Ramadan Fables

We arrived home from the states a few days ago and have been wiped out because of the jet lag.  My husband had to start working day 1 and I of course had to get to the grocery store so I piled the kids in the car and thought I would be as respectful as possible since it is Ramadan and cover my hair.  I get out of the car and it is really windy and sandy and dusty and well, upon the first step out of the car the scarf blows off my head and my hair is all over the place and I am OVER being in Saudi during Ramadan.  

We go into the store and as we are shopping I am feeling extremely thirsty.  I don't know if it was the change in climate or if I just had been bad about hydrating with all of the traveling but my daughter and I walk past the juices and I think, 

"Humm, maybe I'll just open a small juice and pay for it when I get to the counter"  

Which by the way, I never do!!  

I grab the juice, turn down the isle, open the juice, and bring the bottle to my lips. As I am almost feeling the relief of the juice on my tongue it hits me: 

"WHAT AM I DOING? IT IS RAMADAN!"  

So I quickly pull the bottle from my lips and try to hide behind the shopping cart.  I actually ducked!  I don't think that worked so well. I ask my daughter, 

"Did anybody see me?"

She said no, but I went through the rest of the grocery store not making eye contact with anybody, feeling extremely dumb, and trying to get out of there as quickly as possible.  Then I came home and turned on youtube so I could learn how to tie a scarf on my head properly.

Welcome back to Saudi!

Lashing Offense?

My naiveté is showing again. Awhile back my Nespresso machine stopped warming milk; an essential component of my morning latte. Thankfully, or so I thought at that time, I had a driver and a compound restaurant. The driver took care of all of the details with the Nespresso machine. Took it into the distributor, made sure it got fixed and made the trips back and forth hoping to get there while opened because, still, sometimes knowing when businesses are opened is more like dumb luck.

While the machine was being fixed I was thankful for the compound restaurant because I could get up in the morning, give a call and have my morning fix delivered to my doorstep. Not bad! After a short time an employee at the restaurant got wise to my calling and started to call me asking if I would like a latte...even better!

Then he started calling to chit chat (which I politely tried to get out of)

Then he asked me for my personal mobil number (which I did not give him)

Then he ran out of the restaurant every time I walked passed bringing treats for the kids (which I did not accept)

Then I came home one afternoon to find that he had brought food over that I didn't order nor did I pay for.

Uh oh.

I had a problem. What to do?

I pondered this for awhile. How should I handle this situation.

I could be straight forward...get in his face...order him to leave me alone...I thought in this environment, that could be dangerous. At the end of the day, I don't want anybody to have a reason to dislike me.

My husband was out of town...so, that wasn't an option.

Right! I have a maid and a driver. I decided that the best course of action was probably to remove myself from the situation entirely. I sent the maid with money for the food, asked her to pay for it. While there, she told the man that he should leave me alone because he could get in big trouble for his behavior. When my husband returned, he had words with the man and told him it was inappropriate for him to be calling and bringing over food to our house.

I relayed this story to some friends of mine and the man in the family commented that this was "a lashing offense". I think it is, but at the end of the day, if reported, I am unsure who would be getting the lashing.

Conversations With My Driver

Those of you who have been reading, know that we have had difficulty with our drivers. Earlier this year we decided that we had no other choice but to employ our own full-time driver. And, really, the problems that we had had with the driver's prior to new-new driver have vanished. Our current driver is reliable and likes the children and is nice enough. But, at the end of the day, I have had a problem with the basic idea of having a driver and the reality of having a driver.

I am not so put off by the fact that I am not allowed to drive here. As long as I get from point A to point B I am happy. Having a driver, however, means that there is always an extra person in the car, an extra set of eyes, an extra set of ears. This has been irritating to me. I have come to realize that the time in the car in the past was a time that the kids and I could talk, and be silly. My daughter and I love to car dance. Now I feel forced to watch my behavior as we are always in the company of a non-related man. It was either old-new driver or new-old driver that made me aware of this.

Over the past seven or eight months I have been hating having a driver. But something happened over the summer. We came back from summer vacation and all of a sudden having a driver wasn't the most irritating thing in the world. We have adapted. And recently I have realized that my driver is a wise man:

"Madam, I am learning things from you every day"

"Really?"

"Yes, you know you have one child on one side of you screaming and complaining and another child on the other side crying and screaming. And you, you never get upset. You do not hit your children. I see many parents hitting their children. You do not yell. This I see all the time. You are calm and you explain to them. When I have a wife, I will talk to her, I will tell her that that is the kind of parent I want to be."

