So You Say You Wanna See the Sights
The week before last a friend who I work with named Danny, a Britisher who in fact took me out on my first social outing to a Starbucks about two plus weeks back, invited me to go to a souk, a public market, up in Qatiff, about forty kilometers north of Ad Dammam, the collective name for the urban center that I live in. The evening coffee out, by the way, was an intellectually stimulating, lively event shared over a couple of too late in the evening sixteen ounce drip coffees that kept me turning over our conversation in my head until about two-thirty am, my heart rate galloping along clipetty clop in my veins. He is strong, deep thinker, well versed in literature, philosophy, political science, and he has lived in the Middle East for some decades now. He is a practicing Muslim and will be, in fact, marrying a Saudi pediatric surgeon this summer.
I met him and another teacher, a guy named Edward who hails from Colorado, at nine-thirty in the morning. Edward is also getting married this summer, to a Thai lady, and he also has taught in many countries and has been in the Middle East for some years. The three off us piled into Danny's Mitsubishi and drove up to Qatiff, discussing Danny's summer plan to bring his two teenaged sons, who live with their mother, to Colorado for a romping adventure. Edward played tour guide, displaying an encyclopedic range of what to do in the Rocky Mountain State.
The landscape north of here is, surprise, quite barren. Lots of concrete buildings in various states of construction, and deconstruction. There seems to be a premium on putting up new structures in this country but a marked lack of any of the budget appears to go into maintenance of any kind. Industry. Warehouses. Energy facilities. Housing complexes. Roads of all shapes and directions. And lots of yellow beige sand.
We pulled into Qatiff, a Sh'ia concentrated area, and parked, walked the block or so to the edge of the souk, which was not contained in one square or bounded area, but rather consisted of a series of stalls or tables or assemblage of goods on the ground or in the shade of buildings spread out in front of or in between existing buildings. The first part we walked through was a small sea of fowl. Lots of doves and pigeons and quail in half spherical cages set over them like a macabre foretaste of what they may be getting as soon as they are set, cooked, on the table, or on the floor, as the cultural case may be,'s for supper. Ducks, ducklings, geese, chickens, some birds I could not recognize, like one group which had a fascinatingly large amount of feathers covering their feet. There were birds for sale as pets, you know, parakeets and mynah birds. And there were birds of prey.
Nuts for sale, roasting or in large wicker baskets near scales. Fruits and vegetables. Rice, lentils, balls of tamarind, spices, teas, even large, rumpled, dried leaves of tobacco. The smells were clear and pungent, the colors a full array of the spectrum. Bits of oil soaked wood in braziers for incense. Tools. Plastic knick knacks for the kids. Sweets. Breads. Baskets. Scarves. Mirrors. One area had racks and racks and more racks of clothes and shoes. Belts. Antiques. Light bulbs. And there were, unexpectedly, beggars. Women in full cover. Begging.
One learns to see women here before one actually sees them, and to look the other way. As it is a culture that protects women both from being seen and from seeing others, there is a learned behavior to practice body language that says, "I am very much not looking in the direction of any woman of any age, regardless of if she walks with, meaning very often slightly behind, a man, or with another woman or two, or alone."
As we perused the tables of pirated movies, my peripheral vision spotted a cloaked, black figure, which is common, especially in the relative close quarters of a public market. As she got closer and closer I felt anxiety begin to bubble up inside. "Danger, Will Robinson. Danger." The equivalence of a cultural IED about to explode. I sort of stepped back and pivoted away from the table to see her full on in my visual field, very close to me, almost touching me, holding a piece of fabric forming a small bowl in front of her, a lone paper bill, a riyal, in the shallow depression, and her voice, emanating like the Wizard of Oz from behind his curtain, a plea. I made no eye contact, but the unfolding of the understanding of what was occurring came rather slowly, and yet it was but a moment before my hand fumbled in my right front pocket where I had put my money. I knew that if I pulled it all out to rifle through it for one of the single riyal notes at the center of the roll of bills that I would feel like a complete asshole, flipping over one hundred and fifty riyal notes to get to the one riyal note, the value of a quarter in the States, in the center. So I pulled just tiny corners of the bills out, looking at them, trying to get that small note. After a moment or two I was successful. I put it in her pouch and she thanked me while I stood there very much feeling unworthy of her thanks.
