Feasts, Festivals, and Finishing with Fireworks

 In Saudi Arabia men and women are not allowed to have any contact with each other unless they are married or in the same immediate family.  The outdoor cafes and cheap restaurants are only for men.  Other restaurants have "single sections" for men only and "family sections" for women and families.  If a couple is seen talking together and they cannot prove that they are married the Mutawwa (religious police) will at least separate them or at worst, take them to jail and deport one or both of them.

  You can recognize the Mutawwa because they always have a long beard, their thobes are shorter above the ankle, and they don't wear the igal on their heads (see earlier posting for an explanation of Saudi dress).  These are the men who patrol the shopping malls telling the foreign women to cover their heads and they are even stricter with the Saudi women.  I've heard stories of some women talking back to them but since I usually cover my head anyway they generally don't bother me.  In Islam nobody is supposed to be forced to do anything, but I guess the government here doesn't see it that way.  This makes it really hard to date someone but that aspect of my life is not going to be blogged about anyway.  :-)

Even in the city there are few places for people to gather together.  All the houses have high walls around them.  There are no sidewalks and very few parks or playgrounds.  Understandably the heat in the summer prevents anyone from even wanting to be outside, but in the winter the weather is perfect and the few open spaces are always overcrowded.  I've heard other reasons for not having many open gathering spaces (think of the recent revolutions in the region) but I think it also comes down to people not being interested in mixing outside of their own large family groups.

That's why it was very surprising to see when the Jenadriyah Cultural Festival came to town in February it was so interesting to finally be in a large fairground area with so many Saudi families.  

For the amount of people it attracted there really wasn't that much to see, but what I did see was interesting.  The Saudis have gone from camel-riding Bedouins in the desert to Lexus-driving, city-dwelling businessmen in a matter of 50 years so there is a strong feeling of wanting to preserve and connect with their roots.  The Saudi city kids were just as interested as I was in the way they used to get water out of the wells.  You can see how they used camels to pull large buckets of water up on pulleys.

The separation of genders meant that the festival had certain days for families and certain days for single men.  This didn't stop some young single men from trying to sneak in on a family day so they could have the chance to interact with women.  Outside the gate there were riot police who had rounded up a bunch of young guys trying to get in.  Others found ways to 'join' families temporarily to get through the gates.  The funny thing is once they were inside they all grouped together, anyway.  Music is also somewhat restricted here, but when the dancing music (which only uses voice and percussion) started some of the young men would start dancing even if they were not on stage.  Saudi dancing pretty much consists of a line of men bunched together stomping and waving daggers.  Every now and again one breaks from the line to wave their dagger higher, or if it's really exciting he will start waving a sword.

Some friends and I went on other outings throughout the semester.  Back when the weather was cool we had a picnic and wandered around the parts of Riyadh that are not as sparkling and modern as what you normally see.

 

One day a Saudi friend took some of us to the top of the Faisaliyah tower to look at the city - including the Kingdom tower which looks like a big bottle opener.   

Riyadh doesn't have street addresses which makes mailing and giving directions extremely difficult.  Aside from a couple of big well-known roads, there aren't even distinct landmarks.  All the buildings look the same.  Can you see my house?  It's the sandy colored one next to the mosque. 

Now try giving directions to the taxi driver who 1) has been here less time than you,  2) doesn't speak your language and sometimes doesn't even speak Arabic if they are not from here, 3) tells you he knows where he is going even when he doesn't have a clue where he is in the first place, and 4) is too prideful to take directions from a woman.  Add to that the fact that there is no public transportation and women are not allowed to drive.  Many women don't even dare take taxis even if they did know the directions so they just make their husbands drive them or hire an expensive private chauffeur.  I take taxis.  I negotiate hard and cover my whole face if he is staring or smiling too much.  The first thing I learned was how to get back to my apartment and I can now give confident directions in both English and Arabic with a few Urdu words mixed in, as well.  It's given me some freedom to get out and explore even more sandy colored buildings.

