6. Jarir Bookstore

After work on Wednesday (March 24), Carlos, Ricardo, and I went to Jarir Bookstore on Al-Olaya Road. It carries a descent selection of books in English as well as stationery and office furniture. It is also a good place to spot the latest fashion trend in abaya design, since quite a few Western women frequent the place. I was rather impressed by the completeness of its collection of Lonely Planet, Let’s Go, Insight, and the Rough Guide. I picked up the following things: Around the World in Eighty Days, a Quran (Koran), a map of Riyadh, a fashion magazine, some postcards, and a box of perforated paper for printing business cards on laser printers.

The mad dash to JFK episode not too long ago was just the beginning of my visa troubles. After I got to Riyadh, it was discovered that I had a single entry visa after all! The four of us from the New York office had all applied for multiple entry visas, yet two of us got multiple entry ones and two of us got single entry ones. Furthermore, this also had happened to Mike before, but the Amex rep caught it in time and went down to the consulate to get the words "multiple entry" stamped into the passport. Whether the same can be done for me isn’t certain since I have already used the visa. Sending my passport back to New York without my going back would be too risky and probably against some law. Those stupid incompetent morons at the consulate!

The deal was that the consultants from the U.S., by working six days a week, are allowed to go back home every three weeks for four days. For those with concerns back home, three weeks may seem like a long time and a hardship. To me, they are golden opportunities to explore the neighboring countries. One constraint I have is my commencement in the beginning of June. It coincides roughly with the agreed minimum of three months on the project and the length of my visa. This leaves me with two, maybe three, breaks to do something interesting before June. With the single entry visa, now I have to waste one of these to go back to New York just to get the visa mess straightened out. Those stupid incompetent morons at the consulate!

The last week of March is the Muslim Hajj. Most people take a week or two off to go to Mecca and Medina, or just take off. There won’t be all that much work for us to do. I figured that I’d take this opportunity to go back to New York to fix the visa problem. I booked tickets. Just in case, we checked if the consulate would be open during Hajj. No such luck. Forget about going back to New York. Carlos, who had a multiple entry visa, decided to go to Egypt, but he was having a tough time finding flights getting in or out of the country because of the flow of people for Hajj. He ended up with an itinerary that took him from Riyadh to Jeddah to Cairo, then back to Riyadh via Bahrain. While he’s roughing it in Egypt and the others gone, Ricardo, Srini, and I shall have a lot of time in Cordoba to relax and bond. Oh, those stupid incompetent morons at the consulate!

The visit to Jarir Bookstore was thus rather timely for me to get a book or two to pass the upcoming slow week in Cordoba Prison. I picked up an English translation of the Quran for curiosity sake. I doubt that I’d get through more than a few pages of it. I also picked up a Penguin Classics paperback copy of Around the World in Eighty Days, a book that I had somehow never read but a journey that I might just be crazy enough to duplicate one day. Talk about mad dashes to go somewhere. It’s actually not all that easy even today to go around the world in eighty days, because there aren’t scheduled transoceanic passenger ships anymore.

Getting around Riyadh has been both easy and troublesome. It’s easy because we have two drivers to take us anywhere we want to go. It’s troublesome because we have to arrange for the cars ahead of time and we don’t always know exactly when we need the car. Taxis are generally plentiful, but it’s troublesome because I don’t know how to direct the taxi drivers to where I want to go. I haven’t gotten myself oriented for Riyadh since so far I have been driven around and never had to find my own way.

Ever since I got here, I have been meaning to get a map of Riyadh for myself. A big part of the city is laid out on a grid, but the grid is not lined up to north or even to the direction of Mecca. The map I got is printed to match the grid, so north is pointing to the general direction of the upper-left corners. Half of Riyadh is divided into perfect 2km-by-2km blocks by multilane roads. Our compound is in a block named Cortoba (a variation in transliteration), close to the Al-Imam University block. Our compound is on the edge of the built-up part of Riyadh, which is not surprising given the barren looks of the area. I still have little clue where the several client locations are.

