Not long ago. . . I was in class leading a small discussion asking my students where they were from in Saudi Arabia and fished various tidbits of information out of my students regarding the numerous regions of the country. Then I asked which regions were considered progressive, which were considered conservative, which were considered developed, which were considered desirable, and which were considered forgotten and disfunctional. From what they shared with me, the central part of the country (where Riyadh is located) is conservative and is the progenitor of many/most of the fundamentalist Muslims, the north-west near Palestine/Israel/Jordan is the up and coming agricultural bread basket, the central-west on the Red Sea across from Egypt is the location of the Jiddah (Jedda) as well as the holy cities of Makkah (Mecca) and Madinah (Medina), the east on the Arabian/Persian Gulf is home to Dammam, Dhahran and oversees most of the nation's oil production, the south-west near Yemen is lined with mountains and coastline and is considered the chaotic and dangerous backwaters of the country, and the remainder of the unmentioned lands comprise the massive uninhabited sandy deserts shaped like an hourglass curving from south to north and range from the size of France/Texas at their largest down to a little strip of shifting sand dunes the width of Delaware/Luxembourg just to the east of Riyadh. During the conversation I had flippantly mentioned that I would like to visit all parts of the country and would especially love to go to Jiddah someday, so one of my students perked up in his chair and offered, "Teacher! I will take you to Jiddah! That is where my family is from!" Well, I didn't take offer for travel very seriously and forgot about it soon after class had ended, but then several weeks later on a Monday (the middle of the week here) my student Sa'eed came up to me after class and said, "Teacher! I'm taking you to Jiddah Wednesday night. Bring your luggage to work and we will leave direction from school after class." I was a bit shocked to be honest since I had completely put any thought out of mind that I'd be going to Jiddah but apparently everything had been arranged and so I figured, "Ah, what the heck. Might as well go and have some fun! Besides, it's probably better to go with one of my students who knows the ins and outs of the city and can give me a personalized tour since I wouldn't have a clue where to go or what to see if I were on my own." I also thought it might be nice to see a Saudi home and to see how regular life is for my students.

Wednesday rolled around and just as planned Sa'eed came to class, knocked on my door and said, "Ready to go, teacher?" and with that we were off to the airport in his green Toyota Camry. It was about a 20 minute ride out to the airport and along the way we chit chatted about various topics regarding Jiddah such as some of the history, what things there are to see there, what his family does there, and all the rest of that. Once at the airport we parked his car and meandered into the Saudia Airline domestic terminal (there's only one airline in this country, and so they take up the entire terminal) and walked up to the check-in counter where I figured we would just pick up our tickets and be on the 3:30pm flight as planned. Well. . . as I quickly found out, air travel in Saudi Arabia is not always that simple. You see, large numbers of Saudis don't purchase their tickets in advance of travel and so you often have a zoo at the check-in terminal of people trying to arrange flights just prior to departure. Apparently the airline sells flight ticket-booklets to people who travel often and so you can just redeem one of these vouchers any time you want to hop on a plane, providing everyone else in the universe isn't at the airport with the same idea. Unfortunately for us there appeared to be some mad dash out of the city that particular afternoon and there were virtually no flights to be had anywhere. Now, I'm a pretty patient guy when I have to be, so I just stood there behind Sa'eed while he tried to work some of his Saudi magic to get us on a flight, but to no avail. The 3:30 flight was booked, and so was the 4:30 flight, and the 5:30 and 6:30 flights didn't look much better either. "OK, no big deal. Not a problem. We'll wait," I thought, but Sa'eed wasn't to hip on this option. My experience here has shown me that your average Saudi doesn't take "no" for an answer and believes that there's always a second or third way to get around an obstacle, which usually has something to do with calling up someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone in the industry who knows someone in the terminal who might know someone at the ticket counter who might know something about doing you a favor so that one day you will provide a favor of similar weight and value in the future. It's a system of who-knows-who connections that the Saudis refer to as wasta, and it was the first word I learned when I got into the country. This concept of wasta was not lost on Sa'eed and he ended up pulling out his mobile phone and ringing up one of his family members who had a cousin who worked for