Nadeem blurts out a storm of fast and angry Arabic. His toothpickesque 190cm height somehow adds to the weight of the words and the way how he squints his eyes clearly show, that he is not satisfied with the offered price. But the local merchant at whom the words are addressed seems to be unaffected. He holds his head high and returns a stern look together with some words back to my Saudi friend. I can almost feel how the temperature of the environment approaches 0 Kelvin, somehow miraculously increasing the heat of the discussion. The tone and voice color of both participants of the verbal sparring change and intensify, darken, burn.
I can only imagine what the contents of the dialogue are, but the gestures are providing some clear hints: design and size of the shemagh is not good enough, we are buying many pieces, quality of the underwear is shitty, yet the price is outrageous.
Eventually, the plastic bag with the white boxers (I hoped to put on later) is thrown over the counter and I understand that the first stage of this play has come to its grand finale.
Nadeem looks at me, his eyes still cold with rage, he nods his head, and decides to head for the exit. Mohammed, my colleague, and I follow him. With each step, the exit approaches us closer and closer and I am counting the seconds until the moment the merchant cries out something in Arabic in order to stop us and give us a better price.
But the merchant is silent.
Nadeem opens the door and steps out. Mohammed and I follow him.
The merchant is still silent.
Nadeem turns left, continues to walk down the street and Mohammed and I follow him.
The merchant is still silent.
The door closes with a gentle “thack”.
Silence.
We are standing on a semi-dark street somewhere in the centre of Riyadh. It’s 9pm and I see a stray black cat licking his balls, one eye checking the quality of his activity and one eye somehow keeping us in his viewing angle. I look at Nadeem, who continues walking down the street.
“So… what now?” I say with a slight disappointment in my voice. To be honest, I was hoping to hear the door open, see the merchant waving at us with a big smile, offering us a 43% discount, cup of tea, and perhaps one of his shiny set of cufflinks together with his beautiful virgin daughter as a “hey-let’s-be-Arabic-friends-again-my-friend” bonus. But then again, I knew that my imagination was completely of the charts and nothing like that would happen. That greedy bastard would never let go of those shiny cufflinks for free.
“This man was worse than Alibaba my friend, I’m sorry for taking you to his place and wasting your time.”
“Was it really that bad?”
“He wanted to charge you almost double prices! No way I’m going to let you spend almost 250 Riyals for a taqiyah, agal, shemagh, and some underwear!”
“I do really appreciate that, but… what do we do now?”
“No worries habibi, there are many more” he replies, and opens a door he has just arrived at.
We enter a very similar shop with a very similar merchant persona. After a short exchange, we receive exactly the same things as we have chosen in the previous shop. One taqiyah, a white knitted Arabic cap to be used under a shemagh, a cotton square scarf. This all held in place by an agal, a black cord, plus a set of underwear – a white T-shirt, white trousers, and lovely white boxers.
Again, I have no idea what Nadeem, who works in the Saudi army, says to the merchant. Yet his gestures, his hands flying over the place, waving in the direction of the previous store are indicating that he is taking a different approach this time.
In the end I pay 200 Riyals (~50 EUR) for the whole set. Great, hereby my Saudi clothes shopping is concluded. All I need now is to wait for the thobe, a white ankle-length shirt, that I ordered (tailor made) few hours ago and that should be finished in a tenday. I chose a pure white cloth with a good polyester/cotton ratio and a slightly more traditional cut with cufflinks and a higher collar. Right now is winter, with 25 degree Celsius and an almost perfect weather, but in case I’m staying until summer, when the temperatures go well beyond 50 degrees Celsius, I want to look and feel cool.
We return to the car. Mohammed, our designated driver, insists that they take me to a dinner.
Mohammed focuses on the road, but after a while he interrupts the silence.
“So you have a family, Michael?”
“No Mohammed, I’m single.”
“So, a girlfriend then!”
“No, I’m single.”
“Why?”
“Well, currently I’m not living on one place, plus I’m enjoying being single at the moment.”
“But… why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
“Well, I thought that all people from the West have girlfriends. At least that’s what you see in the movies.”
“Some do and some don’t Mohammed. As for now I want to enjoy the freedom for a little bit more.But what about you, did you have any luck recently?”
“Ow come on Michael, you know that girlfriends are a big no no in Saudi.”
“Don’t lie to me my friend, I know that you’ve studied in Jeddah.”
Mohammed looks into my eyes and smiles.
We’re passing one of the longer lanes in Riyadh, the 8 million large capital of Saudi Arabia. I always wonder how this place emerged, but I am imagining it somehow like this: Few hundred years ago, someone sat in the centre of the desert and thought that this piece of sand would make a wonderful spot for a capital city. And voila – Riyadh was born. I know that this idea is missing some fine historical and technical details, but I can think of little actual reasons to have a capital in the middle of one of the largest deserts on Earth. Over and over, Riyadh is dry. Conservative. The religious police, mutawa, in their white cars be occasionally seen taking care of the public’s morale (enforce the dress code, make sure that men and women are separated, prayer attendance is held up to and so on). Once, I had a discussion with a manager at my client’s company and his answer well described this city:
“Michael, imagine what would you become if you’d be a member of a group of people who for the past 300 years had nothing else to do but to sit on their asses in the desert and eat camels.”
But just as everywhere else, there is no “single one” Saudi Arabia. The whole country is basically made up from tons of desert, but you can find one pinch of mountains in the southwest and few teaspoons of coastal areas as well. Definitely, compared to almost anywhere else in the world, the whole country truly is conservative, but the cities closer to the sea (such as Jeddah or Dammam) are relatively liberal. You can even have a coffee in a restaurant with an unmarried girl and the chance that you will have to take a 6 months long break in the jail is lower than 15%, maybe 20%.
I look back at Mohammed and ask him: “So?”
“Well you know, back in Jeddah, I met few girls. I was scared, but not here, not in Riyadh. But once I feel I’m ready for a marriage, I’ll meet girls.”
“So as any Saudi man, you ask your mother or sisters to introduce you to someone, talk to the parents of the girl, then eventually talk to her, and decide on the spot if you want to engage or not, right?”, I continue with the discussion.
“Yeah, you are right,” he answers.
Suddenly, a strange idea comes to my head. I play around with it for a while and then decide to ask the question.
“Mohammed, do you have any sisters?”
“Yeah, the older one is 25 and married, the younger one is 18.”
“So, purely hypothetically speaking, would you allow me to marry your younger one?”
“First it’s not up to me to decide, but I’m afraid that you’d have to convert to Islam first, Michael.”
“Ok, let’s take even a longer hypothetical de-route and say that I’d become a Muslim. Can I marry her then?”
“Well, if she likes you and agrees to you, why not. Welcome to my family, habibi!” he laughs.
Riyadh’s neon signs flick behind the dark windows of Mohammed’s Lexus. We continue briefly discussing soccer, Islam, Playstation games, hobbies, travel.
“So you spent some time in Japan, Michael?”
“Yeah, I’ve enjoyed few years of a lovely on-off relationship with that country.”
“That place is really crazy, right?”
“Mohammed, everywhere and everyone is crazy. Japan, you, and me.”
“Haha, you might be right. So who is normal then?”
“Only those people that you don’t know well yet, Mohammed.”