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I suggest you go and make yourself a mug of tea. Now. Before you read any further. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Let's put everything in the wrong order. Because rushing in headlong is always more fun than taking the time to get organised first. In early December some friends and I went for High Tea at a restaurant in the Globe - it is literally a big sphere set towards the top of the Faisaliyah Tower, with a fancy restaurant in it. The walls (spherical though they are) are made entirely of glass, so you have a pretty good view of the whole city - or as much of it as the sand hanging in the air will let you see - but the outside is bronze-coloured and reflective so I got some pretty good arty shots while I was waiting on the platform just below the Globe before my friends arrived. I'm making up for years of Henderson tardiness by arriving early for everything I can (sorry family. You are wonderful). The tea consisted of tasty tea, huge quantities of sushi and mini sandwiches and a chocolate fountain and teeny tiny puddings, and other such dainty morsels. The service was good though not outstanding, my friends, on the other hand are outstanding though not necessarily good all the time. They lead me to do bad things. Like go back for a 3rd helping from the chocolate fountain.
At the end of November (I told you this was all in the wrong order) I went with a couple of colleagues to an event in the desert, run by a group called The Hash (short for The Hash House Harriers or some such - a group who exist in cities all over the world and basically get people, mostly expats, running and walking together). In the afternoon there were 3 walks organised - short, medium and long (I did the medium due to wearing the wrong shoes for the long), and then shortly before sunset there was food - shawarma and hot dogs as far as I remember. We then watched a Nativity play interspersed with Christmas carols, which the 200-or-so gathered foreigners were supposed to join in with but I'm pretty certain my friends and I were the only ones singing other than the choir. So we sang loudly, even the unfamiliar American (ooooooo) carols that we didn't know, peering at the words in the dark and shivering, and largely making upn the tunes for the ones we didn't know. Joy of joys someone had brought an enormous vat of mulled wine. Shhhhh.
In a vague attempt at sensible chronology, this leads us quite nicely onto Christmas. Lorie and Mary and I were very generously given Christmas Day off work, so I spent the day at the spa with my good friend Ashlie, where we each had a Moroccan hammam ("look! Spaghetti"), a massage, and a pedicure. Although in a bonkers order so we were separated for all of it and therefore couldn't gossip, and I was given my massage straight after my pedicure so couldn't take my jeans off for fear of scuffing my wet nail varnish, so had a semi-clothed Thai massage in which I was told off for being too stiff. However, during my pedicure I did overhear some rather interesting chitchat from one of the other patrons of the spa, who was clearly very well connected and on good terms with some pretty important members of the royal family. Probably shouldn't really put more here. Maybe I've already said too much. If I suddenly disappear off the radar in a few days' time, please inform UKFCO.
As you may know, it is illegal to celebrate Christmas in Saudi, so of course everyone was even more eager to do something about it than my friends and I had been in Moscow last year, where Christmas doesn't happen when we think it should, but is perfectly legal. After the spa, I went to join a group of new friends for Christmas dinner. I was one of the first to arrive, and got roped into the cooking. I ended up as one of two chefs, we produced an enormous and excellent dinner, but I burned myself twice - first on the spring-form tin we used for the stuffing, and second on the underside of a serving dish which had been standing over a candle I'd forgotten about. That one hurt badly for several hours. However, the food came out well and a good time was had by all.
Two days later, once the Saudi weekend rolled around (Thursday and Friday, not Saturday and Sunday), I had another Christmas dinner with another group of good friends. This time I was responsible only for the stuffing and the gravy, both of which came out well, and I managed to get away with only burning myself once - my thumb, on the rack in the oven. There's still a red line there now a month and a half on. Once again a good time was had by all.
For New Year, I went to an even held at the British Embassy, which was a pretty standard affair really but there were good friends there, an enormous buffet, and something related to champagne at midnight. Oh and an ice sculpture of Big Ben. Celebrating New Year is also sort of illegal.
