Early June, 2002

Greetings from the urban desert Paradise of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia!

As you may have read in the short little email I sent out on the June 7th, I'm having some slight problems with the legal status of my residency here in the glorious Saudi Kingdom and so I was recently (and temporarily, I hope!) removed from my rural posting in King Khalid Military City and shipped off to the megalopolis of Riyadh where I shall be staying until either I am granted a proper work VISA or I get terminated from my job and deported to the United States.

In the mean time. . . I find myself on a paid vacation here in the city on a rather ritzy compound with extra time on my hands so I figured I would whip up another webpage and share the experience with you. Now, if only I can find a way to connect my computer to the Internet and upload this page. Hmm. . .

I'll figure that out later. But for now, let's go back to when this all began.

2002 January 1, 6:00 a.m.

After an evening of celebratory exuberance to ring in the new year with several friends, I found myself awoken suddenly in the hotel room where I was staying by a phone call from my mother. "Daniel, I just got a call from Al-Salam Aircraft Company in Saudi Arabia from a man who wants to interview you for a teaching position there in the Kingdom. I gave him your telephone number and told him to call you in one hour."

So one hour later the mobile phone I had with me rang and I spent the following 45 minutes undergoing a long distance interview with my former employer while slightly inebriated due to the aforementioned holiday just hours earlier. Apparently it all went well and they offered me a job several days later.

Fast forward to the first week of March, 2002.

After going through a rather rigorous health certification process and completing the mountains of paperwork required to process my Saudi VISA, I received a call from a company representing Al-Salam in Virginia that processed all of my forms, and they mentioned that Saudi Arabia had rejected my VISA application due to a technicality. Specifically, the company had originally tried to get me into the Kingdom under an Aircraft Repairman's VISA (which apparently is how the other teachers had entered Saudi Arabia) but for some reason the government was no longer going to allow this sort of process.

"No big deal," I was assured, and my paperwork was resubmitted and I was finally given the green light to depart for Saudi Arabia under the auspice of a Tourist VISA which would eventually be switched over to a Work VISA once I arrived in the Middle East.

Needless to say, the process hasn't exactly been that smooth as represented by my two-week stay in Riyadh back in April just after my arrival here, and also by my recent transfer back down to Riyadh just days ago.

The following are a couple journal entries I've made since receiving word that I would have to temporarily vacate my position up at King Khalid Military City.

But first, a picture of me and my students!

Can you guess who the white American guy is?!?

Back row, left to right: Mohammed, Nahar, Sayer, Nayef, Mohammed, and Ayid.

Front row, left to right: Ali, Mohammed, moi, Faisil, and Abdulhakeem.

PS: you will note that Saudi males are very touchy-feely with one another. Male friendships in this region are much more. . . physical and emotional (?) than what one generally finds in the West and they see absolutely nothing wrong with holding hands or touching each other. To them, it's just a sign of friendship and nothing more. I must admit though at first it takes some getting used to - sitting at my desk in class talking about present progressive verbs and suddenly noticing a student rubbing the head of a neighboring student, or seeing them hold hands walking down the hallway.

The above picture was taken about half an hour before I was told to leave my compound. I had brought my computer and digital camera into class that day because of the interest shown on behalf of my students regarding various digital technologies, so I thought I would take a nice group shot of us all, print it up and then hand out copies to each of them. Keep in mind that photography in general is highly frowned upon by conservative Islamic interpretations so cameras aren't terribly common here. In addition, the whole Digital Revolution currently overtaking the rest of the world is just a step or two behind in Saudi Arabia, especially with regard to digital imaging technologies, so some of my students looked at my digital camera with a near magic-like awe on their faces. Also, keep in mind that most of my students are from far flung, rural outlying reaches of the Arabian Peninsula far from the "glam and glitz" of rapidly advancing and developing city of Riyadh.

"Teacher, I don't understand. How do you get the paper image from the camera into your computer so you can see it on your monitor? Do you stick the picture into your computer somewhere???"

"No, I don't have to stick the picture physically into the computer because there's no paper to begin with, and as a matter of fact, there's not even any film! You just connect the camera with this little cable, and the next thing you know, the pictures are in the computer. Here. . . watch and I will show you!"

So I snapped their picture, uploaded it to the computer's hardrive, and when their full resolution image popped up on the monitor they all burst out into a chorus of "Oooooooohhhhh!!!! Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!!" and then ran and grabbed their fellow students out in the hallway who were on class break to show them their digitized image on the computer.

It was pretty cool to see them get so excited about it.