the airline and knew someone in the terminal who apparently had some pull and might be able to commandeer us a couple seats on at least one of the flights that evening. After chatting with his cousin, we were told to just hang out there in the terminal and that wasta would hook us up with a flight somehow or another. Apparently wasta was tied up with something else at that moment because 3:30pm came and went - sans ticket - as did 4:30 and 5:30 and 6:30pm. "Hmm. . . this is looking pretty grim," a voice in the back of my head said to my pondering mind, "I don't think we're gonna be going anywhere tonight, especially not the other side of the country!" I was left alone for long tracks of time to entertain myself while Sa'eed ran around the airport shuffling from this office to that in his long white robe and red and white draping head wrap crowned with two black rings keeping it all in place. I didn't mind much because I had a couple magazines with me and I was also able to people watch to pass the time. You know, there are fewer things more exciting in this world than watching a man with his four wives trying to rustle up their 30 children. (I think I just figured out why there were no seats available on the planes! I mean, 5 large Saudi families onboard and the entire flight is booked!) Well, after darting in and out of the waiting area where I was sitting, Sa'eed eventually returned exhausted and with two tickets in his hand, sat down and puffed, "We've got two tickets for 8:30!" Crisis averted. We ended up boarding the flight around 8pm and were off the ground as scheduled at 8:30. As we barreled down the Riyadh runway and lifted off into the air I couldn't help but notice the unique appearance of the people inside the plane who were all wearing either long flowing white robes with the standard Gulf Arab white or red and white headwrap crowned by two black rings (the men) or full head-to-toe black cloaks covering every inch of skin including their faces (the women), some of whom were even wearing black gloves to cover up their hands. I mean, this just isn't a sight people outside the Gulf States are used to seeing. 15th Century meets the 21st. A couple hundred people dressed all exactly the same stuffed into a tin can with wings thrust down some desert runway and lifting off into the sky as cell phones ring left and right and a prayer worshiping God is broadcast over the public announcement system. Unique indeed. The flight from Riyadh out to Jiddah International Airport on the west coast of the country took about 90 minutes and was exceedingly uneventful. No unexpected wind turbulence to freak everyone out, and no hijackings or unforeseen detours to Baghdad. Just smooth sailing from one part of the country to the next. Once at the airport Sa'eed and I picked up our luggage and made our way out to the parking lot and car rental agency where he arranged to rent a car for the weekend so we'd have wheels. After getting that all take care of we were off again, this time flying down a highway leading straight into the city.

Now for some info I found about Jiddah online at arab.net The text is theirs. The pictures are mine. Sidenote: Jiddah can be spelled Jeddah, Juddah, Jaddah or a variety of other ways because Arabic is not transliterated into English very well.

Jeddah: Growth of the Glittering City Jeddah, the largest city in Saudi Arabia's Western Province, once nestled sleepily on the shores of the Red Sea, with no premonition of its prestigious future. Today it hums, glitters and resounds with industry, technology and cosmopolitan human life. The origin of the city's name poses an interesting dilemma for etymologists. Juddah (pronounced Jiddah) in Arabic means seashore, which seems logical enough, but the school of thought which prefers Jaddah or grandmother, is given credence by the traditional location of Eve's tomb within the city. Jeddah is, in fact, incorrect, but is popularly used by most non-Saudis living there. The story of Jeddah is one of expansion on a colossal scale. This expansion has been both rapid and recent, mostly within the past 20 years. A look at the figures is staggering. In 1947, the city encompassed no more than one square kilometre, and its population was about 30,000. Now, with a population of approximately one and a half million, Jeddah occupies an area of 560 square kilometres and stretches for 80km north to south along its coastline. Between the boom years of 1974 and 1980, the population of Jeddah doubled, and statistical experts predict that this figure will have doubled again by the end of the century. Jeddah is the Kingdom's principal seaport, the original gateway to Makkah and Madinah for pilgrims arriving by ship. Recently, the influx of pilgrims from abroad has increased dramatically with the building of Jeddah's International Airport and its architecturally unique Hajj terminal. Today, Jeddah welcomes 97% of all pilgrims arriving by sea and 98% of those arriving by air. This places huge demands on consumer goods, building materials, hotel accommodation, and technical and administrative services, thus providing an enormous boost to the city's economic prosperity. Childrens' Museum