The muttawa, whom I believe I have mentioned before (the religious police) are still great friends of mine. Carlin and I went to the mall together one evening and I, as usual, omitted (perfectly legally) to cover my hair. Some bearded "gentle" men approached Carlin and instructed him to tell "his woman" to cover her hair. He declined their generous offer and we turned around and walked away from them. This normally works. Not that day. They followed us. Neither of us was in the mood for a scene so we decided to cut our shopping trip short and get a taxi home. We walked out of the building and got straight into a taxi which was waiting. And one of the bearded gentlemen got in with us. We got immediately back out of the taxi again. I was vaguely aware of bystanders shouting at the beards, with no effect. We ran across the car park to the other side and got into a different taxi. We thought we'd escaped. 5 minutes down the road there were flashing lights coming up behind us and we were pulled over. Carlin lent me his scarf and I dropped it over my head, just to make things simpler. They lent in through the passenger seat window and immediately I told them, in Arabic, "look, I'm wearing a hijab, there's no problem." They said, "shut up, we're not talking to you," and turned their eyes to Carlin, shouting at him to get out of the car. Carlin doesn't speak Arabic, and I told them so. "Shut up, we're not talking to you. Get out of the car!" "He doesn't understand. He doesn't speak Arabic." "Shut up, we're not talking to you." And on and on. After a while they changed tack and demanded Carlin's iqama (residence permit). Carlin produced it but tried not to let it out of his hand. They snatched it away. They glanced at it and asked if he was African. I told them no, he was American, forgetting that his iqama actually gives South African as his nationality. We got that cleared up. Then they asked for mine. Same snatchy story. My iqama, as you might expect, states quite plainly that I am British. It does this in Arabic. They looked at it and asked me if I was Algerian. Of course I told them I wasn't. They asked me if I was sure. I told them I was absolutely certain. They were dubious. Then they asked if we were married. It was tempting to tell them we were, in the hopes that they would believe it and leave us alone, but it was too much of a gamble - our iqamas say "unmarried" on them and the consequences of being caught lying about that could be pretty bad. But saying we were just friends (i.e. the truth) is no good here, as that's not allowed. I'm not allowed to spend time with my male friends. So I told them (truthfully) that we were colleagues. They wanted to know where we worked, who for, what we did. "Are you sure you're not married? You're definitely not Algerian?" On and on this went. They asked where we lived. Stalling for time, I just said "nearby" and waited to be asked for the full address, and for them to come back to the building with us, or worse. But clearly "nearby" was good enough for them. They then told Carlin to move to the front seat of the taxi, gave our iqamas back, and let us go. Bizarre. It was a few hours before I stopped shaking.
The next day I was at a different mall with different friends, and took a taxi back alone. After a while the driver asked me if I had been at Grenada Mall the previous evening. I told him I had. He said, "you have problem with muttawa. I remember you." I said yes, it was because of my hair. He told me, "no problem."
A few weeks ago I was at the checkout in the supermarket when a small woman in a niqab came up to me and said hi, addressing me by name. I could only see her eyes and in my distracted state couldn't work out who she was, so looked at her with panic all over my face. She took pity on me and revealed herself (audibly, not visually) to be one of my favourite students.
I have rather a lot of spare hours at work at the moment - I'm using the time to re-learn French. It's going pretty well and I'm thinking hard about learning methods and how I can use my contemporary experience of learning a language to help my students.
Some time ago was international AIDS week, or something. Being a medical college, Inaya had quite a big focus on this - there were posters and presentations and special lectures and all sorts of stuff. Of course, this is a good thing. What I found comic was that so many of the students were walking around with badges that proudly proclaimed, in English, "I have AIDS, please hug me."
Sometimes, just for fun, I teach my students a few words and phrases of a language they are unlikely ever to use. So far we've covered Russian, Czech and Welsh. What next?
Zack is our excellent driver to and from work every day. He has 6 children (the youngest of whom - Musa - was born just a couple of weeks ago) and often brings us food which his wife has made, thermoses of Saudi coffee, etc etc. For Christmas he gave us really thoughtful little presents. We don't know what we would do without Zack - he is reliable, punctual, intelligent, funny, good at English, interesting, and above all a safe driver. We often pass trucks transporting camels or other animals - Zack never fails to point them out to me. I invariably squeal with excitement. Especially if there's a baby camel in the truck. When I burned myself so many times over Christmas, and showed off the burns to him in the car, he dropped me home and then went to buy me a tube of burn cream. I was so touched.
Everyone knows that pork and alcohol are illegal in Saudi Arabia. I recently discovered that nutmeg and poppy seeds are also prohibited - nutmeg because it might be a hallucinogenic, and poppy seeds because they might be opium. I can't help thinking that's just a cover story, though - the real reason poppy seeds are forbidden is that many Arabic speakers find "p" and "o" very difficult to say, and therefore say "booby seeds" instead. Boobies are expressly prohibited, growing them from seed is probably a beheadable offence.