Then one of my students said, "Teacher, please give me the camera and computer for just one weekend so I can take some pictures!"

To which I responded, "Um. . . NO!!!!!!!!" ;-}

If one thing can be said about Saudis, it's that they are not affraid to ask for (or demand!) things whatsoever.

So my plan for the weekend was to go home, print up the pictures and then hand out a copy to each of them the following week on Saturday. Alas, that was not to be since I was promptly removed from KKMC (King Khalid Military City) just a few hours later.

The following are my journal entries from the past few days.

2002 June 05, 5:00 p.m.

Hello everyone from Hafar al-Batin, Saudi Arabia!

Due to a sudden twist of events, I am no longer in my snug little comfy villa on the compound at King Khalid Military City, but rather I find myself in a dimly lit hotel room in the one-road city of Hafar al-Batin just south of the Kuwaiti border. The temperature is about 110F/43C outside and I've just checked into the dusty old al-Khulaiwi Hotel and have cranked on the air-conditioner to cool down and write my story.

Why pray tell am I in this hotel in the first place? Well...

The view out my hotel room in Hafar al-Batin.

Not long ago. . . three and a half hours ago to be exact. . . I returned home from a long day at work ready to begin the weekend (the weekend here is Thursday and Friday), and on my way back to my villa I stopped by my little cubbyhole mailbox to see if I had received anything in the post, which I knew I hadn't, but I thought I'd entertain myself just for the sake of it. Well, as I went to check my mail, a middle aged Saudi man dressed in a long white robe came up to me and asked, "Are you Daniel Schereck, the English teacher?" to which I cautiously replied, "Yes, I am."

I felt like saying, "Why? Who wants to know?" but I figured I'd be straight forward and just answer his questions. So the man, Abdullah, says, "There's a problem with your VISA and your permit to stay here on the compound. Specifically, it has expired and you can no-longer stay here and you have to go stay in a hotel in the town of Hafar al-Batin 30 miles/50 kilometers away until we sort this out. If we can't sort this out right away, we will transfer you down to Riyadh until further notice. I will have a driver pick you up right away. "

Me: "WHAT?!?"

Me on my bed with my laptop and camera looking in the mirror, pondering life in blue.

So basically he goes on to explain to me the whole problem with my VISA, yadda yadda yadda... and to tell you the truth, NONE of this is a major surprise to me because I've been having VISA problems ever since I applied for this job back at the end of 2001. Without getting detailed, initially there was a problem with the company getting a work VISA for me during the application process while I was in the USA so the company just decided to bring me into the country on a tourist VISA with the understanding that they'd have my permanent work VISA all processed and ready within no time. Well, that didn't happen. I got here, and as you may recall, I had to stay in Riyadh for two weeks while they got my compound pass. Once I got that pass they transferred me up to King Khalid Military City where I had lived for the following one month and two weeks, up until three and a half hours ago. So now, because all my paperwork is totally messed up, they've decided to remove me from the compound, because... well... I HAVE BEEN THERE ILLEGALLY... and stick me somewhere else.

So that's the situation in a nutshell, and I've known this might become a problem the whole time I've been here so having this all blow up in my face isn't *totally* unexpected, although it's definitely not what I had hoped for.

As a sidenote: I made a point to constantly remind my company about the impending expiration of my legal tourist visa status, so this AIN'T NONE OF MY FAULT! ;-}

Now back to the story...

My entry level hotel room, complete with other people's hair in the sheets.

... After Abdullah informs me that I'd have to leave immediately and I make know my surprise at this sudden demand, I was like, "Do you think I could maybe have an hour or so to pack??? I wasn't exactly planning on going anywhere today!" So he gave me 90 minutes to pack and I ran back to my villa and started thinking, "You know, Daniel, if they weren't able to process your work VISA in February and March when all the original paperwork was finally submitted, and haven't been able to process your work VISA since arriving here IN the country, it's very likely that they'll NEVER be able to process your work VISA, and chances are, you might be on the next plane out of Dodge!!!"

This isn't what they told me, it's just me "connecting the dots." Then I thought, "Well, if for some reason they have to send me back to the United States and terminate my position due to the impossible need of getting me a work VISA, I really ought to take as much stuff with me as I can pack into my suitcases over the next 90 minutes." And that is what I did. I quickly ran into the extra room in the back of my villa and whipped out two suitcases and a back pack, then did a quite run through my villa visually making a note of everything that I thought I should take.

Full set of green chairs (the color of Islam, by the way) where I guess I'm supposed to sit around with all my friends and drink tea and eat date fruits.

