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Rollin' through Riyadh September 2000
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Greetings yet again from the great Middle East! All is going well for me here in Saudi Arabia and I am enjoying my time here immensely! Riyadh continues to open up and unveil itself before me and I continue open up and take it all in! On the following few pages I wanted to give you all a quick look at the modern side of Saudi Arabia in order to eliminate any remaining stereotypes of Saudi Arabia being a country only of camels, dirt roads and sand! :-) Take the pictures above and below for example... Above: on the left you see the new Kingdom Tower currently under construction and on the right you can see a blurry picture of the nearly completed al-Faisaliyya Tower. Once the Kingdom Tower is complete it will be covered in reflective blue glass and will be topped by two sharp, razor-like tapering spires on both sides of the building capped by a glass bridge spanning both spires. Below: a blurry on-the-fly shot of Riyadh traffic around 8 p.m. apporaching the UFO-looking Saudi Ministry of Interior along the King Fahd Highway, which cuts right through downtown. Just like every other modern city on Earth, Riyadh's got sprawling highways snaking all around the city complete with bad drivers, honking horns and lots of traffic!
This is what traffic looks like along the main surface street in downtown, Al-Olaya, on Wednesday night - the beginning of the weekend. And just like nearly any major American city, efficient public transport is nearly non-existant so the car is king. But on Wednesday and Thursday nights traffic is especially hectic after nightfall since anyone who's anyone is out with their friends cruising around the city celebrating the end of the work week. Well, actually, I should rephrase that: any MAN who is anybody is out cruising, since women are nowhere to be seen on the streets because a) women aren't allowed to drive, and b) single men and women are not allowed to socialize in public. This is not to say that girls don't go out, because they do, it's just that girls go out INSIDE. Inside the local malls to be particular, and since the malls are all open until 12 p.m. the shops are all packed with hordes of teenage girls cloaked in black and obnoxious packs of teenage boys cloaked in white. Although the clothing may look different from what you might find youth culture wearing in America, Europe, Australia or Asia on a weekend evening, the feel in the air is the same and the vitality of the city's youth is unavoildable!
Let's take lastnight - 27 September - for example. Last night after work my co-worker Jeff and I drove our Suburban heap-mobile into the city so that he could drop me off at al-Hamaadii hospital so I could get my eyes tested for my Saudi driver's license application and so Jeff could go to his final back-therapy session (he messed up his back a couple weeks ago). So after the hospital visit he and I picked up a former co-worker of his, John, to have dinner at a nice Thai restaurant, go cruising around town and then to hang out in the new Al-Faisaliyya Mall - which is all the rage these days. |
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Last night as the three of us meandered up and down the four levels of the Al-Faisaliya Mall and reached the top level of the mall, par escalator, we noticed a large crowd of people assembling around a 17 year old-ish guy who was wearing a truly blasphemous outfit of army-ish looking pants and a t-shirt with no sleeves (GASP!!!). Now, there are a few rules of thumb you need to know first about going out in public in Saudi Arabia: 1) foreigners and Saudis are not expected to dress the same. This means that foreign men (i.e. ME!) are not expected to wear the long white thobes, although there is a general understanding that other non-Saudi Arab men will, though this appears not to be the case these days with other non-Saudi Arab youth, say, from Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Palestine, etc. 2) Despite the fact that foreign non-Arab/non-Saudi men are expected * NOT * to wear the traditional Saudi clothing, under no circumstance would it ever be acceptable to wear shorts in public, as it would be considered horrifically indecent and sleazy (revealing skin not on the hands, feet or face is largely considered indecent). 3) As for Saudis, the men/boys are expected to wear loose white "thobe" robes and the women, who must either be in groups or with their husbands - but never alone - must wear loose black "abaiya" (robes). Under these robes you can wear WHATEVER you want and often as I look around I find plenty of cut-off jeans sprouting out from under the black robes on the young girls.
As we ascended the escalator and saw that something was amiss, Jeff immediately said, "Let's stay as far away from that drama as possible!" and of course John and I immediately shot back, "Hey, let's go over there and see what's going on!" So over we walked, to Jeff's disgruntlement. So as we strolled by we saw a group of teenage "shabaab" (boys/guys) surrounded by a slew of incensed religous police who had singled out in particular the guy wearing the "haraam" (forbidden) t-shirt with the cut-off sleeves. The religious police were pointing at this boy's apparent bad choice in public evening wear and appeared to be lecturing him about his a-traditional and anti-Islamic behavior, although this is just pure speculation since between John, Jeff and me, the three of us barely possess a combined Arabic vocabulary of 30 words! But in any case it was quite obvious that the teenage guy wasn't having a very pleasant time being pointed out publically and berated. Poor kid.