Many of you may have seen articles recently about the dinosaurs being carted off by the religious police. True story. In case you missed it, you can read it here http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21570748-making-mockery-saudi-morality-police-whos-dinosaur
On to things political and economic - you may be aware that an enormous percentage of the Saudi workforce is made up by immigrants of various kinds, both skilled and unskilled, and I am of course included in this percentage. I won't say whether I am skilled or unskilled. I would like to remain employable if possible. The proportion of immigrant workers to working Saudis is disproportionately high - I'm not sure any other country in the world has stats quite like it. The Saudi government, being the clever people they are, have realised this is a problem. Very few Saudis of employable age are actually employed, which worries the bigwigs. And me. And a lot of other people too. So, a system called Nitiqat has been implemented, whereby every company operating within Saudi has to ensure that at least 30% of its employees (I think maybe even 30% of the staff of each department) are Saudi citizens - if they fail to comply, they are fined quite a lot. On the face of it, this seems quite a good thing. Maybe it has potential. But it also has a darkly comic side. Without wishing to defame any Saudis, Saudis don't like doing menial work, or working in service industries. Saudis will teach, operate on hearts and brains, sit in a flashy office, be a lawyer, etc etc, anything "impressive", but they won't serve food in restaurants, they won't serve customers in shops, they won't clean up after other people, often even after themselves. Cleaning agencies are big business in Saudi - but they are of course slightly screwed by the Nitiqat system - how are they realistically going to make sure Saudi citizens make up 30% of their cleaning staff? Saudis won't do that. Within weeks, possibly even days, of the system being launched, cleaning companies had to be exempt because rubbish was literally piling up in the streets. One by one, more and more service industries will probably be exempt. Here's one of the original articles: http://www.arabnews.com/saudi-arabia/cleaning-companies-taken-out-nitaqat-system
Remaining with the theme of employment. Women. As you may already know, women are not allowed to work in shops in Saudi. At least, they weren't. And they still aren't allowed to work in the vast majority of shops. Just a few months ago, I think possibly since I arrived in Saudi but I'm not entirely sure, it was decreed that women would be allowed to work in certain kinds of shops - cosmetics, accessories, lingerie, maybe a couple of others too but those are the ones I'm aware of. This seems like the best idea ever - LET THE WOMEN BUY THEIR UNDERWEAR FROM WOMEN RATHER THAN MEN BECAUSE THAT'S LESS UNCOMFORTABLE. Huzzah. Makes me happy. Although the women working in those shops almost always cover their faces which, despite the fact that all Saudi women cover their faces all the time, makes me feel like I'm doing something illicit when I buy new knickers. Still, not as bad as the dodgy smirks the men in the hosiery shops give you when you have to buy plain boring old tights. Anyway - back to the point of this paragraph - just a few weeks ago some high up and respected (apparently) clerics started shouting about how women should be taken back out of those shops again because they might be corrupted by the experience. Much better to have over-excited young men who aren't allowed to see any women other than their mothers and sisters handling the raunchy underwear in La Senza and making the customers feel uncomfortable, than to have some aspirational but modest (faces covered - remember?) women serving the customers. And they appear to be being taken seriously. I worry. I'm bulk-buying underwear in case things are changed again before I leave the country.
Still with La Senza - a few weeks after Christmas I was in La Senza with some friends and saw what I would (probably incorrectly) describe as a sexy santa negligee - this entertained me no end and I took a sneaky photo (which I will try to upload but no promises), as it was something of a surprise in country where both sexy and santa are illegal.
2 weekends ago some friends and I went to the King's Horse Races. I had never been to a horse race before, and was most excited, although didn't really know what to expect. Originally we had a private box, but then some member of the royal family (if only we knew who …) challenged us for it, and predictably won, so we had to settle for a table in the very nice restaurant, with their very nice buffet, and a very nice view of the track. There was of course no betting, this being a strict Muslim country, but there was a "lotto" system, whereby you could pay to pick your 2 favourites for each race, and after the race finished all the votes for the winning horse were put in a rotating drum, and one was picked out. The owner of the winning vote got a car or a cash prize or something along those lines. Definitely Not Betting.
PS I picked the winning horse for the last (King's own) race. Wasn't picked out of the lotto though. I didn't win a car.
