An All-American Thanksgiving

Outside the restaurant

I'll be having a different sort of Thanksgiving this year. The restaurant in our compound, which typically does a themed buffet on Thursday nights ("Italian night!" "Indian night!" or the perennial dude favorite, "Carvery night!"), is giving a nod to the Americans by doing a Thanksgiving dinner this week. Butterball turkeys are thawing as we speak. Roasted and mashed potatoes are promised, and pumpkin pie. The restaurant staff is Indian, so if stuffing does appear I'll be interested in the seasoning. We'll be dining with other Americans who live here, and have spread the word to friends from outside the compound to join us. Right now, it's looking like a group of about 50, including a fair sprinkling of non-Americans probably a bit baffled by a major American holiday built around everybody's least-favorite poultry.

So in honor of this uniquely American holiday, I thought it would be good to take a moment to reflect on the uniquely American things I'm thankful for.

110v wiring: This one is huge. Because it's small. I LOVE American outlets,  mounted discretely flush into the wall, and appliances with their dainty little plugs that won't break a window if your whip-action gets a little aggressive when you're wrapping up a cord. With 110 you get plugs the size of a cat's paw instead of a Labrador's, so you can have things like string-to-string Christmas lights. Extension cords cost $5 and can tuck their thin little way into crevices and corners. That's notable because here a 3-meter extension cord costs $15 and you could use it to tow a truck. The multi-head cap at the end looks like a cricket bat. In American you can buy a shy little octopus that turns a single outlet into three without bothering its neighbor or intruding into the room. Genius! Oh! And the grounded outlets in bathrooms! What bliss! You can operate a blow dryer in front of a mirror. What a thought! In the magic land of America, you buy a thing, you plug it into the wall. Done. No adapters, no squinting at the UL micro-print to figure out whether you need one, no wondering whether this outlet works for that or whether the handmade label on a particular outlet is telling you the truth about what kind of a zap is waiting on the other side. (I saw a bank of labeled outlets in a friend's house recently with one marked "127v." What?) The American power grid may be ancient and decaying, but doggone it, I can put a lamp where I want. With a switch on the lamp instead of the cord. Thanks, guys.

Lines: Oh, that docile American willingness to wait in line. We learn that one early, right? I certainly remember the kind of hell that would rain down on a first-grader accused by his or her peers of cutting in line. Didn't matter what we were waiting for. We could be going out to recess, but at some unspoken but universally recognized moment the melee for the door would turn into a line, and anyone accused of cutting at that point would be vilified. Saudi Arabia is not unique in being an every-man-for-himself culture, and as a rule-following, contention-averse American female, I appreciate those American checkout lines and offramp queues. There's still plenty of jostling and cheating for sure, but in general, it works pretty well. Thanks, Lord of the Flies self-policing American school system, for getting that one right.

Wrinkle-free cotton: I may be out on a washline by myself on this one. I can't say for sure if this is an American thing. It may just be me (most likely), or my generation, or that breezy California style I grew up with, but it sure seems like the English-speakers with accents much prettier than mine do a lot of ironing. Around here the universally understood reason for being unable to stay any longer at lunch or go on some outing is "I have a lot of ironing to do." And the involved parties all just nod their heads. Been there, too, mate. You have? Does the pronunciation of a hard "r" make one more content to smooth out a t-shirt with a few spritzes of water? Or harem-scarem enough to say, "Oops. Wrinkled. I'll just press these pants really quick"? I can't say I've run up against people mentioning "ironing" as an agenda item in the States. Good thing. Because if you're all out there routinely setting up for an afternoon of ironing I'd just as soon not know about it. I'd keep on doing exactly the same lazy thing, mind you, but I'd have one more reason to think I do a uniquely poor job of looking after myself.

Return policies: I recently came across a website where foreigners living in the U.S. contributed lists of things about America they have difficulty explaining to their relatives back home. A recurring item on those lists was American retail return policies. And I love them. We recently bought an air bed (now open for visitors!), and asked the salesman what we could do if it didn't inflate properly. "You can return for refund in two days!" he told us proudly. "Or exchange in seven!" He worked for a big-chain retailer, which is what made this boon of generosity possible. And let's keep in mind that these policies are in place in a country where 50% of the adult population can't drive and any outing is going to chew up half of an evening. Can't get out within two days? Tough. Zappos, I love you. Target, I love you. And to the collective body of the American retail consumer, who would force the closure of a business with anything less than a 30-day, 100% refund policy, I love you best of all.

Holidays & three-day weekends: One thing that baffles foreigners about America is how ridiculously hard we work. More hours per week, fewer days of vacation, shorter lunches...we are seen as a nation of workaholics missing out on all the important things in life. Gotcha. Can't argue. But boy, we sure know how to shave the edges off. Is there anything more savory than a three-day weekend? Lounging on a Sunday and knowing you're not going to work the next day? Or perhaps counting down to a Friday off, where Monday is already Tuesday and the long weekend is only three more days away? A three-day weekend to start the summer, a three-day weekend to end it, a three- or four-day weekend in the middle. Halloween, which is a guaranteed playday no matter whether or not you're at work, then the FOUR-DAY Thanksgiving holiday. After the Christmas and New Year's holidays, there's that tender-mercy January break with MLK Day, President's Day in February, spring break just around the corner, and back to summer. I'll take care of my own big vacations, but living where I keep having a little one just around the next corner makes the rhythm of a year, well, just delightful.

