14. Nineteen Hours in Bahrain

The problem with getting a bunch of consultants to take a weekend trip is that no one cares about it enough to plan ahead. By the time I paid a quick visit to the travel agent in the compound, it was too late to arrange a trip to Dubai, UAE. Bahrain, connected through a causeway to Dammam, 390 km northeast of Riyadh, was the obvious alternative. George, who had a visa applied for from a previously aborted trip to Bahrain, would be our driver. The Suburban was also ready with the necessary permits for travel. We needed the big car as there would be a total of seven of us, including George.

After a totally useless morning meeting at the client, in which 44 people attended, and my meeting at the client’s main subcontractor, we were ready to leave at around 3:30 p.m., Thursday, May 20. Larry estimated the arrival time to be 8:00. "No, nine o’clock. You wanda bet?"

I don’t know what possessed Larry to bring one 24-pack of fake beer, one 24-pack of Coke, and one 24-pack of chocolate milk. We are going to get real beer in Bahrain; Coke tastes awful when warm; chocolate milk spoils in the heat. (Actually it was preserved processed chocolate milk that’s pretty hardy.) Larry should let his wife pack next time.

The drive to Dammam was rather uninteresting. It was about 7:30 when we stopped for a short break on the Saudi side of the causeway to Bahrain. Crossing the border, however, took a hour and half. First, proper forms must be filled out for the car. Then we exited Saudi Arabia, which also required forms. Then someone checked for the proper stamps again. Then we went to the Bahrain side and stopped to fill out a form and pay a fee for a 72-hour transit visa. Then the visa got stamped. Then we got the papers for the car done. Then we got our car and luggage checked at customs. I don’t remember if we stopped again for someone to double check our passports. Seven people, six nationalities, five consultants - imagine the confusion.

Srini had reserved a room at Le Meridian. He and Ricardo would stay there. He had no clue where the hotel was. So we decided to find the Gulf Gate Hotel that the rest of us more budget minded folks planned to check out. It was along the coast in the downtown hotel district of Manama and was easily spotted. Larry, his wife, and I went to inspect the rooms and found them to be acceptable. At about one third of the rate of Le Meridian, it was adequate for one night. I had asked for a room for George. Then he surprised me by saying that he could stay with his brother.

By the time Srini and Ricardo came back from Le Meridian, it was already well past ten. We drove around the downtown area looking for a restaurant and ended up in the Sheraton. We set George loose to find his "brother", who came with George to pick us up after the dinner. George’s brother looked so completely different from George. Our innocent question of who was the elder brother was unanswered. We figured it out later that it was just some friend George knew. I didn’t like it that George was pulling our legs.

I could never quite figure out what goes on in George’s head. For one, he would say nothing when he’s completely lost. This is not a good thing to do as a driver. Time after time he would just keep on driving until one of us in the back ask something like, George, where are we going? He would say nothing. We would ask something like, George, do you know where you are going? He would say nothing. We would ask something like, George, where are we? He would say nothing. He would just say nothing. Then he would take an exit off the highway or make an abrupt U-turn. This was how our desert drive to the "Edge of the World" at the beginning of May ended. Markus was rather pissed off by this sort of thing from George. When the transformation piece of our project was sold, we gave George to the other team.

It was past midnight when we dropped off Larry and his five-month pregnant wife at the Gulf Gate. I was rather tired, but what the heck, let’s go find Savage Garden, a pub that Ricardo got info about from Le Meridian. We had no luck finding it. Chris and I returned to the Gulf Gate.

On one side of the lobby at the Gulf Gate Hotel was a restaurant, where earlier a rather cute singer performed to a rather empty room with two or three tables of guests. Loud music came out of two rooms on the other side of the lobby. We found a roomful of Gulf Arabs watching four or five women of rather Renaissance proportions in form-fitting evening dresses on a low platform stage. The dresses were perhaps a bit tight but they did not reveal all that much. For those of you who are getting a little ahead of me, rest assured that the dresses never came off. Or, so I believed. The women walked about a little and moved to the music and songs in motions that did not seem to go beyond shifting weight from one foot to the other. The price of admission was ten Bahraini dinars, or about $27. A ten-second peek was generally allowed while inquiring about the "show." Chris reported that some of the Arabs held hands with the women and danced. Considering that most of the Arabs in the audience probably rarely set eyes on a strange woman without an abaya, the "show" must have been rather risqué and scandalous.

Opposite of the Arab room was the Indian room. The Indian room did not have a cover charge. Here four or five Indian women in saris danced to a small crowd of Indians, save Chris and me and one or two Arabs. The dresses were even less revealing than those in the Arab room, but the women danced more energetically. A woman and two men sang Indian songs. In lieu of money, a cloth flower could be purchased for one dinar and a lei for five to be given to the ladies. Chris bought a couple of flowers and a lei. He rather enjoyed the subtle eye contacts and hand gestures. I had a beer and simply observed. I was getting bored and left around 2:30. Chris stayed a bit longer.

Sleep.

I awoke to a windy and foggy morning. From the balcony we would see the beach but little beyond. The wind picked up quite a bit of sand. Visibility was very poor.

George was a half hour late. He drove us east, since the ocean was to our left,. I heard Ricardo or Srini say that the Meridian was to the west. "George, do you know where Le Meridian is?" No response. That’s plenty response to me. "Make a U-turn." After a while, George recognized the route he took last night.