The problem here, though, is that just last week my surface-shipment of goods arrived from the United States and so I have PLENTY of things that I wasn't going to be able to pack, especially all the reference and language books that I hold totally dear to my heart. But what is a guy in my position to do? So I decided to forget all my books (because they weigh a ton!) and instead take all the new clothes with me that I had purchased just before coming to Saudi Arabia as well as all the important documents and photographs stored in my desk. I ran into my bedroom, flung open the closet and emptied out all my nicest clothes onto my bed and tore through my dresser grabbing handfuls of underwear, socks, and shirts. Can't have enough of those, I say! Then I neatly, but rapidly, folded everything into one giant block of compressed fabric and stuffed it into my oversized black duffle bag. Then, with my smaller wheeled black suitcase in hand, I jetted out into the living room and pulled open all the drawers of my desk and pulling everything out that I thought I would possibly need in the event that I am sent back to the USA right away. That included all my tax files, my employment papers, my personal contact lists, photographs of friends and family, and anything else that I had stuffed into the "important documents" drawer of my desk. I then stuffed it all into plastic bags roughly according to group or topic of the particular items, tied 'em up, then crammed them into my smallish black suitcase. Once I completed that job I packed up my computer and digital camera and squeezed them both into my backpack with no room to spare. Remembering that I hadn't packed my toiletries yet, I ran back into the bathroom, grabbed my shaving cream, razors, tooth paste, tooth brush and soap, then put them into my little black leather toiletries bag and sprinted back out into the living room to pound them into the remaining tiny portion of unused space in my backpack.

Once I had seen that all the *essentials* were packed and ready to go, I dashed into the kitchen and reheated some vegetable pasta leftovers in the fridge then sat down in the living room, flipped on the TV and ate lunch while I watched a news story about the most recent Israeli-Palestinian military incursions counter suicide attack.

Phew!!!

Saudi bathroom technology: spray gun on the left, or bidet on the right. While I consider this arrangement superior to the waterless American and/or contemporary European system for personal hygiene, I have to say that the digital Japanese toilet seats with electronically controlled and aimed bidet nosel with warmed, buffeting air drier is by far the best system any civilization has yet devised!

Just after I scarfed down reheated pasta shells, the doorbell rang and my ride was standing there at my door: two young Saudi men driving a Lexus.

"Not too shabby!" I thought. Needless to say, they played the role of your typical semi-affluent Saudi and said, "We're here to take you to Hafar al-Batin," then turned and returned to their air conditioned vehicle and left me standing there in the blazing sun with three pieces of luggage to lug on my own. Mind you, it's not that I expected them to do all the work for me, but I thought it might have been nice if they would have *offered* to carry a bag perhaps. At least that's what virtually any OTHER person in any OTHER culture might do... but whatever. This is Saudi Arabia, and I know that the people here equate physical labor with underclass servants or slavery, and so they NEVER lift a finger. Whatever, no big deal. So after standing at the back of the guys' car for a rather long moment and noticing that the trunk wasn't going to open itself, I motioned to the driver and was like, "The trunk? Open? Maybe?" A few seconds later it popped open and I heaved my suitcases into the back, accidentally scratching the bumper with the wheel of my duffle bag as I did so.

My bad.

(My name in Arabic. From right to left: d-aa-n-y-aa-l sh-r-y-k. Can you figure out each Arabic letter?)

Apparently the drivers' instructions were to drop me off at the hotel and to not engage me in conversation along the way, so I just sat there in the back seat thinking to myself, "Gee. . . it sure would be nice if I could see out the front of the car to know what the road ahead looked like," but with the front passenger's long white headwrap flailing every which direction, forward vision was simply a NO-GO. Oh well. . . I just turned my head and peered out my right back-seat passenger window and watched as the flat, dead, dry, dusty and desolate landscape melted by.

I must admit though what the young driver lacked in interpersonal cross-cultural communicative skills and displays of hospitality, he made up with driving ability because I was pleasantly surprised to see that he didn't once take the speed up over 80mph/130kph AND he managed to stay in one lane the whole way.

Sometimes I really am convinced that there is a God in Heaven who actually listens to my prayers...

So we drove up to Hafar al-Batin, sans accident, and made it in one piece. I can't say the same though for the strewn line of rusted out vehicles burning apart along the dusty, sun baked highway roadside. Seriously, there were remnants of crashed and rotted steel automotive cages the entire way. In one place you'd see a car flipped over off in the distance with its chassis up-flipped and sun scorched to a crisp. In another place you'd see two cars smashed head-to-head on the side of the road, where they were later forgotten and left to recycle themselves into the dust. And in other places, you'd see the lonely, abandoned car sinking sadly into blowing mounds of light brown wind-blown grit and cemented into place by season after season of advancing levels of sedimentary flows from long since forgotten flash floods.