Thanksgiving: A holiday based on gratitude AND self-indulgence? Could anything be better? Probably not. I have a feeling those two things kind of need each other. The fact that every year Americans of all religious and cultural backgrounds spend the better part of a week traveling and shopping and cooking to come together for a single meal, based on food that we say we love, but don't really want to eat any other time of year, says there's more to this holiday than the food. A day of thanks. Thanks for the people you're sitting with, thanks for all that makes it possible for everyone to be there, thanks for food and shelter, for the web of family and friends and community and country that gets us through, and thanks for the American story we all share. And perhaps what makes us cherish it so deeply is how good it feels to ignore our complaints and count our blessings. Pretty great excuse for a holiday, huh? And after dinner, while considering how content and satisfied you are and how great that pie is going to be, you the mixer plug a little kiss from me before you start whipping the cream.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Getting to the Bottom of Things

I'm exploring a theory--plumbing the depths, in fact--but I'm keeping my hopes for that Nobel Prize in economics in check. Pinched back, you might say. Here's the poop: I believe I've found a way to divide the world into first world, developing/emerging world, and third world that is completely void of controversy. What relief! A method that eliminates all wrangling over GDP, debt ratios, per capita income, and other subjective measures that frankly reek of first-world high-water attitudes. No judgment, no complications, no math. But whenever I have an urge to float my theory with fellow-travelers, plop! They've already arrived at the same end. So it's clear I haven't found anything new, but if I close my eyes and concentrate and hurry, I MIGHT be the first to publish it.

Here goes: It's in the plumbing. As follows:

• First world: Reliable drinking water comes from the tap, you can order a salad in a restaurant without worrying about how the greens were washed, and sit-down, flush toilets with toilet paper are available everywhere you go (outdoor venues excepted, where maintained Port-A-Lets are available instead).
• Developing world: Reliable drinking water comes from the tap (though sensitive travelers might have a few uncomfortable days if they drink quantities of it), restaurant ordering is generally safe, but you frequently find some funky bathroom situations.
• Third world: Non-potable water from the taps, and bathroom situations occupy the range between funky and primitive, with no way to anticipate how far up or down that spectrum you're going to find things.

I hope I didn't use too much technical language, but I needed to be specific if I had any hope of marking the territory around my theory. I expect future travels to clean up some of the swampy areas between categories, but I think I have a good start. Those Nobel people pay some mad cizash and I don't want to lose out over a careless smear. Plus I hear they keep things really clean in Stockholm and I'd like to go there. So let me plunge into the details:

First world
When you're in the first world, you know what to expect when you go into the bathroom. Americans make jokes about European toilet paper, but come on--you're using public toilets. You ever wanted to buy one of those gigundor rolls in a U.S. public bathroom for your home installation? Institutional toilet paper is the worst everywhere, but in the first world it IS everywhere, unless it runs out and you need your neighbor to spare a square. You're going to have a room with a door, a sit-down toilet (and a urinal, if applicable), and by global standards, it'll be clean. Anything other than that is an exception and a reliable conversation piece. As for water, you just don't think about it, other than to say the tap water tastes better here than there.

Developing world
In a lot of ways, the developing world looks like the first world. Highways, office buildings, first-class shopping. You eat in restaurants without worry. And then you go to the bathroom. Sink? Maybe. If there is a sink, soap? Maybe. Towels or paper towels? Maybe. Toilet off the ground, like a chair? Maybe. Toilet paper? Maybe. What have other people done in there before you? Not sure, but it appears probably something different than what you're doing.

Third world
In the third world, you carry bottled water everywhere you go. You eat fresh vegetables only in a high-end restaurant or if you've prepared them yourself, and you may or may not have seen somebody washing his face in the water used to cook the street food. You are likely to find yourself needing to use the bathroom more often here than you do at home, which gives you a broad survey of what's available: squatters (both elevated and flat), pull chains, dip buckets for low-tech flushing (and washing), straight-up pit toilets, sit toilets without seats or tank lids, and privacy that's left up to you. And toilet paper? Don't make me giggle. When you're finished, that hand sanitizer in your purse is probably your only option.

Which brings me to my current state of residence, where we have highways that look like this:

Riyadh Ring Road. Source: Dar Group

Office buildings that look like this:

Downtown Riyadh. Source: Skyscrapercity.com

And shopping malls that look like this:

Al Faisaliah Mall, Riyadh. Source: Arab News

It's all got that freshly scrubbed sparkly shine, doesn't it? So now it's time to evaluate the plumbing. Potable water? Check. Now whether you want to drink it is a separate question. A seasonal question, actually. When I got here in late August, I was taking showers straight from the cold tap. We knew the seasons had changed when we noticed cool--as in drinking temperature--water from the tap a few weeks ago. So, with first-world water checked off it's time to go the bathroom for the final part of the evaluation.

To establish the context, perhaps the best place to start is with my own:

Admire my decorating? This is the powder room/loo/WC/washroom/toilet by my front door. That's one of the rugs the carpet dealer threw in when we bought our larger rugs. The sink is the smallest I've ever seen--good luck getting both your hands in it at once, but I've provided soap and a towel if you're game to try. (Though I'll understand if I see you washing your hands in the kitchen.) Most Americans are familiar with the hand-held shower wand so universal in Europe and inexplicably absent in the U.S. I have those, too, in my showers and will miss them terribly when I go home. But what is that sprayer by the toilet, Americans ask?

Well, as convenient a tool as it might seem for rinsing out the toilet you've just cleaned, it is, in fact, for cleaning the person using the toilet. No matter what else is lacking in a public restroom in Riyadh, you will ALWAYS find one of these. A lot of non-Americans find the customary U.S. reliance on dry toilet paper alone disturbing. As the girl from Cottonelle reminds us here, wet washing is much more civilized than using just toilet paper, don't you agree? (Don't forget to talk about your bum on Facebook!) So in Europe you find the bidet, and in the Middle East a spray wand.