This after what I would call the most challenging week of being a parent! Maybe having a driver isn't a bad thing...maybe an extra pair of eyes and ears isn't so bad. I think I'm keeping this one around. He's good for a little pick me up!

Comfortably Numb

I know, many of you are wondering if there is anybody out there.... Two and a half months have gone by without word..what is she doing????

Well in all honesty, I have been comfortably enjoying my life in Saudi Arabia. Where year one was filled with chaos and uncertainty, getting to know new people, missing old friends, and worrying about children adjusting; year two has been, thus far, filled with the comfortable predictability that comes from knowing your surroundings. Or at least those surroundings which one allows themselves to get to know.

We are enjoying our new found friendships. We are enjoying the quality of life that our children have here. We feel the good outweighs the bad. Yet, we are a little ambivalent. At the end of the day this is a temporary life, a life that one has to leave so the question of when to leave is omnipresent. This, I feel, makes it a little bit difficult to live in the now. Instead, we are always thinking one step ahead and weighing this life against a life we imagine we would have some place else.

So, how does Saudi measure up?

Today's weigh in goes something like this:

On the plus side, I personally am enjoying compound life. We have met some fantastic people and every day I know that if I want I will bump into somebody I know and can do anything from say 'hi' and give a passing smile to have a cup of coffee or chat for a couple of hours.

I am enjoying the multi-cultural-ness of it all. I am not surrounded by Americans, I am not surrounded by Swedes. Today, I am in regular contact with people from around the world. This is something positive for us all. The kids have friends from around the world, the majority of their friends speak two languages as do they. This, I believe, gives them a different view and understanding of the world as compared to the one they would have had had they lived their life in only Sweden or the US.

Another bonus is that the kids have time to be involved in quite a few activities and I am getting to spend more time with them here than I would have had we been someplace else.

On the minus side:

I miss having a home of my own. Living here is a little like hotel living. And, sometimes I long to get out into the woods....to go for a hike..to hear the wind rustling through the trees. To smell the rain. I miss the nature that is not desert.

As long as the plus side is heavier than the minus side I guess we'll continue to be comfortably numb here in Saudi Arabia....at least until we can figure out something else to do.

Criticisms

Well, I have (rightfully so) been getting criticism about being such a poor blogger.

I must say, it is getting more and more difficult. I am beginning to think that I don't really see Saudi Arabia any more. I don't really see what's out there to see. I don't see what's happening right in front of my eyes. Instead I am getting bogged down with the simple things in life: getting the kids off to school, making sure food is on the table, making doctors appointments, writing grocery lists, etc., etc., etc.

And, increasingly, my living in Saudi Arabia isn't only about living in Saudi Arabia...it is becoming more difficult to see living here as something different, fun, and exciting to do for a short period of time, something to experience. Instead it is turning into a place where I have begun to reflect upon my life in not only Saudi Arabia but, even more so, my life in Sweden and my life in the USA. I guess, living here is becoming much more about me living than about me living in Saudi Arabia.

At the end of the day, that is how it is. One adapts to one's surroundings; finds their place in the midst of it all...what once was strange and foreign becomes the norm. And, although some things are irritating simply because one has known a different way and wishes for example that one could find Kellogg's Corn Flakes because Poppin's Corn Flakes just aren't good enough, in the end it all boils down to:

getting the kids off to school

making sure food is on the table

making doctors appointments

writing grocery lists

etc

etc

etc

Its a Crazy World

In the almost 11 months that we have been here, we have gone through 3 drivers and are on number four. Driver number 1, or "old-old" driver, as I like to call him, was from Pakistan and drove his own car. He did not drive for us full-time. We all liked him but, he was forced to go back home to Kashmir due to illness.

Driver number two didn't last very long. He was from India. In addition to having a really bad attitude and disappearing, he called one day an hour before our six year old daughter was to be picked up from school and said he wasn't coming. That put an end to him.

Driver number three, or "old-new" driver, as I like to call him, is Saudi. We all liked him. He wasn't driving for us full-time either, but was seeing to our daughter's transportation to and from school. On the way home from taking her to school the other morning he says to me:

"You know madam, this driver here" pointing to a man standing by the curb, "he is no good. He is always asking me if I want to buy whiskey". For those of you who don't know, alcohol is forbidden in Saudi Arabia and having it comes with pretty high punishments. He continues, "I tell him yes, I buy a bottle. But then, he never comes with it...so I say forget it"

Then he goes on to tell me how alcohol is just trouble, many people drink too much and get into fights. He then tells me a story about a time he and his brother go to Egypt and his brother came home with 2 bottles of Black Label whiskey, which the brother thought they should drink. Old-new driver says to his brother, "No, it is too much, one glass is plenty..it isn't ice cream." Then he continues to tell me about what a responsible drinker he is, understanding the dangers of drinking too much (similar discussions have taken place about his superior driving skills) followed by:

"Madam, you remember that day that I came and your daughter was feeling a little heavy and I was speaking so much english, that day I had had two glasses of black label before I left to come pick you up"

DRIVER SAY WHAT?!

