Hassa, a little more than halfway.  I asked about the next train to Dammam, which wasn't until the next day.  They had one first thing in the morning, and one at about 1pm.  The morning train cost double that of the afternoon train, and I figured, a) I had waited this long to get there, what was a few more hours? and b) Did I really want to get up and have to look for a taxi at 4am?  So I decided to book the afternoon train.  Which took another 10 minutes or so while the guy searched around for something and then finally took the money and printed the ticket.

Now I just had to find a way back to the hotel.  I was pretty sure my room would still be available to use, and hopefully they would still pay for me to stay the night, because Mohammed had told me that he didn't think I would be able to take the train today (I should have listened).  So now all I had to do was try to figure out how to get to the hotel.  I had absolutely no idea where it was, or even what it was called, so I asked Mohammad to give me directions.  He texted me the following:  Exit 8.  Right, 2nd left.   It didn't seem super helpful, but I figured that if he could at least get me in the general vicinity of the place, I could remember the way from there.  So I found a taxi driver and negotiated with him.  He wanted 60, I talked him down to 35.

At the time I was really proud of  my bargaining skills, but later, I felt guilty.  We made it to exit 8, but there was a left exit and a right exit.  I had no idea which one to take... The taxi driver kept asking me which way and I said "left" in Arabic, only I actually said "Right".  I had gotten the two mixed up in my head which was actually okay because once we turned right and went a little ways, I recognized the intersection.  Whew, thank goodness for my inability to tell left from right.  We took our first right, and then we went down two lights and took our second left.  Nothing looked familiar.  The taxi driver kept looking at me, but I couldn't help.  I tried to call Mohammad, but I had run out of credit on my phone.  Finally the driver pulled over and started asking around, I thought I remembered the name of the hotel, kind of.   He asked one guy who didn't speak Arabic, so I told him where I wanted to go, and he thought he knew it, but couldn't tell the driver who only spoke Arabic, so he went to get a friend, who spoke Urdu and Arabic, and he told his friend in Urdu who then translated back to Arabic to my driver.  Turns out, we should have taken the literal second left, not the second stop light left.  So we went back and sure enough, as soon as we turned down the street, I recognized it and told the driver where to go. I think he may have been even more relieved than I was to find the place.

I paid him, and climbed the steps to the hotel for (hopefully) the last time.  Even though the staff had been very helpful, and I had met a lot of really wonderful people during my time in Riyadh, I was very very grateful to be going home the next day.  I got into my room, and admired my passport some more before falling asleep.  It was the first solid nights sleep I had had since arriving in Riyadh.

The Consulate

With rumors flying, and no one being able to tell me anything for sure, I wrote to the U.S. consulate about my Iqama, and job switching quandary, who advised me to come in for an appointment.  So on Wednesday, I left work early and took a taxi to the consulate.  I shared the cab with a woman who was going to pick up her passport which would now have additional pages.  Someday, I want to travel enough to need additional pages in my passport.  For now, I would settle for just having a passport.  Anyway, we picked her up and I was nervously biting my nails because my appointment was at 2:30, and it was already quarter past by the time we reached her.  But Mr. Rashid, our pakistani taxi driver remained his usual calm self. He assured us we would arrive on time, and turned up the BBC world service on the radio.

I had read on the website that cell phones were not allowed,  in fact, no bags of any kind are allowed.  But since I was coming straight from work, I had no choice but to bring my bag, and I wasn't sure what I should do.  I didn't know Mr. Rashid that well, or if I would even be taking the same taxi home.  The other lady was only going to be in there for five minutes, so he was happy to wait for her and take her back to the apartments, so she was going to leave her purse and phone in the taxi.  But I knew my appointment would be over an hour, and Mr. Rashid wasn't sure he would be free then, so I would need my phone to call him, or if he wasn't available, call another taxi.  Besides, I didn't really know him well, so I was hesitant to leave my work bag and phone with him in the taxi.  I figured there would be a check point somewhere along the way where you can leave your bag.

