ADVENTURES IN DUBAI: YOUR FAVOURITE NUMBER ONE BLOG BRITISH DESIGNER LIVING IN DUBAI TELLS (NEARLY) ALL
Monday, October 31, 2005
Getting Over It
Fear and Loathing in KSA I arrived in Dubai and booked into a hotel in deepest Deira. I phoned the flooring salesman that I’d met in Riyadh, and he picked me up and we went out on the town. I could barely handle it. Apart from the abundant beer, we finished up at a nightclub where a troupe of scantily-clad Russian dancers were gyrating onstage. Shocked I was.
The next day I moved to the Chicago Beach Hotel (which was to be demolished a few years later to make way for the Jumeirah Jumeirah Beach Hotel). I made a few phone calls and fixed up a few interviews, and within about three days I had secured what I thought was a good job offer. I arranged a flight back to the UK for the next day, and lozzed about on the beach at the hotel.
I will never forget my time in Riyadh, and while people may say I had a miserable time because I did not integrate, I have to say that I didn’t meet anybody in Riyadh who seemed prepared to help me do that. I dare say that if I had stayed longer I might have a different view of things.
I really only met one Saudi who treated me with any kind of warmth or compassion. He was Dr Client, and we actually spent a fair bit of time together over the year. I met his wife and kids a few times, went to his house, visited marble and furniture showrooms with them. It was all business-related, of course, but he called me ‘Abu Offspring’, and did the huggy-kissy thing when we met.
Mostly the Westerners I met had been there a long time and were not interested in helping a newbie – they were cold and aloof and above all, suspicious.
People talk about post-traumatic stress syndrome, and I would suggest that there is such a thing as post-Saudi stress syndrome. I was certainly deeply affected by my immersion in Riyadh, and BetterArf says it took me at least six months to even begin to get over it. I’m not suggesting that all of Saudi Arabia is as harsh as Riyadh, but that is where I spent my year, so that’s all I know about.
Free at Last in KSA The day I actually left was probably one of the most stressful of my life. I had a plan that said I was going to spend a few days in Dubai trying to find a job before heading back to the UK. I had bought myself a ticket to Dubai, and had booked several flights spread over 3-4 days after the end of my contract because I had no idea how long it would take Bongo & Co to finalise the formalities. Surprisingly, everything happened on time. On my last day at work, I got my pay cheque. It was, of course, too late to cash it, so the next morning I was up bright and early, expecting to be out of there by the end of the day.
As it happened, one of the engineers was also leaving that day, on vacation. He was a good guy, an Egyptian, and we headed off to the local bank together with our pay cheques. Naturally, their computer system was down, so they could not verify if there was any money in Bongo’s account to cover these cheques. We decided to head downtown to the main branch of this bank where the account actually lived. When we got there it was complete chaos. Because the computer was down, of course. We stomped into the manager’s office and I told him that I had to get this cheque cashed because I was leaving in two hours. Somehow it happened, but they were absolutely not going to give my Egyptian friend any money. I can’t remember the exact details, possibly he didn’t have his passport with him or he was Egyptian or something, but I signed a bit of paper that said I knew him and they could come and beat me up if it turned out they’d given the money to the wrong guy. Weird.
Anyhoo, loaded down with cash, we head back to the office. Now I have to get Ibrahim, the world’s laziest PRO, to take me to the airport. He has to do this because they have a piece of paper from the Government that needs to be signed and stamped as I leave.
Riyadh Airport is quite a way from the city. We are halfway there when Ibrahim realises he’s forgotten the piece of paper. We turn round and go back to the office to get it. When we arrive at the airport there’s only about an hour and a half before my flight leaves. I head for the check-in desk for Dubai. Ibrahim is deeply puzzled. As far as he’s concerned I’m supposed to go to London.
The check-in clerk tells me that I don’t have a booking. I explain that I most certainly do, and he tells me that I did have one, but the travel agent cancelled it. Damn! I ask him if there are any empty seats on the plane, and he says there are lots. So I suggest that maybe I can have one of those?
Sure, he says. No problem at all.
It was the best flight of my entire life. Ma’salamah Riyadh.
Feigning Liberty in KSA It’s a strange thing, but I never discovered Riyadh’s thriving but illegal pub scene until I was preparing to leave. With a month to go, a Brit flooring salesman came to see me. He said I looked like I needed a beer and said I yes, of course I did. He said he’d pick me up after work and we’d go for a pint or six. Naturally I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t.
