Girls Night

If there is one thing I've done here that I can be proud of, it would be this:  I indirectly brought some weekly joy into the lives of some Saudi Women.

When I first started teaching at the institute in the evenings, my students had been studying together as a group for 6 weeks already with another teacher, but as I was struggling to learn and remember all their names, it became clear to me that they didn't know each other's names either.  You might ask how its possible to be with the same group of people every night for six weeks and not know their names, but the sad truth is that classes are called lectures here for a reason.  Many of them were doing group and pair work for the first time with me.

Once they started to get to know each by mixing in groups, the dynamic of the class changed.  On the one hand, there was a lot more side chatting during class.  On the other hand, they rushed to help each other understand, and challenged each other more in games in class with light-hearted teasing.  They all felt more confident speaking up and personalities began to emerge.  They were the same girls who on the first day had been quit  and reserved, but now they were loud and carefree and couldn't wait to talk in class.  The transformation was amazing to watch.

Unbeknownst to me, this transformation wasn't solely the result of my amazing class activities as I first thought.  Mid-way through course, one of the women had invited all of them to her house after class on Thursday (our Friday) and ever since then it has become a weekly event.  Each week, a different woman would hosts the class at her house.  After they had been doing this for a month or so, they invited me to come along.  For some reason it always seemed to happen that I was either leaving for Dammam on the weekend, or because it was the holidays, having parties at the embassy, or having friends visit.  Anyway, this Thursday I finally made it to the girl's night.

The class itself had dwindled from the original 10 or so members down to only 4,  many of the girls had decided not to continue for the second six weeks because of exams at the high school, or a change in work schedule, or because their maid quit.  But they all still managed to make it to the weekly party on Thursday.  So it was kind of like a mini-reunion for me.  I got to see a lot of the students that had stopped coming.

I was driven to the house after class by Wesam, a 26 year old who is married with two kids.  Her son who is two and a half, came with her father to pick us up and drive us to Mona's house.  He sat in the front seat with no car seat, and spent the whole ride hanging out the window.  Several times, I was worried he might fall out, but Wesam just grabbed for his hoodie a few times without even pausing in conversation.  It is very normal to see kids with no car seats, often standing up or sitting awkwardly in their mother's laps while driving.   The kingdom has the highest rates of traffic accidents in the world, and so it is somewhat shocking that the use of seat belts and proper child seats is so uncommon. Thankfully, it was a short trip.

Mona's Grandma's Pancake Recipe:
Wheat flour, water, salt, and
 black sesame seeds

Wesam and I were the first from class to arrive.  Mona, who used to attend with her daughter, was busy making food in the kitchen.  She wanted to show me her grandmother's recipe for savory pancakes, and the Indian food she was cooking.  She explained that her Somalian maid had left to make more money with some other family, so she had taken over the housework, which was extra hard since her son was home on a visit from California where he is in school.   "He misses my cooking so I have to cook for him three times a day."  Next she introduced me to her mother, a tiny woman who was clearly old, but also very energetic.  She had been to America nearly 20 years ago, and would surprise me occasionally throughout the night by saying a random phrase in English.

The chicken coop, and busy rooster

Next I got the grand tour.  The house was huge.  There were three stories, and the first floor was just the kitchen and three different living rooms, the second floor had bedrooms, and the third floor was also bedrooms, but for pets. They had about 20 cats and maybe 100 birds.  There were bird cages everywhere.  There were parrots and canaries and finches and outside in the backyard, a chicken coop.  The grandmother took me outside to have a look at them.  They were all hanging out on a well.  She pointed out the only rooster among so many hens and said,  "man very busy." and then laughed while giving me a knowing look.

On the other side of the house was a separate entrance just for men.  It was much fancier than the door I had come through and in this garden there was a permanent outdoor tent.  She explained that this was the "man cave" for her husband and two boys.  It was fully carpeted and had the traditional pillows for leaning inside the tent.  It also had a large flat screen TV and good speakers.  There was also a fire place - not sure if it worked- but there were a lot of tea pots for Arabic coffee on the mantle ready to go.  She told me that the girls had wanted to have our night out here, but because of a sudden cold snap, we would stay inside.