So we reached the parking lot area for visitors to the consulate.  Far away in the distance, I could vaguely make out the outline of a building, but it seemed pretty far away.   Between us and the building was a long walkway lined in concrete traffic barriers.  The first man we came to told me I couldn't bring my bag.  I asked him if I could leave it here and he told me no, I should take it back to my car.  I told him I came by taxi and I couldn't leave it.  He looked extremely unhappy and somewhat concerned, and after some more explaining and pleading on my part, he agreed to let me leave my bag in the tiny cabinet below the checkpoint.  Now armed with only a stack of papers and a photocopy of my passport, (and thankfully, my US driver's license) I made my way to the next checkpoint, which was through a maze of bars, not unlike being in line for a roller coaster at an amusement park, only we were the only ones in line.  There was a guard waiting at the head of the line.  And he escorted us one at a time to the door of the next checkpoint.  When he came for me he said something I didn't understand, but assumed he wanted my ID.  So I dutifully handed him my driver's license.  He shook his head but still held out his hand, so I handed him the appointment reservation I had printed online.  He didn't want that either.  Finally he said "Hands!" as he grabbed one of my wrists and turned it over.  I quickly juggled my paperwork so it was all under one arm so he could swipe my hands with something, that I can only assume was meant to detect bomb residue or something.

Then he walked me in and checked my paperwork to be sure there were no explosives or knives taped to the back of page nine of my contract or something, and sent me through the metal detector.  After the metal detector was another long walk between concrete traffic blocks and then an iron gate that clicked open as I approached.  Inside the gate it was green and nicely landscaped with a row of golf carts parked neatly to one side.    There was a lovely large building with official looking seals all over it, and I headed that way at first, until a man in a business suit and professional looking ID badge came out of the doors and pointed to a smaller building off to the side with a big sign saying "Visa and Passport Area" so I headed on over.  Inside, it felt like a DMV.  In the back was a small, (I'm talking cart sized) Jeoffry's coffee shop and some restrooms, and in the front was a large digital display announcing "now serving # 66".  I looked around for somewhere to take a number.  There was a woman in the back behind a counter, so I approached her, but she just waved me forward and said, just take a seat.  I sat down near the front, so that I would have a good view of both the digital display, so I could watch for the number I didn't have, and the counter where the woman was seeing people.

She seemed to indicate the next person by simply looking out from the glass and giving head nods to whomever she wanted to talk to next.  It was a surprisingly good system.  After all, there were only a half dozen or so people in the lobby, and all of them appeared to me to be Saudi.  I sat watching a women across the isle from me comfort a small baby while her husband tried to simultaneously fill out paperwork and keep a small boy from running around the room.  I smiled at the little boy, and the mother looked over at me.  She might have smiled, but I couldn't tell, she was wearing the niqab and all I could see were her eyes.  After a few minutes of furtive glances, she walked over and sat down next to me.  She asked me about where I was from and about my job.  When she found out I was a teacher, she got very excited.  She told me she was returning to the US in the fall to start graduate school in Pennsylvania.  Her husband was also studying there and both of her children had been born there.  They were at the consulate getting a passport for the four month old.  Her English was good, but she was worried about the graduate school level work and wanted to know what she could do to practice.  I told her to read everyday, and to practice listening to lectures.  I suggested a few websites, and other things she could do, but we didn't get very far in our conversation before I was being called into glass booth #4.

There was a woman and a man on the other side of the glass from me listening to my story of being illegal, and the company not issuing my iqama and my separate issue of wanting to quit and start for a new company.  Nothing I said surprised them, they had seen it all before.  When they asked the name of my company and I told them, the guy smiled and said the name of my boss in Riyadh.  Clearly the company was so notoriously bad, the consulate staff already knew him by name.  I cringed.  I cringed even harder when they gave me their advice.  Basically, he said, there is only a 500SAR fee ( $133.31) if a company is caught "holding" visas for which they haven't yet applied for iqamas.  Since the iqama fee is 2000SAR ($533.25), and the company only gets a certain number per nationality per year, it is in the company's best interest to not submit the paperwork for the iqama.  He told me the company could more or less keep me here without an iqama indefinitely.  He didn't advise that I quit before the iqama was issued, but didn't elaborate why.  He said my best bet was to wait it out until I received my iqama, then ask to be transferred to the new company.  Chances are, they would not agree to transfer me, at which time I could simply resign with the obligatory 30 days notice, and wait for the company to issue my final exit paperwork (which they could take as long as they wanted to organize...) and then leave the country to come in on a new visa with the new company.  It seemed better to me to resign ASAP and skip the part where I wait forever, since chances are they wouldn't agree to a transfer anyway.  He told me he didn't think that was a good idea, but didn't say why.

