TEACH ENGLISH IN SAUDI ARABIA Saudi Experiences
• Home Page

Excerpts from an English Teacher's Diary

Click on the links to other sections (or scroll down): A Wedding Party Without the Bride • Haitham's Extended Family • The Black House Café

The Camel Market

• On the way back to Riyadh we took detour to the camel market. I'd expected a building, but it was just a lot of paddocks scattered around bumpy tracks, with big square bales of fresh green grass on sale along the main road, along with sacks full of what was presumably dry camel feed.
• Groups of men in thobes were hanging about the paddocks and there seemed to be a fair bit of trading going on in a quiet sort of way.
• I knew a female camel was called a naga, but otherwise I thought camels were just camels. However, it seems it's a bit like Eskimos and snow, with different names for sand camels, mountain camels, stud camels, camels in calf, camels in milk, racing camels, different colours, breeds, etc.
• A Newly-Born Calf
  • Just before we arrived a calf had been born, and it was lying on the ground next to its mother, not moving at all. Then it raised its head and eventually struggled to its feet. I assumed that photos of animals weren't haram (forbidden), so I got a series of shots. It's a pity I just missed the birth.
  • I heard a camel complaining and saw that it was being winched up onto a truck, so I took some pictures, even though there were men standing around, as their backs were turned.
• I Nearly Buy a Sheep
  • There were also some sheep, which Kiwi Dave said were a famous breed - I think they're called Nejdi - which the Saudis won't let you export. He asked the price, and the owner, who was called Sadiq, thought he was serious.
  • So Dave said I was the one who was interested, and Sadiq insisted on giving me his phone number. When I wrote it down in Arabic numerals as he said it he became even more convinced we were serious buyers.
  • He even let us take his photo, close up, not just in the distance as I had photographed the groups of men. I didn't ask where he was from, but from his style of dress I suspect he wasn't Saudi. The sleeves of his thobe widened towards the wrists, it didn't have a collar, like a shirt, and his white headdress was wrapped around his head, a bit like a turban, and had tassels at the ends.
• Free Camel's Milk
  • We were told that the camel's milk was free, obviously a hangover from the days when anyone in the desert was allowed to milk any camel they saw, but I didn't fancy it, and anyway, none of us knew how to milk a camel.
• A "Camel Taxi"
  • On the way back to Riyadh we saw a pickup truck in front of us with two camels in the back, roped down, so I quickly took a photo as we passed.

A Wedding Party Without the Bride

• The wedding party was the only one I've been to where I didn't see the bride.
• Mohammad, our regular taxi driver, picked us up at 8 pm - me, Brian and Chris. I had a map which Faisal, the groom, had given me, but all in Arabic, of course. We found the area without any problem, about a fifteen-kilometre drive away, on the outskirts of the city, off a busy highway. The problem was that there were celebrations going everywhere in walled compounds, scattered around dirt tracks without any names.
• An Invitation to Another Wedding
  • Eventually we found what we thought was the right place, but when we asked for Faisal, they'd never heard of him. However, there was another wedding party inside and we were told we were welcome. It seemed like a they'd have been happy to have us stay, but we discovered that Faisal's party was in the next compound.
  • His uncle was at the gate and he welcomed us with a smile and let us through a big space in the open air where rugs were already laid out for the meal, and into a long, low building. Inside was a big room with sofas round the walls, where most of the male members of Faisal's extended family were already seated. We had to go round and shake everyone's hand before sitting down. Then as more guests came in we had to stand up and shake their hands. Faisal hadn't arrived yet.
• The Coffee Ceremony
  • In the centre of the room was a big coffeepot and lots of handle-less little cups. A man picked up the pot and a tray of cups and offered us coffee. It's considered bad manners to refuse, but it's not normal to drink more than two or three cups. The coffee was unsweetened, greenish, and flavoured with cardamom. When you've had enough, you hold the cup with your hand over the top when offered more, and move it slightly from side to side, with a rocking motion.
  • Everyone was very friendly, although there was a young religious zealot, about twenty, who told us with a smile that Osama bin Laden was a very good man, and also that he was a wolf while Bush was a mouse. He also said that bin Laden would kill the Americans, even though Chris had told him he was American. The zealot was a weedy little specimen with glasses, so it's as well bin Laden wasn't relying on him to kill Americans. I saw older men looking in disapproval, and three men apologized to us for his remarks afterwards. One of the older men had studied in Miami, and spoke very good English and a little Spanish.
  • Next everyone was offered several little glasses of sweet tea and mint without tea, and there was more chatting. This went on for more than an hour.
• Looking Like a Prince
  • Then Faisal appeared, looking really elegant in a long white robe, decorated with black and gold piping, a plain white headdress, and his oqaal tipped forward stylishly. He really looked like an Arabian prince.
  • The senior members of the family greeted him first, then we stood in line to congratulate him. There was more tea-drinking, then after a while Faisal was led out.
• Eating Out of a Communal Dish
  • Just when I was thinking we should phone and ask Mohammad to come for us later, people started to wander outside, so we followed. We washed our hands and took our shoes off and sat down on one of a series of squares of rugs, each with a big communal dish in the middle containing rice and lamb. As it happened we sat next to the zealot, but when he mentioned bin Laden again an older man who was sitting opposite smiled at us sympathetically. The meal didn't last very long, and as people had eaten enough they just drifted off. We could hear the women's party at the other side of the wall, which sounded much livelier.
• Another Invitation
  • There was time to spare until our taxi was due at 11 PM, so we accepted an invitation to drink more tea with a group of teachers, including the one who had studied in Miami, and another who was principal of a school and also an imam. As we left we were invited to another party, not a wedding celebration, just a family get-together. I'm sure this was a genuine invitation. Everyone was very friendly, and even the young zealot made his menacing comments with a smile, and didn't look as though he hated Chris personally for being an American, just the American enemy in general.
  • So that was that. I never did get to see the bride, but none of the men did, except for Faisal, and presumably his uncle.