Inside again she showed me another living room, this one just for men, but it was in the process of being re-decorated, so it was kind of a mess.  They had just finished redecorating the bathroom, which she told me her husband had designed.  I could tell by the ways she said it that she didn't really approve.  It had vertical rows of black tiles.  Each row had a different pattern and after ever third row or so, there were several rows of white tiles.  The effect was something like a prison since the vertical black tiles, even though they were very wide tiles, kind of seemed like bars.

Mona's 3 in 1 living room

There was a third living room that she didn't take me to see, which was just behind the kitchen and very small.  This one was just for family.   Finally, we were back at the living room with the rest of the girls.  It was so big, it was actually like three living rooms in one.  Or maybe it just felt that way because there were three very different sets of furniture, one on each wall.  There was one very modern looking box - like set of couches and love-seats in black, white and pink stripes.  On the opposite wall were antique looking chairs and sofas in pea green and gold.  Next to them was a giant purple sofa and foot stool.

Mini-sweet sambosa's

During the course of the night, we would rotate between all these areas depending on the activity.  For the initial round of Arabic coffee and sweets, we sat in the pea-green couch area.  By now, two more of my students, sisters, had arrived with their mother and younger sister.  They were originally from Syria, but only the oldest daughter had been born there, the rest had been raised in Saudi, and up until last year, they had gone back to Syria every summer to visit friends and family.  One of Mona's two daughters brought the younger sister (I think she was about 7 years old) a present - red earrings and a puzzle.  She was delighted and ran to put the earrings in right away.  When she came back, she started to play with the puzzle.  she opened the box, then took one piece out, looked at it, put it back, and took out another.  She was holding the piece up, and looked at it sideways and then looked at the picture on the box.  She put the puzzle piece on top of the spot in the picture it should go, smiled, and triumphantly returned the piece to the box.  It was clear she had never done a puzzle before.

Since I couldn't really understand the conversation happening around me anyway, I took the puzzle and the girl over to a coffee table, and showed her how to start by looking for the edges.  Once we got the boarder in place, and I felt she had a handle on finding pieces to fill it in, I got back up to rejoin the adults.  She got up to and followed me back to the couch.  She didn't say anything, just waited patiently while I greeted two other students (also sisters) who had arrived.  Even though their father was Saudi, their mother, who also came, was Egyptian.  We talked briefly, but since their mother didn't speak English, it was a pretty short conversation.  The little girls stuck to my side and looked at me patiently.  So I asked if she wanted me to help her finish the puzzle and she nodded, so I went back to the kiddie table and very happily helped her finish the puzzle.

Turkish Coffee

By then, more guests had arrived, so we switched to the black and white and pink area, so we had more places to sit.  We had more sweets, and Turkish coffee was brought around.  Inevitably, the conversation turned to men.  They gave Fatimah, who is 30 and not yet married a hard time, and she stood her ground saying she would not marry a Saudi.  She was clearly a woman determined to follow her own course, and had several tattoos.  One began behind her ear and traced her hairline down her neck.  In class, I had only ever been able to read the first part: "I am not an option."  Now, for the first time I could read the rest: "Choose me or f*#&ing loose me."  More than once I had wondered how and where a Saudi woman would go to get a tattoo, but then she must have gotten it on one of her trips to Egypt to visit her mother's family.

Then it was my turn to be grilled, and suddenly everyone had a son or a cousin who they wanted to introduce me to.  I declined politely, insisting that I was very happy to be single, and joking that I would end up killing any man I married since I am such a bad cook.  The grandmother offered through translation to let me live with her.  She would teach me everything she knew in the kitchen.  She said she was lonely since her husband died and she had a huge big house and no one to share it with.  I laughed, but was secretely wondering if it was a geniuine offer.  Depending on how much housing was going to cost, it wouldn't be such a bad deal.  She wouldn't be lonely, I'd have low rent, and cooking lessons to boot!

Preparing the Shisha

Someone hooked up their phone to the speakers, which were remarkably loud, and a few girls started dancing.  Another set of girls worked on preparing the shisha.  We migrated again back to the pea colored couches where there was more room for dancing.  My shyest student, Maria, was suddenly up and dancing, shaking her hips in ways even Shakira hasn't mastered.  I was flabbergasted.  Song after song, these girls got up and danced, sometimes the dances were crazy, made up from different moves they had seen in western music videos.  Sometimes they were traditional dances done in a circle while holding hands (I was pretty good at these).  And sometimes they were strangely erotic, with lots of shaking of hips and breasts.  I was decidedly terrible at these, despite the lessons the girls tried to give me.  Even the grandmother got into it, shouting "shake that ass" at one point.  I was so surprised by that I nearly fell over. Thankfully, someone came around with tea, so I grabbed a cup, grateful for the excuse to leave the dance floor.

