I finally arrived in Riyadh at around 11:30 p.m., Saturday night (March 13). A driver had been sent to wait for me at the airport. This was much better than dealing with taxis. When I asked earlier about the direction to the compound where our team was staying, the response was that a driver would be waiting and would not leave without getting me. When I asked again, I at least got the name – Cordoba Compound.
Neither the name nor the directions would have been any use actually. The taxi drivers would not know the compound, and I wouldn’t be able to give them directions. There is simply no functioning address system in Saudi Arabia. Anyone who wants to receive mail gets a P.O. box. Paying phone bills for people without a box means getting a call from the phone company and going down to the local office to pay. It’s a little like Tokyo, where buildings are not numbered sequentially along a street. But in Tokyo at least there is, however bad, a system. Taxi drivers in Riyadh usually find their way by landmarks. For example, Cordoba Compound is near Al Imam University, a prominent landmark most people know. Once we get to the university, we can see the compound and reach it via a road that follows some power lines.
On one side of the compound is an open field of sand and construction rubbish. This seems to be a fairly common practice. In many areas of Riyadh we see walled-off buildings juxtaposed with open lots of construction debris. Outside the compound walls, there is a ring of concrete barricades. Additional concrete barriers, in sets of three, each over one-half the width of the road, are placed perpendicular to the walls and the barricades. Cars would have to go along the walls to reach the front gate, and would have to negotiate quite carefully around these barriers in S-turns. It got me a little worried at first when I arrived, since the guy seemed to be driving right into a barricade, until I saw the opening in the offsetting barriers. Supposedly, there are some government officials living in the compound, so security is a little tighter. Other expat compounds generally do not have this level of security.
Inside the compound is an oasis of luxury. The curving streets are cleanly swept without so much as a piece of trash. Kid’s bicycles and soccer balls lie about waiting for another day’s game. The lawns are perfectly manicured. The shrubs are neatly trimmed. The flowers are always blooming at their peak. The stately date trees add a touch of magnificence.
Most of the daily needs of this community can be taken care of at the center of the compound, where one can find a small but well-stocked grocery store, a dry-cleaner, a travel agency, a video rental store (with horrible and pirated selections), a large outdoor swimming pool, several tennis courts, and a recreational center. The center boasts a basketball court, an indoor tennis court, squash courts, a weight room, an aerobics room, saunas, steam rooms, pool tables, ping-pong tables, and four bowling lanes. Four smaller pools can be found around the compound, one of which is right behind Villa 16 where I am staying. The pool is of decent size such that I can do lap swimming, although the water is usually too warm for a vigorous workout. There are also two Jacuzzis and two tennis courts next to the pool. All the facilities seem to have been vastly overbuilt as they seem rather underused and are always readily available.
The weather in Riyadh this time of the year is nearly perfect too. It’s rather cool at night and doesn’t get too hot during the day unless in the sun. It’s always sunny. Well, almost always. It rained on Tuesday (March 16) last week. In fact, we got wet as we came out of the restaurant after dinner. Being in the desert, this is an event worth recording indeed.
The compound is so perfectly neat and well-kept it almost feels a little unusual. It is as if we are on the Truman Show, not so much that we are being watched, but that the place doesn’t exist in reality. If one doesn’t look beyond the walls, this could have very well been Club Med, only without the crowds.
Within the compound, only Western-styled clothing is allowed. I was told that this rule is used to deter Saudis from living in the compound. I was told that in other expat compounds where some Saudis live, there had been complaints from the Saudis regarding the dress code. The majority of the people living in this compound are American or British or at least English speaking. Many are families with children. Others are empty nesters nearing retirement age. Life is very comfortable and safe in the compound. It is actually not such a bad place to raise small children, especially if the wife doesn’t otherwise work. The kids can run around, bike, roller-blade, swim, and play all they want. Michael, our Job Manager, is in the process of bringing his wife and child here. While on the topic of demographics, it must be noted that even though the average age of the women living in the compound may very well be around 25, the distribution is highly non-uniform, with half of the population married and the other half having not yet reached majority. This is not exactly good news to the single guys in Villa 16.
Villa 16 is run like a frat house, for no other reason than the fact that only guys live there. But the similarities seem to end there. It is a so-called VIP villa, which is the largest type in the compound and costs the most. We use the living rooms downstairs as a place to do work. There are four bedrooms and three bathrooms upstairs. Since the policy is that no one should have to share a bathroom, at most three people live upstairs. We have two other smaller villas at the moment. As more and more team members come in, we are adding more villas. I was told that during the peak in the last phase of our project, over ten people worked here. The kitchen was usually a huge mess. Right now, this is a little hard for me to imagine. We have a maid come in in the morning to clean the kitchen, make coffee, and if we get up early enough which we usually do, to clean our bedrooms and make our beds. I am not too sure if Villa 16 really qualifies as a frat house without the beer and the women and the pig sty.
The TV programs we see in the compound are not censored. There are three huge dish antennas near the tennis courts in the community center. Smaller satellite dishes can be seen on top of some houses. Most of the programs are pretty lousy, but we do have some thirty channels including CNN. And, yes, much like the rest of the world, we get Baywatch!
Outside the compound walls, it is, of course, an entirely different story…
Terrence
Riyadh
Thursday, March 25, 1999