They did offer to call the company and politely inquire about the status of my Iqama, but that was pretty much all they could do.  I asked if it was legal for them to hold my passport, and they sort of shrugged and said, "Well.....basically, yes."  "So I am stuck?", I asked.  "Yes." they both said.  They wished me luck in the sort of way you wish someone luck who is about to attempt a slam dunk when they are only four feet tall.  I collected my various contracts and copies of my passport and headed for the door.  I left feeling somewhat relieved to have information from a reliable source, but mostly just beaten down.  I stopped to get some water from the water cooler with environmentally friendly origami paper cups before I headed back outside for my three block walk back to the parking lot and my bag with the phone in it so I could call the taxi.  I was mid gulp when I heard my name over the loudspeaker. My first impulse was a flutter of hope, had they forgotten to tell me about some loophole?  Was there still hope?  I rushed back to the window.  No.  Sadly, it was only that I had forgotten to collect my driver's license, which I had used as proof of ID.  "Not that you have any need for it here," said the woman with a knowing look as she handed it back. "No, I sighed, no chance of that."

I walked out for the second time, but decided I had better use the restroom while I had the chance.  Inside the toilets there was real toilet paper.   I am in America! I thought as I wiped my bum with soft quilted 2-ply.  It's the little things.  I left the office for the final time, and with every step and every gate I walked through to get back to the parking lot, the heat, my situation, and, well, everything felt a little more oppressive.  It's easy to forget until you get a reminder.  I made my way back to where I left the bag with the guard, who saw me coming and got my bag out when I was still 50 feet away.  He clearly couldn't wait to be rid of it.  I took out my phone and called Mr. Rashid, then sat on the sole bench, thankfully halfway in the shade, to wait for him to take me home, and hoped it would not have to be my home for too much longer.

Job Opportunities

There is nothing like sitting around in an office for three weeks with no work to do for motivating you to look for new jobs.  Actually, there is nothing like working for a company that doesn't respond to phone calls and emails, and has you working in a country illegally to motivate you to look for new jobs.  It's just a lucky coincidence that they happen to be paying me to do it on their time.

So, they still have not given me an Iqama.  I have been living here on an expired visa since July 23rd.  If I try to leave the country on an expired visa, the company (but really me, because they could refuse to pay it) would charge me $2,666.00 (ominous exact amount when I convert it from Riyals).  Obviously, I have been pretty concerned about this, so I have been sending emails asking them about my situation daily since we came back from Eid Break.  I have also called them everyday.  Two weeks later, they have still not responded to a single email or phone call.

In the meantime, I have been spending my time applying for other positions.  Last week, I got an interview with a women's vocational training college in Khobar (about 30 minutes away) that pays about $1,000 more per month, and would house us in a brand new compound.  It seems too good to be true.  They offered me the position the next day, and want me to start August 31st.  Great, right?  Wrong.  Like everything else in this country, it is not that easy.

First of all, there is the 30 day resignation notice that I need to give my old company, which obviously wouldn't finish before August 31st.  I asked if I could start a week later, and they told me they really needed someone now, or if I couldn't start on time, they would have to have me wait until December when the second trimester starts.  However, I do have about a week of vacation saved up, and could take that plus leave without pay for any days that might overlap, if that were the only problem.  But it isn't.  In Saudi, you are sponsored by your company, and your legal status in the country is provided by them.  So if you resign, the only way to legally remain in the country is to have your Iqama transferred to another company.  There are two problems with that, one, I still do not have an Iqama, and two, most companies do not want to simply hand you over to another company seeing as how they have paid to recruit you and paid your plane ticket and invested all the effort of bringing you here in the first place.  So the chances are slim to none that they would agree to transfer your Iqama.  What they are more likely to do is give you a final exit visa.  This means that you have to leave the country right away.

Even this wouldn't be so bad, if say, you could just leave, go to Bahrain, get a new visa, and then re-enter with the new company.  The problem is, most Saudi Visas must be issued in your country of origin.  Meaning, I would possibly have to fly home, start the visa application process all over again from scratch, and hope that my former company didn't do anything to prevent me from getting a new visa.