But it gets a lot less civilized in a hurry. There are some problems with the use of these things in a public setting:

• Overreliance: Washing with water is a first-rate idea. Not having anything to dry with? Uh...are you supposed to just air-dry under those abayas and thobes? It's common to find no toilet paper, or to be made to feel that your predicament is your own fault because a roll of toilet paper is sitting on the sink and you were supposed to tear some off BEFORE you went into the toilet. And yes, that is also what you're supposed to dry your hands with at said sink. The well-prepared traveler carries her own.

• Overspray: Finding water on the seat in a public bathroom in Saudi Arabia is normal. So is finding water on the lid, the tank, the wall, and the floor. And I'm told the women are tidier than the men, who often use the sprayer to do ablutions before prayer, which include washing the face and head, hands and arms to the elbows, and feet and ankles. The directive also seems to include just walking away when you're finished. It's up to the next many users to keep their own hems out of the puddles on the floor until the dry climate does its job. Here's what I walked into just last week in a restaurant:

Kinda hard to capture water with a phone camera and the backup distances available in a toilet stall. You're looking at front edge of the toilet and the floor on the left, and the back edge of the seat and the lower part of the lid on the right. With a little study you can see the droplets all over the toilet lid and seat and the sheen on the floor. Thanks a lot, sister. I hope you're feeling good about yourself.

• Overly male world view: Dudes building public buildings, you do realize we're wearing abayas, right? Which are another layer of hitching and handling you have to manage on top of whatever clothes you're wearing underneath. And which tend to drag on the floor, so you have to start wrangling from the moment you enter the bathroom/poolroom. And you DO realize we carry purses, right? Well, of course not. These are the same dudes who don't consider the next man to use the bathroom when they spray water everywhere. The same men who say they wear ONLY white in the summer because it's Just Too Hot to wear anything else, and say it front of a woman wearing a black robe with zero sense of irony. The same men who tell me to bring a lab sample back to the clinic the next morning and seem puzzled by how I'm supposed to do that when women can't drive. So, of course, I have yet to encounter a SINGLE bathroom with a purse hook. Not one. I'm considering the merits of a backpack.
• Overuse: How, exactly, did the last person use this wand I'm supposed to take in my hand and...oh, never mind.

If you can look past the water-everywhere issue, bathrooms at malls and restaurants are usually fairly clean. Even when instructions are required.

But when the instructions fail (or patrons are just making their best guesses about what they're supposed to do) things can go badly awry. Excluding highway truck stops and scheisty places where you really shouldn't be asking for the toilet anyway, the worst I've seen was in...[drumroll]...the health clinic. Repeat: THE HEALTH CLINIC:

According to my formula, here's where the faintest trickle of a chance of Saudi first world status swirled down the drain. Yes, the pink tile is everywhere because, duh, it's the ladies' room and there MUST NOT be any confusion on that score. Yes, you're looking at a squat toilet cemented into broken tile, which patients (who are wearing long black gowns) are supposed to use while gathering sterile samples. Just out of the frame is the pull chain and overhead tank, like the one in a museum re-creation of a Victorian house. Yes, there's the spray hose to the left and yes, that's water on the floor on and around where you're supposed to squat, but what I learned only AFTER using this exemplary public facility is that the water did not come from the hose. Not entirely, anyway. Turns out that flushing the squat toilet sent flush water all over the floor. IN THE HEALTH CLINIC.

And for the final flourish:

This takes a little more explanation. This is the bathtub. I can't tell you why there's a bathtub in the health clinic's public bathroom, so don't bother to ask. More interesting, though, are the tenants, a collection of dead roaches and flies. See those l-o-n-g antennae on the big one in the middle? So clearly the bathtub was unnecessary, except to confirm that yes, no one ever cleans in here. IN THE HEALTH CLINIC.

Have I scoped out the picture well enough? Have we come to the end? Are you ready to deposit your global rankings votes? And do you feel relieved of the pressure to make these decisions without the right reading material? I hope so. My goal has only been to expel any contention or confusion. Hmm...maybe I should be eying that Nobel prize for peace, instead. Here at the end of November, it's the season for warmth and closeness, after all. So with the approach of this Thanksgiving weekend and the houseful of guests it brings, may I wish you good times, a unnatural willingness on everyone's part to go with the flow, and fully functional plumbing.

Wading in a Winter Wonderland

We have rain!

So I broke out the Christmas music and started a fire.

I must admit the technology isn't perfect. Enjoying the season this way doesn't allow me to sit by the fire AND watch a movie, unless I unhitch the iPad and put the fire on the coffee table. But it's all worth it. These things are important, you see, because I suffer from a condition unique to expats in hot-non-Christian countries. Or maybe just unique to me. Either way, I call it Seasonal Orientation Disorder.

I don't know how Arabs do it, live by a calendar that disassociates holidays from seasons of the year. The Islamic calendar differs from the Gregorian one, so that Ramadan advances by eleven days every year. This year, Ramadan started in July and finished in early August. Next year, it will start in late June and go through most of July, and it will continue to back through the spring, winter, fall, and back to summer. And they all seem fine with that.

Me, I need to orient myself to space and time by marking the seasons with their associated holidays. You have sweaters and fires and evergreens for Christmas. The Fourth of July is for picnics and watermelon. Flowers for Easter. Pumpkins and colored leaves for Halloween and Thanksgiving. Am I right? So planting petunias and walking around in bare feet in November is disorienting. Plenty of Americans live in warm-weather places and wear shorts while doing their Christmas shopping, but they do it surrounded by holiday lights and music and window displays full of snowflakes. Santa laughs at them everywhere. Here? Nothing. So I have a hard time keeping the season in mind, and when I see a Christmas-oriented commercial on a TV show I'm streaming, it really throws me off. This forecasted week of rain could be a game-changer.