It was kind of sad, in a way... seeing all these dead cars...

This is the answer to the Arabic alphabet question above. Short vowels are not written in Arabic, like Hebrew. Unlike Hebrew, Arabic is a cursive-only script and letters are generally connected either to the letters before them or after them. The name Daniel is recognized by the Muslims as one of the prophets of God/Allah, and the name Schereck, written as shareek means "partner." Omitting the y/ee in shareek turns the name into the Arabic work shirk which means "infidel", and that isn't exactly the type of name a guy like me needs here in a country like this!

Then, before I knew it, we had traversed our 45 kilometers and were parked in front of the Al-Khulaiwi Hotel where I got out of the car and grabbed all my bags and lugged them myself inside the desert baked outpost. I walked up to the concierge, explained that I was in need of a room for the night, and the nice Egyptian man behind the counter kindly took my last remaining photocopied piece of identification and had me sign a blank check-in form which apparently will serve as my hotel room agreement. I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in the small Arabic fine print it says something like, "I am responsible for ANYTHING the hotel wants to charge me, and in the event that I don't pay, I'll gladly spend an evening in the local prison."

You never know!!!

So that's where I am now, sitting on the bed in my now-cooled hotel room listening to cars race up and down the highway/street outside the window with my laptop resting warmly upon my legs and thinking, "I wonder what's going to happen next???"

Whatever that turns out to be, I'll be sure to document it and let you know!

Ciao for now!

Daniel

 

Saudi and Arab business men, from the Holiday Inn brochure, hard at work in the Hafar al-Batin Holiday Inn conference room. I thought this was an interesting image, one which is generally not scene outside the Middle East, I imagine.

After arriving at the Al-Khulaiwi Hotel and getting settled in, I made a little voice memo, which will follow, then I put on my walking shoes and went for a little jaunt into town to see what Hafar al-Batin had to offer. When I landed at my hotel, I was under the mistaken impression that Al-Khulaiwi Hotel was in/near downtown Hafar al-Batin, but after a 90 minute walk into the center of town, I realized that there was more to this city than originally met the eye.

But first, a voice memo given into my camera as I sat on the bed of my hotel.

Hello it's 3:50 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon. Due to a strange twist of events I find myself suddenly in a hotel in a small sort of dusty, dry one-road desert-town town called Hafar al-Batin which is the city next to King Khalid Military City which is where I'm supposed to be living right now. Apparently there's some problem with my visa and actually this is not a surprise. I came to Saudi Arabia on a tourist visa because the company couldn't get my work visa cleared in time, so they brought me in as a tourist, well, my tourist visa is on the verge of expiring and my, um, what's the word I'm looking for? [the German word "Erlaubnis" always comes to mind when I need this particular word] my permit to stay on the compound with the military expired like 18 days ago so they finally were like, "Um, you're not legal here." So they told me to pack my bags and go, so I packed my bags and I went!

Now I'm in a hotel in the middle of nowhere just south of the Kuwaiti border. Tomorrow I'll be taken to Riyadh. By whom? I don't know. At what time? I don't know. Where I'll be staying in Riyadh? I don't know. Will I have a visa? I don't know. Will I be returning to America? I don't know. Will I have job when I come back here? I don't know. I don't know. I really don't know! And you know what? I really don't care. I mean, I look at it like this: worst case scenario in my opinion, I have to go back to the United States, and I say worst case scenario because I would really like this job and I kind of need a salary. But, that being the worst case scenario. . . so. . . I get to live in a nice free country. OK. Not a bad thing. You know. I stay here, I get money. I go back to America, and I'm free. Really it's like win-win, so I'm OK.

Um, yeah, so I'm sitting here in this kind of grubbyish looking hotel that's kind of like pimp-daddy on the inside. I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know where I'm going. I have no idea about anything. All I know is that I'm in some fucking weird town in Saudi Arabia. That's all I know. That's all I know. Sorry for the expletive there for people with sensitive ears, but that's kind of how I'm feeling right about now.

Anyways, just thought I'd check in and say hi!

Ciao!

