5 A thobe is a loose fitting long sleeved ankle length garment worn by Saudi men. Usually white in color except for brief months in winter when it may be made of darker cloth (brown, black, or navy). Summer heat means the white thobes are usually made of fine cotton. Sleeves can be cuffed or simply loose. The neckline can be collared, in which case it is usually worn buttoned up, or round necked and worn unbuttoned.
MY NEW HOME,
A MILITARY COMPOUND
WE WERE NOW AT THE extreme east of the city. Waiting at traffic lights, the dusty silence was punctuated by rubber burns on slick, vacant roads. Crackling Arabic music carried on currents of exhaust fumes drifted into earshot from a nearby car. I could smell gasoline. We were on a deserted road leading up toward a compound. It was remote; soon there were no lights. In the darkness I could sense the edges of a huge desert.
Sudden floodlights heralded a gate. Barriers blazing, guardhouse gleaming, this was the gate to my new life, my life in Saudi Arabia. I would be working at the King Fahad National Guard Hospital, a hospital for the military protecting the Saudi royal family. I was now an employee of the Saudi Arabian National Guard Health Affairs and so would live on a militarized compound. Quickly, the well-groomed Saudi soldiers, uncovered hair perfectly coiffed and waxed even this late in the night, waved us through the gate without inquiry; I was in a hospital vehicle, with a known escort.
After a few brief turns through the campus-like grounds, we approached one of many buildings. Flat-roofed, cuboid buildings coated in garish terracotta paint extended far and wide. External air conditioning units peppered the surfaces, barnacles on whale hide. No central air, when it would be over 120°F in the summer? I wondered about the furnace of summer ahead, noticing the night air, which tasted of the pervasive dust. I smacked my already chapped lips to get the chalky taste away.
The heaving white minivan, mimicking its driver, ground to a lethargic halt. I looked at a neglected bilingual sign: Building 40. Even in the dark, the building was evidently in poor repair, a stark contrast from the dazzling airport. I entered cautiously, following Umair. I watched with amazement as he expertly gathered the skirt of his thobe. Curiously woman-like, he deftly raised the hem to avoid tripping while he carried my suitcases upstairs. For a time, I digested the strange scene of the heaving bulk of a man who now revealed the distinct gestures of a woman.
We entered an airless apartment, inhaling mouthfuls of dust. A plywood door slammed cheaply behind us. With a clumsy swipe, Umair slapped on the lights. I could smell hot dust burning on bare light bulbs. The apartment had been unoccupied for a while. More animated than at any time yet, Umair now reveled in the role of rotund realtor. Eagerly he showed me the appliances, opening all the drawers and showing me the cutlery for ten. He explained how to switch on the satellite television, smiling as he surfed channels which were broadcasting from a West now as remote to me here as Jupiter. He peered at me closely, reviewing my reaction. Somewhere in between passport control and the apartment it had become appropriate to look at me. Finally, he directed me to a welcome food pack. He left, his heaving footsteps retreating as he clumped down the concrete stairwell, doubtless while clutching the dangerous hems of his thobe. Stupidly, but suddenly, I missed him.
Hours later, I awoke, heavy-headed, disoriented. Slowly my thoughts came into focus. My sandpapered throat was rasping. The bed was facing the wrong direction. As I regained full consciousness, shaking off the heavy vestiges of sleep, I remembered: my entire life was now facing in this new, wrong, Eastern direction. I drew back the heavy black-out curtain, blinking in the stinging winter sunlight. Molten light poured in through windows as I opened them, chasing away every drop of darkness. Above, an interminably blanched sky would soon make me yearn for long-forgotten, gray clouds of England. The view from my apartment revealed that Saudi Arabia seemed now a poor country, despite the swashbuckling Mercedes of my arrival. I would learn that Saudi Arabia was many things to many people: to the rich, a land of boundless wealth; to the poor, a prison of abject poverty; to the expatriate worker, a land of contrasts and inconsistencies, an ever moving labyrinth of contradiction, not wholly one nor wholly the other. I readied myself for my first day in the Kingdom.
Dressing, I noticed a number of typed notes throughout the apartment; detailed instructions from the chairman of the department. Away from Riyadh at the time of my arrival into the Kingdom, he had left helpful details. I read with interest, hungry for information.
I unfolded a map, studying the glossy colors like a child. I felt displaced. According to my best estimations, I was perched on a precipice of encroaching desert. I looked out of the window. Certainly my eyes confirmed this was so. Returning to the map, I noticed the utter lack of detail. Riyadh didn't look very big or very labyrinthine according to this map, the way a city of 4.2 million6 surely should be. I wondered about my new bearings.
“Think of yourself as in someone's private garden, Qanta. You are a guest in a private retreat, unlike anywhere else you may have lived. I like to call it The Magic Kingdom,” I remembered the chairman saying. I wondered what he could mean.
Nearby, I noticed a handbook on Islamic etiquette that he had also left for me. I glanced at it. Cartoonish diagrams peppered short couplets of text, curiously like a child's book. I flicked through the pages, disinterested. These simple diagrams hoped to communicate the most complex cultural subtleties to non-Muslims? Suddenly, I wondered whether the chairman understood he had hired a Muslim woman. Pictures of veiled women and thobed men discussed codes of behavior with which I then believed myself to be familiar: a man greeting a man (with handshakes); a man greeting a woman (without handshakes and never without the presence of her male family member); permitted and forbidden items of consumption (alcohol, porcine flesh, illicit drugs); nature and timing of prayer (five times a day during which shops would always shut). After skimming through this “child's stuff” (stuff of my childhood at least), I discarded it. While I had briefly considered culture shock on arrival to the Kingdom as a possibility in past weeks, I had quickly dismissed it as silly, assuming my Muslim womanhood would give me an immediate and very natural carte blanche of insight and acceptance in Saudi Arabia.
I wasn't remotely worried about customs and culture here. As a Muslim, I considered myself a member of this club. My trite self-assurance began to ring hollow. Echoes of doubt were already magnifying in my new reality. What I didn't know, as I carelessly tossed the wooden books aside, were the legislated ways of orthodox Islam. Knowing the basic tenets of Islam would not get me very far. I would only make my painful discoveries with time as I bloodied myself colliding in one culture clash after another. I was to need an altogether different guide book for this “Kingdom of Strangers.”
I returned to the notes. I was to call Maurag, my secretary, at once, one of them instructed. I dialed the number, speaking into a receiver that smelled of dust. She would be right over to take me to lunch so we could make plans for my essential first purchase in Saudi Arabia: tonight we were going shopping for an abbayah.
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6 Riyadh's population is 4.26 million as of February 2005 and has grown by 4.2% in the eight years prior. Of the total, 34% (1.46 million) are expatriate workers, the remainder Saudi nationals (2.46 million). While the population continues to grow, the rate of population growth has diminished as internal domestic migration to Riyadh has decreased in recent years. http://www.saudiembassy.net/ 2005News/News/NewsDetail.asp?cIndex=5111.