of Science Jeddah has grown from humble origins. It began about 2,500 years ago as a tiny fishing settlement, established by the Quada's tribe. In AD647, Caliph Osman Ibn Affan chose Jeddah as the main port for the city of Makkah, and it became known as Bilad al Kanasil -- the City of Consulates. In the 16th century, the Ottomans built a stone wall around the town, in order to fortify it against attacks from the Portuguese. Originally, four gates were set in these walls, Bab Sherif opening towards the south, Bab Makkah facing east, Bab Madinah in the north wall and a west gate facing the Red Sea. Bab Jadeed, the new gate, was not built until the early 1900s and was wide enough to accommodate the motor car. Sentries were posted at these gates, which were closed at dusk. Entering the town after dark would, no doubt have proved a challenging business. Jeddah remained a fortified, walled town for centuries of Ottoman influence and was not released from Turkish rule until 1915. Further evidence of Turkish influence can be seen in Jeddah's architecture. The buildings of old Jeddah were tall and graceful, constructed of coral limestone and decorated with intricately beautiful wooden facades, known as rawasheen (singular roshan). These were designed not only to break up the sun's glare, but also to take advantage of the cooling sea breezes when the inner windows were opened. One cannot help but feel that, with the enclosure of the town within high, fortified walls, the sea breezes may not have stood much chance of reaching Jeddah's early inhabitants; hence their penchant for building their houses tall and for sleeping on the roofs on hot summer nights. Some of these beautiful old houses still exist in Jeddah, if you know where to look. However, their number is sadly declining and many are in a poor state of repair. An extensive renovation programme, run by the Historical Area Preservation Department, was set up in 1990 and aims to protect the city's architecture and heritage. The department now employs a staff of over fifty people and organises digs, tours and local research. In bygone days, the streets of Old Jeddah were twisting, unpaved and haphazard, flanked by closely-packed buildings. A thick layer of sand covered these streets, packed solid by numerous tramping feet. Mingling with the strolling inhabitants, water carriers and other street vendors, camel caravans once plodded their way through the wider thoroughfares, while goats and donkeys wandered in the narrow alleys. The souq [pr. "sook"; market] was the heartbeat of Old Jeddah and is still an exciting and picturesque part of today's city. In those far-off days open-fronted shops grouped together according to trade; an old Oriental bazaar tradition, which has continued, to some extent, into modern life. Wares were displayed in the street under palm-leafed canopies, sheltering traders from the relentless sun -- a far cry from the modern-day comforts of air-conditioning in the luxurious shopping malls of the 1990s. When the Suez Canal opened in 1869, Jeddah became one of the main ports on the trade route between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian and Pacific Oceans. As a result, the city's wealth increased dramatically, and Jeddah's inhabitants became more cosmopolitan. European diplomatic legations were established on the northern side of the city, and rich merchants began to build their family homes here. Sailors awaiting the departure of their ships on the spice routes often used their craft skills to decorate the facades of these dwellings. Pilgrims often brought goods from their native lands to sell in Jeddah, and those who could not afford the homeward journey often stayed on and settled here. These men sometimes married into a local family and became permanent residents of Jeddah. Modernisation of the city forged ahead with the passing of the years. By 1929 the first house of reinforced concrete had been built; less attractive than the delicate coral limestone, perhaps, but certainly a more durable alternative. 1940 saw the advent of electricity, 1948 marked the arrival of the first airfield, and in 1965 the first automatic telephone system was introduced. The reign of King Abdul Aziz and the unification of the Kingdom brought new stability to Jeddah, and its enclosing walls became obsolete. Expansion had become essential, too, and the city walls were therefore demolished. An interesting local story tells how the broken rocks from the demolished wall were used as fill for the new pier in Jeddah harbour, which was built to enable larger steamers to come alongside. The story is probably apocryphal -- a pity, if so, as there is a certain gentle irony in the idea that the rocks once used to discourage invading forces are now helping visitors to come ashore. Jeddah's building boom began in the Seventies and still continues at a breathtaking pace. New shopping centres, office building and apartment blocks are springing up everywhere. Stretches of former desert have now become part of an expanding, lush green city. Jeddah has successfully managed to combine the dignity and traditions of the past with the dynamism of the modern business world.