As excited as I am about the change of weather, it does come at a cost. Riyadh is a desert city ill equipped for rain, even though it happens every year and when it does, it rains heavily. But the streets here have no drainage. Not poor drainage. No drainage. There are no gutters or storm drains. Let's add that there are a lot of underpasses. Thus...

Roadway flooding in Riyadh, 17 Nov 2013. Source: Tadias.com

Riyadh flooding after rain, 17 Nov 2013. Source: RiyadhTips

The drivers here are as ill equipped as their city to deal with water (and that is water, just under weird light, not Mountain Dew), and they are arguably the worst drivers in the world even in optimal situations, which leads to this...

King Fahd Road after rain, 17 November 2013. Source: RiyadhTips

(Don't assume the sideways or wrong-facing cars got pushed that way.) RiyadhTips, my source for the above two pictures, has a Facebook page that's a terrific place to find all kinds of information that would be hard to ferret out for yourself. Such as this little nugget, which should delight everyone who's ever rolled eyes at the way schools close in Atlanta or Nashville after a couple of inches of snow:

Ah, perfect. Cloudy skies, wet pavement, schools closed, and when I walked over to the compound market this morning I even wore a light jacket. I can't squander this opportunity. So I've turned up the crackling sounds on the fire as high as I can to drown out the lawnmower next door.

To Mourn with Those Who Mourn

Americans were universally astonished when we told them we were moving to Saudi Arabia. Moving to any foreign country is something Americans don't tend to do, and even international travel is unusual. According to State Department statistics, only about a third of American citizens have a passport.

But in an expat community in the Middle East, you see very quickly how unusual the American norms are. Foreigners here come from and live easily all over the world. Europeans, southeast Asians, and Africans follow employment across national borders as easily as an American from California moves to Texas. (That is, there are some yawning cultural differences but nobody thinks you've done anything remarkable.)

And there are a LOT of foreigners here. Estimates range from about a quarter to a third of the Saudi population at any moment is made up of foreign workers. The majority come from India and Pakistan, then Egypt and Yemen, but right behind them are workers from the Philippines. And in this country typified by sand and rock and walls and restrictions and yes, hardship, the Filipinos are a joy.

In every public-facing, care-giving, and hospitality-based profession, you'll find Filipinos. Nurses, hotel employees, retail workers, maids, customer-service workers, all Filipinos. At Chili's, where we have eaten maybe three times since I've been here, the host greets us like long-lost friends when we come to the door. In western-style restaurants with soft drink refills, my glass has never gone empty. Every refill comes with a fresh straw unwrapped for me and a fresh lemon. Hotel concierges remember your name. Nurses make you feel as if it's their privilege to care for you, that they love you and want you to be well and comfortable.

I don't know what the culture at home is like to produce people who are so universally warm and caring. They have come to a place where they are unappreciated and often abused, and they do it out of devotion to their families. You can find them at work all over the Middle East, in Europe, in America, and elsewhere, usually one family member working to support a circle of people at home in the Philippines. They may go years without seeing their families, sacrificing the joy and companionship of loved ones to provide them with what they need. And they do it with unrelenting kindness.

Their suffering from an earthquake, followed by a devastating typhoon, tears my heart. Many of the foreigners I know are Filipinos, and through the web of those who know people who know people we have checked anxiously to learn whether family members are all right. Edith, the sweet and smiling and hardworking woman who appears at the stroke of 9:00 a.m. every other Monday morning to clean my house, didn't get to cross the threshold this morning before I asked whether her family was okay. "Yes, ma'am," she said with a sad smile. Relief keeps company with grief for those who are not so fortunate.

I know of ministers in the United States that point to sin as the cause for Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey or Katrina in New Orleans, drought in the West, earthquakes or other natural disasters. To them I hold up the people of the Philippines. There is no faith that could find support for the idea that these people did anything to deserve what has happened to them. Their bodies suffer because they live in an unstable world, near the sea. Their souls suffer because they love one another.

A year ago, I attended a funeral that was particularly unwelcome. I ached for friends whose suffering I could do nothing to lessen. Driving to the cemetery with the funeral procession, I started to notice cars pulling off to the side of the road as we passed, not for any traffic reason, but to honor us. Strangers, standing aside to acknowledge and share--even for a moment--the sorrow of fellow human beings. Afterward, hollowed out physically and emotionally by the long day, Steve and I stopped at a favorite eatery. When the cook's wife brought my warm, soft torta I had to blink away tears to tell her where I'd been and how grateful I was for this lovingly prepared food. She smiled and nodded and looked into my eyes for a moment. "Yes," was all she said. "Mexican sandwich is good." And walked away. And I was comforted.

We can do little, us workaday citizens of faraway countries, to ease the suffering of these good people. For their suffering bodies, I will give what I can to relief efforts already underway around me, and encourage others to do the same. And for their suffering souls, I can honor them. I can lay off being snarky for a day and make my contribution to the web that binds us all to each other and bears us each up. My heart goes to the Philippines, and all those whose hearts are there now. I weep with you.

I Feel Pretty

Here's how this week's adventure was pitched to me:

• People either love it or hate it.
• It's so gross.
• Keep an eye behind you.
• Don't walk alone if you don't want to be touched.
• Look up, not down.
• Bring your own water.
• There's no bathrooms.
• You'll want a shower when you get home.
• You can smell it in your hair.
• You can kind of taste it, too.

Who could pass that up? So with a crowd of adventurous souls, I piled on the bus to the second-hand souk.