Le Meridian is a very nice hotel. This particular one is a few kilometers outside of the city. It has a nice beach in front of a small lagoon. It was interesting to see bikinis and abayas sitting around the same swimming pool. The wind and the sand made staying outside a lot less appealing than it otherwise would have been.

Chris and Ricardo wanted to stay to enjoy the beach and the water. Larry wanted to see the wildlife sanctuary and the museums. Srini, for reasons way beyond me, wanted George to drive him to the airport to see the duty-free shop. Wildlife? It’s a desert. Museums? I had seen enough good ones. Archaeological sites? A pile of stones, and I had seen far better piles. Swimming pools? We already had those at Cordoba compound every day. Beaches? It’s 400 kilometers of beach from here to Riyadh. I couldn’t care less what I did and was fine with any of the things the others wanted to do (well, except the duty-free shop). I was, however, a little tired of all the different plans.

Finally it was agreed that Larry and his wife would have the car. Larry asked me to go along, so I did. Since it was a Friday and it was some holiday in Bahrain, the museums and a lot of other places, including the wildlife sanctuary, were closed. There were a few archaeological sites that we could visit. We went to see the ruin of a Barbar temple that supposedly dated to second or third millenniums B.C. Yep, a pile of stones. Then we turned east to visit Muharraq Island, which is connected to Bahrain Island via a short bridge. We tried to find two restored old houses, but couldn’t find them at all. We ended up going to see the Arad Fort. The site was closed, but we got in through an opening on the side. Away from the highways, the back streets of Muharraq were narrow and windy. The buildings were not the new and glitzy kind in downtown Manama. We drove to the southern tip of the island and then went back to Le Meridian.

Srini reported that he took a taxi into town to see the souqs, but a lot of them were closed. Chris and Ricardo reported that they had a good time at the beach. Given the choice between a full lunch or two hours at the beach, I chose the beach, except that George had made the decision for me, since he was nowhere to be found and I had my swimsuit in the car.

We left Le Meridian at around 3:30. After a couple of hours of driving we worried that George might be too tired. That was when we noticed that there wasn’t any rest stop for something like a hundred kilometers. By that time we were only a hour or so away from Riyadh.

The surroundings began to look like the outskirts of Riyadh. I don’t know what tipped Srini off, but suddenly he asked George the where are we question. No response. I thought we were somewhere on the eastern edge of Riyadh since we were approaching from the northeast and I hadn’t seen the glitzy downtown area. As luck would have it, moments later the Suburban broke down.

George pulled over to the side of the highway. We got out of the car, trying to figure out what to do. We opened the hood, but none of us knew anything about cars, so it was rather useless. The engine still ran fine, but the power wasn’t going to the wheels. Sounded like a transmission problem. I was rather glad that we were not somewhere in the middle of the desert between Damman and Riyadh. The idea of going back to the compound by thumb came across my mind.

There was an emergency telephone booth 50 meters ahead of us. Some shopping mall had been spotted to be a short distance behind us. We could call for a tow truck. We could call the compound. We could leave the car and take taxis. We could call to get one of our drivers. Had any one of us been with George, he would have taken some course of action fairly quickly, which probably would have worked out just fine. With five consultants together, however, reaching a consensus was a rather laborious task.

No one else seemed to care about the emergency phone booth, so I went to check it out. Regular calls required a phone card, which we didn’t have, but a tow truck was just a button away. Several of us wanted to go to the shopping mall to call Cordoba. They wanted to take George with them. "Why?" He was the only one who had a driver’s license and I thought he should stay with the car. "George knows where we are." "George, where are we?" George mumbled something to me. And why did we need four people to go make a phone call?

A taxi had stopped. We put Larry and his wife in there. Srini and I joined them. We’d go back to Cordoba to deliver the news. One of us would come back with the driver to brief the rest about what should be done with car. The taxi started and we asked where we were. I looked out the window to read the exit sign. Exit 8C. Exit 8C? That sounded familiar. Exit 8C? Before my brain had the time to click, we saw the Thinnet construction site. Oh, my God! Of course it sounded familiar. Every time I jump into a taxi to go back to Cordoba, I tell the driver, "Al Imam University. Exit 8." We were perhaps less than 500 meters (in direct distance) away from Cordoba!

This was the most amazing and the most ridiculous thing. The car broke down right outside of our compound and we didn’t know. Nineteen years as a driver, George still had no sense of direction. Two months with George, we still wanted to trust his sense of direction.

We reached the compound gate. Srini changed his mind and wanted to let only the driver go back. What! One of us should go and tell the rest where they were and what they should do. How’s the taxi driver going to explain the situation, an incredulous one no less? I said I’d go. Srini then said he’d go back with the taxi.

Then Larry wanted to wait with his pregnant wife at the gate for the rest to get back. I thought, Why? Srini was on his way. I told Larry and his wife that they really didn’t need to wait. Larry then asked the front gate to call a tow truck. I thought, Why? Leave the car. Let the people in the office who arranged the rental leases deal with it tomorrow. I asked Larry if it’d be alright with them if I went to my villa.

No one was in VIP 16, our office villa. I went back to my villa.

I had had enough of things beyond my logical comprehension for the day. Nevertheless, it was a rather interesting trip.

Terrence
Riyadh
Thursday, May 27, 1999