Last weekend some Saudi guys took 7 of us into the desert for the afternoon - we sat in a tent with comfy cushions and shisha and unlimited snacks, and did absolutely nothing (except for the boys playing football for a bit) all afternoon and evening, except for moving to the next door tent for lunch and back. Lunch was, predictably, kabsa - chicken and rice. The Saudi national dish. Everyone shares one enormous plate which you sit around on the floor, and you eat with your hands. I'll admit to it not being a food I get particularly excited about, but it's perfectly edible and pleasant enough once in a while. The Saudis seem to eat it several times a week; or maybe my students just don't know any other food words. It's not for lack of trying on my part, I promise.
My students keep me on my toes, caught permanently somewhere between hysterical laughter and utter exasperation. Here are some of my favourites over the last couple of months:
1) an attempt at a presentation on Hurricane Sandy, which was a homework assignment and the work was, of course, supposed to be independent and original: "From wlbpedlg, the free encydopedle. Hunlcnne sandy was a humncane the devaslated pontcons of the caribbean and the mid atlantic and North eas lemumited states during late october 2012..." and on and on it went. She had little idea why I was so cross with her. This was the most entertaining of many infuriating attempts to con me into believing they'd suddenly become incredibly good at English, by copying quite literally word-for-word from the internet. I told them off. Hugely. And 99% of them sorted their act out and did some real work.
2) From some of my strongest students, when I gave them free rein over how they wanted to structure their news bulletin presentation: "Welcome to the News Bulletin. Fashion: Saturday morning teacher Rosie was seen with a new hairstyle and elegant with long black pants and a green t-shirt and was wearing a beautiful shoe. It was beautiful. We heard some rumours that it was in the party at the weekend we do not yet know what the occasion. Weather conditions: We expect that the temperature drops to 15 degrees Celcius. You need warm clothes. But I do not mean the teacher Rosie. I think she did not feel cold at all. If continued adjustment in the classroom, maybe snow fall and class room turns to ice."
3) A quiet, earnest girl produced this when asked to write a recipe (they all wrote different recipes): "cut lettuce into pieces and placed in a dish and add the wolverine to sous and grated cheese and toast." I'm ashamed to admit this, but I laughed in her face when I read it. A few weeks later, they made the recipes in class, and I was given a plateful of her wolverine salad. It was actually delicious. (You may be wondering what she was trying to say - I tried hard but never found out exactly. Something along the lines of decorations / extra pieces. She had used Google translate, and learned her lesson about online translators.)
4) In an exam, in response to the question "what is a laboratory" - "It is a place where they make extremists for science."
5) In a bizarre piece of work on the health benefits of oranges - I never quite got to the bottom of where she thought she'd unearthed this assignment from, but this student is properly nutty anyway - "filters blood and kills the worm syrup … regulates the respiratory process of the teeth."
I will not, at this juncture, go into the saga of the weirdo who lived in my building for a few weeks. I'm still trying to forget it ever happened. Maybe next time.
Last week I watched a fascinating documentary which was recommended to me by a handful of friends and Saudi-enthusiasts - were you to watch it as well, it would be fifty nine minutes well-spent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au9Aqd_-2hc The prince on the programme is the governor of Hail, which is where I was nearly sent for my year in Saudi, where I have a few friends, and where I will be visiting for a weekend next month. It has come to my attention that the link isn't working - no idea why. Go to www.youtube.com and search "Inside the Saudi Kingdom (BBC Documentary)" and it should be the first video that comes up.
If you've made it this far, I congratulate you heartily, and thank you as well. I know it's been long. My apologies for the rambling nature of this post - the sheer length of the list of things I wanted to include was pretty daunting, and the thought of trying to arrange them in to some kind of order, or edit the list, was enough to put me off starting at all, so I decided to just splurge and see who stuck with me. I am very grateful indeed if you have made it to the end, and hope you don't feel it was time wasted. I am aware some of you may have questions which you would like me to answer - if you do, please either post them in the comments section after this entry, or email me, or send me a message on Facebook, or really just ask me in any way available to you, and I shall do my best to answer questions in my next blog post, which hopefully won't be 3 months from now. Thank you once again.
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J. Bro Rosy Posy, I miss and love you. You write beautifully. Can't wait to meet up with you in a normal city and marvel at the ridiculousness that is this experience...