Dressed to kill in the latest fashions and swaggering up and down, the would-be models breezed in and out through the automatic doors. You would be forgiven for thinking you were a spectator at fashion week in London, Paris or Milan. The corridors doubled as catwalks with a multicultural assortment of nannies and maids lining the ramp as their proteges swayed with the cool confidence of studied glamour. A gathering of designer handbags and their self-possessed owners. Several of the owners appeared to know each other and greeted one another with a feigned half smile and a flurry of kisses aimed at the air on either side of their cheeks. Those who were unfamiliar were eyed with an air of feline condescension. The regulars strutted their stuff while carefully punching numbers onto their mobile dialpads with their well- manicured fingers.
I approached the reception with trepidation trying desperately hard to keep the flaps of my abaya together lest some part of my cheap pajamas be exposed to the unforgiving scrutiny of the assembled glitterati. Having mastered the art of walking with my abaya sandwiched between my shins, I mustered up the courage to inquire about the location of the administration block. The woman behind the desk was busy filing her nails. Unnerved at the prospect of disturbing her, I stood waiting for her attention. She honored my request by pointing a red-painted talon in some direction vaguely behind me and I attempted to follow what was an ill-defined path.
During my search I pondered the similar circumstances that I had found a decade earlier. A different city in a different country but a very similar situation. Only what I had known in my own experience couldn’t have been more contrary. A scene from what appeared to be a sweatshop with people dressed carelessly in denim and burdened with shabby bookladen bags. The current situation couldn’t have been more surreal if it had been painted by Dali himself.
But this was a private college, Saudi-style! Here I was trying to get my niece enrolled and yet I couldn’t even find the office. I retraced my steps and confronted the sight of the receptionist who had just received some hot cheese bread delicately swathed in napkin. I repeated my request and was told as she ate, “Third door on the left.” I followed her instructions but somehow, I went into an abaya cupboard.
Deciding that I was not going to receive information from the administrative staff, I asked one of the cleaners who kindly led me down a corridor and pointed to the door I had been seeking. I knocked on the door and only silence came from the room. I knocked again. Silence again.
As I waited, there was yet another delivery of hot cheese bread brought to the door. The door was opened and I saw the college registrar perched on her sofa flicking through a women’s magazine. I followed the hot cheese bread in and stood in front of her.
“Excuse me,” I said.
She looked at me, “You apply in the administration. Not here.”
“Apply?” I asked.
“Yes. This is for students. We have a separate section for those looking for work,” she said, munching on her snack and scanning the contents of her magazine.
“I am not here for a job. I want to find out how to enroll my niece and what courses you offer,” I declared.
“Read this,” she said, patronizingly handing me a brochure. At that point one of the supermodels entered with a question and was treated with a level of deference inversely proportional to the contempt I had been shown. The magazine was shut, the cheese bread abandoned and the sofa made available for whoever she was to make herself comfortable on. I was annoyed at the injustice of it all and left the institution rather depressed and dejected.
Memories of my own intellectually stimulating university days played inside my head. Was this just a glorified version of what I had known in the past or was there reality in my remembering administrative efficiency and a genuinely educational environment? There had been virtually no social distinctions made, no points given for wealth or beauty.
And then I was filled with sadness at what my niece would have to endure. How can we ever make progress when our centers of learning are tainted with such crude favoritism and ostentation? Are those values really the bedrock of our society? Are we so deeply trapped in materialism and the shallow and fleeting joys of appearance that we subjugate even our educational institutions to parades of wealth and superficiality?
After a short while spent in the college I had visited, my niece chose to further her education abroad. I hope that when my own daughters have to make a choice in a decade’s time, the thirst for knowledge in Saudi Arabia will have replaced the desire for oneupmanship.
(Lubna Hussain is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh.)