Living Some Dream

                                                             Living Some Dream

               "To me the goal was to learn, to see, to know, to understand. Never could I 

              glimpse a sail on an outbound ship but my heart would stumble and my throat 

                                                                  grow tight."

                   American author and storyteller, Louis L'amour, from The Walking Drum

My wait in Riyadh is from four-thirty in the afternoon until three-thirty in the morning. I grab a luggage cart, stack my three bags and my knapsack on it and proceed to wander around the King Khaled International Airport (KIAA) like an indigent person attached to the back end of their shopping cart. The terminal is exceedingly long and narrow, perhaps fifty feet wide, at least the portion one can loiter in without going through security. I feel the proverbial stranger in a strange land, one of perhaps a half dozen non Asian people, meaning mainly Saudi, Middle Easterner, or South Asian, that I see. I work to project an air of respectfulness and non haughtiness. I purposefully look away from the fully covered females, look down quite a bit, especially at first, filled with uncertainty and social trepidation.

I tried to withdraw money, Saudi Riyals, from an ATM machine, but was rejected. I was thirsty, but not a one of the dozen or so bubblers I encountered worked. If it was water that one wanted, one buys a bottle of it. This in a country where water is quite literally more expensive, per unit, than oil. Having no local currency, I went without, without both currency that is, and without water. I looked in the restroom but found that they were always quite full and I did not want to draw attention, not able to rid myself of the sensation, imagined I am certain, that I was being viewed somehow by the others in some vague judgmental manner. Interestingly, each restroom has what look like open, tiled, shower stalls with no walls, just faucets and raised, square, tile boxes, shower pans, if you will, and the words, in English, "Ablutions." This is where the men wash their feet before prayer, adhering to the word of the Prophet (peace be upon him-this is the phrase that follows any and all references to Mohammed in print in the Arabic world) to clean oneself before submission, prostration, devotion. 

I walked the length of the terminal three times slowly, going outside to smoke twice and to marvel and to breathe in this new place, this new dream. Yes, I thought, living a dream. Not the dream, not some specific dream, not the American Dream, not material wealth, not status nor the envy of my peers, rather some dream, any dream. A dream. Life is but a dream, is it not? How did the Bard phrase it? A poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Yes. Yes it is a flash, coming in like some barely decipherable streak of light and shadow, like that something tha runs across the road in front of your headlights that you can't quite make out, never, though we foolishly continue to expect that it is just about to, clarifying. In this brief candle flash we move through this play of puppet shadows where we never really become the player itself, only the paper thin silhouette continually distorted and stretched out of true proportion upon the screen. I have spent good money purchasing substances to keep me somewhere on that blade edge between the kingdom of Morpheus and the solid world, not fighting to control the distortions or the lack of control, but rather joining it, moving along with and inside of it, going with the current and not against it. Now, ironically enough, stone cold sober, I am preparing myself to shift into a realm hitherto never considered, a new flash of light, a new shadow puppet dance. A new dream.

I found a spot to lay down, pulled out my down pillow, the very same dependable, mute companion that accompanied me the five hundred miles across he north of Spain, and I slept for five hours on the thinly carpeted floor of King Khaled International Airport, arising at one-thirty am, two hours before my departure for King Fahd International Airport in Dammam. I went back outside to have another smoke and met a man of about thirty, Mohammed, traveling to his younger brother's wedding the next day. I ended up having about five cigarettes with him and talking to him for about an hour.

He was impressed that I will be an Instructor at King Fahd University. "It is the best University in all of Saudi Arabia," he assured me, sitting on my left in his red and white headdress with the double black cord wrapped to hold it in place, and his full length white thobe, his robe.

Mohammed offered to buy me a coffee, which I accepted. He went inside and returned with a hot American coffee for me and one for himself. I asked if he drank Arabic coffee, that cardamom spiced, overly caffeinated, milk infused witches brew, and he shook his head. His favorite, he informed me, was from Dunkin Donuts. His father is a native Yemeni who immigrated to KSA for work. Mohammed works for a famous fashion clothing store, Zafra, and is the manager of a retail store in one of Riyadh's thirty plus malls. He wants to live either in America or in Spain. 

"Why Spain?"