• souq or souk (Arabic: سوق‎, Hebrew: שוק‎ sūq, also spelled shuk, shooq, soq, souk, esouk, suk, sooq, souq, suoq or suq) noun: an open-air marketplace or commercial quarter in Middle Eastern and North African cities. The equivalent Persian term is "bazaar".
• second-hand (sknd-hnd) adj: 1. previously used by another, not new 2. Dealing in previously used merchandise

Souks are great. Take the roof off the mall, open up the store fronts, and you've got a souk. Of course, you also have to take away the landscaping, the bathrooms, the strategically placed benches and fountains and fireplaces. Pft--details. Here are a few shots from my first souk experience, at the Old Souk in Doha, Qatar:

Lovely, eh? Of course, that's the dressed-up, picturesque, tourist-destination souk. Here's one shop at the souk near our home where we bought rugs last week:

A little less lovely. Mundane. Scruffy, even. (Though check the array of rug colors inside and consider these in your home. Blog on Saudi decorating is upcoming.) The men selling carpet were wonderful, the prices were fair, and they finished extra pieces for us for free and threw in a couple of bathroom rugs. I left feeling way less skeezed-upon than I ever have coming out of a carpet store in the U.S.

And then here's the second-hand souk:

You could say we left mundane and scruffy behind a good while ago. It's 500 little Salvation Army stores, outside, with gritty carpets on the ground and lots of staring and calls of "Sister! Sister! Check! Check!"

It can be kind of hard to know where to look.

But narrowing your focus helps. The bus from our compound goes every month, and there's a cadre of women who never miss. Yes, these women have all their teeth. They don't grub in each others' trash. They bathe regularly, know how to behave in restaurants, and speak in complete sentences, many in multiple languages. And at the souk, they know where to look, which is not at the chaos of shirts and pants and children's clothes at waist level, nor at whatever funk might be underfoot, but all the way up at the rafters.

The bus schedule says the destination is the "second-hand souk." But that's not the name it goes by among the compound women, who call it the "princess souk." The shopping objective is dress gowns available for a few dollars. "A few" equals five. For a really, really great one in new condition you might have to go to ten. And there are hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds.

All the abayas and headscarves walking around the city can be misleading. Arab women dress up, a lot. There can be some very well manicured nails peeping out at the end of a sleeve and some killer shoes below the hem. Steve was surprised when he first got here to see expensive, elaborate, and overtly sexy special occasion gowns in store windows throughout the malls. Men and women don't mix outside the immediate family, and for big events and celebrations, a man and wife will arrive together (she in her abaya), then separate for the women to gather in one room while the men gather in another. "Why wear a gown like that when no one is going to see it?" he said. Oh, honey. That room full of other women is a long way from no one.

And dress they do. The city seems to be awash in gowns. Mounds of white donation bags are pushed against the back walls and in the corners of the second-hand shops, full of new inventory that shopkeepers (or their children) are busy unloading and sorting all the time. Our best guess is that the second-hand souk is the marketplace for self-starters who pick up the mystery bags of donated goods at mosques and are welcome to get whatever they can for them.

Taste, however, is an individual thing. And a cultural thing. And Saudi women have a distinct sense of style:

I'm curious about the Carmen Miranda number tucked into the middle of this set:

And its companion piece, which may have been my favorite. Look closely: Rainbow bodice, multi-poinsettia flower at the waist, lining ending at the bottom of the hip. Below that, scrunchy leggings inside the sheer tulle skirt:

 I was also intrigued by this tartan-patch number. Appalachian prom?

 

And every once in a while we spotted some things that weren't gowns:

Perhaps it would've looked better without the big turquoise purse throwing off the effect. Sorry. This next one, however, was a puzzle. It was far too long to just be a big sweater. I think we're looking at a sweater dress with a r-e-a-l-l-y stretchy short, tight skirt. Covered in buttons because, well, uh--oh, I don't know:

Wait--I'm reminded of something:

But I digress. Anyway, despite all the dire warnings about how creepy the men were and how alert you needed to stay, I didn't have any problem. My most threatening interaction was with the lone woman shopkeeper we saw. I and another women were lining up our shots of the Fantasy in Pink Trio at the top of this set of pictures when she came charging out of her shop, waving the pole used to unhook dresses from the rafters. She banged the pole against the metal railing and yelled at us, then continued yelling down the alley and arguing with the male shopkeepers around her as we strolled away. I wonder whether they were trying to tell her to settle down and she was telling them to mind their own damn business, that she'd yell if she wanted to yell. I'm not sure what she objected to. Was she afraid we'd take the pictures home, copy the designs, and get rich without buying anything from her? None of the men seemed to care about pictures in the slightest, so do your own speculation about whether her reaction says more about cultural imperatives for women to be invisible than it does about merchandise ownership.

By the end of the outing, we were all equipped for next week's Princess Dinner at the compound, where we'll bedeck ourselves in our most over-the-top finery. I wound up with this elegant number for $6:

Turquoise is my color, and it came with a headband, so...

I'm hooked. Yes, I'll be back next month. I am now accepting orders for your daughters' prom dresses. You'll have to do your own triple-washing and sequin replacement (I'm finding them everywhere right now), and fit is your own gamble. But the price is right. And despite what I've chosen to show here, a lot of women came away with genuinely beautiful (and tasteful) gowns. So next time I'll put the camera away and get serious about finding something. Love it or hate it? Well, let's just say I'm starting to plan New Year's Eve already.

An Ignition Key to the Kingdom

This is my current favorite picture of my twin grandson and daughter (you should be able to sort out which one is which):

So many captions! So many word balloons! I can imagine a lifetime dynamic starting here, with Brother blithely going about his business and Sister a nano-second away from dope-slapping him on the forehead.

This blog is a few hundred words long, and I'm going to provide links to articles, videos, and blogs that will total many thousand, but if you really were to take in all of it, nothing would communicate the subject, the reaction, the ramifications, the subtext, the context, the pretext, the post-text, the text itself of the topic as well as this picture. The topic?

