WEEK 5



'Mimi Berchie' in Arabic, (from right to left ) written on the board by my girls

 
I ENJOY BEING A GIRL…
Going into the bank to cash my cheque this week was an experience that was far too exciting for its normally mundane nature, but even the most routine activities in Saudi Arabia become a huge dilemma and adventure for women.

Ideally, we should have found a women’s branch of Riad Bank to cash our cheques, but we’d heard that they wouldn’t mind serving us in this particular men’s branch. When we got there, however, the gravity of what we were about to do dawned, and none of us had the nerve to walk through the queue of men at the ATM and into their bank (it didn’t help that we’d just driven past the notorious Punishment ‘Chop Chop’ Square). So we nervously tightened our headscarves and squabbled about who should enter the premises first. Naturally, this caused more of a spectacle, as the amused men (probably the closest they’d come to women that day) were entertained by the inadvertent public exhibition by nervous foreign women. After the weary-looking guard took pity on us and asked us what we wanted, none of the men gave us any trouble once inside the bank – other than the odd sneaky once-overs we’ve all grown accustomed to. The clerk tried to give us tickets to make us join  the queue, but we made a group decision to sweet-talk the manager into serving us before the 30-strong queue of men, so we poor, helpless females would be spared the indignity of waiting for an hour in a roomful of men. The ‘damsel in distress’ thing works quite well here in Saudi, I think you’ll find…

Anyway, it looks far better for the bank manager to serve a handful of women and first and let them be on their way, than risk their presence in a non-segregated room, should the religious police come knocking.

We had no such dilemmas in Western Union. After a much briefer should we/shouldn’t we shuffle at the entrance, the line of men graciously parted almost instinctively to usher us straight to the front of the queue. Sometimes, you can’t complain about being a woman in Saudi Arabia!

TIME’S UP LADIES – UNLESS YOU HAVE A SAUDI WATCH…
On Thursday, which should have been the first day of my weekend, some of us had to go in to University to invigilate an exam, where I learned that the bizarrely relaxed Saudi approach to anything formal reaches even official exams. Apparently, it’s only a Western thing to expect total silence in exams, or to stop writing precisely when the time is up, or to switch your phone off, or to not leave the room just as we’re about to start!  As sweet and ambitious as I find Arab students, they do need to be encouraged to act responsibly as adults to get the equality they crave as young women. But it’s not entirely their fault – some invigilators sat open-mouthed as some of the Saudi teachers walked into the room to give the girls some of the answers to tricky questions! I guess they do have a completely different approach to examinations here.

‘The Day On Which She Was Born’ IS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR A PARTY!
It was heartbreaking last week not allowing one of my classes to celebrate the birthday of a student in class. They were so excited, but I didn’t think an 18^th birthday was worth my job, so they had to save the treats they had brought in, but I allowed them to refer to her ‘special day’ and the ‘day on which she was born’, which they thought was hilarious, as they don’t think much of the University’s attempts at protecting them from facets of culture and society which they so obviously indulge in at home.

PRINCESS OF THE DESERT?
Every Arabian Princess needs a desert experience, so I took myself off to join the Riyadh Hashrides society, where a bunch of Western expats get together every Friday to go hashing in a different location outside and around Riyadh.

When you say desert walk, you think flat, sandy terrain right? Well for my very first hashride I went to the Dead Yellow Taxi Waterfalls, which is basically very rocky desert terrain with steep steep cliffs and deep deep valleys. The scenery was stunning, and you could see the riverbeds and waterfalls that still shape the land from when it was covered with water thousands of years ago, and watching the sun set in the desert was a beautiful experience.

Before we started walking, one of the guides asked me if I had vertigo. “Of course not”, I scoffed in disdained as I insisted on joining the advanced hike rather than the beginner’s hike.   Turns out I do have a touch of vertigo. Don’t be fooled by my smiling face in the photos, it was probably the toughest physical thing I’ve ever done – and I didn’t even have proper hiking boots, just trainers. I felt really dizzy and sick halfway up the steepest slope of one cliff, but it didn’t stop me whipping my camera out with one hand to catch the view.

I had no business being on that advanced walk, and next time – if there is a next time – I will swallow my pride and go on the gentle beginner’s walk.

 

 

 

 

AL-MAMLAKA ‘KINGDOM TOWER’ (or the bottle opener)

Finally, we rounded off the week with a shopping trip to one of Riyadh’s most famous landmarks,’Al –Mamlaka’, also known as the Kingdom Tower. It’s a stunning building day or night time, and you can see it from almost everywhere in the city. Some people call it the 'Bottle Opener', and others say it looks  like a tank top. It has three floors of shops, with private offices and apartments through the rest of the tower. The third floor of the mall is women-only, so you can remove abayas and headscarves and walk around in Western gear. Funny enough, when we got there we couldn’t be bothered to take the abayas off and walk around in our own clothes!

 

 

 











The women-only third floor is covered in frosted glass so men can't look up and see us walking around in skimpy clothes...

HILARIOUS MOMENT OF THE WEEK:

While taking a photo with a Muslim friend who covers her face with a niqab, she suddenly stopped as it dawned on her: “Why am I smiling? No one can see it…!” J