On our way to what I presumed would be Sa'eed's home, we got into downtown and suddenly pulled up in the circular driveway of a large hotel located not far from the coastline of the Red Sea and I said to Sa'eed, "Are we meeting someone here?" and he responded, "Of course not. This is where you're staying!" "??????" I thought. "You'll be staying here this weekend, tonight Wednesday and tomorrow night as well. I've got some business to take care of here in the city so you can stay here during the day time, and then we'll meet up in the evenings." "??????" I thought again. My general assumption prior to departing Riyadh for Jiddah is that I would stay with Sa'eed and his family in their home, since, well, that is basically what I have always done when traveling with people from around the world. Families always take you in and you meet the entire lot, hang out and socialize and then turn in for the night then wake up the next morning and do it all again. I don't know if being put up in a hotel is typical for visits with Saudis, but it was certainly the case on this particular trip, and in retrospect I suppose it makes sense since it is simply forbidden for a man to socialize with women who are either not his wives or direct family members thereby making such a visit impossible. At the time, however, I was totally clueless. As with most things I experience abroad I just think to myself, "OK. . . I don't have any idea what's occurring here, but whatever. I'll just go with it and see what happens." So I got checked into the hotel, dropped off my bags, and then Sa'eed and I drove further into downtown to go for a cup of coffee (the thing for men to do here in Saudi Arabia). While downtown we were greeted by hordes of young guys (a.k.a. "shabaab") cruising around in their cars and also crammed into parking lots and cafes. Some were dressed in their traditional white robes while others were dressed in western clothes with caps and nike shoes. I got the feeling that Jiddah was much more liberal than Riyadh because I could see quite a few women who were walking around with their faces uncovered and I wasn't sure if they were all non-Saudi Arabs or if they were in fact "liberated" Gulf women who just didn't feel the need to cover their faces. In any case, the feeling I got from the few parts of the city which I had seen that evening was that the city was much less conservative than the interior of the country where I was living and that people seemed a bit more relaxed. In light of the city's history of being a sea port for international traders it makes sense that the Jiddans would be more open culturally than the nation's people from the interior who historically never had much contact with the outside world or more liberal Islamic peoples. Since Riyadh was my first experience with Saudi Arabia I had just assumed that the whole country would be run by religious police chasing people around all over the place and that extreme social conservatism ruled the entire Arabian Peninsula, but Jiddah showed this not to really be the case. Since we had arrived in the city relatively late due to our delayed departure from Riyadh, we didn't have that much time to putz around Jiddah so Sa'eed and I returned to my hotel where he dropped me off and then informed me that we would swing by the following day at 4pm to pick me up and he give me a small tour of the more modern parts of the city and then on Friday, the day after, he would give me a small walk around tour of old town Jiddah after the noon prayer before we go out to the airport to catch our flight back to Riyadh. That was all fine and well with me, although I felt it was still a bit strange to be put up in a ritzy hotel instead of staying with him or his family, but whatever. "Just go with the flow," I thought to myself as I lay in bed and fell asleep.

I woke up the following morning sometime around 10 a.m. (rather early for me!), lounged around my hotel room for quite some time flipping through my Scientific American magazine and watched the world's latest drama on CNN. Once lunch time rolled around I made my way down to the noon buffet and gorged myself silly, then waddled out to the swimming pool where I beached myself on a sun chair and roasted my tender white body under the solar charcoal above. As with the rest of the country, the pool areas are completely segregated and this was a Single Men Only pool and so there were no bikini clad women to be found anywhere. Men, and only men, most of whom appeared to be from Western Europe or the more socially liberal Arab countries of Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Palestine. Eventually my fried body tired of this desert baking and I went back inside the hotel to change clothes and go out for a little walk up the corniche (seaside walk/road way) which I had viewed from my hotel room earlier in the morning. From my window I could see what appeared to be water just a few hundred meters (yards) away from the hotel and though perhaps there would be some sort of coastal life just a short jaunt away, the way perhaps one might find small touristy businesses or restaurants along the coast virtually anywhere in the world. I descended the hotel dressed in pants and long sleeve shirt and walked in the direction of the water and crossed several lanes of roadway traffic comprised of what seem to be an endless number of wanna-be race car drivers flying by me. Unfortunately for my fantasy of discovering some cozy little seaside Saudi community anywhere near the water or my hotel, the reality was that this sea water I had seen from the balcony of my hotel room was really nothing more than an artificial harbor still under construction and surrounded by an expansive fence which blocked out whatever views the site might have offered for the length of the entire parameter which seemed to be about one or two miles long. As for any quaint little corniche side businesses, all I saw was a large furniture outlet painted yellow with a glass façade and closed for the weekend. So much for tourist trinkets or T-shirts with slogans like ""