Above: as I sat down in the lobby of the Holiday in Hotel in Hafar al-Batin, this group of well-dressed Saudis walked in and were accompanied by a small crew of support staff carrying video and still-frame cameras and the whole time these men and their friends sitting in neighboring chairs were being taped as if they were movie stars. For all I know, they might be. Just in case, I thought I'd swivel my little compact Fuji camera around and snap a picture of my own. At a minimum, it shows you what Gulf Arabs look like sitting in the lobby of a hotel. :-)

After my long walk down the main expressway through Hafar al-Batin, I found that the city was significantly larger than I originally thought and that al-Khilaiwi Hotel was actually on the edge of the city entering from the south, and that the meat and potatoes of town were located a ways to the north. So I walked and walked and walked and walked and walked until I finally came up to the famed Hafar al-Batin Holiday Inn Hotel where many of the Americans on the King Khalid Military compound go on the weekends (Thursday and Friday) for the large Western breakfast buffet spread each morning. Since I had been advised not to leave the KKMC compound due to my visa complications since April, I never made it up to the Holiday Inn with my coworkers. On this occasion, since I had no plans that evening and was totally unsure of my future, I figured that the least I could do was have a nice dinner in a nice hotel.

Above: me sitting at a table in the rooftop garden dinner buffet area at the Hafar al-Batin Holiday Inn.

Above: street scene down below the dining terrace in Hafar al-Batin. As you can see, it's rather busy with street traffic and people going about their business.

Below: a typical scene here in Saudi Arabia, as amplified from the image above. A boy playing in the lower left corner, Saudi men buzzing around in their white robes and red-and-white headwraps, a dark complexioned man (Indian? Pakistani?) wearing western clothes, a Saudi police officer in uniform and beret, and a woman racing by in a ghostly fashion with her head-to-toe black cload trailing behind her.

Above: alleyway scene during prayer time. Shops are closed, streets are relatively empty, and the men are all off in mosque praying. As you might have noticed, women are banned from praying in a mosque as such structures are men's territory only.

Below: a close up view from the above image in which you can see women either with or without their faces cloaked beside their children as they either wait for shops to reopen for for their husbands to return from prayer, or both.

The following are two voice memos I made to my camera from atop the outdoor Holiday Inn rooftop buffet dining area.

Voice memo No. 1

Hi there, it's 8:10 and I'm sitting in the holiday inn restaurant area. It's a balcony on the third floor on the exterior of the building overlooking a small square like an outside market mall outside kind of area. It's down below and people walking around, people driving their cars. I've got the hissing of the mist machines blowing around on top of me. It's kind of a woodsy outdoor area. Blowing trees and lights, lanterns and tables.

I'm have a nice Middle Eastern moment, at the moment, which kind of gets me thinking. I can't get September 11th out of my mind and the simple fact that it was 15 Saudis who killed 3000 people in the United States, and I also think about the fact that a lot of my students think September 11th was just a big joke. A lot of them don't even believe it was Arabs who did it, they think it was the Jews who concocted the whole plan, and told all the Jews to vacate the WTC that day and so their idea is that no Jews were killed that day and they were gone mysteriously and it was Israel that organized the whole attack. And I think about this, and I think about some of those jokes that they make about the World Trade Center, and this and that, and I just, like, it's kind of shame. I mean, I'm having one of my nice little Saudi moments right now, eating nice Arab food, but the reality is that I think the Muslim world and the United States are not going to have a very friendly future. I think things look kind of grim. And so this is the thought process in my head. I'm having a nice time, but on the flip side I feel like something really bad is developing in this region - and the United States, I mean, it's a two way street - so, it's just kind of my thought process here and it's kind of sad.

Voice memo No. 2

Small interruption there, that was the waiter guy taking away my plate of Syrian salad, hummus which is mashed chickpeas and babaghanoush which I think is mashed eggplant and oil, but don't quote me on that, um, freshly baked pita bread, grilled meat, fish, prawns, chicken, and some chicken soup which was absolutely delicious.

So anyways, back to my story, or my thought process here I guess. I just find it kind of sad because I really think that a lot of the Saudis are really nice people. I don't find them terribly 21st century, although this should come as no surprise as it is the year 1423 on this part of the world on their calendar. It's just kind of bad. I don't know. I just wonder, when's the next attack on the United States going to be? How many people are going to die in that next attack, and I think there *will be* one, and what the American response will be. I just think that if America is nuked by a terrorist bomber, or another sky scraper attack, or who knows what, I really don't think the Americans are gonna want to sit around next time and play the game of invading a country and hoping everything's gonna get better. I just think something bad is going to happen between these two cultures. I think it's kind of shame. But you know, maybe the world's not big enough for everyone to live in it. I don't know.

Anyways, I'm just sitting here on my little balcony so I hope all is well with you. If I have another Arab moment, I shall record it for you.

