http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t43VgJ4U9_Q

Christmas in Riyadh, 2010

I wound up in Riyadh in My December in order to teach Mo Saud the strategies to enable him to get a higher standardized test score, so he can get into a better college, fulfill all of his dreams of success, and all that other good humanitarian stuff. Before I left Dubai, I was informed that Mo is in the royal Saud line. Which means that if every Saud in the order of succession died, he would be the ruler of Saudi Arabia. In other words, that means he's an heir of the kingdom. Not that I've ever been a huge fan of the “benevolent” part of my work, but I now cared even less. I knew what the story was as soon as I met him and his group: Mo needed to finish his application by January 3rd, 2011, which meant he had to take the *, and he was looking for miracles. Being royalty, Mo is semi-averse to work. Being me, I'm incredibly averse to work. And so, my first ever attempt at corporate sabotage was hatched in the land of the Sauds.

Initially, it was a scheme to a) stick it to the man and 2) financially secure myself for the short term. An unintended yet welcome side effect was the buildup of goodwill and influence (Wasta) with the House of Saud. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself here. So once he and I met and I assessed the situation, I started floating some stories of the shenanigans happening in the UAE offices which administer the * (things along the lines of fake passports and “forgetting” large sums of money at the testing centers). Fortune smiled on me, for Mo immediately latched onto the idea and decided I should take the test for him. And I agreed. Wasta, man!!! I'd be like those early oil magnates from Houston, who happened here and traded money for crude and thus granted the Sauds wealth unimaginable. Except on a smaller scale. Because, you know...it wasn't like I was digging for oil.

We came up with several scenarios, the most outlandish of which involved direct impersonation, makeup artists and exorbitant bribes and the least complicated involved a rigging of remote cameras and an elaborate system of communicating the correct answers via telepathy or electroshock Morse Code (I preferred the latter, Mo the former). But try as we might, an actual and viable plan wasn't forthcoming. Every idea postulated needed some enhancements from outside forces, a Deus Ex Machina, or just a really attractive blonde in a short skirt. So my visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was spent with the days deep in schemes and diagrams and blueprints of buildings, and the nights I had free to roam and explore Riyadh as I would.

And so I did. Pardon the paucity of photographs, but I was certain the Mutaween  (crazy religious police) were tailing me and waiting for me to snap a picture of some innocent and unaware Saudi woman, her hand innocently raising her burqa to scratch her chin. I had also read that taking photographs of the wrong things and or people was a quick way to find out what the inside of a Saudi jail is. So, all pictures were taken with utmost secrecy or speed or a lot of loitering in an area until the coast was clear.

The first thing I noticed about Riyadh is that it is a city with no financial stress underscoring its continuing growth:

There are no parking meters in Riyadh. There are no fiscally motivated engines of justice patrolling the streets in search of the traffic alchemists' stone: the ability to turn double parked cars into gold, transmuting single metal coins into riyals as solar powered timers inevitably count down to zero. Riyadh is missing the boat on the potential gold mine of traffic infractions. In fact, there are only two traffic control devices I saw during my visit, and neither of them generate revenue. First, the ubiquitous camera radar, positioned on highways and at all intersections governed by traffic lights, takes pictures of those driving too fast, taking perilous left turns from right lanes, and running red lights. But no fine is issued. The only penalty is that points are deducted from licenses in a half-assed attempt to make the roads less deadly. The radars are not deterrents. The second device I noticed was the green and gray garbed police officers, who control the exit and entrance ramps of the main thoroughfares with what can only be described as a laissez faire attitude. Again no fines, just a slowly dwindling allotment of driver license points for those unlucky to be motioned to the side of the road. (The license point system is, like many other things here, heavily biased: ex-patriots receive fewer initial points than Saudis, who in turn start with fewer than the Sauds. Conversely, the Sauds are not penalized as many points as ex-patriots are for infractions of minor or severe natures.)

Another interesting thing about Riyadh is that the municipality itself, as well as those firms which construct it and or constitute it, fears no lawsuit. Gaping construction sites plead to be fallen into, holes dot the sidewalk like mouths hungry for a turned ankle, dire physical danger lurks within 10 steps in any direction, but no recourse to civic law is available. So the denizens of Riyadh have learned to keep an eye on their feet and not on the the skyline, searching for personal injury attorney's billboards.