Dinner is served

When I emptied my plate, someone
would fill it again, even if I insisted
I was full.

Around 11pm, we were called in to have dinner.  Dinner!?  There was something called Mashkhul, which is a rice and meat dish similar to Khobsa.  There was Tabula salad, there was seafood soup, there was the Indian food Mona had made, there was a salad of yogurt and cucumbers and dill, and there were even pickles.  It was a huge feast.  The younger women offered drinks while the older women dished out huge helpings no matter how much you protested that you didn't need that much. One of the most brilliant customs I've come across in Saudi is the use of disposable plastic sheets as table cloths.  When we were all finished eating, the ladies simply began scrapping all the leftovers off of the plates onto the table.  This saves the use of a garbage disposal and makes washing the dishes easy.  When all the plates and dishes are cleared from the table, then you just fold up the table cloth with all of the scraps of food inside and throw it away, or in this case, toss it out to the chickens.

Tea served in fancy cups

Cleaning up was sort of a group effort, we all pitched in since Mona's maid was gone.  Mona herself left early to go and stay the night with her husband in the hospital.  He had some blood clots in his brain, and they were monitoring him.  He had been in the hospital for nearly a week now, and they were trying to decide on weather or not to do surgery.  Her two daughters stayed behind to continue playing host.  We had one more round of hot drinks, This time ginger and hot water.    Since I normally just take taxi's and you weren't going to find a taxi on the side residential streets especially at this time of night, one of the girls offered me her driver.  So he came and picked me up, and off we went.  I don't know how much longer the other women stayed after I left, but it was clear that no one was in a hurry to leave.

I could understand why.  I was lucky enough to have an active social life among expats, so I hadn't felt the same isolation these women must feel.  Salma, one of my students once tried to explain to me why their Thursday nights were so important.  "During the week," she said, "I feel like this (she curled her hands up into fists and and brought them to her chest), "Then its Thursday, and we laugh an dance and talk, and everything goes away.  I feel like this." (and she threw her arms open wide).

Even though most of the time I hadn't been able to follow the conversation, the dancing and laughing and eating had made me feel like I was part of the group.  It was the first time I had truly felt welcome in Saudi Arabia, and I agreed with Salma.  My arms were now open wide, ready to experience and embrace whatever came my way next.

Cultural Night

Last weekend, the teachers and I were all invited to a cultural night for women.  I felt so lucky to arrive just in time for this event.  One of the things I've been most disappointed in here is the fact that I work with and live with only foreigners, and haven't had any chance to interact with any Saudi women, aside from the students with whom I'm not allowed to talk about anything but the weather with.

So all week I worried about attending. I wanted to go, but since they still haven't paid me, I could not afford to get a taxi.  If enough women from work were planning to go, we could have the company driver go, but it seemed as if most of the other women weren't interested in attending, or going away for the weekend.  I was contemplating if I would have enough food to last me to the end of the month if I used my remaining grocery money to get a taxi when we got an email saying they were going to let us use the company van and have a driver take us.  I was so excited.  Now I had a new problem, what to wear?  It was a women only event, so I imagined we would be allowed to take off our abayas, but I didn't know what would be acceptable to wear underneath.  Could I wear pants? Was it a very fancy event?  Should I wear a dress?  Eventually I decided to wear my only skirt and a new button down collared shirt that one of the other teachers had given me because it was too small for her now.

I went downstairs and was surprised that of the 20 or more women living in our apartments, only four others had decided to come. I was particularly surprised since a) everyone always complains about how there is nothing to do, and here was something to do, and b) It was a rare chance to experience Saudi Culture, and c) free food.   Chris was hoping one of us had a cell phone with GPS since she did not know where it was. Unfortunately, none of us did.  I guess the type of women who are interested in free food are not the ones who have the money for a smart phone.   Even though she had looked it up on Google maps, and copied down the map onto a paper since she didn't have a printer, the driver didn't recognize the area and wasn't sure where it was. Funny, I hadn't bothered to even look at the address since I was obviously not going to be driving, but now wished I had looked more carefully at the invitation.  Armed with only our wits, and a hand drawn map, we set off into the night in the general direction of where it was.  There aren't really any proper addresses in Saudi Arabia, instead you have things like, "Between King Saad and Prince Faisel streets, across from the DaWaan Pharmacy."  So normally, that might be enough to go on, but there are more pharmacies in Saudi Arabia than there are pubs in Ireland.  And the only thing they have more of than pubs, is members of the royal family, and since every street is named after some member of the royal family, we were basically looking for a needle in a haystack.