With a pronounced awkwardness I tried to return to my browsing, but she did not go away. Working at not looking at her as she said something else to me in her muted Arabic, my thoughts rotated around the idea that she was wanting more. She didn't stop, reaching out a bit towards my arm, pointing at the ground. What now, I thought, hadn't I done what neither of my companions had? Hadn't I already given at the office? Again a phrase, a point, so I looked down at my feet and there was a fifty riyal note. My fifty riyal note. On the ground. I had dropped it. Again my mine went through the steps to make a pattern out of the available data. Oh. Oh gosh, I dropped it. I dropped it and she is letting me know so that I can pick it up. She is not trying to steal it, to cleverly, as I am used to in my culture, put her foot over it in order to get money to feed her children, to pay her rent. She is helping me. SHE is helping ME.
As women haven't much of any rights in this culture, if their husbands die or divorce them, they have no chance for an income. Devoid of the opportunity for employment, women are often, without help from family, forced into begging to receive any income at all. Yet this woman helped me to recover my fifty riyal note, a note that probably equaled what she made in one or two entire days of begging, maybe in a week, I have no idea. Awkward I was, a creature mute and dumb, as I reached down and grabbed my money. Do I give it to her now? After all, she could have kept the whole thing. Shouldn't I just give it to her? Would that draw unwanted attention to anyone watching? I put the bill in my pocket, looked away in shame, pretended to read the titles on the flat, gaudily colored squares before me, unable to calm my mind for some moments, my sensory organs monitoring her presence as she stalled, waited momentarily, left.
This one stall, a series of tables, actually, that we spent the most time at, was the pirated DVD place. I picked up a few for about $2.50 USD each, cheaper, Eric said, than one can get them for in Thailand. I got a new Jeremy Renner vehicle, Kill the Messenger, about the guy who first broke the CIA cocaine running for funding the Contras story. Another called Fort Bliss, with Michelle Monaghan about a medic from the Afghanistan War having issues upon her return to the states. And a season of the Game of Thrones. That was, at the end of the day, the total of my purchases. Some cultural explorer I am, yeah? And a heel to boot.
The next weekend after the Qatiff trip, this weekend, sort of disappeared as it is finals week now for the third module and the powers that be scheduled the first half of the final exam, the listening and writing portions, for today, Saturday. At eight in the morning. This by itself would not be a terrible thing, nor indeed, in the end has it been. But last night I went with my friend Ned, to the biggest of the spectacles that exist in the modern urban centers of the Gulf states, the Mall. Not as big or otherworldly as their sister complexes in Abu Dhabi or Dubai, the Rashid Mall is still far and away different than anything I have ever seen or, frankly, imagined. The word that comes to mind is Wonkaesque, as in Willy Wonkaesque. While I did not spot any Oompa Loompas during our four hours wandering the dizzying, absolutely labyrinthine, kaleidoscopic hallways and levels of the many huge buildings that compose the Rashid mall complex, I've no doubt that they are there.
It all started with a rather simple sounding suggestion. In need of purchasing a phone that works in the Kingdom, and lamenting to Ned some days back about said issue, he offered to go with me on one of the weekend nights to the big mall to grab a phone, soak up some of the dazzle of the place, almost more of an event than a place, and get a bite to eat as well. As little as I have been out of the university/town/compound that we inhabit, needing to solve my phone issue, and always focused on food, what was I gonna say? Hells yes, as my boy says.
I had bought a SIM card for my crappy pay as you go phone from the US, the one my iPhone toting progeny call simply "the crack dealer phone." But it would not work. The twenty something year old man working at the STC (a cell phone carrier company in KSA) store seemed to know less about the process than I, and I could not have believed that anyone under thirty could possibly know less about the machinations of cell phones than I do, nor could he speak English to any acceptable degree. His response to my SIM card refusing to unlock was, and I am guessing here from the hand gestures and muffled grunting sounds he made, to wait longer for it to, I don't really know, become comfortable in its small, flat slot underneath the battery?
