JEDDAH, 20 July 2006 — At the police station they registered my name and time of entry. It was 5.10 p.m. I was searched and deprived of my cigarettes, then escorted to a jail cell.

The carpet in the cell was thin and worn. There was a broken television in one corner, but at least the A/C was blasting a cool breeze. The room had three toilets, a couple of sinks and a water fountain. As far as jail cells go, it was relatively clean.

This would be my home for the next 24 hours. My charge? Driving 160 kilometers per hour down Jeddah’s Madinah Road.

Sure, I’d like to say it was an implementation of my brilliant muckraking journalistic skills to test what happens when you commit a traffic violation. But I must confess: I wasn’t speeding to write this story.

Like so many of my Jeddawi friends, I was speeding because everyone speeds; because Madinah Road is a raceway where everyone drives like they’re in a NASCAR rally; because you can exceed the speed limit without realizing it by simply going with the natural flow of traffic; and maybe even because in a country where only men drive, the highways and byways are suffering from an overdose of testosterone.

Whatever the case may be, like the 19 other detainees in that jail cell, I got caught.

“License and car registration, please — and don’t get out of your car,” said Mohamed Al-Shahrani, the traffic officer who pulled me over earlier that afternoon. The law says you spend at least 24 hours in a jail cell and your car gets impounded for getting caught exceeding the speed limit. If you can’t pay the fine — SR500 for speeding — then you get the pleasure of an additional 48 hours in the cage. (You also pay SR150 later to get your car out of impound.)

After verifying my documents, officer Al-Shahrani ordered me out of the car and asked me to follow him to the shade beneath a Madinah Road overpass. There were a number of patrol cars containing my fellow lawbreakers, and tow trucks to haul all of our cars away.

I approached the lieutenant of this particular traffic operation, hoping to charm him with my personality and maybe get off with a warning. No such luck. “Put him in the patrol car,” he said coldly. “And get his vehicle on that tow truck.”

I noticed that the lieutenant wasn’t wearing the typical nametag. After being placed in one of the police vehicles to begin my journey through the system, I asked one of the officers why the lieutenant didn’t have his nametag.

“If you knew his name and you had a strong contact inside the department, then your connection could make contact with the lieutenant,” he said.

It was then I realized that the police were trying to mitigate the “wasta” effect by keeping the names of higher-ranking officers from the people being arrested. “Wasta,” if you don’t already know, is an Arabic term that means literally “medium” but translates more appropriately into “utilizing personal connections to facilitate or expedite bureaucratic, commercial or legal procedures.”

Clearly in this case, even if I had “wasta” I wasn’t going to be allowed to use it. The officer told me that I was the 31st violator arrested in six hours during that particular Madinah Road operation.

With 24 hours to kill in a Saudi jail cell, I decided to talk to some of my fellow inmates. One man in his 50s said he was diabetic, and that the police wouldn’t release him. Instead, they told him to arrange somebody from the outside to deliver his insulin, which he later received from a visiting family member.

Ali, another inmate in his early 20s, also received a visitor who delivered a pillow, blanket and four packs of cigarettes. Looking at the rock-hard floor covered by a thin layer of dirty carpet, I decided to give my brother a call and ask him for a sleeping bag. For some reason, the cops wouldn’t let him deliver the goods.

It turned out that Ali was a repeat offender, having spent 24 hours just the week before.

“I was very careful after my previous experience,” he said. But on Friday he decided to let loose. Unfortunately for him, lightning strikes twice. He was caught doing 140 kph and again he was arrested and his car was impounded.

“To be here twice in consecutive weeks now? That’s very bad luck,” he said as he lit up another cigarette.

Jeddah traffic police have been put under pressure to do something about the infamous driving habits of city residents. The most recent statistics show that accidents in May have declined in comparison to the same month in 2005. Officers I spoke to admitted that their superiors are pushing for stronger enforcement of the two most dangerous violations: speeding and running red lights.

One of my fellow inmates, Abu Salem, said in fact he was a police officer himself. He was caught off duty by a colleague and charged just like the rest of us. He said the arresting officer was ordered to enforce the law, even on a colleague. “I don’t hold any grudge against my partner. We have been put under extreme pressure to uphold the traffic laws recently,” said Abu Salem, admitting that he probably would have done the same.

Another officer, who didn’t want to be named, said that they have been given quotas, which discourages them from issuing warnings or slacking off on their duties to enforce the law.

Hussain, a Yemeni man in his 60s, complained about the pressure being exerted on the police. He was charged with running a red light — a SR300 fine, plus cost of impounding and 24 hours in jail — a crime he denies committing. (“It was yellow!” he insists.)

“All of this pressure put on the traffic officers is in the long run affecting us,” said Hussain.

In the end, being stuck in a Saudi jail cell for speeding isn’t a terrible thing, at least as far as being in jail is concerned. Like everywhere else, there are Asian workers at the jail who for a small fee will bring you coffee, sandwiches, biscuits and beverages. This was a good thing, because when the jailhouse food arrived — mashed lentils, bread and some wilted salad, hardly up to Sheraton’s standards — nobody was inclined to touch it. Instead, we ordered out.

Abadi took on the role of the jailhouse jester. He was easily cracking jokes and entertaining his fellow inmates. He called a friend who delivered still more cigarettes and playing cards, which entertained us throughout the night.

The next morning detainees were counting the seconds eagerly waiting to be released. I was pleasantly surprised to see the Red Crescent Society visiting the detention cells that morning to attend to ill inmates.

Upon checkout from the Heartbreak Hotel, you have to pay your fine. If not, you go back to the cell for 48 hours. In spite of the A/C, and food deliveries, and other un-jail-like perks, I wasn’t about to stay another two days. I was escorted outside to the conveniently positioned ATM machine and withdrew the money to buy my freedom.

Afterward I walked to the front of the police station and hailed a taxi. The Pakistani driver smiled at me as I got in the car. He knew exactly from where I came.

“Did you get caught running a red light?” he asked me. “No,” I replied. “I was speeding.”

“I was caught twice, but I didn’t do it,” he said. “The cop said I ran the lights, but I didn’t. They were yellow.”

As we reached a steady clip down the road leaving the police station, the cabbie’s speedometer read 106 kph. The speed limit was 70.