We drove down to the area we thought it was in, and we found a King Saad street, and we found what was either Prince Faisel, or Prince Tasel street, and we drove the blocks between and around it for about a half hour, with no sign of anything saying culture night, or any indication that we were anywhere near where we were supposed to be.  We tried calling some of the teachers who didn't live in our apartments and said they were going to attend, but got no answer on the phone.  Finally, we pulled into a Best Western (in fact, it was the nicest looking Best Western I had ever seen) and asked the concierge inside if he knew where the address was.  Chris went in, hopefully clutching the invitation and her hand drawn map, but returned despondent.  The man inside had no idea where the place was, but didn't think it was anywhere near by.  We had driven about 45 minutes to get here, and had now spent another 45 driving in circles.  The event had already started and was only scheduled to last for two hours anyway.  I could tell we were on the verge of giving up and heading back.  I couldn't let that happen.  I asked Chris, if she had the phone number of anyone who was organizing the event.  She didn't, but thought it was in one of the emails they had sent.  I asked if she thought the concierge would let her use the Internet to find the email.  She seemed doubtful, but I wasn't ready to give up, and pleaded, offering to go in myself to ask, though I hadn't gotten the email so it would of been useless without her going in too.  Finally when everyone else agreed with me that we should give it one last try, she went in.  This time she was gone for longer, finally they came out.  She had a phone number and the concierge was going to explain to our driver how to get to the area we needed to be in and find the McDonald's and then the woman on the phone was going to explain how to get there from the McDonald's.  The trouble is, our driver only speaks Urdu, and the concierge only Arabic and English, so he had to call over a third man, who had been trying to get these giant marble balls in the front rolling in the the water fountains.  After some very confusing and animated attempts to give directions, our driver thought he knew where they were asking him to go.

We pulled out of the Best Western with renewed hope, and started driving, and driving, and driving.... Turns out we had been very very far off in our guess as to where it was.  Finally, we got to the McDonald's and Chris called the woman who was trying to explain the directions, but she was pretty fuzzy on how to get there, seeing as how she never drove there herself, but only sort of paid attention as her driver brought her places. "You turn right after the McDonald's, and then you take the third, or maybe fourth right, and then you will see a big patch of empty land, and then you turn..."  Chris was trying to relay these directions to the driver, who's English wasn't great, while still listening to the other directions the woman was giving her, and after a while, no one knew at which stage of the directions we were, where we were at, or where we should go next.  So we turned around and went back to the McDonald's to try the whole thing again from the start. This time she told us to turn left at the third or forth street, and we wound up in front of some very beautiful houses, but not the ones we were looking for, so we turned around again, and went back to the McDonald's, this time to wait for a driver she was sending to lead us to the place. Encouragingly, he arrived very quickly and within five minutes we arrived at the cultural night, an hour and a half late to a two hour event.

The private garden where the cultural night was hosted.

But it was worth it.  As soon as we arrived, we were ushered through a gate and into a mini-paradise.  Everywhere you looked you saw green.  There was a beautiful stone pathway through deep green grass leading to a big outdoor tent lined with rugs and little benches and tables with tea set out.  Immediately we were greeted by helpful and friendly women who invited us to take off our abayas and even gave us little bags to carry them in.  We got name tags and were led to the first of a series of little booths lining the edge of the yard.  The first one was offering scientific evidence for some of the events in the Quran,  I was in the back of a group of women listening to someone who was talking about the medicinal qualities of bees while on a laptop images of fetuses rotated on a slide show.  I couldn't hear very well, so maybe she was saying something that would tie it all in together, or make some connections somehow, but I left before I could find out, so now in the back of my mind I'll always be trying to find links between babies, bees, and biblical events.  The next booth was a Q&A about Islam, but it was crowded, and we were very thirsty, so we skipped over it and the calligraphy and traditional dress tents to get some juice.

There were two kinds of juice, and I highly recommend them both.  One was a mint lemonade, and the other pomegranate juice.  If you've never thought to throw a sprig of mint into your lemonade, do.  It's so delicious, I think I'm spoiled for life and can't go back to plain lemonade after this.