 Most of my Arabic I learned from taking a class at the Arab Institute.  It was great until somebody noticed that men and women were entering and exiting the building together so now they cannot have classes for women at that location.  It's too bad because it was one of the few schools that offered Arabic classes for foreigners and it had a great library and fun activities.

 I graduated from Level 1 but they didn't have enough female students for a Level 2 class so I will have to wait until I come back in the fall to continue.  This is my teacher, Dr. Sharif from Syria.

And now the semesters at King Saud University have also finished.  It's tradition for the students to have a class party the last week.  Last semester the students ordered a delicious chocolate cake.

Then they gave my co-teacher and I something I have wanted for a long time:  a necklace of my name engraved in Arabic.  Technically we aren't supposed to accept gifts like this from the students but since the grades were already in and nobody else can use it since it's got my name on it I had no difficulty accepting it.

Then at the end of this semester my students made my co-teacher and I wait outside while they put out the cake.  They lit fireworks and when we came in the room they shot confetti all over us. 

Then we put on fancy masks and took photos.  I finally got some photos of my students (even if most of their faces are covered with the masks) but I decided not put them online out of respect for how hard they work not to be seen by men outside of their families.  So now the year is over and summer vacation starts next week.  I'm going to spend 10 days in Germany before going home to Utah for 2 months.  I'm really excited for the vacation and to remember what it feels like to be myself in normal society!

Incredible India

In March we had our University mid-semester break.  The time between semesters in January wasn't much of a break since we had to stay and do professional development courses.  So I was happy to finally have some time off to travel after 6 months of being in Saudi Arabia.  My British friend Janine and I debated for a long time where we wanted to go.  It's a difficult decision when you are so close to so many interesting places but you only have one week.  We thought of Egypt, Dubai, then Oman, but really we were both feeling kind of tired of Arabia and the desert.  I drew a circle around Riyadh and checked flights to everywhere possible (Afghanistan not really being on the possible list) and found that Mumbai, India turned out to be the cheapest flight.  Janine, being into yoga and meditation and having already lived in India, was worried she would go and not want to leave.  This didn't really matter anyway because after we got back she sneaked out of the country and went back to her yoga ashram in New Zealand.  So we booked our flight and then had a few weeks of paperwork to get the visa for India.  I was a little worried about combining Indian bureaucracy with Saudi inefficiency.  It was also more difficult to get without having a proper residence visa for Saudi Arabia since we only have temporary work visas.  We got our passports back the day before the flight and we were off.

When we arrived we then had to find the Saudi consulate and immediately apply for a new work visa to get back into Saudi Arabia.  Things went surprisingly smoothly and we had our new visas the next day.  We spent some time wandering around Mumbai just being happy not to have to wear black or cover our heads.  We could talk to any men we wanted to and saw churches from various religions again.  Janine was excited to be able to drink alcohol again (legally) but I don't miss certain consumables the way some foreigners do.  I did, however, order something otherwise illegal just because I could.

We spent a lot of time shopping for fun Indian clothes.

We went out to Elephantine Island to see some old caves and tombs.

  But really we just wanted to get out of the city and see some nature.  After a short stop in Panjim (and a double feature at the movie theater - another forbidden pleasure) we spent the rest of the trip on the beach in Goa.  Janine did convince me to try out an Ayurveda doctor (Indian medicine).  In the waiting room there was a baby chick wandering around and he told us the story of seeing the chick dropped from an eagle's mouth into his backyard.  He decided it was fate and is now raising it.  As I was having my consultation the chick came and tiptoed over my bare feet to explore this new person.

 After lots of hard poking and prodding he told me many amazing things about my body.  They weren't amazing because I learned anything new about myself, but that he could tell all these things just from poking me really hard.  It opened my eyes to see that healing the body can happen in many different ways - and the way our Western doctors are so quick to prescribe chemicals instead of seeing medicine as a holistic process.  The rest of the time was spent getting massages, drinking fruit lassis, and lounging on the beach.  We were also counting down the days before we had to go back, but those few days were well worth it!