We first of all went to his house which was on one of the fabled Western compounds that I had so miserably failed to gain access to. He said there was a bar there but it was only open on Thursday and Friday. He let me sample some of his home brew while he had a shower and got changed.
Then off we went and he blagged our way into a British Aerospace compound. All of the stuff for sale in the clubhouse there was home-made, but it was a million times better than the stuff I’d made. I had a pint, and then we went off to another place. When I left, my buddy put me in a taxi and told me to remember to bribe the driver with at least 50 Riyals, otherwise there was a good chance that he’d take me to a police station instead of my apartment. Ah, more paranoia.
Unfortunately (for me) the exercise was not repeated because this guy was leaving Riyadh in a few days’ time. Got himself a new job in Dubai, so he did.
Feeling Lugubrious in KSA About six weeks before the end of my contract I write a letter to Bongo, advising him that I will not be renewing my contract. He calls me into his office, and asks why I want to leave. I politely explain that I cannot continue living in a country where most of the things I like doing are illegal. He asks me to elucidate. Well, booze, art, concerts, cinema, theatre. He tells me he can’t do anything to change that, and I say I know he can’t and so it’s better if I leave.
A few days later he tells me he wants to set up a separate interior design division with an office outside Riyadh, and he wants me to run it. I ask him what location he has in mind and he says Jeddah. Ah, no, thanks but no thanks. Knowing that Bahrain or Dubai are completely out of the question, I suggest both these locations. I was right, so I don’t have to move on to phase 2 of my reasons for leaving which is that I hated every single minute of working for his company.
The word pretty quickly gets out that I am leaving, and I get several phone calls from other companies who are interested in hiring me. One of them is the company that B’astard works for. I go to several interviews, and am offered several jobs, but none of them has the kind of astronomical salary attached that would make me reconsider leaving.
Furious Lackey in KSA The office had recently hired a junior architect. He had probably been with us about five weeks when we heard that he had been arrested and locked up. His crime? Well, it seems that his previous sponsor had spotted this kid in the street, claimed that he had absconded, and called the cops. I don’t know the ins and outs of the story, but I do know that this young man was incarcerated in a Saudi jail until his current sponsor (Bongo) came along and used a bit of wasta. Problem was, Bongo was visiting his money in Switzerland at the time, and it was a week before he returned.
Once Bongo returned, the lad was released instantly. No charges were brought. No case to answer. It didn’t help my mood though. Apart from the time when Ken the American engineer was almost arrested for crashing his truck into a car that had run a red light (and Bongo was out of the country for that event also), it made me realise how totally vulnerable us foreigners were. Anything could happen, at any time, and you had no comeback whatsoever. The response from the police would be to lock you up, and talk to your sponsor when he made an appearance. Yakk.
Fekkin Lostit in KSA As you can imagine my return to Riyadh was awful. I tried to cheer myself up by counting down the remaining days – only about four months, but it was the most desolate feeling. There was no hope now that Bongo would ever move me out of the penthouse, but he did remember that there was a second bedroom there that was not used, so he started giving me flatmates.
There was an old German engineer who stayed for a fortnight, and an Indian architect who stayed for a month. I didn’t mind, it was a bit of company. But I had to stop attempting to make beer while these guys were around.
For the last few months I had been completely overloaded with work, and had been begging Bongo to get me an assistant. Eventually he agreed that if I could find a Filipino with about two years’ experience he’d hire him. I kept interviewing guys, and passing the good ones on to Bongo for a second interview. And then nothing would happen. I guess the money was wrong, or Bongo just didn’t make them an offer, but what it meant was that I was struggling to keep up with an impossible workload. Bah!
Bongo sent me one guy to interview, who had previously been working for Bongo, but had been 'laid-off’. Not sacked exactly, but no longer employed. This guy said that he would only come back if he was paid for all the time since he was laid-off. I reported this to Bongo, who went mental and told me it was none of my business and la-la-la.
Festive Lunacy in KSA One of the first things I had done when I started the job was to book two or three week’s holiday at Christmas. Bongo was non-committal on this for months and months. Eventually he told me that the company policy was for employees to work eleven months and then take their one-month vacation in one chunk. I explained that he was a git of the highest order and that if I couldn’t have a break at Christmas then I would resign immediately.
Finally Bongo agreed to my request and I booked my flight.