Around here everything you sign up for, every form you fill out, from blood and urine samples at the Medical center, to Housing forms, to requests for transportation reimbursements, to iqama registrations, require a phone number. As in your form will not be accepted until you put in the ten digit number that begins, around here, with "05." Up to now I have the number of Denis Kearney in lieu of any of my own in about three dozen forms spread out throughout the KFUPM universe. An example of the need for having my own phone is that I can not access my online bank account without having a confirmation code sent to me EVERY TIME I want to get into it to pay a bill or check my balance. So by now, five weeks into my overseas adventure, my I-am-here-to-pay-off-my-bills adventure, I still can not get to my money to pay a bill. And in KSA every time you add more minutes to your phone, which you can do at most any store by buying them at the check out, you need to punch in your ID number, which for me is my iqama number, my residence permit. Apparently the issue we have in the states of having all of our communications recorded and stored has been going on here for more than twenty years, set up with the aid of the faithful CIA hounds of the beloved Red, White, and Blue.
We selected Friday evening, at 7:30, as the time to go. 7:30 is the right time of the evening to go somewhere because there are two evening prayer times, one around 5-5:30 and one around 7-7:15, each lasting about thirty minutes, during which times everything shuts down. It is something like the siesta time in Spain, but five times every day. So Ned arranged for one of the KFUPM taxi drivers, Ashuraff, to get us in his grey, new SUV. The trip is only about ten to fifteen minutes, as the mall itself is perhaps four to five kilometers from here.
As we neared the mall, the size and grandeur of the edifices which make up the complex became apparent. The traffic congeals, and the two lanes of traffic in each direction slow down, bumper to bumper and, staying at ground level, pass underneath a part of one of the buildings as though beneath a part of a huge convention center. The sparkle and flash of newly polished, expensive automobiles, neon, bright fixtures, chandeliers hanging, and the throngs of people moving to and fro gave it all the feel of arriving at a Las Vegas casino for valet parking just prior to a world championship boxing main event. It is one of those places where one finds oneself, like say a Disneyland, or Times Square, where you spin your head the whole time as you near, enter, wander, and exit, that you implicitly understand you will not, no matter how much craning of the neck or twirling of the head or eyes that you do, take in all of the visual stimuli in your field of vision. So you just sort of accept it, gawk, marvel, and pass on through.
Now the Saudi people are a proud, handsome, well dressed, and, as a whole, remarkably self assured lot. As I run my eyes over the groups of men, mostly younger men, what are called shababs in Arabic, and the many abaya clad women, as well as children, I see heads held high, an air of confidence, control, the I-have-everything-under-control and all is as it should be aura from the males. At this time, still early in the evening, the women are composed more of the wives and mothers, who walk usually about two paces behind their men. In this culture men do not hold the door for their women, they open them and walk through, allowing the door to do as it will as they move ahead deciding where their whims take them. I am reminded of a story told to me by a friend who is ex-military and was employed once as security to accompany a Middle Eastern man and two worker helpers to the hinterlands of Yemen for the purpose of stripping spare parts from the wrecked military vehicles that still litter the deserts there following years of civil unrest. His employer, not wanting his nationality to be known as they drove into the country from Oman, put a traditional Saudi headdress on him, told him not to say anything at all and, to complete the lie that he was a Saudi, instructed him to "look arrogant." It worked.
Ned and I waited outside of an electronics store for the ten minutes or so that it took for prayer time to finish up and then we headed inside. I found a fairly cheap smart phone quickly and began the purchasing process. My first smart phone. Ever. Welcome to the new century, right? The gentleman, who thankfully spoke moderately good, okay, not really, but passably good anyway, English, put the new SIM card from my crack dealer phone into the new shiny toy, gave me the same caveat, it will take an hour for the card to do whatever it is that it needs to do, let's say shower and shave, before I'm going to be able to install the seventy riyals worth of minutes that I bought from the previously mentioned phone fellow. Good enough. Phone secured we set off to see the sights.
My friend had told me that inside the mall it felt like being in a Vegas casino as there are no windows and the exits are hard to find, all roads leading one back to the money spending opportunities. I think that Nick hit it right on the head. My first glance in was up through a vertical slice of space between various levels and slanted escalators to see three levels of shopping Valhalla above and one or more below. Myriad abaya cloaked women and thobe wearing men passing at forty five degree angles up and down, the women all in black, the men all in white against the many colored brightly lit signs of Tag Huesen, Cartier, Versace. We moved in and began to look for a place to get a bite to eat. Having come here some weeks earlier, Ned said he remembered a good looking Chinese restaurant on one of the upper floors. As one ambulates up, down, and around this place it dawns that this entire, huge, multi-storied building with various wings, atriums, small amusement parks for kids, food courts, is but one of many different buildings. When we approached the site, Ned asked Ashuraff to take us to Gate Five, one of the many Casino-looking entrances to the many buildings.
