“So you finally made it?” asked my friend.
“Just,” I replied with an acute sense of dread recalling all the trials and tribulations that I had to endure in order to secure the elusive yellow card that afforded me the liberty of leaving the scorching heat of Saudi Arabia.
“What do you plan to do now that you are out?” he pursued.
I thought of the myriad of seemingly impossible possibilities that I had entertained during my incarceration and narrated a few of these.
“The first thing that I want to do,” I began petulantly, “is go to the library. I want to walk in the park and then I am dying to see what’s on in terms of the theater.”
It was this statement that inspired him to wax lyrical on the exploits of our compatriots during the vacations.
“You know,” he began. “I totally get why it is that you wanted to leave for the summer. It makes sense considering all the stuff it is that you want to do. None of what you have mentioned is possible here. What I don’t get is why there are so many of our countrymen who venture abroad but for what?”
“Well,” I mused. “It’s baking hot. I guess everyone deserves a break, right?”
“Yes. But what’s the point? I mean just look at our youth who travel. What do they really gain? They swap their thobes for trousers and shirts. They swap Jeddah and Riyadh for Paris and London but that’s about the extent of it. So the change is all about dress and destination but what about enrichment? Do you honestly think that the majority of people who leave Saudi in the summer come back with a new perspective on things? Do you think that they take in the culture or the beauty of these places? Is their ideology in any way changed?”
I thought about what he had said and it really did make a lot of sense. Like migrating birds we fly the same ridiculous circuit as everyone else from London to Paris to Geneva and Cannes every year. We flock together in the same places and have this annoying habit of congregating in clumps rarely venturing away from our familiar trajectory or entourages to enjoy the diversity of what the world has to offer. Other than frequenting expensive hotels, fancy restaurants and hanging out in fashionable shopping precincts in an effort to see and be seen in the latest fashions, I don’t see much of an initiative on our part to benefit from foreign travel which is really rather sad.
“You know a lot of the Saudi guys I knew at university would quite literally spend the whole summer playing cards all night,” he said interrupting my thoughts.
“Cards?” I asked trying to sound surprised, although I knew that he was probably right.
“They would play all night and leave behind a whole bunch of Styrofoam cups and trash in their wake,” he lamented.
“You’re right,” I concurred. “I met someone who took over six years doing his degree in the United States because he was having a ball. It’s so pathetic. Most people I went to university with had to work during the summer to make ends meet and then you have spoilt brats like our friends who can afford to spend valuable time doing absolutely nothing other than making a menace of themselves.”
“I think that there should be some curbing of this kind of behavior,” my friend said seriously. “Most students I know take summer courses in addition to summer jobs. We should have similar opportunities here. Students who are being sponsored by the government should be encouraged to do something beneficial during part of the summer vacations. There should be a program of community service that they can contribute to. They would benefit immensely from vocational training. There’s absolutely no need for a three-month vacation in which they just hang around doing nothing in particular.”
I think that he’s absolutely right. The quality of graduates that we send into employment frequently falls below the mark and the government could do a lot more to improve the situation by setting up institutions that teach these students valuable skills that they wouldn’t otherwise learn at university. We have a wealth of potential talent that is waiting to be discovered and nurtured. But in order to arrive at such an initiative it is imperative that we wean our youth away from the glitter of the superficial and empower them with a thirst for knowledge.
In the future I hope that the following quote by Erasmus will resonate with our youth: “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.”
(Lubna Hussain is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh.)
