I was waved beyond the immigration line to the Perspex counter. The soldier at passport control offered no smile. He did not welcome me to his country. He did not greet me as a Muslim, even though my last name gave me away as one. In fact, he did not greet me at all. Supercilious, he busied himself reviewing my papers. Following his lead, I didn't engage in small talk either. We made no eye contact. Intuitively I already knew the ways of the Kingdom. With a dismissive wave, he signaled me gone, tossing my passport onto a distant counter. The gold insignia of Her Majesty's Crown lay marooned in an eddy of crumpled-up, handwritten Arabic notes. The sharp taste of nostalgia for my English childhood rose suddenly to my throat. Out of habit, I went to grab my passport anyway. Instead, a hulking figure expertly corralled it, snatching it away from me.
I looked up to see a huge man. He returned my gaze with open distaste. This was Umair, my sponsor. Under his male authority, I could now leave passport control and enter the Kingdom. Umair was my “meet and greet” manifestation of my employer. Intimidated, I felt myself shrink in his male shadow. A bulky, tall Saudi, Umair was dressed in a white thobe5 punctuated with a recurring filigree of tobacco-stains; a batik of spit. Ancient sandals made almost of camel-hide (they seemed so thick) completed the ensemble, exposing fat, cracked heels. On his head, he wore a red and white checked headdress (the shemagh) that sorely needed pressing. Though dressed in the identical uniform of the Saudi national dress, he wasn't as refined as the Saudi I had been studying on the cover of Fortune.
Though meeting me (meeting my passport, more specifically) he failed to greet me. We communicated in sign language, as he spoke no English and my Arabic consisted only of prayers. Stupidly, I still made vain gestures to recover my passport but he retained it tightly in his leonine fist. Irritated, with flabby nicotine-stained fingers, he motioned to me to retrieve my heavy luggage, while he languished, supporting his considerable bulk against a railing. He struggled to coax his fat hand into a seamless pocket, finally retrieving a badly squashed packet of Marlboros. He made no move to help, preferring to watch in unrestrained boredom, scratching his belly from time to time.
The baggage carousel continued to circulate cases which no one rushed to claim. The Malaysian maids remained motionless, leaning against the crawling belt. I lugged my enormous bags off the carousel by myself, surrounded by male onlookers. No man came to my assistance, neither porter nor passenger.
At last, X-raying the bags after baggage claim to ensure I was not bringing anything illegal into the Kingdom, I was allowed to leave the terminal. I sighed with relief. The conspicuous authority in the airport made me uneasy and I felt anxious to get away. I stepped into the November night. A westward desert breeze caressed my face. Without the requisite black abbayah, I was patently out of place. Already I could see Riyadh wore more black than even New York City.
I bundled myself into the hospital van. The windows were blacked out, a cheap film peeled over the panes trapping both air bubbles and me behind a purple haze. Many of the vehicles I would ride in from now on would be themselves a veil, leaving me wondering of the real color of the world outside.
Umair loaded the luggage into the car and started the drive to my new home. The immaculate road leaving the airport stretched for several miles. It was perfectly straight, no need for the mad curves and tight angles of London or New York. Traffic was surprisingly heavy so late in the night. Everyone was driving very fast, as though hurtling to an imminent death. On either side, tumble-weed and desert bushes fell away to interminable sand, an earth-bound Sea of Tranquility on a nocturnal moonscape. The only movement, a voiceless ripple of breeze through sand, was soon blurred by our own ridiculous velocity along the roadway.
We entered an arterial highway into the city. Globalization had reached even here. Within minutes, I spied the first signs announcing American pop culture was for sale in Riyadh. Briefly thrilled that my childhood Arabic was good enough to read the signs myself, I started reading the names aloud. Thirty feet in the air, in jarring fluorescence, a sign screamed “Taco Bell” in Arabic. Saudis ate fajitas and tacos! From the van, I could see Saudi families disembarking their sedans and entering the fast food outlets. I was disappointed. This new world seemed depressingly uniform on the surface, so many American flagships of consumption. This Saudiscape revealed an America with Arabic subtitles, where men and women ate burgers and drank Coca-Cola. McDonalds, Pepsi, and finally even KFC followed, underlining the monotony and disconcertingly displaced sense of familiarity. I saw nothing which I could identify as authentically Arabian. The main highway on which we were driving was peppered only with fast food outlets and strips of car dealerships selling GMC Suburbans or Porsches.
Around us, cars raced by, bulging Cadillacs, bellies bursting with Saudi women and their children, at each wheel always a man. I wondered where they were going, so late at night. Every car window in the rear was blacked out with heavy tinted glass or veiled under pleated curtains. These roads teemed with more Cadillacs than Park Avenue. Yet inside the glossy cars, the people were most definitely from here. I allowed myself a first unseen smile.
Regulation black or steel-colored S-series Benzes passed the bumbling Cadillacs, racing one another along the highway. I looked to my left and locked eyes with a long-lashed camel in a battered Suzuki pickup, a jarring reminder that I was no longer in New York. Rubber burns marked the roadway in wide calligraphic Naskh strokes. The new Kingdom of German sedans sliced past the old Kingdom of munching camels, the two worlds dueling alongside each other on this, the Mecca Highway.
I looked at the drivers. Within these obese Cadillac-shaped camels, among the Benz-clad Bedouin, falcon-eyed men lounged at the wheel, each invariably dressed in checkered shemaghs and flowing white thobes. To a man, each carried a cell phone, a near-appendage to his headdress. The men were driving nonchalantly with one hand, reclining. So many commuting caliphs. Of course, there were no women drivers. The absurd, clamorous clash of modern and medieval—Benz and Bedou, Cadillac and camel—was one which would reverberate throughout my stay in the Kingdom. It never became less arresting to behold.
In these first moments, I was already captivated, in more ways than I knew.
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1 Sharia Law was originally derived from multiple schools of legal thought interpreting Divine Law originally codified in the Quran. In the first few centuries of Islam over thirty schools of legal thought existed and originally the Sharia was diverse and pluralistic. Some of this rich diversity has been lost over time, particularly in the modern era of resurging orthodoxy. Sharia literally means “The Way” and refers to the body of Islamic Law codified by the Quran and teachings referred to as hadith and sunna which recount the Prophet's sayings and actions respectively. Reference: The Great Theft, by Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl. In, “Introduction: Islam Torn Between Extremism and Moderation,” page 23.
2 In Islam, travel is regarded as a hardship for Muslims and therefore the five daily mandatory prayers are ascribed shorter duration to ease the difficulties borne by the traveling Muslim.
3 A nephew of the current monarch King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and grandson to the original founder of Saudi Arabia, King Abdul Aziz al-Saud, Prince al-Waleed, often known colloquially as “Waleed,” is renowned as a progressive agent of reform, most notably promoting women's rights throughout the Kingdom.
4 Abbayah means veil. Every woman, western or non-western, Muslim or not, is required by law to wear an abbayah over her clothing whenever in public. These garments are full length and include a head scarf to cover all hair. In Saudi Arabia they are almost always black in color.