Driving in Riyadh doesn’t seem to be as hazardous as I was led to believe. The roads are well built. There is relatively little honking. Honking is reserved mostly for drivers who don’t accelerate within a millisecond after the traffic light switches to green, and is a substitute for yelling at the other driver to get him out of the way. There is a general agreement that a fast car in the left lane has the right to pull up really fast and flash the high beam, and the slower car should then quickly move to the right. There are a few aggressive drivers who don’t bother and simply take the left shoulder beyond the yellow line as an extra passing lane. The cars are equipped with devices that would beep or ring if the speed goes above 120 km/h, even though this doesn’t seem to slow down anyone on the left shoulder. Besides, once you are above 160 km/h, the wind noise is more than enough to drown out the beeps. Stop signs are universally ignored. Running a red light, however, lands the driver in jail and gets everyone in the car a free visit to jail. When there is an accident, it’s jail first and then sorting out the details. Social status counts a lot and foreigners don’t rank very high. Mike didn’t want any of us to drive or take taxis if possible, so we have two dedicated drivers. Well, such is the state of driving in Riyadh even without legal alcohol and woman drivers.

The grocery store in the compound sells some pretty dated issues of magazines like Time and Newsweek. The first thing I did was to look for girly pictures. And what did I find? A knee cap here; a bare shoulder there. Or rather, should I say, a knee cap used to be here; a bare shoulder used to be there. Now they have all been masterfully covered with black ink blots. Where appropriate, an entire page would be missing. Don’t bother trying another one because every single copy has been properly updated to local standards. It is said that university students were recruited to perform such civic duties. This must be the greatest job in the world – sifting through foreign magazines, looking for pornographic material, painting over a woman’s bosoms and shoulders and midriffs and thighs. It’s an adolescent’s fantasy come true. But why are students doing this job? Well, they couldn’t afford a job as a video censor.

The art of censorship must have reached its highest sophistication here. We found a fashion magazine at Jarir. The models wear various styles of evening gowns over tight black tees. Hmm… Is this the newest fashion trend in Paris? But, … white wedding gowns over black tees? Since the magazine is distributed here, the publisher had modified its press and covered any exposed flesh in black, thus saving the censors a lot of trouble, and probably a lot of pleasure. No low necklines; no shoulders; nothing above the knee. Practically every picture had been touched up. It was such an item of oddity to us that we examined the magazine with great interest as if a whole bunch of teenagers pouring over a Playboy. This fashion magazine is definitely for keeps. I gladly bought it.

In the market that we visited the next day, we found a Mariah Carey CD of her greatest hits. On the cover, she wore a pair of bellbottoms and a fluffy looking tee under a miniskirt dress. To someone who’s unfamiliar with the singer, nothing may appear out of the ordinary at the first sight, but when was the last time you saw Mariah Carey in anything longer than a tight miniskirt, let alone bellbottoms? On some of the other covers, the eyes of the female singers had been crossed out with markers. They must have looked too sensual.

There is actually a small travel industry catering to the expat community. There are also books written by foreigners on what to see and do in Saudi Arabia, although the selection seem rather limited. Since I, a non-Muslim, am forbidden to set my eyes on the Holy City, I will have to settle for a postcard of the Holy Mosque there. I suppose as long as there are people like me who would buy these postcards, there would be people who would print them. "Wish you were here" is often written on a postcard. Somehow, I wanted to write "Glad you were not here" on mine. You are better off somewhere else.

People are addressed fairly casually by their first names at the client. However, sometimes they’d throw in the title, especially in meetings. I was addressed as Mr. Terry once, which sounded a bit odd, I must say. Odder yet is how the chairman is addressed. The norm is Mr. Chairman, but once in a while he may be addressed as Your Excellency, as Carlos reported. I do not wish for such honor, but why wasn’t I Dr. Terry like Markus and Michael had been called occasionally. It must be that they had Dr. on their business cards. Mr. Terry? Gimme a break. Around here the title of engineer seems to be of some value as it is printed on business cards, but the title of doctor seems better yet. Since I had run out of my very small supply of business cards, I decided to print some cards myself. The box of card stock should tie me over nicely until our office is ready and we have some cards printed with the Arabic version on the back.

What I thought was an Indian restaurant we went to in "Elbonia" is supposedly a Saudi restaurant according to Srinivasan. Well, it was just grilled chicken on long-grained rice. Could have been anything.

The number of British and American expats should be in the hundred thousand range, Michael said. Don’t know if this number is any more accurate than what I quoted in "Elbonia".

Terrence
Riyadh
Friday, April 16, 1999