Ciao!

I finished eating my wonderful buffet dinner around 9 p.m., and at about 70 Riyals (US $18) later I figured I'd start making my way back to my swanky pimp post Al-Khilaiwi Hotel. This time around I didn't exactly feel like walking half way across northern Saudi Arabia to get to my intended destination, so I decided to flag down a taxi instead.

Unbeknownst to me, however, was the fact that Hafar al-Batin doesn't have taxis in the traditional sense. Instead, what they have is a bunch of older Saudi men who drive around in white Nissan pick-up trucks taking you wherever you want to go - for a price. Needless to say I looked like a fool walking up and down the streets looking for a traditional taxi while having no luck finding one. Eventually I walked into a hotel along the main road downtown and asked in my broken Arabic, "Where are the taxis??? I don't see a single one outside anywhere!" Slightly chuckling, the concierge explained to me how Hafar al-Batin taxi services opperated and told me that I could get a ride with one of the older guys driving around outside. Since I was still a bit confused, I asked if maybe he could ring up a taxi for me, so instead he snapped his fingers and a Philippino bellhop run up to the front desk, then he and I went outside and commandeered me a taxi in one of the neighboring streets.

I have to admit though that I was humored to see that when I saw my taxi driver, who was standing beside his truck shooting the breeze with several of his friends, and the fact that he was fully blind in his right eye and had a developing cataract in his left. Once inside his vehicle, I was disheartened to notice that the vehicle had neither seatbelt nor airbag, and that if we ended up getting into a collision, I'd turn into a fast-flying human projectile! Fortunately, with a combination of someone slow driving and incessant honking at oncoming drivers, the old man was able to avoid any collisions and I was delivered to my little rat's nest, er, hotel, safe and sound!

Yes, there is a God after all. . .

Voice memo just before bed:

Hello, it's Daniel. It's 9:10 p.m. and I'm back in my hotel, the Hotel al-Khilaiwi on the south side of town. I found out tonight after walking several, several miles across town that there is in fact a town here with several tens of thousands of people and I happen to not be in it here in this hotel. I just got back from eating dinner and got a note from the guy who's picking me up tomorrow, I think an American maybe. He's driving to Riyadh. He's picking me up at 5 o'clock. I am sooooooo not an early person. Couldn't he come at a more reasonable hour, like 8 or 9?!? So I'm gonna go shower now to get ready and set up my wardrobe so I can roll out of bed in the morning and get dressed and get over my big old bad tired self and leave this place. And that's my story. I'm gonna go get a couple hours of sleep now. I didn't bring my second alarm clock. I hope I don't sleep in! That's all for now!

Bye!

So I went to bed around 10pm and got up the following morning at 4:30 and met my American driver Walter down in the hotel lobby promptly at 5 a.m. As it turns out, John is one of the 28 men who live on my compound and he and his wife were driving down to Riyadh that morning to spend the weekend shopping in the city, and they were kind enough to drive the 40km north of KKMC up to my hotel before turning back around and heading south into the urban Saudi civilization to the south. The detour was totally out of the way for him and Monica, but I was extremely grateful that they did it because I must admit that I feel MUCH MORE comfortable driving with the Americans here than I do with the out-of-control zigzagging speedy Saudi youth or with the 90 year old blind elders. I was also COMPLETELY happy to be in the company of American culture again, especially when John walked into the lobby and saw me with all my overstuffed luggage and said, "Would you like me to get one of those suitcases for you?"

I was like, "WHAT?!?" . . .kind of in a state of shock after having just experienced the wealthy and lazy side of Saudi society the day before when my Saudi chauffeurs looked at me and my luggage standing in front of my apartment upon departure and completely ignored me, refusing to lift even a finger in assistance.

"Sure, that would be great!" I said. "Here, you can take the smaller of the two."

"Not a problem!" John replied.

Aaaaaaah.... how nice it was to be back in the company of helpful people. . . people not afraid to exert the tiniest bit of energy in the form of LABOR without fearing that doing so might make you look like a servant or a slave. God bless people who aren't afraid of work! (And God bless people who don't believe in slavery!!!)

As an aside: Saudi Arabia is the *only* place I've ever been where someone would actually just sit there and stare at you, not offering assistance even if they saw you struggling with something. Honestly, I can't think of a single other place I've ever been to in the world where that might happen. Hmmm. . .

So I thanked John profusely and told him about my experience the day before, and we both just laughed it off then hopped into his Toyota Camery, where I met his wife Mary half conked out in the front passenger seat, and then we darted off down the highway toward Riyadh.

