Lonely Planet says that Saudi Arabia actively discourages tourism, which is probably true given the fact that they do not issue tourist visas. Yet as guardian of the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, this is a country host to some two to three million pilgrims a year, especially during the busy Hajj season. Furthermore, some five million foreigners live in Saudi Arabia – fully one fourth of the twenty million total. Most of these foreigner are laborers from poorer Middle East countries, the Indian subcontinent, and some Southeast Asian countries. They work in all sorts of menial jobs that no self-respecting Saudis would do. Expatriates from Western countries number far less. British and American expats account for twenty to thirty thousand, I heard. They work in all sorts of technical jobs that no self-respecting Saudis could do.
Although no one is technically a tourist, among all these visitors and especially within the more affluent Western expat community, there’s bound to be a few adventurous souls that want to get a glimpse of this mysterious country. So there are some, though very limited, places for sightseeing. Lonely Planet covers Saudi Arabia in two books, Middle East on a Shoestring and the Arab Gulf States. The four of us from the New York office have four copies of these two titles on hand. What an overkill considering how little is written on Saudi Arabia and how little there is to see and to do in this country. Places that a lot of people would really want to see – Mecca and Medina – are off-limits to non-Muslims.
Mud Palaces
Riyadh’s most interesting site, according to LP, is Dir’aiyah, some 30 km outside of the city. There lie the ruins of the first capital of the al-Saud clan. For my first weekend (Friday, March 19) in Riyadh, Carlos, Ricardo, Srini, and I decided to pay the site a visit. George, one of the two drivers employed by the Firm, took us there. He had been to the site before and knew the place.
The site covers a fairly large area. There weren’t too many visitors. We saw a group of Southeast Asians, a family of Spaniards, and a gray-haired American couple. George led us through the labyrinth of ruined houses. There are some signs in both Arabic and English pointing to so-and-so’s palace, or defense tower, or exit. A few of the houses and sections of the palace walls have been reconstructed. A few are in the process of being reconstructed. At one place we saw a block of hay and a pool of mud. Yes, the palace was built from mud! I suppose mud was the most easily obtainable construction material in this area and the desert climate helped. Imagine that. The royalties not so long ago lived in mud palaces. Although the Middle East is rich in culture and history – the Egyptians to the West; the Israelites, the Assyrians, the ancient Mesopotamians and Babylonians to the North; the Persians to the Northeast – not much seemed to have made it into the desert to present day Saudi Arabia. If there were any high culture in this place, I didn’t find much in Dir’aiyah. Had I just been catapulted into Elbonia?
Coming out of Dir’aiyah, we went to downtown Riyadh to look for Masmak Fortress. George couldn’t find it. Visiting some of the souqs, or markets, would be nice, but we hit upon the noon prayer time. All the shops were closed and the streets outside of the mosques were jammed with cars. People simply left their cars in the middle of the streets triple parked, saving only a narrow lane for others to negotiate through. We ended up driving around for a while. George is from Sri Lanka and had lived in Saudi Arabia for many years. He worked for some prince before. He pointed out some of the walled-off compounds to us as belonging to such and such prince.
Right vs. Left
With the fortress and the markets looking hopeless, our interest somehow turned to camel meat and camel milk. With four consultants in the car getting excited about doing this and that and going here and there and changing minds every thirty seconds, George must have been mightily confused, but he went along with our ever changing requests with good humor. He knew of a supermarket that sold camel meat, but not any restaurant. He actually stopped at a few places to ask if they served camel meat or camel milk but to no avail. I am sure if you wanted to eat horse meat in New York, I wouldn’t be able to find it. We ended up at an Indian restaurant that George knew.
The restaurant was doing brisk take-out business. Quite a few customers were moving platefuls of food to their cars outside. The menu was no help. We asked what they had. Chicken. Good. 30 riyals each. Good. Somehow someone got wind that half chickens were 11 riyals. Better. We all got those. They turned out to be half chickens on ten-inch plates with far too much rice for one person. Good thing that we didn’t get the full chickens.
