Touch a sensitive nerve with the Saudis and they start oozing like pus from an inflamed pimple. Last week’s article about the customs services brought out a deluge of letters. Some were printed in the letters sections but the real interesting ones arrived privately. I understand the reader’s right to answer, but I am interested in the thinking and/or the attitude behind what is going on.
Um whatever Al-Ghamdi pontificated about what I should know as being allowed in the country or banned altogether. She is right of course. The said magazine can be found in Jarir, ma’am. Go look. Someone forgot to tell the officials she so dearly protects.
Then, on a more serious note, she said that if my daughter were to be a drug addict I would be very angry with those officials who allowed the drugs in. Wrong, ma’am. That is our way: Blame others. If something is wrong with my daughter I’d blame myself and her mother. We are ultimately responsible for her and not government officials of any kind.
Then again, if I did it the Saudi way and hired others to bring up my children, it would be natural to blame officials for my child’s less than savory behavior. Her logic, if it is one, will lead to the conclusion that all those blowing themselves up are the product of inefficient officialdom. Try that one for size!
Considering that the country is awash with guns, bombs, and arms of all sorts as evidenced by the killings going on, I would like to hear Madam’s take on the efficiency of the border searches.
Is it right to reduce a Bedouin of 70 to tears over his Saloukis when the animals are part and parcel of our culture and ignore the bigger issues? What, if like others, I had gone to the States and wrote about their “hate of Islam and Saudis” simply because they frisked my pants without me being in them? Would that make me a patriot?
The undeniable truth is that we love to be abused by authority. We grow up relishing the “protection” it brings. To use a literary term, it is an obscene suspension of disbelief on a major scale. Such an approach to life puts one’s critical faculties on hold forever. It demeans one’s dignity and makes it malleable. Worse, it makes you believe that busting a drug run under banana peels means the country is drug-free.
It would be like shooting a duck in a barrel, but I have to state it anyway. She, and others, are in that unreal mode of assuming that everyone is guilty until frisked. That is not civilized. I might also mention that it is in contravention of human rights, in any code and any religion.
If we take a step down from the loftiness of ideals, what would the venerable lady say to this proposal: When a man and his family left the country for their summer holiday, the shading of the car was perfectly legal. As they came back, it had been banned. Try explaining this to a distraught family stuck in the middle on nowhere being asked to tear it down. The same goes for camera phones that had been legally bought in Saudi Arabia before the unfortunate family left home.
It also does not help your credibility to bribe customs officials with money and days off if they confiscate such a contraption. It should be within their duty and not in need for an extra oomph.
As for the chap who thought it “silly” to say that the Indians had a malicious smile on their faces as they ripped the cars apart, let me say this. I was not handled in such a way since I have a big enough mouth and enough “wasta” to escape such a fate. Therefore, there was nothing personal so to speak. It was mostly Kuwaitis and Emiratis who were suffering this fate. Our brothers and co-GCC citizens.
This is hardly decent since we, of all people, get the royal treatment in their countries. As for the smiles, this is the first time I have seen Indians with ‘power’ over the locals. This is something of a historical discovery my good man. Relish it.
