Last Sunday, my mother was mugged in Jeddah. She was getting out of her car at The Oasis Mall, at 7:30 p.m. Two men riding together on a four-wheel motorbike rode up and snatched her purse. Her arm got tangled in her purse and she wound up being dragged two meters across the ground.
A respectable middle-aged woman was mugged in a public crowded place at a decent hour, ten minutes away from the safety of her home.
Last month a close relative was walking toward her car in front of a popular restaurant on Andalus Street. Two men on four-wheelers snatched her purse. Fortunately, she came out of the ordeal with just a bruised arm. Not very far from the same place an expensive car was broken into.
The windows were smashed for a baby’s diaper bag. The attending physician in the emergency room claimed that my mother was the tenth case this month. The injuries were varied, but the causes were all muggings and thefts.
Most of the victims are women. Thus what can they do to protect themselves? Should they learn self-defense? How can a pedestrian confront a motorcyclist? How can one woman go up against two men? Many people are considering arming themselves for protection but are worried about the legalities of such defensive measure.
Thieving, beggary and loitering are giving the streets of Jeddah a bad name. Perpetrators now go as far as stealing cars at gunpoint. One man went into a pharmacy and left his wife in the car. He came to find her hysterical, sans car. Other offenders lurk in the supermarkets. Their presence serves to remind us to never leave purses in market trolleys.
The mobile phone, the money, the credit cards and the identification documents, although important, are all basically replaceable. But the feelings of fear and anger at being taken advantage of linger. As my mother’s injury heals, she must deal with the pain and inconvenience of her broken shoulder. I struggle to deal with my anger and feelings of helplessness. And what heightens this sense of vulnerability is that this trend is growing in our society.
The story is always the same — two men on four-wheelers, one driving while the other does the snatching. Then they drive into oncoming traffic to discourage anyone from trying to follow them. With maneuverability and speed, they roam the streets freely and unafraid. Shouldn’t they be rounded up, since most of them do not even have legal permits and iqamas?
We all see them, everywhere at all times of the day. Umm Hisham, a mugging victim, openly cries as she retells her ordeal. She reminisces about shopping in Gabil Street in Old Jeddah. She remembers how shopkeepers would cover their stores merely with sheets of material and go to pray. “It used to be that safe. It used to be that secure.” While great efforts are being made to capture terrorists, these small-time criminals are slipping through the net. It is high time these four-wheel bandits were made to feel the same fear that they inflict on others.