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.