Personally, I think it's interesting to see how Saudi Arabia is coming to terms with its changing reality. And believe me, all the foreigners are making bets on whether or not traditional Saudi Arabian culture will be able to survive in the face of globalization and Westernization. As always, don't expect me to put my in-depth opinions on these webpages since I don't feel like getting myself in any potential trouble with Saudi law enforcement who have full power to monitor all electronic transmissions into and out of the country. So you'll just have to wait until I get back into America to ask me! :-)
Above is the Masmak Fortress in the old heart of downtown Riyadh awash in light. Although you can't see it in this particular image, the old town al-Dirah district is extremely vibrant by night. Families walk around together with children riding on bicycles and people selling their wares in small markets. Since there are no economic or racial ghettos in Riyadh - as known in United States - and because crime is punished so severely, there are virtually no unsafe streets anywhere in the entire city and therefore young people and their families can be out in force all over the city until the late hours of the night relaxing, chitchatting and just having a good time.
Above you can see a little section of the Murabba Palace which was built by King Abdul Aziz in 1946. The Palace is next to the new and beautifully designed Riyadh Museum and one of these days when Jeff and I get the energy to drive into Riyadh one weekend morning at 9 a.m. (the only time single men are allowed to go into the museum) I'll photograph it all in daylight and put it up on the web for you to see.
Above: a new market/shopping center near Masmak Fortress and the infamous "chop chop square" where heads and hands roll every Friday afternoon. I assume the shopping center's marketing slogan has something to do with the convenience of one-stop-shopping and public beheadings all wrapped in one.
Above: an example of suburban commercial/residential architecture. Although the building is the location of a commercial enterprise, the structure appears much like many of the other homes surrounding it. As is typical in Riyadh, homes are large and usually two or more stories tall. Unlike the surrounding homes in the neighborhood, this building is not surrounded by an 8 to 15 foot (2.3m to 4.8 m) tall concrete/stone wall (as seen on the right of the image). In any case, most of Riyadh's homes are rather ritzy and made of concrete/stone and are painted white, beige or tan, or other related light colors.
A random image of the sign above the Thai restaurant that Jeff and I eat at every week with his friends.
And last, but not least, an Arabic stopsign and one-way-street sign, and a blue and gold Riyadh water tower downtown under a full moon. No urban detail is too small or mundane to include on my webpages! :-) And that's it, that's all for now! I hope all is well with you wherever you may be!
Good Night!
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Downtown
Riyadh:Cruising
As
seen in the picture on the right, Riyadh is quite a bright city at
night - although the blur of the picture might get in the way! The
large, bright square to the right is a Times Square / Tokyo-esque TV
screen with an undending armada of advertisements and public
announcements. And if the picture weren't so blurry, you'd also be
able to see the never ending line of traffic slowly moving down
Al-Olaya. An
observation on youth culture in modern Saudi Arabia: just
like every other group of youth in the modern industrialized world,
they like music, movies, cool clothes and just having a good time. In
Saudi Arabia, however, this can lead to a bit of trouble with the
roaming religious police who have made the newly built teen-magnet
shopping malls their latest venue.
So
we're in the mall around 11 p.m. walking around chit-chatting and
people watching. In Riyadh teenage boys are usually seen wearing the
traditional full-length long white robes (called "thobe")
and often with a red and white checker-board draping head wrap -
after all, men, just like women, are expected to be modest and
unrevealing in public so form fitting clothing is a big no-no for the
natives. Well, some kids are truly rebellious - known collectively as
"shabaab" or 'young men' - and don't wear the traditional
white thobe and prefer to wear form fitting Western clothing, usually
from expensive designers. Well, this is simply "haraam!"
(forbidden!) and makes them an easy target to be accosted by the
religious police.
4)
Saudi girls/women are expect to be covered from head to toe in black
while in public and this includes the face. Therefore, you can
generally tell the Saudi girls/women from the other non-Saudi Arab
women since the Saudi women/girls will either have only a little slit
in the face covering for their eyes or will be completely veiled.
Non-Saudi women, however, don't usually cover their faces although
they do have to cover their heads and necks. Non-Saudi-non-Arab
women, on the other hand, must wear the black "abaiya" in
public, but generally do not cover their heads or necks. Lastly, 5)
to not do any of the above is to land yourself in hot water with the
religious police! And so it was with the teenage guy in the mall with
his cut off shirt.
But
from what Jeff and John told me (since they've lived in Saudi for
several years now), the most that will happen to the boy is that the
religious police will contact his parents to inform them of their
child's troublesome anti-social behavior and question them why he
might be acting with such disregard for the culture.
