24. The Difference Two Weeks Made

When I arrived in Riyadh the night of Friday, September 17, it almost escaped my notice that it had become much cooler. The hot blower dryer air that had been greeting my face upon my previous returns to Riyadh wasn’t there any more. It’s amazing the difference two weeks made. But more so than the change in temperature was the change in my outlook. After Australia my mind and my heart turned homeward. "E.T. go home."

The magical allure of travel, which was for me a big plus about the project, had by now worn out its luster. I used to look at the world map in my room at home and wonder where I wanted to go next time. I dream about it; I do a little research; I make some hypothetical plans; I dream about it more; I do a little more research; the plans become a bit more real; and if things work out, I actually do end up going. It took nearly two years for my South American trip to grow from an idea to a reality. The dreaming, the research, the planning, and the anticipation are an integral part, as well as the joy, of traveling. Since May, I have barreled through Austria, Hungry, the Czech Republic, Greece, Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, India, Singapore, Australia, and Japan. I have been to too many places in too short a period of time with too little effort. Planning was always hurried. With each trip there was less and less dreaming and anticipation. I was going through the motions without the enjoyment. I was travel fatigued. I was suffering from travel indigestion. It’s time to stop and save a few fine destinations to be visited in the future with more effort and with more interest. I scrapped plans for Kenya and Maldives. It’s time to go home.

The challenges of Arab culture was taking its toll too. I have come to realize that no matter how hard I try this is a culture and a people that I will never understand, let alone respect or accept. The culture and the mentality of this place is so antithetical to every fundamental value that I hold near and dear that the gulf between our world views is beyond bridgeable. The more I understand the culture, the more I become sure that this is not how I want to live. The differences in customs and business practices annoy me more and more. Their diametrically opposite take on equality, tolerance, and liberty makes me want to leave more and more. There is little, barring the wonderful fruit juices, that I like about this place. I belong elsewhere.

One of our client contacts – let’s just call him Al – is one of the most capable managers we have encountered at the client. While educated in Saudi Arabia, he speaks fluent English and has visited the West. He has a no-nonsense Western way of doing business. He invited Carl, Ricardo, and me for "coffee talks" outside work on three separate occasions. The first time was after we had returned to the client site at night to check on a few things. He asked us to coffee. The majority of the conversation, or more like his monologue, was on religion. It’s a good sign. He saw us as friends now – misguided friends who should be saved. Carl nodded and nodded with a few comments that sometimes sounded a bit apologetic. I kept my mouth shut most the time until the very end. It must be the fatigue from a long day of work and the starvation from not having had dinner. I had to make one comment on Lucy from Africa. He dismissed it with a sneer, "Why would God create monkeys just to evolve them into men?" I had nothing more to say. See, the Jews and the Christians got a few things wrong, but at least they all believe in one and only one God. The polytheists, like the Hindus, are really screwed up about what they believe. But the atheists … the atheists are the damnedest of all. I should have been quieter. How did I forget that it’s beyond their grasp that a person can believe in no god?

The second time was at a coffee shop. I made sure that I ordered the most substantial dish on the menu, just in case. The third time was dinner at a Saudi restaurant before Carl left. We talked quite a bit about Saudi traditions and customs, which were interesting to learn, and a bit about politics, which were fine as we steered away from sensitive topics. He spoke of the joy of going into the desert with family and friends. He spoke romantically of that something in the desert that beckons a Saudi. Do they understand that most other people don’t fancy the desert and would rather see a movie or two? I had the feeling that just as we don’t seem to understand how anyone who’s been to the outside world could stand living here, the Saudis don’t seem to understand why the foreigners wanted to leave so much.

The Western expats stay perhaps because, although separate from and socially lower than the Saudis, they are generally a privileged class. A few weeks after we moved into villa VIP 16 in Cordoba, signs were put up around the pool to indicate that the VIP pool is for residents in the VIP villas and their guests only, most likely at the urge of the same snotty neighbor who complained about our being in villa 16. It disgusted me that in this already exclusive compound, some people wanted to make it still more exclusive.

My disdain to this place thus extends very much to the Western expat community here. Some of the Westerners seem to enjoy being higher up on the class structure. For a pittance they can have maids and gardeners and drivers to order around. The lower classes dare not bow to them and "yes, sir" them. One subcontractor hired by our client to run some testing was based in Dubai. Most of its fourteen or so test engineers were Indians. The compound they lived in was arranged from Dubai. They reserved some facilities in the compound to have a BBQ party. Two Brits there refused to leave. The lead guy complained to the compound manager. The compound manager sent them a letter afterwards stating that he had been threatened and they were not allowed to use certain compound facilities. And that was that. What recourse did a bunch of Indians have? A similar incident had occurred to another team of the same subcontractor. In that case, the living arrangements were made by their client, whose Canadian general manager got on the phone and screamed at the compound manager to straightened him out.