I arrived at Heathrow about 11am one drizzly grey day about a week before Christmas. I was met by my brother-in-law who lived nearby, Offspring and BetterArf who had brought me a nice warm coat to wear (not an abaya). First port of call, naturally, was a pub. I had planned to drink a few million pints, but I think I was under the table after about one and a half.
Needless to say I had a wonderful time, but the Riyadh-induced paranoia did not have enough time to wear off. I felt guilty about drinking alcohol, eating pork and seeing people holding hands and possibly snogging in public. I was also inclined to barter about the price of non-negotiable items like newspapers and stamps.I have no idea how I managed to tear myself away at the end of the holiday. I have never felt less like stepping onto an aeroplane in my life. As I got to the airport I saw guys in thobes and women in abayas and I just wanted to cry. In fact I probably did.
Funny Looks in KSA All too soon the visit was over and the family had to fly back to England. My flight left a few hours after theirs and I put the time to good use by attempting to drink the entire contents of the airport bar. I absolutely did not care what happened when I got to Riyadh in a state of obvious inebriation. Actually what did happen was that the immigration guy raised an eyebrow, said ‘been drinking, sir?’, smiled and sent me on my way. He must see dozens of people like that every single day.
I was still tiddly when I turned into the office for the afternoon shift at 4pm. Everyone remarked on how relaxed I seemed. Well, alcohol is a relaxant, so physically I guess I was a bit loose. But in my head I was screaming. I had no idea how I was going to get through the next three months until Christmas.
Frolicking Lamely in KSA We took a morning flight to Bahrain and arrived at 10 am. Following our usual plan of not planning anything too much, we asked the taxi driver to take us to a reasonably-priced hotel. I can’t remember the name of it now, but it was very nice and had bars and restaurants overlooking the pool.
Now this is where it gets weird. This is the first chance I’ve had to get a beer in over four months so I immediately head for the bar. It must be some minutes short of 11 am, but the bar is not only open, it is packed with Saudi men! Not only that, but the hypocritical little bastards are all drinking beer! I am absolutely gob-smacked. I always suspected that the supposed piety of Saudi society was a bit bogus, and here was the proof.
I elbowed my way to the bar and proceeded to consume as much beer as I possibly could. We had lunch sitting by the pool, and once again the Riyadh paranoia was banging away at me. I shouldn’t be doing this. That woman in the tiny bikini should wear a swimming abaya. Those Saudis shouldn’t be here at all. That woman in the thong should cover her ass.
But you know what? The world didn’t end at that moment. Most of those people are probably still alive and well. I think my visit to Bahrain was a turning point in my attitude to the mad burghers of Riyadh. I had spent months trying to understand their culture, trying to imagine how it could make sense and how it could make them happy. Trying even to fit in. But it was no good. I now knew that it was all a sham.
Family Life in KSA The big day arrives. I drive my little Chevy Sprint to the airport and meet the family. I am completely immersed in Riyadh paranoia by now and am reluctant to return my wife’s extravagant hugs and kisses in public. She is wearing the black nylon abaya that I sent her, but it is not done up, and her belly button is clearly visible between the crop top and jeans she is wearing. I hate Riyadh for making me think this way, but I have to tell her that she should fasten the abaya properly.
We get to the penthouse and BetterArf cannot believe how big it is (small English house paranoia). Later that evening the doorbell rings and it is Bongo come to say hello. I introduce BetterArf and find myself apologising for her lack of abaya and continuing belly button exposure. Bongo quite understands, in fact he seems to be having a good old leer.
During the days when I am at work, BetterArf and Offspring explore Riyadh a bit. She is only able to go out because her honour is protected by our five-year-old son. So that was a relief!
At the weekend we go for a drive into the desert. Well at least as far into the desert as you can get until you reach a police checkpoint and get sent back to town because you have no authorisation to leave. But we did see some sand dunes and some camels.
BetterArf had several culture shock experiences. First of all she was shocked at how Riyadh had changed me, how the formerly easy-going fun-loving bloke she had married had been turned into a totally paranoid freak who saw trouble lurking around every corner. Secondly, she was pissed off that she was not allowed to enter a record shop. If she wanted something she could wait at the door and someone would bring it for her. Finally, in Jarir Bookstore she was allowed to enter, but only up to a point. A large part of the stock is contained in a section marked ‘gentlemen only’. What’s that, the porn section?
BetterArf has been thinking that maybe we will all move to Riyadh at some point in the future, so she’s making enquiries about teaching jobs and housing and stuff. But I think I realised during this visit that this was no place for us to bring up our son. We could not endure the strictures of Saudi society even if we lived on a Western compound, and I absolutely did not want Offspring to grow up thinking that it was normal for women to be confined to the house all the time.
