This summer thousands of Saudis (and other Gulf nationals) drove their cars from Saudi Arabia in and out of Jordan, in and out of Syria and in and out of Lebanon, and back again. The trip from the Saudi border to Beirut is something like driving from Paris to Amsterdam or from Boston to New York City, distance-wise.
The most civilized part of the journey is getting out of Saudi Arabia. You don’t leave your car. You drive up to a kiosk, have your passport stamped; then another kiosk and your car papers are handled in the most efficient and civilized way. I was rather proud to see such civilized behavior and efficiency.
Unfortunately, this euphoria lasted until I had to get back in again. Along with hundreds of travelers, I was subjected to the most humiliating behavior a traveler has to endure. The customs officials, rude and uneducated, demanded that every single item in the car be placed on huge concrete slabs in full view of the rest of humanity. They went through everything. I mean everything. They pulled clothes and dumped them on the concrete slab. They unwrapped sandwiches and left them exposed on the dirty surface. They punctured sealed juice cartons and placed them sideways on the same surface, dripping on clothes and other personal stuff. They left things scattered and went to the car. They pulled everything out and left it where they dumped it.
If they did not like your face, they ushered you to a pit with energetic Indians waiting with malicious smiles. There they pulled your car apart and did not put anything back in its place. Being the curious type, I asked their supervisor who stood swishing his teeth with an old miswaak, how long it usually took people to clear customs. “Three hours,” he said proudly and then added, “five is the norm.”
The scene resembled something out of Kafka’s nightmares. A Bedouin in his pick up truck was pleading for them to let his Saluki dogs in. These greyhounds are his life. The man, about 70 years old, was telling the young customs official that he had to take them across the border to see a vet in Amman and was bringing them back home. They nearly reduced the old man to tears with their insensitivity.
I understand the need to check travelers going into a country. However, what are these people really looking for? No country in the world allows drugs, yet they are not so severe in their searches. The same should apply to us if it were only drugs and alcohol. Is it printed matter?
The man doing our car found a teen magazine left by my daughter. It took him 10 minutes to go over the whole issue. It was obvious what the magazine was, yet I gave him the details. “Yes,” he said, “but the girls’ busts are too big.” That is a direct quote. The busts were covered of course. What about television I asked him. He agreed that there is more on TV than what the rag contained, yet he ordered us to take it to be “examined” by the resident censor. We did and he confiscated it.
Just in case you are wondering, I did ask if they had the screening machines as customs at airports use. The answer was yes. Why were they not used? No answer. Mind you, it is lonely and boring at the ends of a country in the middle of nowhere.