On my flight from Riyadh to London for my Thanksgiving break, the guy sitting next to me was a chatty Englishman, who’s lived in Riyadh for the last five years managing two or three compounds. He prided himself in running compounds that women can walk around, without fear, in bikinis if they so choose. To keep his compound Western, the likes of Lebanese are quoted the inflated rack rates, while Westerners are given the corporate rates. Realizing something, he expanded his definition of Westerners to include all "Westernized people."

I therefore expand my disdain to include elements of all "Westernized people." It’s been said that Cordoba Compound was historically a stronghold of Americans with military connections. The compound now has a good mix of British, Australians, Americans, Europeans, as well as some Japanese and Lebanese. At the pool I met this old Japanese guy, who worked for a bank here. He asked me where I was from. For my amusement I told him I was Chinese. He asked if I was visiting the compound. I know he meant no harm, but why the presumption?

However, the appearance of segregation, prejudice, and discrimination is in large part the result of the conflict between two uncompromisingly different and diametrically opposite ways of life. The cultural gulf between what’s inside and what’s outside the compound walls is so deep that the walls could barely keep from crumbling under the pressure – not the pressure to merge but the pressure of one side swallowing up the other. Inside the compound walls is a way of life unacceptable to those outside the walls. Outside the walls are people feeling threatened by the way of life inside the walls that’s also practiced by the larger world. Outside the walls are people not generally known for their tolerance. Outside the walls lies the nearby Al Imam University of Islamic Studies, whose wailing prayer calls drift over the walls at set times of the day. What’s barely keeping the walls propped up is the money, and thus power, inside the walls. What’s barely keeping the walls propped up is the strict distinction and separation of what’s public and what’s private. What’s barely keeping the walls propped up is keeping those outside the walls outside the walls. Small wonder then why inside the walls only Western clothing is allowed.

The inaccessibility of the world outside the compound walls doesn’t necessarily translate into community within the compound walls. What surprised me about the chatty Englishman I met on the plane was that he was single. What surprised me further was his proclamation that he had better social life in the five years in Riyadh than he had had back in England. Perhaps his job as a compound manager helped. Our personal experience has been that the social network within the expat community is very much a network of wives. Being young, single, male, and thus with a different set of priorities and agendas than the married with kids, we are effectively shut out of the network.

The only remaining social interactions is with the other team members of the firm on the project. What concerned me the most was that I had lost interest. New people came onto the project. Blissfully in Stage I, ignorant of what’s coming in Stage II, they were eager to go out to see the malls, dine in the nice restaurants, or drive in the desert. I found myself declining invitation that I would have been quick to accept. The old timers had become entrenched in Stage III. I was no longer interested in much. Just let me veg out in front of the TV with deliveries from the village canteen.

It saddens me that there are people who have worked for years and years away from their loved ones. Gafoor, one of our two drivers, have worked in the Gulf States for the last 19 years. He came a young man at the age of 19. Married at 21, he has three kids back home in India now. His employer here pays for one trip home for six weeks every two years. He writes letters to his wife during the lulls of a busy day. In front of us he jokes and laughs, but one time Ricardo saw him crying when he wrote those letters home. They are paid a mere $270 a month, and these are the good jobs. Sometimes I wonder what they think of us when someone gripes how this is not what he had spent $80,000 on an MBA to be doing, and vehemently wants off this project. That we are not the same? We go home every three weeks.

It’s amazing how in the beginning, I had little problem spending four or five weeks at a time here. Lately, the two and half weeks I had to be here between each trip home seemed like an eternity. My telephone bill was making an exponential climb into the stratosphere.

The months of October and November brought significant changes in weather. It did not escape my notice that the sun was setting earlier and earlier to a time that I remembered so well when I first arrived in mid-March. It’s now too cold to swim in the outdoor pool. It’s down right chilly after I got back from Thanksgiving. Suddenly, a lot of the Saudis are sporting gray or black robes with a jacket on top. I had been made fun of by the other guys on the project for not wearing my suit jacket to the client. I declared that I shall wear the jacket on my last day here. It is cold enough now that I have been wearing my jacket for the last two weeks.

More amazing was the rain. It was cloudy all day long on Wednesday, December 1. At around dusk, it began raining. I mean real rain. Not just a few drops like the two times we saw in March, but real rain. The ground was completely wet. We had a farewell party that night for several of us who were rolling off the project. We were to play soccer and touch football at some recreational place for rent not too far from Cordoba in the direction of the airport. The one time of the year we decided to do some team sports outside, it rained. Perhaps it was an omen that it’s time to leave.

Surely, I knew exactly when I’d be leaving as I had begun counting down my days towards the end. On the wall behind my desk, adjacent to my infamous Cultural Shock Stages Chart, which you can find in Letter 15, "A Small Staffing Challenge", is a top ten list:

and a count down chart that started on November 21:

Each day a sticky note went up to update the count, until they were all 1’s at the end of the day on December 5 and all 0’s at the end of the day on December 6.

Terrence
Riyadh
December 6, 1999