Women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia.

Now allow me to clarify: There is no law decreeing that women are not allowed to drive, and Saudi apologists are quick to point that out. But Saudi Arabia is a land with a different relationship to law than citizens of democratic, law-and-order societies are used to. In a land where there is no dividing line between religion and government, religious edict is given the weight of law, without any requirement that the new law be debated, tested, agreed to, or codified. Judges are clerics, so if someone wishes to challenge a law that isn't really a law, well, good luck.

Look at the picture again. Says a lot, doesn't it?

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that doesn't allow women to drive. That places it behind such beacons of progress as Libya, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia. Two years ago, a woman by the name of Manal al-Sharif got behind the wheel and posted a YouTube video of herself driving. She encouraged other women to do so as well, which they have been. You can watch her TED talk here. Yesterday, October 26, Saudi activists planned a day of protest, calling upon women to take to the streets--in cars. Get out there and drive! Use civil disobedience to call attention to this mockery of a law!

It's been a big topic around here lately. With the clock ticking and the groundswell growing on social media, clerics responded, and response to an absurd "law" has been, well, absurd. A Saudi sheik (credited as a "judicial and psychological consultant to the Gulf Psychological Association") made a global laughingstock of himself a few weeks ago by declaring that driving "automatically affects ovaries and rolls up the pelvis." (I'm curious what this rollup looks like.) He explains this is why "we find" that women who "continuously drive cars" have children with clinical disorders. You'll enjoy the article from Al Arabiya here. (Never mind that some of the highest rates of genetic birth defects in the world happen right here in Saudi Arabia, where women don't drive but do marry their first cousins.) Another gem is this video of the same thoughtful gent in action, taking himself quite seriously in a panel discussion. Watching him make these disconnected, unsupported declarations and treat them together as a logical argument is a jaw-dropper. Note the collection of Serious Gents impaneled to lend some gravitas as he grenade-launches himself through the looking glass.

Still works, doesn't it?

Now, plenty of Saudi men are opposed to the status quo as well. My particular delight is this music video, "No Woman, No Drive," which I found Saturday evening at the ripe old age of seven hours and 110,000 views. 13,000 had given it a thumbs-up at that point (though 2200 had voted thumbs down).

Living without freedom of movement is an experience that can't be fully appreciated until you've done it. I say "freedom of movement" because plenty of people live very comfortably without cars. They do, however, usually live in walkable cities and use public transportation. Those are not options here. First, there is no public transportation--no trams, trains, or subways, and the only buses that exist are ramshackle, used only by the Pakistani, Yemeni, and Bangladeshi laborers who flag them down when they pass. Even if women were allowed, there would have to be a lot of zeroes in the dollar figure I'd accept to get on one by myself. If you don't have a car and a man to drive it (many middle-class families employ a driver full time), then taxis, with unknown and often unlicensed drivers, are your only option. Additionally, Riyadh is not walkable for many reasons:

• For a lot of the year, it's too hot to be out and around during the day, particularly in a black robe.
• The city is spread out, intended for cars. Retail businesses run along the length of major thoroughfares, with residential property filling in the large blocks behind. Retailers cluster themselves together by type, which is convenient if you're comparison shopping for tires. However, if you live behind a block of tire retailers and need anything other than tires, you'd better get in your car and start driving. There's no such thing as a "neighborhood" with its own retail services.
• There are no sidewalks. Individual shops pave (or don't pave) the few feet in front of their shops as they choose, so as you move from one business to another you're stepping from surface to surface, at uneven heights, over rubble or dirt or broken pavement.

This first-person account gives a sense of what daily life is like for a middle-class Saudi woman living without freedom of movement. The blog mentioned in the article, which has become a collection spot for personal accounts and topical articles, is here.

It's a little different for Westerners. I--like many expats--live in a compound, where walls shut out the Saudi world and we enjoy Western-style living inside. We have our own little market, which is fairly well stocked. We have a gym and a pool, a restaurant, a couple of beauty salons, a gift shop, and community rooms for exercise classes, craft groups, or things like baby showers or football parties. I can walk to any of them in less than five minutes. For outside errands, however, we depend on a compound bus.

We get s a monthly calendar that tells us where the bus is going every day. (The destinations are all for shopping--malls and souks--because there's nothing else to do here.) The nearest grocery store sends a bus to the compound most days of the week to pick women up, take them to the store, and bring them and their groceries back.

There are benefits to this arrangement. Bus riding is global female bonding at its best. On one ride a few days ago, I got to laugh with women from England, Ireland, South Africa, and Australia about the stumbles we make over names for things in our different dialects. ("Pop the hood" seemed to be a particularly baffling American expression, and for my part calling the back yard the "garden" leaves me unclear about what you call the place where you plant vegetables or the paved area where you sit.) A Filipina who's lived here for many years has been my best resource for shopping tips. A young Pakistani woman is my headscarf-tying resource, and a trip to the hypermarket gave me a chance to learn about living through the breakup of Yugoslavia from a Slovenian woman. Bless the bus.

There are also grating inconveniences to this arrangement. The bus comes and goes according to the schedule, not according to your wishes. I've been needing an iPad-to-HDMI connector (watching TV from the U.S. is our entertainment salvation, and we've grown tired of having the computer tied up), and I had to wait until the last Wednesday of the month, when the bus would be going to the particular store I needed. Right now I need light bulbs and charcoal. That'll wait until next Tuesday. Then when you get to your destination, the clock starts ticking on the departure time. You can't just decide the errand is a bust and leave, nor can you discover what's there on your own time. You have to rank your shopping list and keep checking the clock because as departure time approaches, you need to head to checkout no matter what you have to eliminate from the list. You also can't buy anything you can't wrangle on the bus. No furniture or bags of soil.

