When Prophet Muhammad fled to Medina in the Gregorian year of 622, or 622 A.D., or 622 C.E., his journey, el-Hajrah, was the starting point of the Islamic calendar. Right now, it is year 1419. I know, 1419 and 622 do not add up to 1999, but that’s because an Islamic year is shorter than a solar year. It was joked that perhaps the legacy systems at the client could thus escape the Y2K problem. Alas, the underlying systems weren’t built by followers of Muhammad.
During the month of Hajj, which falls around March this year, some two million Muslim pilgrims go to Mecca. A large percentage of them transit through Jeddah, a historical port city on the Red Sea coast. Since I couldn’t get out of the country, I thought about going to Jeddah for a visit. Sure, me and two million friends. No chance. Carlos had had enough trouble flying to Cairo. He found a flight out of Riyadh on Saturday. In the mean time, we decided to look around Riyadh.
Saudi Cuisine
For lunch on Thursday (March 25), Markus, Ricardo, Carlos, Srini, and I went to a Saudi restaurant somewhere in the city. It’s a very good restaurant according to Gafoor, our driver. The architectural style of the building is supposedly in the traditional Saudi style similar to those of the ruined mud houses at Dir’aiyah. I suspect that underneath the mud or plaster surface the walls are built with cement blocks, much like the half-built houses I had seen around the city. Wood is hard to come by in the desert. Thick cement walls and small windows are probably better at shielding the heat of the day. Temperature in the summer rises to 50°C, or 122°F, in the shade; and there is no shade.
The restaurant had a few tables with Western table settings. We went over to the carpeted box. Perhaps we would give the floor and the right hand a try. Two Saudis were already there. The idea was voted down. We were a little reluctant to share the same floor space with two strangers. Well, back to tablecloth and fork and knife.
The Indian waiters brought us thick leather-bound menus. There was a page on the history of the restaurant and its architectural design. I ordered some beef dish - minced beef and cabbage in a tomato based soup - not all that different from beef stew and not all that good. Ricardo had a dish of lamb and spinach. The whole thing looked like green slime. I tried a spoonful of the slimy stuff, perhaps a derivative from some plant. It had a bland taste and a mucus-like consistency. I spat it out. Ricardo valiantly attacked the green slime and finished perhaps half of it.
There are a good number of fine restaurants in Riyadh, serving a variety of cuisine ranging from Lebanese, Turkish, Indian, to Chinese and Japanese. Yet one thing so hard to find is good Saudi food. Through their nomadic history and in the harsh environment the Saudis seemed to have never developed any fine cuisine.
After the meal, we moved to a corner on the other side of the hall, where there was a carpeted sitting area for tea. You see, we hadn’t given up on the idea of sitting on a carpet yet. Perhaps because we were foreigners, the waiters said it was okay keep our shoes on. Besides, the carpet looked pretty dingy. Displayed on the wall was an odd collection of antiques. In the middle of the sitting area to one side of the wall were a number of kettles, large and small, modern and traditional, in a tiled rectangular depression. Two large ones were on the gas burners. The tea itself was nothing special and perhaps of a Lipton variety. What’s different was the fresh mint leaves put in with the boiling water. They gave the tea a rather refreshing smell and, what else, a minty flavor.
Al-Bathaa
Since we arrived in Riyadh, we haven’t had a chance to visit the souqs, or markets. Gafoor would take us to see some today, but only after six. This was because most stores open after four. This being some holiday before Hajj, the stores wouldn’t open until six. The normal Saudi work day is from about 7:30 a.m. to about 3:30 p.m. It’s simply too hot to be outside during the day. The city really comes alive only after dark.
We went back to Cordoba for a little break. Markus opted out the night excursion. The rest of us set out at around six to see Al-Bathaa, the poorly defined city center. This turned out to be an area where few Saudis could be found. Most of the people there are Indians and Filipinos. The so-called markets are shops in concrete buildings with looks not all that different from those that can be found in crowded Southeastern Asian cities. They sell cheap clothes, jewelry, and other manufactured goods. Srini spent quite a bit of time and energy throughout the evening visiting the jewelers, and eventually bought a gold bracelet. The rest of us mostly wandered about window shopping. Carlos picked up a CD with a fully-clothed Mariah Carey on the cover.
We stopped at a small shop that sold sugarcane juice. We were not half done when the prayer call started. All the shops locked down swiftly, evidence of years of practice. Streams of people moved in the same general directions towards the mosques. Praying five time a day is one of the five pillars of Islam. Around here, all the shops must close during prayer times. The prayer schedule changes slightly from day to day. It can be a real inconvenience. Markus and I got kicked out of a McDonald’s one day. The prayer time started minutes after we got our lunch. As we left, a woman came running and begged to be let in to get some food. You should have guessed that this was a foreign woman, for any Saudi woman would have known better. We learn to cope with it.
The sugarcane juice shop waited for our glasses and did not close fast enough. Some old guy with a teenager walked by and reminded them to close. The old man did not look much different from any other average old man, and this particular one didn’t have a long beard as Gafoor had said the muttawaas wore. Gafoor is a Muslim Indian, so we let him go pray, which took no more than ten minutes. He had worked in the Gulf States for some nineteen years, many of which were spent in Dubai, UAE. He speaks good English and Arabic and was a good resource. He had told me about the time that he was caught driving during prayer time. The muttawaa made him go somewhere to pray. Muslim and non-Muslim residents are easily distinguished by the color of their identification books - green for Muslims and red for non-Muslims. For some other offense, he was once taken to the muttawaa office and sat for a couple of hours before they let him go. He wasn’t too thrilled about all the restrictions that he didn’t have to deal with in Dubai.
One of the things we had talked about was buying the Arab headdress. While the Saudis require all foreign women to wear abayas, they don’t like foreign men wearing their headdress and the white robe, called dishdasha. I wasn’t too sure if we’d be rebuffed if we tried to buy the stuff. We walked by a stall that sold the headdress. The old Sudanese guy seemed to be happy enough to do business. Carlos was the first to try it on. The old man sat him down, put the skull cap on, then the red white checkered ghotarah, and then the alga. He gave Carlos a broken piece of glass mirror to get a look. It must be said that the headdresses looked quite out of place and funny on our heads. Curious passers-by stopped for a moment to look at us. The old man himself didn’t like to be photographed, but a few kids appeared to pose with us. Didn’t know where they came from or whether they were in any way related to the Sudanese. It was a rather festive and friendly scene. Even haggling over price was interesting. We got it down to 60 riyals, or about $16, a set, which was probably still more than the stuff’s worth, but acceptable. We had thoroughly amused ourselves. It was the highlight of the evening. I had now found the perfect Halloween costume. I’ll be Terrence of Arabia.
Gafoor took us to see some other markets where Europeans and Americans frequented. We window shopped a bit more, stopping at a craft store here or an antique store there. I didn’t find anything interesting. We stopped at Masmak Fortress, the one we couldn’t find the week before. Close to it was the central mosque, a huge place. We couldn’t go in, of course, but stole a peak or two from afar through the open doors.
Terrence
Riyadh
Thursday, April 22, 1999