After a few days we moved into Ken and Barbie’s apartment, where there were pleasantly landscaped gardens, a huge swimming pool, and a relaxed atmosphere. Offspring mastered the art of swimming and probably spent all day every day doing it.
Fast Lamborghini in KSA My original job offer included ‘a car or travel allowance’. Since I had been compelled to stay in the apartment behind the office, Bongo had decided that I didn’t need a car or travel allowance after all. If I had to travel anywhere on business then the cost of that would be re-imbursed, provided that I had had three competitive tenders from taxi drivers, and chosen the cheapest one. Eventually I got him to agree that the original job offer was very clear on this point and that he had an obligation. So a backdated travel allowance was paid, and a small car would become available in a few weeks time when one of their engineers completed his short-term contract and returned the Chevrolet Sprint the office had given him.
I spent a couple of days acquiring a Saudi Driving Licence, and then Ibrahim the Saudi PRO took me out for a couple of driving lessons. Of course, I knew how to drive in England, but driving in Saudi is quite a different proposition.
On the housing issue, though, I could not make Bongo budge. The job offer had only said ‘accommodation will be provided’, there was no mention of Western compounds, and really I should be grateful to have a luxurious penthouse apartment in Sulimaniyah, Riyadh’s answer to London’s Mayfair. Well, maybe I should have been grateful. If I’d had my family with me I probably would have been…
Fundamentalist Loonies in KSA I only encountered one Muttaween during my year in Riyadh, and that was plenty thank you. The American engineer had escaped from his site for a week because his wife was in town before they both went on vacation. We’ll call him Ken, and his wife of course is Barbie. They very kindly invited me to accompany them on a visit to one of the soukhs. After looking at lots of stuff together, Ken disappeared into a shop that I was not interested in. Tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired Barbie followed. She was wearing an abbaya but no headscarf. I waited outside and began rolling a cigarette.
Out of the blue this very scruffy looking Saudi came up to me and prodded me with a stick. I turned to face him and he said ‘your wife should cover her hair’. I was a bit taken aback and explained that my wife was in England. He looked totally confused for a moment, obviously calculating what the relationship might be. He dashed into the shop that Barbie and Ken had gone into, and came out seconds later. It seems they had disappeared (this particular row of shops could be entered from both ends. And exited too, of course). Mr Muttawa returned to me, told me I should not smoke (not completely stupid, then) and slunk off, muttering something under his aromatic breath. I spent an anxious half-hour looking for Barbie and Ken. I found them eventually and we went home.
Barbie and Ken lived in a place called Sahara Towers. This was a Western compound of about six apartment blocks in the middle of Riyadh. It turned out that they would be on holiday in Cyprus for one of the weeks that my family would be here, and they very kindly offered us the use of their apartment during that week. This was too good to be true!
Forward Looking in KSA As the arrival of my family grew closer, Bongo called me into his arctic office and gave me a flyer about Index, the big interior design exhibition in Dubai. He said ‘you should go to this’. I looked at it and realised that the dates were slap bang in the middle of my family’s visit.
I’d heard a bit about this Dubai place, about how it was so relaxed and you could get beer and you hardly felt like you were in the Middle East at all. Sounded like my kinda place!
The timing was a bit of a problem. I had no intention of losing 2-3 days of our precious time together. They couldn’t come with me because there was no time to arrange a multi-entry visa for Saudi. We couldn’t re-arrange their visit so that it started or ended on the dates of the exhibition because of UK work and school commitments. Regretfully I had to decline the chance of a jolly in Dubai, but it gave me an another idea which was that we would spend the final week of the visit in Bahrain, and the family could return to the UK from there.
Frighteningly Ludicrous in KSA It took about three or four months for Bongo to get my residence visa (Iqama) sorted out. Apparently there was some kind of quota system for various nationalities and professions. So a company might be allocated visas for five Indian civil engineers, two Egyptian structural engineers and so on. Bongo had not been allocated a visa for one British interior designer, and so eventually he had to go and see Prince Nayef to get the visa authorised. At least, that was what Bongo told me, and he expected me to be seriously grateful.
So finally I had the little green book and was able to open a bank account and, well, open a bank account. I was also able to sponsor my family to come over on visit visas.