The other thing about all this, is that everyone gives you different advice.  Some people have said that since I don't have an Iqama yet, it is actually a good thing, and I can leave more easily, and the new company can issue me a business visa from Bahrain, no problem.  Since there is no Iqama to transfer, the old company has no hold on me.  Another person said that no, If I left before the Iqama was issued then that triggers a 2 year ban on getting any visas for Saudi in my name.  Another rumor is that if I tell my old company that I have another offer, they will not agree to release me, and without a final exit visa, I can not legally exit the country.

I spoke with an HR person at the new company who told me that they would try to get a business visa for me through Bahrain so that I wouldn't have to go all the way home to the United States.  They are currently bringing all their new teachers in on business visa's since they haven't yet received their LLC license in Saudi yet (they are a Brittish Company).  They will then eventually switch us over to Iqamas when they receive the license.  The problem with this is, my old company still has my passport and will not give it back until they issue an Iqama, making it impossible to leave the country, let alone get a new visa.  They are consulting with their lawyers and the Saudi Government Liaison to see what can be done.

In the meantime, I can't give notice, because if we can't figure out how to work it out so I can start in August, I won't be able to start until December, and I don't want my current company to fire me, or resign too soon, and then I will have to sit around for three months with no pay in order to start again in December.  It's a frustrating game of waiting for more information, and holding my breath to see what will happen.  Cross your fingers for me....

Vacation! *Inshallah*

I may have mentioned that the company I work for is, how can I put this..... the least organized most irrational company I have ever come across.  I have been looking forward to the upcoming Eid Holiday, which is a National holiday mandated by the Saudi Government.   We are being given a paid vacation from the 18th of July to the 2nd of August.  That's 16 days of paid leave!

I applied for my leave at the same time as everyone else in the office. We all filled in all the same paperwork on the same day (the first possible day it was allowed).  And then we waited.  Some for them to issue tickets home if they were renewing their contract, others just for approval, an exit visa, and the return of their passports, which the company keeps with them in Riyadh.  One by one, everyone but me received what they needed to go on vacation.

I've been spending my wait time debating how I should spend those two weeks.  Part of me wants to come home to see friends and family, bring home things I brought that are useless here, and load my suitcase up for the return trip with more useful supplies.  The other side of me has been checking for the cheapest ticket out of Saudi to just about anywhere else.  I've always wanted to see Petra in Jordan, or maybe I could go to Sri Lanka, or India, or Ankor Wat in Cambodia... the possibilities are endless.  You might be thinking, wow, this vacation is only 11 days away and you haven't yet decided how to spend it?  Shouldn't you have made arrangements or booked tickets or something by now?  The answer is, yes, I would have loved to have all of this arranged months ago.

The thing is, I've been here long enough to know that you can't make any plans when it comes to this company until you are absolutely sure you will be given written permission to leave from the company, the exit/re-entry visa, and passport that will allow you to do so.  And you are never absolutely sure with this company until the last possible minute.  I have been doing what I can to encourage the process of getting my iqama and exit visa to move along. I've sent one email a week to all the email addresses I have for anyone in the company for the last month and a half.  Of those half dozen or so emails, I finally got one response about two weeks ago saying simply: Someone is working on it. You will have it soon.

You may be wondering what is so very complicated about granting permission to leave and giving me an exit visa and my passport back. The answer is that nothing here isn't complicated.  About a week ago, Layla, who arrived in Dammam with me called a friend of hers who works in the office in Riyadh because she had also not heard anything about her leave.  Layla had been trying to call the man in charge of vacations for over a week and he never answered or got back to her.  Out of desperation, she called her friend, and made her walk with her cell phone up to the third floor to the man's office and forcibly put it to his ear so he would talk to her.  This is how we found out that we both needed to resubmit our leave request forms.  Turns out, because neither of us were taking any additional days beyond the Eid Holiday, we were confusing payroll.  We needed to officially request only one week off, but, would be paid for both weeks, "they promise".  And how long had they had this incorrect paperwork? How long had they known, but not told us that we needed to resubmit the documents?  Since the day after we initially submitted them on May 28th.  So we filled in the paperwork again, this time requesting only one week off, signed the forms and had them sent off to Riyadh. Layla and I crossed our fingers, that this would solve the problem, and we would have our exit visas soon.