"The beautiful women." I asked why he is not married and he replied that he is waiting to find his real love. I applauded him this. Wished him better luck than I have experienced. Explained to him the meaning of the phrase, two time loser. We smoked and sipped our coffee and I was then plenty awake. Suddenly time to go. I shook his hand and thanked him for his generosity and his company, and then I turned to go inside.

On the small plane to Dammam, seating maybe sixty to eighty passengers, I was the only non Arab. The worm had already begun to turn. Before take off, along with the multi-lingual safety messages, was a reading of a passage from the Quran. I try not to despair, thinking that in my culture, if the pilot read a verse from the Bible, I would be really quite afraid that he knew something that I did not.

It was a fifty minute flight. It was a descent into the next world for me, a passage to the other side. I girded myself, breathed, readied my spirit for whatever should come next. You asked for this, remember that. This is what you want, right? So relax that puckered sphincter, sit up straight, and look into the bright light of the sun. What's the phrase, To get the truth you've got to get close, you get too close, you die. I wanted, I was thinking at that moment, just to get kind of close.

Upon disembarking, about four-thirty in the morning, I collect my bags. I have been tasked with calling one of two numbers given me in order to get my ride to KFUPM. One is a Mr. Mohammed. The other a Mr. Hassan. But I haven't a phone.

A taxi driver who offers me a ride listens to my story and then dials one of the numbers for me. There is no answer. As the helpful gentleman begins to dial the other number, a bespectacled young Saudi man in his clean, pressed thobe, approaches with my name in all caps on a piece of paper. "Are you Mr.," stumbling on my family name. I say yes. He leads me to his car, aides me in piling my luggage into the back seat and we drive off. He is polite but says nothing during our thirty minute drive, except to answer in monosyllables when I query him on various things. Soon, realizing that he has no interest whatsoever in communicating with me, I stop talking and simply look about. We go 110-120 in 40-50 kph zones, get to KFUPM as the birds begin to chirp and the sky begins to lighten. 

In my head I continue the few mantras that I have been holding onto. Three days before now I did not know that I would ever come to KSA. Then suddenly an email arrived informing me that if I can come in the next few days, the Faculty Affairs Office will recommend to the University's Rector that they allow me to do so. But being as the second term, Term 142, has already begun, if I can not come now, it will not happen. My son, Teo, helped me book a ticket and I sent the itinerary off to KFUPM, and voila, forty eight hours later, Teo and my other boy, Paolo, drop me at Seatac Airport at five am and here I am. 

Just breathe. Just breathe. Change is difficult but it is good. It is all change, and change is good. Change only ends when we do. And I am not through. I am only beginning. This is what I want, have wanted, for so long. The nerves, the doubts, they are good, they are like the pulse in the blood, a sign of vitality and, ultimately, of life. Embrace it, look it in the eyes, thrive. Go forth and thrive.

We enter the main gate at KFUPM after a twenty plus minute ride and soon are driving around and around a modern, clean, nice looking apartment complex. I am pleased to see where I will be living. In the photo below my place is the ground floor unit in the center. 

He looks about considerably and pulls out of the parking lot as he dials a number on his phone, speaking in Arabic. Then back into the lot and around the building again. Then back on the phone. Now we pull out and around the block to another set of smaller, shorter buildings in a tight cluster. They are not as new and many of the units, in fact, seem to be crumbling. A pick up truck with two South Asian, older, leather faced men who do not speak English greet us with that sallow, half afraid smile of the serving class, and my driver unloads my bags and drives away without a word. It is a tad odd, but, whatever, I think, exhausted from the better part of forty hours of travel and a shift forward of twelve hours. Disorienting it all is, but I made it. I can stop clenching my teeth and saying my mantras. I can put down my bags and relax.

Using sign language and smiles, the two men help me carry my bags to number 1109, hand me a key and, still smiling gently, body language and tones of the migrant workers that they are, turn and leave.

As I go in I notice a yellow post-it note affixed to the front door, I grab it, bring it in. The place is a studio, and not the one bedroom apartment that I had thought I was getting, but it is, after all rent free, and it is clean. I put down my bags and read the note. "Dear Mr. Bicchieri," it reads in a blue ball point pen scrawl, "I will be by to pick you up between 7:30 and 8:00 to start your paperwork." It is signed, "Denis Kearny." I check the time on my iPad. It is now a hair before six.

Bienvenidos a Saudi Arabia!