This is the same driver that "old-old" driver warned us (and when I say us, I mean me) not to trust.

Needless to say, old-new driver has been replaced by "new-new" driver who has survived almost a full week and I really hope he is going to work out well...it seems as if he will. Although yesterday I was fed up (today I am blaming that on my trip to the dentist) and when he asked "Madam, do you know how to drive" followed by "In Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to drive, our religion doesn't allow it. Women can be mothers and housewives only" I did want to rip into him a little. Not because I was personally offended or anything but (1) I was a little bit irritated by his naivety and (2) I was not 100% sure why he was saying this to me. Me a woman (and although I hate to admit it), a woman higher up on the food chain than he. (Today I think he was just trying to break the ice and chose a poor subject to start off with). At the time, I chose not to respond and gave him a vague, "Oh."

Sometimes I look at him and see a deep sadness. I wonder what it must be like to grow up in Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world. A place where I can only imagine corruption and exploitation are the name of the game. Only to leave it at 16 to come to a country where Bangladeshi's are at the bottom in terms of status, where indentured servitude is alive and well, where the vulnerable and poor are exploited and abused.

He is 28 years old,

He has lived alone in Saudi Arabia for 12 years,

He speaks 5 languages,

He has not been home in 6 years,

His father died last year,

His mother wants him to get married,

He thinks decisions about marriage should be taken slowly as it is the most important decision in life,

He believes his sponsor is not a good man,

He does not talk about whether or not he likes Saudi Arabia because "what choice do [I] have?",

He believes that living in Europe is an unobtainable dream for him,

He believes hurricanes are acts of God,

He wonders if my husband and I married for love, and

He softens when he sees my children.

Our maid does not know if she will go home this summer...why? Because one of the families she works for has told her that they just can not manage without her for 20 days. They couldn't possibly take a substitue for those 15 hours. She works for them one day, five hours per week.

Is not seeing your family after a year more important than 15 hours of house cleaning? Who is this family that would make her worry about such a thing...make such a choice? Why are they not telling her,

Yes,

Of course,

Go home,

See your loved ones,

Have a nice time,

See you when you get back?!

Are they not giving her an unspoken threat...if you go, we may not take you back. Five hours per week. Is that not the rich taking advantage of the poor? Is that not unreasonable? May she never go home?

Again, I wonder, what is this crazy world we live in?

Osama bin Laden is Dead

My father tells a story about when he was little. He and his younger brother got into an argument. They were outside and each had his bicycle with him. At one point one of the brothers got so upset that he took a rock and threw it at the other brother's bicycle, damaging it. In response to this, the other brother took a rock and hurled it at the first brother's bike. This cycle continued until both of the brothers were sobbing and both of the bicycles were damaged-- but, somehow, they could not stop casting stones at the other's prized possession. Finally, my grandmother came out wondering what was going on and put a stop to the youngsters pain and suffering.

The news of Osama bin Laden's death has had many people rejoicing, celebrating, cheering. Osama bin Laden. A man that caused many people pain. Osama bin Laden. A man that made many people suffer.

He had a lot of followers.

He had a mother

He had a father

He had a wife

He had children

According to at least one news report, one of his daughters watched while he was being killed.

I wonder how my mother would feel if she were to see me being shot?

...my father?

...my husband?

...my daughter?

...my son?

Would it be hate? fear? sadness? rage? loneliness? confusion? something....else?

I wonder who is being hit by the rocks of Osama bin Laden's terrorist activities?

I wonder who is being hit by the rocks of retaliation?

I wonder who is being hit by the rocks of rejoicement?

I wonder how it all will end?

If history tells us anything, it will never end.

I guess now it is time for somebody on Osama bin Laden's side to hurt somebody's bicycle.

I only wonder who will come outside and give everybody a hug when this is all over.

Bin Laden chose wrong path in history: Khashoggi

http://arabnews.com/saudiarabia/article379792.ece

Expatriates hope for and end to terror killings

http://arabnews.com/world/osama_bin_laden/article380395.ece

Fear, doubt, disbelief over Osama's death

http://arabnews.com/world/osama_bin_laden/article380401.ece

Death to boost anti-terror fight: Kingdom

http://arabnews.com/saudiarabia/article380281.ece