Haitham's Extended Family

• The trip to see my student Haitham's family didn't turn out as I expected. I arrived at his father's "call cabin" business after the maghreb prayers on Friday, as arranged, and sat there drinking sweet tea, and being introduced to his brothers and cousins. I was a little late in arriving, so I was surprised when we just sat there talking.
• Eventually we set out. He told me his house was about a fifteen-minute walk away. It turned out to be in a district I'd already explored, over a sandy area marked out with building plots, and down dark, seedy streets that in some countries I'd be a bit wary of entering at night. He pointed out a tumbledown house where he said he'd lived when he first came from Egypt. (His mother is Egyptian and his father Saudi.) I was introduced to even more brothers (but no sisters - it's as if women didn't exist).
• He didn't seem all that sure exactly how many brothers and sisters he had, somewhere between twenty-five and twenty-eight. Of course he just said "brothers", which for him included sisters.
• However, he was sure about the number of wives his father had: three.
• The "Bedou" and Haitham's Egyptian Uncle
  • I never got to see inside his house, perhaps because by this time we got there you could hear the call to the isha prayers, the last ones of the day, from all the surrounding mosques. Haitham told me he often skipped prayers, perhaps because he's lived in Egypt, and I don't think he could take me to his house when he was supposed to be at the mosque.
  • We walked down an unlit, unpaved alleyway which smelled of goats, and I was introduced the local village idiot who claimed to be Bedou, and in charge of the goats, and one of Haitham's uncles, an "old man" in an Egyptian-style turban who I suspect was younger than me.
• Another, Sheesha-Smoking, Uncle
  • We entered what I thought was a building where animals were kept. Perhaps it was, judging by the smell, but just inside the entrance was a little room with a television, a stereo and a single bed, where a man was smoking a sheesha. The room was shabby and untidy, and no bigger than many European or North American bathrooms.
  • It seems not all Saudis are rich, or maybe the money just has to be spread around thinly when you have to support three wives and twenty-odd children, plus an extended family of assorted uncles, their wives and their offspring.
  • The man with the sheesha seemed startled to see me, but was very friendly. It turned out he was another uncle. After a while sitting around chatting, with Haitham interpreting, and me using my phrase book when his English failed him, we left.
  • Down the alleyway the Egyptian uncle appeared out of the darkness with a bunch of grapes, and insisted that I ate the ones he fed me, and that I take part of the bunch away with me.
• More Invitations
  • I've been asked to go to the beach with Haitham and his brothers this weekend, but teachers aren't supposed to fraternize with students, so I said I wasn't sure because I was thinking of going to Jeddah.
  • I wasn't. This was just an excuse. But another student nearby offered me a lift to Jeddah, as he lives with an uncle in Yanbu during the week, and commutes home at weekends.
  • So now I've two invitations to wriggle out of.

The Black House Café

• High spot of the weekend was a trip to the Black House Café, with Nawaf, a Saudi friend. He took Kiwi Dave, Brian and me to this trendy nightspot with its illuminated name in huge English letters, located in the modern Olaya district, close to the Faisalia Tower.
• This is what the Saudis consider to be the city centre, although it was as dead as ever, even on a Thursday night, which is the equivalent of a Western Saturday night.
• If New York is the city that never sleeps, Riyadh is the city which never wakes up.
• Thobes Glowing a Luminous Bluish White
  • The place was bizarre, done out in a style which might have been fashionable in some trendy Soho coffee bar in another age - say London in the sixties.
  • It was full of Saudi men (no women, of course) sitting round tables in the semi-darkness, their thobes a luminous bluish white under ultraviolet lights.
  • On the walls were luminous stars and crescent-moons and the odd ringed planet with the globe projecting. Hanging from the ceiling was a plastic airplane and luminous coloured bones.
• American Football and Ice Hockey
  • There was a big TV screen and a smaller one, both showing sport without sound, at first a football match from Jeddah and later American football and ice hockey from Boston.
  • Bottles on shelves behind the bar looked as though they might contain alcohol, but naturally they didn't.
• High Prices to Keep Out the Riffraff
  • A Moroccan waiter brought the menu, which was all in Arabic, so Nawaf helped me decipher it. There were various types of coffee, and of tea, soft drinks, non-alcoholic cocktails and icecream, all overpriced to keep out the riffraff.
  • We ordered cappuccinos and mint tea, and the bill came to thirty-odd riyals for the four of us (about $8), quite a lot of money here.
• The VIP Section
  • In one corner was a raised platform with a rail around it, which I thought at first might be for a band, as there was recorded music: a strange mixture of Saudi, Lebanese, Moroccan, Cuban and Sting.
  • Hanging above this platform was a luminous cutout skull with the letters "VIP" underneath. I assumed that someone had accidentally, or unknowingly, substituted a V for an R, but Nawaf said that, no, it was the VIP corner and you had to pay extra to sit there. Then I noticed chairs on the platform, all empty.
• An Illicit Photo
  • I commented to Nawaf that it was a pity I couldn't take a photo, and he replied that no one would notice if I didn't use flash. I had a fast film in my camera, so I turned the flash off and sneaked just one shot.
  • We chatted for a few hours then went back to what we loosely call home and to bed. And that's how you paint the town red in Riyadh.