There were some tables in the front towards the service counters. There were boxed areas along the sides and towards the rear. They probably were doing some renovations since the boxed areas were carpeted but had no tables or chairs. That’s what I thought until I saw someone sitting in one of those boxes. Oh, yeah, that’s right. People still sit on floors and eat with their hands. Well, actually, just the right hand. The left is reserved for doing business at the other end. I saw two people sitting at the table but using their hands to eat. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll stick to fork and spoon.
I wonder how in some cultures the concept of chairs or utensils just never developed. Some Indian friends of mine had demonstrated for me the graceful way of tearing off flat bread with one hand. But wouldn’t the whole problem of not mixing the hand designated for handling the input and the hand designated for handling the output go away, if people would simply use utensils? Everyone seems to have a knife for cutting. Some even have spoons for liquids. So how come some people never made the jump to forks? I don’t know about chopsticks. I mean, if I had a knife and a spoon in my dirty hands, and if had to think about what the next thing I want in order to input the food in front of me elegantly, I’d invent a fork. Chopsticks would be too weird simply because they would be too hard to master. Whoever thought of chopsticks? Well, I guess the Elbonians never thought about these trivial things.
Camel Milk
Srini wasn’t too excited about the prospect of drinking camel milk, which is reputed to have a cleansing effect the first time one drinks it. Think of it as a reset button for the digestive system. We dropped him off at Cordoba and continued our saga to find the camels.
We wanted to find the camel market mentioned in LP and the camel racetrack near the airport. George drove around for quite a while, covering far more than the 30 kilometers LP suggested. Along the way we saw some "amusement parks" along the highway. A patch of the desert is marked off with used tires, and people rode around on three-wheeled dirt bikes. We also saw people having what looked like picnics in the desert. They simply drove off the road into the desert, plucked down a carpet on the shady side of the car, sat around, and had a picnic. These were most likely family picnics because of the presence of BMOs.
If the camel market we found was what LP claimed to be the largest camel market in the Middle East, it was a disappointment at first. The whole place looked more like a shanty town. No one seemed to be trading any camels there. We drove around for a while and George asked about camel milk. He spoke to some Sudanese guy who said we should come back next week and he’d have camel milk for us. The next guy George spoke to said the Sudanese was crazy.
We had just about enough of the place, when George stopped one last time. The traders were from India. The kids actually ran up to our jeep and offered to let us ride their camels for five riyals. What the heck. We all got out of the car. One kid pulled down on the harness of an old camel. The front legs came down first and then the back legs. Carlos climbed up to sit behind the camel’s hump. The old camel’s front legs stood up first, so Carlos was jerked back. "Wooh," he let out a yell. Then the back legs stood up, and Carlos was jerked forward. Holding onto dear life, he grabbed onto the camel’s hair. It was hilarious. Then it was Ricardo’s turn. Then George. The old camel didn’t seem to be too happy about it, yelping and howling. The kid kept kicking the old camel’s belly to get it to stand up. I decided to pass up. Two words - Christopher Reeves. We were also led to see some baby camels, who were very curious and actually came up to us. We asked how much the camels cost. About 10,000 riyals.
George was going to ask again about camel milk, which now looked like a distinct possibility. We stopped him. I think all of us realized that our stomachs most likely wouldn’t be able to tolerate camel milk coming from this place.
Next we wanted to find the racetrack. George said that the races usually start in the early evenings. The first guy he asked said it’s 2 km down the highway and turn right. The second guy said it’s 10 km down the highway and turn left. The third guy said that the winter camel racing season was finished. The third guy seemed most believable. Srini had been told by some people in the Sheraton that the season was over.
The drive back to Riyadh was much shorter, so George must have made a wrong turn somewhere. Back at Cordoba I worked on some slides for a presentation that Michael would be giving the next day. All in all, it’d been a pretty good day.
Terrence
Riyadh
Monday, March 29, 1999