The bus doesn't take you to lunch, nor does it take you to a friend's home for a visit. For those things you need to arrange for a driver. At that point, you have to estimate your pickup time--no lingering over chips at Chipotle until the conversation is finished, no bailing out when things get boring or you realize you've overstayed your welcome, no changes of plans to go someplace else and try the frozen yogurt. No "I'll just make one quick stop here." The inability to be spontaneous is a real buzz-kill.

Saudi women, however, don't have the conveniences of the compound or its bus. Many can't afford drivers, and (uncomfortable in taxis) are therefore stuck at home until their husbands arrive in the evenings. Watching a Saudi man leaving a home fabrics store last night with a comforter under his arm, I wonder whether Saudi men have any idea how much easier their lives would be if women could drive. What dude ever wanted to shop for a comforter? Give men a chance to taste a cold--well, O'Doul's--and a little football on a weeknight instead of making trips to Sephora and they'll wonder what took so long. The ramifications of not driving and the context are described well in this article from the Salt Lake Tribune.

Warnings about dire consequences for driving on October 26 led women to say that they were not holding any public gathering (forbidden and punishable), but would just be continuing to drive as they have been, posting videos of themselves driving, and that they'll keep on doing it in the future. (Plenty also interpreted the warnings about not "disturbing the peace" to be directed to men, advising them to leave women alone.) Headlines today are mixed, but the story underneath them is consistent: a few dozen women across the kingdom claim to have driven without encountering police, and police confirm that no one was detained. My husband and I went out late Saturday afternoon to see what we could see. In our highly scientific poll of people we saw in cars beside us the tally was...zero women. But in our loop to downtown Riyadh and back we did see or go through a number of checkpoints, with traffic slowed to pass by police officers peering into the drivers' compartments. News reports (like this LA Times article) confirmed what we saw (which admittedly didn't photograph well in the dark):

When you're in bed with madmen, sometimes the best way to make it through the night is to know when to give up the covers. The checkpoints we saw were in prime high-traffic, high-visibility, Saturday-night shopping and restaurant areas during busy hours. Women who reported driving did so close to their homes, going to mundane nearby destinations or around the block a few times at mid-day. In this case, my ginormous brain has concluded that the ease-into-reform-minded king threw a bone to hardliners by making a show of force at times and in areas where no one expected women to come. The fallout probably won't really be known for weeks or months. To follow the conversation on Twitter, keep an eye on the hashtags #women2drive, #oct26driving, and #daretodrive.

I am inspired by what I see and read. It takes one kind of courage to fight in a well-matched contest. It takes another to fight an adversary much bigger than you are, based on reason and principle. And it takes still another to fight one that is not only bigger than you, but to step outside the protection of reason and play on the adversary's field, by the adversary's shifting rules, with the adversary's tools, with the adversary providing the oversight and declaring the right to end the conflict when and how it decides. The vision of freedom is a sustaining one. In the words of artist Khawla Al Marri, "One day it will rain cars and I'll have my own key."

And that is dream for us all.

Real Gone

I been gone. Real gone. (Sing it! You know you want to. I'll let you get it out of your system here without cartoon cars.) My gone-ness for the last two weeks was part of a national exodus of Saudi-dwelling expats for the Eid al Adha holiday (Hajj pilgrimage season). Most of us get about a week off as part of the holiday. Another (Eid al Fitr) comes at the end of Ramadan (it was two months ago, just before I arrived), and we had a one-day "National Holiday" between the two, and...you're done for the year. Two separated weeks and one day crowded into just over two months. None of those three-day weekends Americans are so fond of, no streak of fall holidays, no Christmas, no spring break, no summer vacation.

So both the expats and the Arabs take off when they can. The easy destinations nearby in the Gulf are jammed because the entire Arab world has the same holidays. Then there are the next-step destinations in Europe--Paris, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Rome. (Most non-stop European cities are about 5 hours away, so Europe is not an exotic destination from here. It's low-hanging fruit.) But everybody goes somewhere. Daily life in Saudi Arabia is grinding enough that you don't skip an opportunity to get away. There's no such thing as a "staycation" here. No movies, museums, music, art, scenic or historical sights, parks, sports, recreation...nada. So you watch TV at home through the workweeks and devote your entertainment/sanity budget to travel.

We went to Bali.

I know that sounds impossibly remote for people in the States, but it was manageable from here--about the same as a New Yorker going to Hawaii. Australians go there the way Americans go to Mexico (see map; Bali is just off the east end of Java). For them, it's a cheap, accessible place to get drunk and lie on the beach.

Allow me to clarify "cheap." Appetizer $1.50, dinner $4, dessert $2:

And though we were there for the food, we weren't for the clubbing. So we skipped the Cancun-esque resort scene near the airport in Denpesar and headed out across the island.

And got to see stuff like this:

Bramavihara Buddhist temple (a good video tour is here)

Rice planting

Terraced rice paddies

Git-Git Waterfall

Bali is one of 17,000 islands in Indonesia. (I think they counted every rock in the water to come up with that number.) While Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country, Bali is almost entirely Hindu (allowing for a nominal number of Buddhists, Christians, and finally Muslims). So I left a completely foreign Muslim society to go to an equally foreign (though at least open) Hindu one. And the Hinduism is visible everywhere: Every home has a personal temple on the property (a few shrines for daily offerings), every family group has a family temple, every village has at least three (north, east, and center), the island has directional temples and water temples for special use, and we soon discovered that the ceremonies we counted ourselves lucky to see on our first few days weren't unusual at all--we saw ceremonies every day. Births, deaths, cremations, weddings, childhood markers, full moon, village ceremonies, family ceremonies...there's always something.

