I could not believe what I was reading in a local newspaper during my flight to Jeddah on Monday. A fight between some young men had broken out in a main street in Taif that resulted in one fatality and four people being seriously injured. In another incident in the same city on the same day, a man was forced off his 2003 Toyota Land Cruiser at gunpoint in front of a shop in broad daylight. The driver managed to overpower his assailant. But as he was subduing his attacker, another young man showed up and fired at the driver and the two jumped in the jeep and drove off. “Can this be happening in Saudi Arabia?” I asked myself. Such incidents would sound normal in New York, for example, in Chicago or Moscow. But in Taif? And in broad daylight?
What left me flabbergasted was that the report said that all the young men involved in the fight and in the car theft were unemployed high school graduates.
Perhaps the question that needs to be asked here is: Who is to be blamed? The young men? Our upbringing? Our social institutions? Unless we do have the courage to face up to our realities, I am sure that we will be seeing a lot more of what happened in Taif.
But perhaps another matter that needs to be discussed which is just as important is psychologically preparing our youth for the real world.
We are so fed up with hearing about Saudization and creating more jobs for Saudis in the private sector. Most of it is just newspaper talk. We want Saudis to become cabdrivers. We want Saudis to sell vegetables and fruit in the local market. We want them to take up blue-collar jobs. But are they psychologically prepared for that?
From what I see from the behavior of lots of young men of my age in Riyadh, Jeddah and other cities in Saudi Arabia, not yet. They are too busy chasing after their superficial dreams. Too busy paying attention to the symbols of success in the superficial Saudi male way of life: the latest mobile in the market, the latest unique shummagh (head gear), the expensive thobe that is tailored with special decorations and made from expensive cloth, the fancy car, the expensive beads, and anything that you can show off and that will distinguish you from others. How can we expect those young men to climb the ladder from the bottom rung up when they have already — due to the way they were raised — become accustomed to a certain standard and will not settle for less?
Another matter we have failed to address is that we have to stop believing that we are superior to others just because we are Saudis. The concept that because I am a Saudi I will not lower myself to the extent of mopping the floor or cleaning a window or working in any blue-collar job, and that such things are only for people from Third World countries is out of date.
We want to reduce the number of foreigners in our country, yet at the same time we continue to believe that we as Saudis are just too proud and high to take up a job as a janitor, a waiter, a cabdriver, or any other job that is pays low or is labor related.
During my last year in college, I had only a few credit hours and joined a jewelry company that was looking for Saudis. I worked as a salesman in a jewelry shop in a mall for a year. Sadly, I was the only Saudi salesman, not only in the jewelry sector, but in the entire mall, working 11 hours a day, seven days a week.
One morning, my manager told me that another new Saudi employee was asked to take my place as I went to attend a class at the university. When the non-Saudi manager of the shop asked the new Saudi employee to clean the outside windows of the shop, the reply came: “You want ME to clean windows? I have never even wiped the windows of my own car!”
That sort of mentality, that because I am a Saudi I am automatically — by nationality — above you, or that this job would be beneath me, must be changed if we truly are going to overcome our unemployment problems.
The better part of our unemployment comes from Saudis refusing to take up jobs that they see as beneath their Saudi standards. If we really want our young men to shoulder tomorrow’s responsibilities we have to prepare them to deal with the reality they will have to live with, not the superficial fairy tale they have wanted to live in. But that miracle cannot happen without tremendous efforts from both social institutions and parents. Until then, Saudization will be just newspaper talk. And I bet we will see plenty more reports of unemployed young men causing trouble or committing crimes in the future.
Arab News Opinion 30 April 2003
