The call had come a couple of weeks earlier. Would I be interested in coming to a reunion of the College of Petroleum and Minerals? The event was to be held at a beach resort in Bahrain, just across the causeway from what used to be a college but is now a university in Dhahran.
Having not seen most of my classmates from those umpteen years back, I readily agreed. My wife wondered if spouses were also welcome, given that the venue was at Bahrain, but I had to gently remind her that this was still an all-male affair.
I booked an early Thursday morning flight from Jeddah to Dammam, arranged for a car from a rental agency, and reserved my hotel room in Bahrain for the weekend stay. One word of caution for those planning to drive a rental across the causeway: Arrange your car reservations early enough as some documents are required to be prepared by the rental company and processed through the traffic police to allow you to drive across.
Trudging up those long stairs from the tarmac into the Jumbo B-747 with the early morning sun barely breaking across the horizon, I marveled at the resilience of the fully covered lady ahead of me, holding an infant in one arm, and a heavily loaded diaper bag and purse in the other, as she precariously made her way up those passenger steps. Just in case, I was prepared had she tripped or fallen backward.
We touched down in Dammam some time before 9:00 a.m. As I made my way through the huge but practically deserted terminal, I was tinged with a sense of irony. Here we are, in one of the grandest of airports in the Kingdom that serves a pitifully low volume of airline traffic, and yet back in Jeddah, the civil airport authorities have chosen to artfully ignore the decaying infrastructure that has been bursting at the seams for all those years. As a gateway to pilgrims from the world over, it serves as an inexcusable of firsthand impression. Oh well, I imagine one day when these very papers I write on turn into dust, the airport facilities at Jeddah may just be upgraded. Until then, I dream on.
On the highway from Dammam airport to the causeway, I had my first sighting of camels in quite some time as they strode nobly across the overpass. Other than that, there was nothing else of significance to fill the eyes with.
The formalities at the causeway checkpoint were surprisingly swift and soon I found myself on Bahraini soil. Belying the notion that the whole of Bahrain is not much bigger than a Jeddah neighborhood, it seemed larger. There was also a beehive of activity with construction and road works in full swing.
After checking into the hotel and a quick shower and change of clothing, soon it was down to get to business. Getting directions to the resort where the event was being held, I was soon in my car and finally made it there, albeit a few missed exit signs and some wayward driving, Saudi-style.
No sooner had I stepped out of my vehicle, than I was bear-hugged by a giant of a man with bushy hair and fully bearded, sporting a healthy paunch. With microseconds ticking while processing my mental data banks, I finally recognized him and returned the hug with equal fervor. He was a close friend from my dorm days. What a blast from the past! The last time we had seen each other was in my midteen years.
Making the rounds, I met more and more of my teenage friends, each spurring memories of those fun-filled and carefree years. We didn’t bother catching up on our lives since then. We were simply content to relive the memories that bonded us through the times we shared.
There was Hamza, who first taught me how to drive in his outlandish purple car. Ahmed S., the brainy whiz in physics and mathematics who helped me understand the intricacies of calculus and Newton’s law. Talat, whose size and bulk were always a comfort by my side during those teen years when we would fight with kids from the other dorms. Baby-faced Mahmood, still swaying to Arabic music after all those years. To top it off, there he was, my chemistry teacher, Mr. Herman B., to whom I owe the gratitude of learning about molecular weights and ratios. He still teaches at the university. And there were many more.
And finally there was Yousuf Kooheji, the ever-bubbling and tireless dynamo whose greetings helped me get there with delight, down the road to memory lane. We had all changed in some ways since those long years ago. But for a few brief moments on the coast of the Gulf, we were young again.