Saudi Crepes

Saudi Doughnuts

Just beside the juice table were two women on the floor in front of gas burners. One was making Saudi crapes, and the other one was making a traditional Saudi dish that was very much like doughnut holes. Only it was like magic.  There was a big dish full of nearly boiling oil, and the woman would scoop up some dough and drop it in, and magically, the dough would turn itself into a perfectly round ball.  You may think I'm exaggerating, and that there must have been some that ended up kind of lopsided, or with weird shapes, but no, everyone was perfectly round, and all she did, was just drop the dough in the oil, and wala, perfection!  I stood watching it for a long time, and I never could figure out the secret, but one of the Saudi women has promised to send me the recipe, so maybe I'll try it.  I wonder if I accidentally burn down the accommodation in the process, if the company will move us to a better one with a laundry room.

Food from the buffet - stuffed zuchini!

Before I knew it, they were serving this huge buffet of food.  I had assumed we had missed the food, and all that was left were these doughnut balls and crapes, so I had already eaten about half a dozen balls, and at least half a crape.  I was so mad.  I would never have room in my stomach now to try all of the dishes they had arranged on the table.  Each dish was carefully labeled and included the region of Saudi where it originated.  There were even tiny little salad dishes with lids.  We sat on the benches and relaxed and ate.  Saudi women came around and checked on all of us making sure we were having a good time and didn't need anything, and did we try her favorite dish yet?  She sent her daughter to fill up a plate for us to try.  Like everything else, it was delicious.  I was stuffed.  While I was recovering in the hopes of having room for a dessert, I talked with a Korean woman.  She has been in Saudi for two years now, and though she doesn't like it here and feels trapped and isolated, she is hoping her husband will sign up for another year because he drinks too much in Korea, and here, where it is so hard to get alcohol, he is much better.  What a difficult choice, your own sanity and freedom, or what you know is best for your husband.

Using bamboo for Arabic calligraphy

After a small but delicious dessert, I rushed to the calligraphy booth.  The women helped me choose a quote from the Koran, and painted my initials over the gold leaf on the page with the quote, then they offered to frame it and wrap it up for me all for free!  They even made me take a second one because it was getting late and they had so many frames left.  I was flabbergasted.  It was all so generous!  For the second one, they showed me how to do calligraphy, and for the first time since I arrived I was glad I had bothered to learn the alphabet, so I could stun and impress them all when I wrote my name in Arabic calligraphy.  It was so much fun I didn't want to stop.  But we had told the driver we would be out by 9 pm, and now it was almost ten.  We rushed to get our things together and I stood next to the booth with all of the traditional clothing waiting for the others who had gone to the bathroom quickly before we left.  I asked to take a picture of some of the clothes and the next thing I knew the woman had somehow managed to get me into the booth and was putting a dress over my head.  I knew I didn't have much time, but it was so pretty, and I did want a picture... So I let her.

Me in traditional brides dress
from the eastern province

And then she insisted on adding the head dress with shiny gold coins, and then of course I needed the necklace as well, and then the fan, and then she wanted her daughter in the picture with me too, and by now I was sure everyone was impatiently waiting for me, so I struggled out of the outfit as quickly as I could, and back into my abaya and thanked the woman for all her help, and ran to catch up with the others, who were trying to get out of going into the tent to have tea with another very gracious hostess, and I really wished we didn't have to rely on a driver and could spend the whole night talking to these friendly Saudi women, who seemed so different from the Saudi women administrators at Dammam University who never smiled and seemed so cold and unapproachable.

As we made our way to the gate, each of us were given a carefully wrapped bundle of goodies to take home with us, and some more cookies to eat on the drive home and many many well wishes.  We couldn't wait till we got home to open our gifts, so on the ride home we examined our SWAG (stuff we all get) and found a very nice mug for tea (which is great since I had no mug at all until then) and a small bottle of perfume, and about five different books, all having something to do with Islam.  We had famous Islamic Quotes, How to raise your children based on principles of the Koran, What every woman should know about Islam, and a very detailed biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Peace be upon him). I'm sure they will make for interesting reading.  I couldn't have imagined a better night. I am so very happy that we didn't give up on finding it, though I think by the time we finally arrived home at half past 11, our poor driver probably wishes we had.