Early on (while we still thought we were catching ceremonies by incredible good fortune), we found ourselves at the "water temple" on Lake Bratan. The scene was breathtaking--flags, flowers, baskets, banners, streamers.

Pura Ulun Danu Bratan Hindu temple

The women were bringing their offerings.

Beautiful children were everywhere.

A gamelan band started to play.

Gamelan band

(You can see who's in charge here, right? And yes, video would've been nice but failed to upload after multiple attempts. Sorry.) 

As we left, I heard a muezzin growling out the call to afternoon prayer from a mosque farther up the road. I could still hear the music. I looked back over my shoulder at the scene behind me and thought, "Dude's sure fighting an uphill battle."

Placing daily offerings.

Hinduism defines the Balinese. Devotion is omnipresent. You find daily offerings (a palm-sized basket woven of palm front strips and filled with flowers and a dab of fruit or rice, accompanied by a stick of incense) in front of restaurants and businesses, outside homes, at every shrine along the roadside, on sidewalks and at intersections. A woman working at one of the houses where we stayed taught me how to make some. I'd seen her placing offerings around the property in the mornings, and asked how many she made and put out every day. "Here?" she said. "Twenty. Fifteen at my house." Hand woven baskets, flowers, rice, incense. So many little handmade baskets that dry up and are brushed aside every day, then just replaced the next day. Thirty-five a day, every day. (The pile in the foreground of the picture is the work product of the offering-making lesson. The little one being placed on the table is the daily offering; more are on the tray. Each one gets sprinkled with water, too, which she carries in the cup and the squirt bottles.)

Daily religious observance in Saudi Arabia probably takes about the same amount of time out of a workweek as does observance in Bali. Religious observance in Saudi Arabia is not compelled, exactly, but disobedience is forbidden and is prevented as much as possible. Religious observance in Bali is personal, but I can only guess at the social and family assumptions about participation. I was certainly as foreign there as I am here in Riyadh. But what I could see was joy and light. Laughter, music, food, color, structures open to the sun, warmth, and welcome. I must say, it felt pretty good.

One of the things I love most about travel is discovering things that are utterly different. Like most of the stuff in this fruit stall:

Fruit stall

And these cookies:

(These were filled with fig, I think. I also saw "chokolat," which I was able to figure out for myself, and another with a picture of grass. I'm upset I never got another shot at those. If you ever see them, in any flavor, buy them.)

But I've started to discover that I love, just as much, discovering things that are the same. Talking to a Balinese taxi driver with a bare minimum of English, a father of three little boys. "Noisy," I said. He nodded emphatically. "Much fighting," he answered. Yup. I know how that goes. Another father shook his head about the "free" public education his children were supposed to be getting, after he pays for uniforms, books, and school fees. Been there, too. An Arab woman in the airport in Dubai saw me smiling at her three-ish year-old daughter taking the universal pose of a tired child--tilted forward from the hip, head thrown back, arms dangling as if they're Just Too Heavy to be borne another second. She gave a half-smile back at me, rolled her eyes, and shook her head. We both know what it's like, right, sister?

Our return itinerary took us a smidge out of the way, and we found ourselves in the in the Egyptair lounge in Cairo in the early morning hours. My social-media problem-solver self wanted to tweet how really, really gross the place was, but then I thought, "I'm in Cairo, for heaven's sake, where these people are suffering, and I'm going to bark about how the sausages and boiled eggs from last night had been left in an unplugged chafing dish?" Flying in, it was immediately apparent how desolate that airport was. None of the typical hubbub of an airport tarmac--no trucks, baggage trams, people scurrying around. Only one plane that wasn't Egyptair's. So I kept my yap shut and considered my good fortune.

I went out to the woman at the front desk at one point to ask when the restaurants might open, and after she told me, she said, "I'm sorry, I know this is awkward, but can I ask your advice about something?"

I may not have quite looked like that, but you get the idea. And let's be clear: I hate giving advice and my children will confirm that I avoid it at all costs. I would rather eat at Applebees than give advice. And as I've said before, I'd rather eat a granola bar out of the glove box than eat at Applebees. So the hierarchy goes like this:

1. Eat beans out of a can
2. Eat a granola bar out of the glove box
3. Dine at Applebees
4. Give advice.

But this young brave Egyptian woman plowed on. The problem? Her fiance kept getting things stolen. A car a few months ago. Then a mobile phone. Then another mobile phone (which she had gotten for him) had been stolen last night. She felt terrible for him, and was trying to figure out how to comfort him because he seemed inconsolable. The phone didn't matter, she said. She didn't care. But she didn't want him to feel unlucky or like bad things were meant to happen to him. That wasn't true--he was the best man she'd ever known and she loved him desperately.

The differences? She was wearing a headscarf. She lived in Cairo, where having things stolen was probably part of the fabric of daily life. And in the "inshallah" ("God willing") Muslim world, it's a rational thing to wrestle with the question of whether one is meant for trouble, which is a concern I doubt would ever cross an American's mind. The similarities? The sense of helplessness in the face of a loved one's suffering is universal, as is the desire to take it away. And from the position of a woman old enough to be her mother, and having been down this same road a few times, I was able to tell her what I'd learned about bearing one another's burdens, which is that there is great power in shared grief, in merely standing beside someone who feels alone in his troubles.

I doubt it added up to much. I think she was pretty well resolved to buy him another phone, so my advice went to its best use. But from a million miles away, culturally and geographically, we were able to stand beside one another for a little while on a dark morning. And when she sought me out at the end of her shift to share a hand clasp and express her gratitude, I don't think either of us felt foreign at all.