There exist a plethora of western chain brands in the Rashid Mall. Starbucks. Baskin Robbins. Victoria's Secrets. Jockey. Burger King. Fuddruckers. There are stores and kiosks as far, literally, as the eye can see, the layout bending around corners, large open spaces cut into the different levels to provide viewing down the many stories. The restaurants all have the obligatory single men's seating and the family sections. We walked for about forty minutes looking for this Chinese restaurant, at one point ending up in the exact place where we entered, confused as to how we had arrived there, apparently having crossed over the street that we drove in on and reorienting ourselves improperly, thinking then that forward would take us to a new part of the mall where this Shangri La of an eatery may be. Eventually, however, we found it.
The place was gorgeous. A high end dining establishment indeed. It was not crowded at all, which, after we looked at the prices, began to make sense. As we were seated in a fine, dimly lit booth near two very large, long aquariums with large fish swimming to and fro under lights which lit up the aqua blue water and the pinkish white, shimmery fish, and hungry as we were, we decided that we'd buck up the riyals and give it a try. The menu was sumptuous and included many, many various dishes, each with a photo. Duck. Lamb. Crab. Camel. Yes, camel. Curry masalas, skewers, pan fried dumplings, exquisite soups, various forms and types of spring rolls.
We ordered some fresh squeezed juices and a large bottle of water and settle in to make some decisions about our meals. We settled, after a long while, on a camel and a duck dish. Unfortunately the camel was "unavailable." We went with duck and lamb and steamed rice. For an appetizer the Filipino waiter brought us a small bowl of what must be rice based chips that had a texture like fried pork rinds, and a small bowl of vegetables, like a small, lightly dressed salad, a small bowl of a sweetish, red sauce, and a small bowl of a red chili sauce with a teeny spoon in it. The waiter was very professional, distant in emotion, but he stood always off to the side of the room watching to see if we needed anything and would come over when appropriate. In this culture the servant class is not treated well and are in no way used to friendliness on the part of the patrons. Ned asked him as he was opening the bottle of water and filling our glasses how his night was going. I watched his face and he was visibly uncomfortable and his eyes winced and his mouth made a sort of I-just-bit-into-a-lemon expression. He muttered a "what?" Ned repeated himself and, still filling water, and in the fewest possible syllables, he answered something not really intelligible but in the area of a "just fine, sir." It was strange.
Ned used to work on the Red Sea coast at an English language institute. He told me that one of his fellow teachers there set up a monitoring program for the instructors to take shifts in the student cafeteria to reprimand and correct the poor behavior of the Saudis towards the migrant workers who served the food and cleaned the place. Keep in mind that slavery was outlawed in this realm only in 1962 and then only because President Kennedy pressured then King Faisel to do so. The new decree of the King, as there are literally no laws in this country, no legislative body or constitution, only changed things for the millions of imported workers about as much as he outlawing of slavery in the US at the end of the Civil War improved conditions for the millions of blacks living in the US South.
That being said, I can tell you this much about the workers in the kitchen at this place-they can cook some SERIOUS food. I am a food-a-phile and I have never, ever had Chinese food that matched this meal. Ever. The duck was tender like butter. Cut into small slices and in an aromatic, delicate sauce with small amounts of green onions, it about melted on the tongue. And the lamb came tepanyaki style, sizzling on a hot, fish shaped, cast iron plate like fajitas in a Mexican restaurant. Man oh man was it good. Indescribably so. The kind of good where you look at the other person or persons seated and sort of shake your head and widen your eyes, making semi-obscene sounds deep inside.