With the absence of anything to see or do along my little section of the corniche starting to bore me, I decided to turn around and walk back to the hotel where I waited for Sa'eed to pick me up and take me for a little drive around town to see the waterfront artwork sculptures and to check out the Red Sea. Humorously, tour-guiding seemed not to be Sa'eed's strong point as we basically just drove around town at a million miles an hour racing up and down the elegantly curving coastal roadway and never really stopped to take any pictures of the huge public works sculptures perched atop pedestals and concrete islands located in the middle of numerous roundabouts throughout the city. (roundabout = street intersection shaped like a circle with an island barrier in the middle that cars drive around in order to connect to their desired direction/roadway of travel on the other side. Especially common in Europe) For this reason, I was unable to take any pictures of even a single of the surprisingly large structures. I was particularly surprised to see all these artistic works in public in light of the fact that artwork is generally forbidden according to the conservative Saudi interpretation of Islam and there are certainly no such items making up the infrastructure of Riyadh. As I have come to find out, the coastal areas of Saudi Arabia are much more liberal in this regard than the interior of the nation is, ever has been, or most likely ever will be. The coastal regions had constant contact with the outside world through their ports and international trade, whereas the interior of the country was an isolated, burning hot backwaters largely devoid of anything but a dead landscape and a murderous sun. The outside world never dared enter and always seemed to just pass this desert world by. [Having lived in Saudi Arabia and pondering the abovementioned point, I've come to the conclusion that the same explanation must be at work with regard to the absence of space aliens on Earth. Specifically that the universe is filled with alien life in all directions and that they could come here if they really wanted to, but the Earth just so happens to be situated in the middle of a giant desert in the Milky Way Galaxy, and there's virtually no reason for them to come here, so they just keep on truckin' on and pass us by. Like jet planes flying over the Arctic from America to Europe, you can see everything out your window below, and it's quite beautiful in its own unique and frozen kind of way miles down, but 99.9999% of the flights over the North Pole never actually land on it and passengers are always happy once their flights safely reach their destinations with images of the in-between long since forgotten.] Along our rapid road-race through the city, seeing it only as one big blur, we did manage to make two pit stops: one at the Children's Museum of Science and one right beside the Red Sea. I wasn't quite sure the reason behind either of them, but I wasn't asking questions and was just happy to get the change to finally climb out the hatch of our rocket ship. The Children's Museum of Science was basically what its same says it is: a place for little tykes to run around and play with all sorts of little scientific things to spark the imaginations of growing minds. As one might assume, Saudi Arabia isn't exactly a Mecca of technological achievement, and since people are starting to recognize negative effects this leads to over the long run, the Royal Saudi Family and various national organizations and corporations have started spending money on creating institutions within the Kingdom to address this problem, the Children's Museum being one such example. Cultural tidbit: one source of great pride among the Kingdom's people is Saudi Arabia's Prince Sultan Salman Abdel Aziz Al-Saud who flew on the American Space Shuttle Discovery in 1985. His flight was a great inspiration to many Saudi youths and he's the one most often sited by Saudis when they discuss their new desire for growth in the field of science and technology.

Our second stop was along side the coastal expressway beside the Red Sea where I stood atop a rock, had my picture taken, watched a few cars zip by, then got back in our light speed traveling machine and warped our way back into our superluminal tour through town. Eventually our personal shuttle craft came upon what was to be a 60 minute space station stop over at Sa'eed's uncle's house located in a modern suburban district of the Jiddah. Keep in mind though that Arabian Suburbia looks a little bit different than American suburbia. All Saudi homes are made of concrete, brick, stone or a combination thereof, usually painted over white or light sandy shades of beige, although you will see the occasional sea foam green or bubble gum pink residential fortress. Around each of these homes will always be a tall privacy wall anywhere from 8 to 15 feet (2.5 to 4.7 meters) tall, and within the privacy walls you would have whatever accoutrements your little heart desired, be it a grassy lawn, palm