This proved to be a very frustrating exercise, once again involving diplomatic bags, wasted trips to London, and a whole lot of money. One day, BetterArf went to the Saudi Embassy in London to see if any progress had been made. They said they did not have her passport. She explained that she’d sent it two weeks ago, and could they please have a good look. The person at the desk explained that it was impossible that they’d had the thing for two weeks because otherwise the visa would have been stamped in it and it would have been mailed to her.
At which, BetterArf took the only course of action that a sensible person could under the circumstances and burst into tears. Offspring helped. The commotion attracted the attention of a senior-type bloke who came out of his office to see what was going on. He immediately took BetterArf and Offspring into a room that contained several piles of passports, found hers and stamped a visa in it.
Foolish Lebanese in KSA B’stard left the company for pastures new a few months after I joined. I was somewhat relieved. He was replaced by a strange Lebanese guy who seemed to take a shine to me. When he arrived in Riyadh he was given a room for one night only at the Al Khozama Hotel. But when he tried to check-out the next morning the hotel insisted that he pay the bill. He explained that they should invoice Bongo, and they explained that Mr Bongo no longer had credit facilities with the hotel. So the Lebanese guy refused to leave the hotel and stayed there for about three days while Bongo scraped together the cash to pay the ever-increasing bill.
So not an auspicious start for our new GM. After a few days he came to me and asked where was all the nightlife, the fun, the cinemas, the theatre? When I had stopped laughing and picked myself up off the floor, I said ‘you’re joking right?’ He said he wasn’t. I said ‘how can you not know that these things don’t exist in Saudi Arabia?’
Faintly Lost in KSA One day, Juma from admin came to me and gave me an airline ticket and a letter in Arabic. I asked him what this was about and he said ‘you are going to Jeddah tomorrow to meet people at xxxx client site.’ It’s the first I’ve heard of it. ‘Abdul and Abdullah are also going and they will hire a car and take you to the meeting’. Oh great, and what’s this letter? ‘This letter is from Mr Bongo, authorising you to leave Riyadh for tomorrow only.’
That’s another amazing thing about Saudi – expats cannot leave their base without permission from their sponsor. They also cannot leave the country without an exit visa!
But I was puzzled about this sudden need to go to Jeddah, and why Abdul and Abdullah were being sent as well. Who was I going to meet? What to do? What was it all about? I still don’t know. When we arrived at the airport in Jeddah, A and A organised a very crummy hire car, and drove us to the client’s premises. After much confusion and difficulty getting into the building, it turned out that the main guy we needed to see, inshallah, was in Riyadh today. So we saw his assistant but it was a complete and utter waste of time. I asked A & A whether this meeting had been pre-arranged with the client and they said they didn’t know, Mr Bongo had just told them they had to go.
Anyway, Jeddah looked like a nice place – the women wore multi-coloured abayas, and the whole place seemed a bit more relaxed than Riyadh. It is also a much older city and there were some fairly interesting old buildings with intricately carved wooden balconies and mushrabiyahs. And, unlike Riyadh, it’s on the coast.
Fear and Loathing in KSA One of the things that really got on my nerves was the amount and quality of censorship. I understand that Islam presribes modest dress, although how that comes to be interpreted as meaning women should cover every inch of skin, including the face and hands in solar-friendly black fabric is beyond me.
Whenever I bought a foreign newspaper I was appalled to find that perfectly innocuous photos and adverts had been vandalised by thugs with thick black markers. And that CD covers would be given the same treatment. I bought a CD once where the image of the female singer had been blacked out up to her neck and even her lips were blacked out.
I was also getting irritated by the way that women were treated. One of my local record shops was closed down by the Muttawa because a female customer had been allowed inside! Women were not allowed to drive, and could only leave the house with the permission of their husband and in the company of a male relative.
I quickly developed a form of paranoia. One of the reasons was the fact that after a couple of months I still had no residence visa, and as far as I knew my visit visa had expired. I always carried a letter from Bongo with me explaining that my visa was ‘in process’. So I was wary of encounters with policemen. Another reason was that I was a stranger in a very strange land. I began to practice a form of thought-censorship, trying not to think about how crap my personal situation was, and trying to believe that there must be some goodness and logic in all the censorship, the oppression, the apparent lack of warmth in human relationships. Whatever I said or did was always accompanied by me thinking ‘is this an ok thing to think/say/do in Saudi Arabia?’