Of course, we had only overcome one hurdle.  I should have known it wouldn't be that easy.  With only three weeks left, I upgraded my email flow to one a day, and obtained several phone numbers for the office in Riyadh, which I called religiously twice a day, with absolutely no answer, and conveniently, no voice mail, either.

Finally, over the weekend, I got a text saying that a new person would be handling my paperwork, and after emailing this new person, I received the good news that they would issue me my exit/rentry visa as soon as I paid the government fees online.  I was so excited!  There was just one problem... I can't pay for anything online, or be issued an exit/rentry visa, unless I have an iqama.

What does that mean?  Well, I entered the country initially on a three months visitor visa, which gives the company time to process my resident permit, called an iqama.  I have heard varying reports about how long it takes the government to process an iqama, but the general consensus for people working for other companies seems to be between 3 weeks and 1 month.  For our company, it almost always takes the full three months, if not longer in some cases.  This iqama is necessary, not only because without it I am technically in the country illegally once it expires on July 23rd, but also because you need it to open a bank account, rent an apartment, send money overseas, pay for things online, and most importantly for me at the moment, be issued an exit / re-entry visa.

Sara, who came to Dammam at the same time as me, but arrived in Riyadh a few weeks before me, is also still waiting for her iqama.  Her initial visa expired two weeks ago.  Frighteningly, the company either doesn't know (even though she has told the admin ladies here and several people in Riyadh) or doesn't care.  I'm not sure which is scarier.  In the one email response I received from the company two weeks ago, they had said I would get my iqama "soon".  My calls and emails to pin down exactly when "soon" might be, have so far gone unanswered.

Today, one of the admin ladies came in to tell me I could pay for my exit/reentry visa online today and they would issue it to me.  I asked her if it was possible to get and use an exit/reentry visa without an iqama, and she looked surprised and said, "You still don't have an iqama?"  Which seems like a strange response from someone I have asked every week for the last two months if my iqama has arrived, and who would be the one, if it did arrive, to give it to me.  She told me to wait, and not pay or do anything, and she went off to call Faisel, the highest in the chain of command here in Dammam.

A few hours later she came back and told me that perhaps I should start getting use to the idea that I may not be able to go anywhere during the Eid Holiday.  She said the company has been having trouble getting iqamas processed.  This could either mean the government itself has a backlog, or more likely, the company is being blacklisted by the ministry at the moment because of poor business practices, a lack of bribe payments, an insult to the wrong prince, or possibly all three.  I asked if it was possible to get an extension on my original visa, and she said maybe, but didn't seem too hopeful.  "Anyway, we still have a little over a week", she said. "Inshallah, you will get what you need."

When I first learned this word, "inshallah" (god willing), I liked the expression.  It seemed hopeful.  I can now say that I officially hate this word.  I hate it because it doesn't seem hopeful anymore.  It seems like an excuse for the Laissez-faire attitude that what will happen will happen, and we can do nothing to influence or change that.  Here is an extreme example, accidents are frequent and often deadly here, but almost no one wears a seat belt.  I asked a Saudi taxi driver about this once when I noticed he wasn't buckled in.  "Inshallah," he said, "I won't need it."  It is one thing to accept that when things do happen, God has willed it, and he will help you deal with it and get through it.  It is another matter entirely to decide not to take any action to effect outcomes before they happen.  If you see a train coming straight for you, but don't move, because you think if God wills it he will stop the train for you, and if he doesn't will it, then he wanted you dead, then you are going to be both dead and stupid.  I say, the fact that God allowed you to see the train coming is evidence enough that he wanted you to live, but you have to do your part too.

Obviously, nothing that serious is at stake here.  There are worse things than being paid for two weeks to not work and stay home in your apartment.  But the attitude prevails in everything.  For example, I asked one of the students if she thought she did well on her exam, she said, "inshallah, I will pass".  Then I asked her if she had studied, and she said "No."  I recalled the expression I learned as a child; "God helps those who help themselves", and I had to wonder if she saw the flaw in relying on God to make things happen in your life when you don't take advantage of the chances he throws your way.   So, if I don't get to leave Saudi on my vacation, I won't blame God.  I'll blame inshallah. And of course, the incompetent disorganized company.