trees, a swimming pool, a volley ball court, a desert tent for barbeques, or anything else you can think of. The difference between Saudi Arabia and most of the rest of the world is that home life is extremely private here and they largely block out the rest of the world from their houses. This means that as you drive through a suburban Saudi neighborhood all you will see are large concrete walls rising on both sides of you, and the first floor or two of the homes are blocked from street level view. At first glance, Saudi neighborhoods look rather dumpy and rundown since the exteriors of these walls are sometimes covered in graffiti and lined with scraps of blowing trash or piles of dirt and rock (left over construction materials), but once you come upon a person's compound and enter through the parameter wall, everything changes and you find whatever you'd see in any other suburban home in the United States. It's just hidden from prying eyes here. Once inside the house's compound walls, I noticed a very nice looking, large, new home surrounded by a yard of grass and desert plants in a tract about 40ft (13m) wide on each side of the house with a driveway up to the front of the home and a concrete patio and pool in the back with servants' quarters just off to the left. (Servants are very common here in Saudi Arabia and aren't necessarily a sign of extreme wealth since full-time indentured South Asian or African laborers can be had for about $150 to $200 a month.) Since unmarried/unrelated single men are forbidden from entering into another family's home, except perhaps for the sitting room just beside the front entry door where tea and treats are sometimes offered in male-only gatherings, we ended up just sitting in the back yard where we chitchatted with Sa'eed's uncle and male cousins, all of whom had lived in the United States in the mid-1990s and learned excellent English, especially his two 8 and 11 year old cousins who spoke flawless American English. After about an hour of chatting and drinking beverages - brought to us by the servants - I suddenly felt as though it might be a good idea if I paid a visit to the restroom before jumping in Sa'eed's car to drive out to a restaurant in Jiddah where we had plans to eat a nice Saudi dinner. Now, in most countries, visiting the restroom of a person's home would not be that big of a request, but here in Saudi Arabia all the alarms went off and the household was put into cultural crisis mode. You see, since it's forbidden for unmarried men and women to socialize or even directly view each other in this country, a jaunt to the bathroom would mean that I'd have to go INSIDE the house and this was a problem because that's where all sorts of GIRLS AND WOMEN were! [GASP!!!] Since Saudis are notorious for their excellent sense of hospitality, Sa'eed wanted to offer all the services of his uncle's home to me, but there was just this insurmountable problem of the women inside and that I couldn't possibly go inside because I might actually see one of them. So Sa'eed said to me, "Daniel, wait here, I'll be right back!" and darted around to the front of the house and crashed inside like a bolt of lightning. "Um. . . I don't have to use the restroom that bad!" I yelled back to Sa'eed but he would have none of it and proceeded to round up all the women of the home and rustle 'em out of the ground floor and up into the second level in order to be securely hidden behind a large door that sealed off the upper stories. It took Sa'eed about five minutes to clear out the ground level of the house, but once he suavely exited the house - mission accomplished - he gave me the All Clear signal and motioned to me that it was now culturally safe to enter the home. "The bathroom is through the entryway and then the first door on the left." "Thanks!" I cheerfully replied and proceeded with great caution into the house knowing full well the entire time that just above me was a group of women probably just as freaked out by the fact that there was a unmarried American man in their home downstairs as I was by the thought of a bunch of Saudi women being segregated upstairs. I have never been so self-conscious about using a restroom in all my life! After leaving the bathroom I noticed Sa'eed standing in the entry way and he then guided me into the guest room of the home (located just beside the front door) where we sat and he offered me cup after cup of delicious ginger tea. Whereas most Saudi guest-rooms that I've seen thus far would have wall to wall Persian rugs with large rectangular cushions lining the wall where it meets the carpets - and you just sit and socialize on the floor - the guest room in this particular house had marble floors and instead of floor/wall cushions, there were cushy green upholstered seats with wooden frames and armrests painted gold all shaped in gaudy, swirly little patterns. "Very regal!" I thought. The tea was great and the chat was good, but eventually we finished with our rest stop and hopped back in Sa'eed's little green rice rocket and zipped over to a wonderful Arabic restaurant where we ate an amazing dinner, then returned to the hotel and I was dropped off to hang out and relax until the next day, Friday, when Sa'eed and I would take a walk-around tour of the old historical downtown area of Jiddah. The following morning, as promised, Sa'eed showed up at the hotel just before noon and after partaking in the lunch buffet there, we checked me out and in no time jumped back into Sa'eed's car and headed toward the old downtown area of Jiddah.