Above: small desert town under construction along side the highway.

We didn't talk that much for the first half of the trip because Mary looked quite tired and I didn't want to be Chit-chatty Dan and disturb her, so I just sat in the back seat with my camera drawn watching the sun rise over the eastern horizon as we sped through the flat, barren, pebble strewn wastelands of the northern Saudi Arabian deserts.

Above: typical Saudi home construction. Square, concrete residences with small windows, good for keeping out the roasting heat of the relentless Arabian sun.

Below: a small mosque

In general it seemed that most other people on the highway were driving quite well, which might have been because it was so early in this new morning, and in general the native population goes to bed around sunrise in order to avoid the growing heat of the day, so the roads seemed abnormally untraveled. This is, in fact, one of the reasons that the vast majority of Americans at KKMC have a no-driving-at-night policy through the desert and will ONLY make the trip along this stretch of highway during the sunlit hours. Once the sun goes down, people (and animals) come out in droves and the roadways become exponentially more lethal with the passing of the hours. As I may have mentioned before, there are virtually no requirements to get a driver's license in this country, so you've got people passing on the left, passing on the right, and swerving in and out between cars at speeds well over 100 mph (160kph). Since large parts of the highway system are still under construction here, you often have this all going on as both directions of traffic share one stretch of unmarked roadway. Passing slower vehicles can be especially dangerous because inevitably as you go to overtake a slower car to your right, a Chevy Caprice full of young Saudis zooms up behind you at 110 mph and passes YOU on the left as a line of cars is coming straight at you from in front!!! Yep, double passing. Then you've got the drivers who seem to think that the lines on the highway are not supposed to be driven BETWEEN, but rather driven ON just under the center of your vehicle, so in the event that you might consider passing them you have to be especially cautious because you never know if they are going to spontaneously swerve into the lane either on their left or on their right thereby crashing into your car and sending you off the highway. Ah yes, and let's not forget the cars piloted by 12 and 13 year olds barely tall enough to see over the steering column and have the trained defensive-driving skills of a baboon.

Above: yours truly in the back of a Toyota Camera zipping through the Saudi desert not long after sunrise.

In light of this, it should come as no surprise when I tell you that one of the English teachers at my school was killed in a head on car crash two years ago killing him and his wife while his children survived in the back seat. Apparently he was caught up in one of these double-passes and crashed head on into a water tanker coming from the other direction. Then, just last week, one of the Saudis who worked on the helicopter base with us near our school was killed when he crashed into a stray camel walking down the middle of the highway late at night. The bloated sun broiled carcass of the beast can still be seen in a pile along side the roadway about 90 minutes south of my compound.

Disturbing.

SO. . . this apparently explains to a large degree why John picked me up at 5 a.m. so that we could avoid both the heat of the day and the madness of the late afternoon and evening traffic. It's a travel tactic I would do well to heed myself!

Above: camels wandering off beside the highway. A true danger to drivers.

Along the trip down south toward Riyadh we passed through a couple little townships interspersed here and there beside the highway every so often and I wondered what would possess someone to establish a villa in the middle of nowhere under the roasting desert sun? Was it growth associated with the gas stations in each location? Perhaps these were migratory people who one day just decided to settle down and turn their wind blown tents into concrete fortresses? I suppose every country has little towns in bizarre locations that make passers-by question, "Why would anyone ever live here???"

These micro-towns were good for at least three things: 1) refueling your vehicle, 2) buying prepackaged food items from the dingy, rundown stores operated by the attending Pakistanis and Indians, and 3) if you're Muslim, going to one of the several mosques peppered throughout the village as part of your 5-times-a-day prayer regimen. Technically though, if you're traveling, you don't have to pray right at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sundown, and dusk. You can make up for them later in the day once you've reached your destination, but I can imagine that can be a bit time consuming if you miss several prayers in succession and have to make them all up at once. Better get them done when they're required.

As for women, since they can't go into the oft-airconditioned mosques, they have to pray outside beside the car under the sun in their black robes atop prayer rugs on the dirt.

Above and below: images of the desert between KKMC and Riyadh.

Eventually Mary awoke from her groggy mid-morning semi-slumber and we three ended up having very interesting conversations for the rest of the drive into the city, discussing global politics, American-Saudi relations, Arab/Muslim culture, religion, etc. As seems to be the case for Americans in this region these days, the crux of any conversation about the aforementioned topics pivots on the Saudi attack against the United States on September 11 and what the long term ramifications of that event might mean for this region. So we all floated our individual opinions, and only time will tell if any of us is right.