We are slowly, savoring each bite, talking about women, relationships, travel plans, for two hours. A couple more of the booths filled up during this time, as we were the only diners there upon arrival. We traded stories, self disclosed, related, became better friends. Ned is a good man. He is handsome, in good shape, a runner, has been teaching overseas for years, has a good laugh, has an energy about him that reminds me of a much younger person, maybe an adolescent. Not that he acts immature, because he does not. I can't quite pin it down. It's like a softness of spirit, not an immaturity of self or of character. His smile is, at times, a smirk, but it is a smirk of a satisfied teen, not a smugness born from the possession of a hidden agenda. Ned travels quite a lot. He brings up the fact fairly often that he has a strong like of women. This is how he phrases it, "I think I already told you that I have a weakness for women." A weakness, he calls it, and then the smirk elevates to a beaming grin, but in a bit of an understated, Ned kind of way. A smile as much through the eyes as through the mouth and jaw. I think we sort of bond on this one, the woman thing.
Ned is kind. He offered me on about three or four occasions to loan me a considerable amount of money to help me out until my first paycheck arrived. I did not take him up in his offer, but I did point out how exceptional I thought it was that he continued to offer me this. We had not known each other much the first time he did so. How often, I remarked, does that happen? It really pretty much doesn't. In fact only one other friend in recent years has made an offer like this, and he is a good friend who lives in Ellensburg, my homey town. You know who you are, Derek. Thank you. Especially, I have thought, this wouldn't happen in this bunch of fairly keep-your-cards-close-to-your-vest, lone wolf types that come to work this post here at the far end of the earth, this mining outpost somewhere off in the rings of Saturn.
We eventually finished our meal, and the bill was SR 240, which, with a twenty percent tip came out to about seventy five USD. That may not seem like a lot back stateside, but here that is what it cost five of us to go out for a big, appetizer laden meal of grilled meats and fresh juices a week earlier. It was a fine meal and the company was superlative. The opportunity to eat at a Chinese restaurant that had not a single entrée on the menu that I really have come to dislike in American places of similar orientation, you know, lemon chicken, General Tso's chicken, Mongolian beef, fried rice, was so worthwhile. And I can not remember the last time I have had food that I found that amazing. It was a very unforgettable dining experience.
We paid and left, finding our way back to our starting point with far less confusion than we feared. The noticeable thing about our time spent in the Mall after we ate, it now being after eleven pm, was the change in both the number and type of people in the Mall and the energy surging through the place. It was Shabab city. It was like cruising the strip. Like American Graffiti, Ned pointed out. It was full of young men and young women. The latter decked out. Yes, still in abayas, but wearing heavy, teenage eye make up, stiletto heels, bejeweled, designer purses. It was like cruising the ave, and the noise was raucous and it was loud. Suddenly I felt quite out of place. It had changed from the family hour to the pick up, flirt, get the girl's number hour. Apparently the advent of the cellphone has afforded the opposite sexes broader opportunities to flirt electronically. One group of three young fellows, maybe eighteen to twenty years of age, blurted out loud, insulting sounding staccato bursts of Arabic at us as they passed in the opposite direction, swiveling their heads and laughing loudly, one of them putting his two hands to his cheeks and sort of grabbing them and twisting them in small circles, barking out Arabic with a feral glee. "I wish I spoke Arabic," came out of my mouth. What are you gonna do. In this country we, as Americans sit on the top of the foreign worker food chain, but we remain one big rung of the ladder below the locals. Aside from the fact that many, many are related to the Royal family, there being over thirty thousand members of the al Sa'ud's in this country, any car accident or altercation between Saudis and anyone else results in the police siding with the natives. There exists here a caste system, make no mistake about that or about which caste you belong to.
We made it to the door we came in, Gate 5. Ned called Ashuraff and got no response. It took us maybe ten plus minutes to find a taxi in the river of cars passing bumper to bumper both ways in two lanes before us, packed like the departure lanes of a modern airport during the holiday season. Busier than when we arrived, it was like moving through the sea of people exiting a concert or a professional sporting event. Packed. We got a taxi and the man drove us home. I said goodnight to Ned, happy for a night away from work, from my flat. Happy to have gotten a phone. Happy to have enjoyed fine company, to have had a chance to bond with a friend, a good man, to sup on a truly magnificent variety of finely prepared, quality dishes.
Got out my keys, let myself in. Kicked off my shoes by the door. Walked to my desk, emptying my pockets. Checked my phone to be sure that it worked. Error message-SIM card locked. Damn. Welcome to the Kingdom.