As stated in the informational yellow blurb on the city higher up on this page, the city came into existence around 2,500 years ago as a tiny fishing settlement, but as with everything in Saudi Arabia, pre-Islamic history is totally irrelevant and so anything that occurred before AD647, when Caliph Osman Ibn Affan chose Jeddah as the main port for the city of Makkah, is completely ignored. Similar to the way that many Americans seem to think that North American history began in 1492, the Saudis seem to have a very limited view of their history which to them begins with the revelations of Prophet Muhammed in the early 600s AD. Anything before this date is a big blurry blank, and the same is also largely true for the 500 year gap of time preceding the ascent of the Royal Saudi family and their conquest/unification of Arabia starting in 1903. I remember walking through the National Museum (of History) in Riyadh last year and being humored by the sight of a giant 500 year absence of time on a "Mural of Time" painted on the wall of a long hall. History apparently starts with Prophet Muhammed, is temporarily suspended when the Muslims started getting sucker-punched out of Europe around 600 years ago, and then starts up again with the rise of the Royal Saudi Family last century. Historical gaps aside... old town Jiddah is one of the more interesting places in Saudi Arabia to visit if one is looking for a piece of the Old Arabian World which hasn't been mowed under by highways, strip malls and oil-funded suburban sprawl. The area is at serious risk of collapsing in on top of itself, however, due to the neglected derelict state of the buildings as national development funds are obviously spent elsewhere in the country, but what remains of the old Jiddah is very fascinating.

Above left: Bait Naseef Above right: inscription on a round stone saying, "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammed is the messenger of Allah." Our first stop downtown was at Bait Naseef (The Naseef Home) which was a prominent family of Jiddah and my understanding was that there is a small museum inside the restored house chronicling the history of the city, but I wouldn't know for sure because it was closed when we showed up that Friday afternoon. As we were getting out of Sa'eed's car I was feeling a bit uneasy about whipping out my camera to take pictures of the house because there was a group of police officers parked just beside it and my experience in Riyadh was that public photography was strictly forbidden, but Sa'eed asked if they'd mind us taking pictures and they had no problem with it whatsoever, so I snapped away! Yet another example of Jiddah being more liberal than Riyadh. From Bait Naseef we didn't have any particular plan as far as walking around was concerned other than just meandering the old world streets and seeing what the life of west coast Saudis was like up until the middle of the 20th Century when people began vacating the old downtown center in droves for new and expanding suburbs to the north, south, and east, and leaving the district devoid of a viable economy. With the ascent of the Royal Saudi Family to power 70-100 years ago, the unification of "Saudi" Arabia under them, and the discovery of oil along the Persian/Arabian Gulf in the eastern region of the country, development funds simply didn't go toward Jiddah and were used instead to build up eastern oil fields as well as the new megalopolis of Riyadh where the Royal Family now sits. From what I've read in various books and online, apparently there is some sort of movement underway to renovate old town Jiddah, which can be seen with some of the buildings on very rare examples, but over all the whole conglomeration of once-beautiful 18th and 19th Century structures are crumbling to the ground with time or being burnt into piles of rubble by fire. It's an absolute shame actually since this particular section of Jiddah is quite possibly the greatest single sight in all of Saudi Arabia representing a huge part of the country's history and architectural heritage. But when people have giant families and would rather drive their Chevy Suburbans to far-flung megamalls in the suburbs, what chance does a cramped and congested old world neighborhood with tight apartments and narrow streets have to compete? The whole time I was there I just imagined what a shame it is that Saudi Arabia has been so awash in oil wealth that not even a tiny fraction of it could have been spent on preserving this last remaining tribute to their past. The Western World saw a massive renewal of its urban areas during the 1990s, and I just imagined downtown Jiddah one day also being turned into a bustling, trendy urban environment with outdoor cafes and specialty boutiques lining the streets catering to young professionals and families returning to a renovated version of Saudi Arabia's past. For the time being, though, that is just a fleeting fantasy. The signature architectural element of Jiddah that jumps out at every visitor are the spectacular wooden "roshan" façades on virtually all of the buildings. They came in many shapes and sizes and appeared to sometimes be flat window coverings and other times they appeared similar to bay windows where perhaps there would be some sort of seating area protruding out from the walls of the dwelling resting precariously atop a whole lot of nothing but high empty space! I wondered if the roshan were stable enough to support the weight of a person and if people actually ever sat on them and peered out the windows to the street life below, or if they had become so rickety that no-one dare rest upon them for fear of collapse? Some of the buildings