After we started chit-chatting, time started to whiz by and before I knew it we were entering the northern outskirts of Riyadh and quickly heading toward downtown where I'd be dropped of at the al-Mutlaq Hotel for a rendez-vous with an Al-Salam company representative who would take me from there.

The joy of NOT knowing. . .

Above: a roadsign in Arabic and English. Can you figure out how they write the numbers 25, 130, 140, and 740, and the abbreviation for km?

Also, Madinah is the modern way to write Medina, one of the two Islamic holy cities where non-Muslims are barred from entering. Makkah (Mecca) being the other one, near to Madinah..

Daniel ponders aloud: perhaps the Christians and Jews should bar Muslims from entering certain cities they hold dear? Hmmm. . .

Once in Riyadh, John drove into downtown and swung by al-Mutlaq Hotel where he dropped me off and I thanked him for my morning transport across the desert safe and sound. At the hotel I was handed a piece of paper which said, "You should be arriving in town around 10 a.m. Please contact your company representative Steve at the following number. He will process you from there." So I bid adieu to my ride, and they were off to stay in another hotel on the other side of town for the weekend. As for me, I stayed at the hotel with my piles of luggage stacked near the front door of the lobby and rang up Steve, and he picked me up about a half hour later. Upon his arrival I asked him politely, "So, um, uh. . . could you maybe tell me what's going on here? All I know is that I was kicked off my compound yesterday and removed from my jobsite, and now I'm in the middle of Riyadh without a clue what's going on, whether or not I have a job, or if I even have a place to stay!

Steve: "Don't worry, we've got a place for you to stay, and as far as we know, you've still got your job. We're just experience a few problems getting your permanent work visa sorted out, so in the mean time we'll transfer you over to the 88 Villas Compound where many of the company's British families reside. We'll keep you there until we can get your visa paperwork sorted out and get you proper identification papers to allow you back on the compound at King Khalid Military City. Don't worry, it'll all work out just fine. In the mean time, just enjoy your stay here in Riyadh and as soon as find something out about your visa status, I shall let you know."

Me: "Well, it's nice to know I won't be sleeping in the streets at least, or needing to stay in that boring and pricy al-Mutlaq Hotel like I had to do for two weeks back in April. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally in support of being put up in nice hotels in what amounts to a paid vacation, but after a couple weeks that place just got a bit stale. Not to mention the fact that I was suddenly whacked with having to pay my own food bill last time which put me back a couple Ben Franklins. At least this time around I can just buy a 25 cent loaf of bread, some sandwich fixings, and pull off a full meal for under $3."

Steve: "I'm sure you'll be quite happy at the 88 Villas Compound. It's quite a nice place."

So we drove about 15 minutes north of al-Mutlaq Hotel toward the Exit 9 and Airport Highway intersection (in the event that any of you has a Riyadh map handy!) and pulled up to the main security gate outside, got a set of keys for my visitor's villa, and had me in my new digs in no time. As seen below, the pad ain't too shabby!

Above: the dining room

Below: the living room

Above: a den-like area on the second floor next to the stairs, which, if Saudis owned this place, is where their women would most likely be corralled if an unmarried/unrelated male were to come into the house. Gotta "protect" the ladies from the corrupt behavior of men.

Below: El Bedroom

Above: the swimming pool next to which I lie every afternoon between 2 and 3:15 p.m., and once I'm thoroughly burned to the bone, I roll off my "tanning" chair and melt into the bottom of the pool. Yes, life as a questionably-legal alien is rough indeed!

Below: the tennis court located beside the pool (the pool is to the right). Alas, I have neither tennis racket nor friend here who plays tennis, so I just admire it from afar.

Above: a small dark-red plant thingy growing in the grass outside my door. It perks up first thing in the morning but wilts over in the heat of the late afternoon, day in and day out.

Below: some nice little flowers beside the pool that I thought I would photograph for my mother who is quite skillfull herself at photographing flowers with her own digital camera.

Mom, this one's for you! :-)

And last but not least: moi!

My daily frying pan, er, sun chair is the white one beside the trimmed hedge on the far side of the pool. After 10 days of hanging out at Casa Illegal Alien, I'm not quite sure if I've gotten myself a tan or something that would better be described as a red. Whatever the case, I'm sure the daily dose of chlorine and ultra violet light is working miracles on my skin!

Well, that's all for now. I hope all is well for you in whichever part of the world you happen to find yourself!

Ciao!

Daniel

Megalinks Homesite / Saudi Arabia

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