Fused 'Lectric in KSA It had become my habit to wheel my computer across the hall from the office to the apartment at weekends. This was not so that I could do work without entering those hallowed halls, it was so that I could play with it. I was mastering AutoCAD and 3D Studio. Oh and maybe playing some games. Maybe.
One week it actually happened – Bongo had got me a new PC with more RAM than anyone had ever thought possible, a whole 20Mb. And it was a 486! I was immensely pleased with it.
Come Thursday afternoon I trundled it across the hallway, plugged it in, switched it on and BANG! A big bang, a plume of smoke out of the back of the machine, and absolute panic from yours truly.
Saudi Arabia, for some utterly bizarre and inexplicable reason, has two flavours of electricity. Some sockets operate at 110 Volts, others at 220 or 240 Volts. The plugs and sockets are, however, exactly the same. Frequently you will get a few of each inside one house. These voltages are for guidance only though, the actual stuff coming out of the walls can be 15% more or less than what you expect. To counter this, all computer users in KSA are connected via a brown and beige box that stabilises the voltage. All computers sold in the Kingdom can operate at 110 or 220, and some can automatically detect what voltage they are being fed on. As it happens, my new PC did not have this auto-detection feature, and it was not switched to whatever the voltage was in the apartment. So the power supply in the computer blew up. I waited anxiously until early evening, when the computer soukh opened, and took the PC to a shop to be fixed. The guy laughed, he’d seen a lot of these. Come back in half an hour and it will be working. And it was, for maybe 30 Riyals. Was I relieved or what?!
Fully Lost in KSA Time for a little assessment of my situation.
After about two months, my wonderful boss had not given me the car that I was contractually entitled to. The ‘temporary’ accommodation was looking very much like it was going to be permanent. My iqama (residence visa) had still not been processed, and as far as I knew my visit visa had expired.
I had no friends, no neighbours, and no telephone. The only way I could speak to my family in the UK was to use public phone boxes, and these only took old-style coins that you had to buy from an old guy who sometimes hung around near the international call-boxes, and sometimes didn’t.
I had tried as hard as I could to meet people and to socialise with them. This basically meant being matey with the guys in the office, but this was by no means an easy thing to do. I can say that, without exception, they were all extremely jealous of me. I was the only one who got paid on anything like a regular basis. One of the guys had warned me during my first week that Bongo operated a policy of always keeping everybody a couple of months behind with their salary. I made it very clear to Bongo that I had commitments in the UK and that I had to be paid on time, and hinted that I might not be very productive if my pay was late.
The guys were also envious of my ‘fabulous’ accommodation. I had visited the homes of one or two of them by this time, and the contrast was astonishing.
I did get quite friendly with one chap who ran a curtain and fabrics business. He was a Brit who had been in Saudi forever, and he was as gay as a nine-bob note. So I didn’t get too close to him, nudge nudge, wink, wink.
Outside of work there was zero opportunity for meeting people. Usually in a new town you can meet people by joining a club of some sort, amateur dramatics or gardening or something, but if such things existed, they were kept very very secret. I was a deeply unhappy bunny.
Frazzled Larrikin in KSA I began to venture out of the building I lived in a little bit. Almost immediately next door was quite a large supermarket. It had a decent range of stuff that was more than adequate for my simple needs – except for the total lack of bacon and other pork products, of course. I was in there one afternoon when the call to prayer started blasting out over the PA system. The shutters came down at the front of the shop and the lights started to go out. I found a member of staff to find out what on earth was going on and he said ‘it’s prayer time, sir, please wait’. Bloody hell, I’d only gone in for a loaf of bread and some cheese and was held prisoner inside the shop for half an hour!
In Saudi Arabia, the entire country grinds to a halt five times a day for prayers. The call to prayer is broadcast on the radio, through malls, and live in all its tuneless variety from the minarets of mosques. And everything stops. You can be in the middle of a business meeting, and people will rush off to pray.
It was something I never really got used to. Bongo’s office used the hallway outside the elevator as its prayer room. One day I was returning to the office after a meeting outside and I took the lift to the second floor. The lift doors opened. Fifteen of my colleagues were prostrating themselves before me. I had no idea what to do, but my legs wouldn’t move and after what seemed like a very long time the lift doors closed and I returned to the ground floor. A bit later the ‘imam’ came to yell at me. I asked him what I was supposed to do, and he said don’t enter the office during prayer time. I thought of explaining that I had work to do and deadlines to meet, and the lift didn’t have windows, but it didn’t seem to be such a good idea.
Fear and Loathing in KSA