downtown are quite tall and I imagine that a fall from an upper floor roshan would be a most unpleasant experience, to say the least! After all, with the concrete holding up the buildings in total dilapidation, I can't imagine the wood façades were in any better shape! As we meandered through downtown, walking along streets barely wide enough for a single car, or climbing up narrow alleyways where vehicle transport was simply an impossibility, my eyes gazed around at the occasional grubby little Arabic tea house or the various hole in the wall shops where men had congregated among themselves to smoke tobacco or flavored fruit paste out of giant water bongs through long snaking hoses. Viewing this in a blurry haze as we walked, my mind wandered back to an era when this little 1 square kilometer town used to be vibrant, walled seaside fortress. I pondered what it must have been like to be a trader and traverse the dry Arabian landscape on camelback for days and months on end from the south or the east and to approach the walled city from afar, the only city for hundreds of kilometers, and to behold its glimmering white walls glaring under a crystal blue sky above. Hiding behind a massive city wall, the city must have appeared to stretch on forever. I imagine pilgrims on their way to Mecca passing through Jiddah and selling their wares along the narrow streets and stocking up on goods before making the final trek up to the northern holy cities to fulfill their religious duty as Muslims to perform the Hajj pilgrimage at least once in their lives. What must it have been like before the city walls were torn down and the highways built? Before cookie cutter suburban developments and strip malls were deemed to be the crowning social development of the late 14th and early 15th Islamic centuries? What must it have been like, I wonder?   Eventually my mind snapped back into the here and now as Sa'eed and I came upon a nice little Moroccan restaurant which happened to be closed for business when we showed up, but when Sa'eed had gotten the attention of the owner through the front window and explained to him that he had an American visitor with him in town for only that day, the Moroccan quickly unlocked the restaurant doors and invited us in to take a look around his establishment to sit for a round of tea on the house. I was most grateful for the owner's kind invitation! The restaurant was gorgeously tiled in many of the rooms and had magnificent, hand painted ceilings all around. Guests can either sit upon intricately hand upholstered seats along the walls or in low slung wooden chairs beside wooden tables. We chose to sit along the wall and were greeted by the Moroccan host who brought out and set up a multi-legged wooden contraption that folded outward upon which he rested a large circular brass platter with an upraised lip which served as our table. Once we made ourselves comfy, our host came out with several tea glasses and a tall, slender tea pot and poured each of us a glass, raising the tea pot high above our glasses as tea came flowing out the spout in a long, slender stream. Then he quickly lowered the tea pot back down to the glass, tipped the pot backwards and cut off the flow, finishing the skillful pour with nary a drop spilled nor splashed! All around me were beautiful paintings on the walls depicting the old life of Jeddah (seen at the top of this webpage) as well as a slew of trinkets and artifacts that the restaurant owner had collected from around the Arab world which he now put on display in his restaurant which could more aptly be described as a gallery! We stayed for about 40 minutes and chit chatted with the Moroccan owner as we drank our tea, Sa'eed in Arabic and I in French as he did not speak English, and learned that this business man is one of the first entrepreneurs looking to help revitalize downtown Jiddah. I wish him the best of luck! It was no approaching the 3 o'clock hour which mean that mid-afternoon prayer was soon to be at hand and so Sa'eed and I got up, bid our kind host adieu, and walked over to a local mosque where Sa'eed slipped inside to give the 3rd of his 5th obligatory daily worshiping of Allah. I, however, sat on a bench under a small awning a block away from the mosque and just waited until Sa'eed finished his prayers and returned about 15 minutes later. Once out, Sa'eed and I started heading back toward his car parked beside Bait Naseef and figured we should start thinking about working our way out to the airport in order to catch our 6:30 flight for Riyadh. As we pulled away from Bait Naseef we rounded the remnants of the old city wall and entered a large roundabout circling a large grassy island in the center and a mosque with a small parking lot off to one side of the road. As Sa'eed informed me, this was downtown Jiddah's execution square where criminals are whipped, lashed, deprived of their limbs and beheaded publicly depending on the severity of whatever crime they have been accused of. We pulled into the mosque parking lot and didn't see anyone standing around awaiting an execution, nor did we see any heads hanging from the large hook which hung down off a post beside the mosque - used to deter would-be criminals - and figured that no executions had taken place that day. Shucks. With our departure from Chop Chop Square old town Jiddah quickly disappeared into the distance behind us and our weekend trip to the west coast of Saudi Arabia came to an end. "Back to work out in the middle of the desert," I thought to myself as we reached the airport and boarded our return flight to Riyadh. If only every weekend could be a vacation afar! Daniel 22 July 2002 @ 22:22 (February 2001)