I don’t know about you but I am exhausted trying to keep abreast of world events. So I decided to forget all that and give you my first impressions of Saudi Arabia.
My first reaction when I landed in Jeddah was — this is not a desert! Of course it may sound absurd and stupid but for an ignorant person like me, it was quite a shock to see a place contrary to what I had imagined. Incidentally, the people coming from Saudi Arabia were always full of awe for the Two Holy Cities they had visited or, if they were Saudi, they might be flaunting and flashing their riyals so one never gave much thought to the appearance of where they lived.
I never thought that coming here would be revisiting my childhood home. Now you’re probably wondering where all this is leading. Well hang on and let me explain. The place I spent my childhood is Papua New Guinea so let me tell you a little about it. Papua New Guinea — PNG — is an island north of Australia which borders Indonesia. It was an Australian colony until independence in 1975 which is when my family moved there. The capital is Port Moresby, a quiet, sleepy and an extremely unsafe town. So now we are coming back to how everything links up. Well, it wasn’t until I visited the shopping malls and markets that I realized what an astonishing place Jeddah really is. Shelves here hold such a variety of goods — I still can’t get over the fact that mangoes are sold on the same shelf as kiwi fruit! I mean in PNG (which still has a strong Australian influence long after independence) though there was choice, we never got such variety! Bell peppers from America, tomatoes from Turkey and vegetables from South America and the list could go on and on. Here it seems they believe in aphorisms such as "Advertising, your right to choose."
And shopping here seems to be defined by the fact that it homes in on vulnerable and easy targets like me who flip over at the thought that I’ve managed to hoodwink the owner of shop or supermarket if I pick up this limited offer/or if I get two for the price of one. How many poor targets like me groan and curse the machine when the cashier gives us the staggering bill! All we do is innocently bat our eyelids at our husbands and have that "I don’t know anything about this over-budgeting" look.
You know, and please, dear reader, I do not mock you, but shopping isn’t a physical trauma here (even though I think we go through the rigors of mental pain!) Where I come from, shopping has a totally different meaning. There is a milkman who delivers milk on your doorstep and you’re over-anxious about his arrival in the morning because there is already a queue in the family waiting for milk. Then the vegetable man comes along and though he has plenty of fresh ones, you have to keep waving off the flies. Let me tell you, it passes the time but the milk was not what we get here from excellent dairies and the tomatoes weren’t Syrian or the bell peppers American!
Well as an expat here in Jeddah, I find it is so much more relaxing and one sleeps more soundly than where I came from. At first I was afraid that our car would be stolen at gun-point on the streets and I always discouraged my husband from parking in dark areas. The reality is that you sleep peacefully and even if you return to your home in the wee hours of the morning, you don’t have to fear danger lurking in the shadows. This maybe disagreed with by those who have spent years here and say that times have changed because you do hear of people whose houses have been burgled. But you can still sit on the Corniche and no one really pays much attention to you.
Life here is more relaxed — in a different context now — there is so much time. I know I spent my summer break literally counting hours. Now you may not concur with this idea because everybody cannot have the same schedule all the time; and perhaps my clock ticked away slowly because of having recently moved to Jeddah and being without old friends and activities. A queer silence prevails here also in traffic — not because windows are shut and ACs are running but perhaps because you never have to swerve your car to avoid hitting a cow. Of course you have certain people who drive madly but that is the so-called "shabab" but I suppose that is part and parcel of city life.
Well here endeth my candid thoughts. Call it what you may but when I saw such a stark contrast between my past and present, I thought I’d share it with you. Maybe you have different views. But the most important thing living in a big city is that there should be security and no hooliganism. Some of you are probably horrified of harassment of women who are walking along the streets alone? Well the advice I have been given is that women shouldn’t go out on the streets alone. And as it is a man’s world here, I abide by it.