The Burmese neighborhood of the holy city of Makkah is a mishmash of residential housing, small commercial establishments and narrow, winding streets. Most cars are too wide to travel down some of the streets. Due to its inaccessibility, the neighborhood is home to undocumented migrants peppered in among legal residents and citizens.
The neighborhood has only two access points, one from an area called Misfala and the other from a place appropriately called Yemen. Road and safety hazards abound on these streets.
To better understand the neighborhood (most of whose residents hail from the country that is now officially called Myanmar) one must shed the Saudi national dress; to dress like a Saudi is to attract suspicion among the locals.
This reporter hired a guide for a tour of the neighborhood, which resembles a chunk of Arakan (a predominantly Muslim city in Burma near the border with Bangladesh) that has been transplanted into the heart of the Kingdom’s holy center.
In many ways the neighborhood feels like a developing country in Asia. This reporter asked one man what he was carrying in a box balanced on top of his head; he said it was expired food products bought at a loss from vendors in the neighborhood to be resold at discounted prices in outside markets.
Near the edge of Makkah’s “Little Burma,” a man was sitting on the ground with cans of liquids. A customer approached him and said he had a pain in his inner ear. The man poured some of the liquid into the ear and was paid SR1. Another customer followed complaining of a pain in his stomach. The man pulled a pill out of a satchel and was paid SR1.
We went on our way deep inside the neighborhood and we saw a man sitting behind a small box next to a garbage site. At first it appeared as if he might be shining shoes. He had a cart with various bottles and brushes. Upon closer examination it turned out that the man was a “tambul” (paan) vendor. (Paan is the chew popular among Asians of the Subcontinent. It consists of various ingredients, including betel nut and rose petals.) For something you would buy and put in your mouth, the scene was disturbing. Customers seemed impervious to the cockroaches and flies that swarmed around the cart.
Nearby was a little market selling mostly electronic goods. Outsiders claim that the market sells stolen goods. This reporter saw a used portable stereo for sale at SR50. Expired food was openly being sold at extremely marked down prices. Foul smelling fish was being sold for SR2 per kilo while whole chickens were marked at SR1.