Additionally, the skyline of Riyadh is home to 2 tall buildings: Kingdom Tower (which looks like a gigantic potato peeler), and the pyramidal-type one with a sphere hanging just below the physical apex of the building. There is a law in KSA that no building may have permanent residences (including offices) above the 30th floor. These two buildings maneuvered around this temporary roadblock by housing restaurants and observation decks in the higher altitudes. It also helps that they were both constructed, and owned, by HRH 'whatever the fuck his name is' Saud.

At ground level once again, every restaurant is necessarily immense, as each one requires separate dining areas: one for singles (men, either alone or in a group), one for families (women escorted by males). There is no third room for women alone or in groups unattended by some roving male family member. In fact, the common consensus is that if a woman tries to eat alone in a restaurant, she is a prostitute. The singles portion of the restaurant is either outside or inside, in which case it is always windowed and well lit. Groups of men laughing or scowling or calling for service can be seen by any casual observer walking on the street. The family section, on the other hand, is secluded, curtained (if there is a window to curtain), and has individual booths which are also curtained for additional privacy. The first time I saw the curtained booths beyond the curtained windows (I was peering through the window), I thought the extreme privacy excessive: single guys aren't prowling around, hoping to catch a glimpse of an unburqaed woman sloppily chewing french fries (well, except for me). But then I realized that if a restaurant had more than one family in the room at a time, the more modest woman would be unveiled before a score of, possibly lecherous, eyes. Thus the privatized booth in the privatized room.

The sole exceptions to the single/family bifurcation I saw were ramshackle kitchens intended for the coolies who construct Riyadh. Those kitchens were the only restaurants I ate in, because the more compliant ones just seemed depressing from the outside. A necessary hazard to this gustatory approach was that these small rooms had no menus or english speakers, just glowering cooks behind a half wall. So I was reduced to pantomime at almost every establishment I ate in, and what was for dinner was always a surprise but never a disappointment.

Something I found surprising on the was the wealth of bookstores and printing companies. Within a ten block radius (the same radius I felt I had to stay within unless I wanted to tempt injury or death), I counted 4 printing presses and 7 bookstores. I walked into a bookstore, expecting it to have at least a smattering of English publications, but instead I was greeted with a less than sincere “Salaam Aleykum.” I retorted with a semi-acceptable “Aleykum Ah Salaam,” and wandered through the store, getting an eyeful of strictly Arabic texts (mainly the Qur'an or dissertation on same) and racks of toys. It reminded me of venturing into Christian bookstores I remember from my childhood: to the uninitiated, those bookstores cater to the codger and the child, but not the middling adult. After pretending to browse for an appropriately polite number of seconds (a ruse that wasn't exactly convincing), I left before the impressively bearded proprietor could convince himself to stand up.

Much has been said about the oppressiveness of wahabism, its form of government and pursuant, necessary oppression, so I'm not going to add anything to the documented facts, but I had some personalized observations about the little I saw from the few I saw: The practice of Islam is not forced on the average individual, but modesty of dress and propriety of action are compulsory, and no other religion is allowed to be observed openly. During the 5 daily calls to prayer, a portion of men did not join the shoals of the devout flocking to the mosque, nor did the Mutaween hand out citations, or even the stink eye, to those of us who were not washing our hands or removing our shoes in obeisance.

However, all businesses (those of the mercantile type only, not the hospitality or emergency services types) locked their doors and shuttered their windows for approximately 30 minutes for each call to prayer. Some KSA websites follow the same rules. As a point of law, clerics have a pretty good reason about this: The purpose of commerce is to serve religion, not serviced by it. Therefore, shops should be closed to reinforce the hierarchy. It's the same philosophy which closes retail stores in New Jersey on Sundays, why liquor stores are not open in Delaware, why the strip clubs in Oregon don't allow full frontal for 24 hours, ad infinitum. While the daily practice may seem onerous to shopkeeps, it wasn't that long ago that Americans had to follow a similar standard. It's easy to criticize if one isn't aware of the similarities of theology behind the same ritualized behaviors. In keeping with strict Wahabism, there are no bars, no movie theaters, no bowling alleys, no pool halls, no dogs barking, no women driving, and no music other than the semi hypnotic ululations broadcast from huge, pole-mounted speakers to indicate the time has come for us to pray.

More to say, with a few pictures...only I'll say it when I can do it without censorship.