Saudi Arabia

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Riyadh & Jeddah

Busy reforming in Riyadh and getting jiggy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabians are, in their own tentative way, making the Gulf swing.

Some Background

Out on the arid western edge of Riyadh, in a neighborhood inhabited by the upper echelons of the royal family, there are two buildings, each in its own way as revealing of modern Saudi Arabia as the two totemic towers that dominate the city centre.
The first, in the city-sized, walled compound of Prince Abdulaziz bin Fahd bin Adbul Aziz-al-Saud, son of the late King Fahd, is a replica of Granada’s Alhambra Palace. Reportedly identical to the original in every detail, it differs only in size. The one in Riyadh is, naturally, larger.
The second, commissioned by King Fahd in the 70’s, is beyond the compound. It, too, is a lavish affair owing its existence to a royal whim. This is Riyadh’s Opera House. State of the art when it opened, The passage of three decades has barely left a mark. Possibly, this is because no expense was spared in its execution. The presence of French specialists, who ensure stage equipment works, keep it air-conditioned and turn the lights on every night, has helped. But the major factor is that the opera house has never actually been used!
Attribute both buildings’ existence to royal extravagance and you wouldn’t be the first to call Saudi’s princes profligate, although, depending on your political persuasion, this would either be proof of the ruling family’s desire to make a mark or of its decadence.
There’s probably a degree of truth to both interpretations, although in their defense, King Fahd was genuinely keen on promoting cultural activities and Prince Abdulaziz has a real fondness for Islamic architecture.
You see, there are degrees of truth to all the shock/stock portraits of Modern Arabia. Veiled women swathed in black abayas: victims or traditionalists? The entire country stopping five times per day: devotion or ostentation? The Bedouin-meets-Balenciaga shopping culture: trashy or trendy? Interpretation is a matter of politics.
Added up, these different images of Saudi Arabia make it fascinating in a “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” kind of way. The lingering impression is less of a country with real people and more of some magic kingdom. A place so obviously on the other side of the looking glass that Alice, in basic black of course, might feel at home.
So imagine when, as you come into land, Riyadh looks oddly familiar. It could be a sandier version of somewhere in Nevada or Texas circa 1975, one of those new cities with room to grow that had begun to sprawl for miles. There are big differences - the forest of minarets, the architectural vernacular - but what you see from the air is a well regimented low-rise city of residential compounds, neon lit strip malls, and the odd glittering tower, neatly knitted together by a network of busy expressways.
On the ground, you notice that even the traffic looks Midwestern. It’s an impatient stream o pick-up trucks (perfect for carting camels) and city block-sized Chevys, the occasional muscle car (Ferrari, not Firebirds) and plenty of gas-guzzling Japanese SUV’s. You also notice, on the drive into town that, with few traffic lights and lanes the width of runways, many of the younger drivers demonstrate motoring skills obviously picked up from Playstations.
Just as the whole experience is becoming too American Graffiti, you pass your first fast-food franchise, a McDonalds. Then you stop at your first red-light and, as you notice the man in the next car in his snappy white robe and red-checkered headdress, with gold tinted wraparound sunglasses, and the three veiled women in the back in black abayas and chunky Gucci sunglasses, you suddenly remember you are in Saudi Arabia.
To hear some fifty-something Saudi’s tell it, by the 1970’s Saudi Arabia itself had almost forgotten that it was Saudi Arabia. Or, more specifically, that it was well on its way to becoming much less conservative.
When it was founded in 1932, King Abdul Aziz bin al-Saud’s Saudi Arabia might have been one state, but it was effectively several countries. True, all Saudi’s were Arabs and Muslim, although not all Sunni. But vast distances and primitive infrastructures meant that each part of the country was culturally, sartorially, and historically distinct. Coastal inhabitants, whether the Shi’ite pearl divers of the Arabian Gulf beaches or the farmers of the Red Sea, had as little in common as they did with the colorfully dressed, dreadlocked mountain tribes along the Yemeni border or the land-locked Najdis.
By the 1970’s, after the four decades of faster-than-light growth, the country was beginning to knit. Air travel had reduced journeys from weeks to hours. To travel from Riyadh to Jeddah in 1950, when there were only 200km of paved roads in Saudi Arabia, too up to five days, but the new motorways now meant you could drive round trip in a single day. A generation of Saudis found themselves mobile and working in parts of the country their parents couldn’t have imagined visiting.
Unification, the onslaught of modernity, and the adoption by the state of the austere interpretation of Islam favored by the al-Sauds - referred to outside but never inside Saudi Arabia as Wahhabism - all helped forge a single national identity. Though still deeply traditional, Saudi society was opening up, finding its own way to be modern.
Just as the royal family was beginning to think about opera houses, things started to go wrong. In 1975, King Faisal was assassinated by a nephew. What was presented as an act of insanity was believed by many to be revenge for the killing ten years earlier of the man’s brother during protests over modernizations introduced by the king. The turmoil was quickly contained and there was relative tranquility for four years. Then, the Iranian revolution sent out shock waves. The rise of the rival Islamic state, a republic that settled the kingdom. Jitters were barely subsiding when a Sunni militant named Juhaiman al-Utaiba occupied the Great Mosque in Mecca with 500 followers and announced the imminent return of the Mahdi, the Islamic Messiah.
The state’s bid to regain control of Islam’s most important mosque resulted in a two week battle where over 100 people died. The authority of the king, self-appointed guardian of Islam’s holiest shrines, was severely shaken. The conservative religious establishment was outraged. Some clerics were threatening to revolt and, to fend off any challenge, the royal family secured its position by ceding a degree of power to the religious authorities. Over the next decade, clerics came to control or significantly influence key ministries, among them those of the education and interior.
A more immediate effect was a general crackdown. Once the rebels had been publicly executed, the plain-clothes officers of the Committee to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice - the religious police - were given free reign to control public behavior, including the right to detain anyone transgressing Islamic norms: loosely, anything from being improperly dressed ( a woman whose hair or face was showing or whose abaya did not fully cover her clothes, or a man in a short sleeved shirt) to listening to music, not attending prayers, or worse, unmarried men and women sitting together in public.
U f there was little public dissent, it was because the country was shaken, plus, at heart, Saudi Arabia was and still is a deeply religious society. Much of the behavior the religious police were delegated to control was behavior Saudis didn’t approve of anyways.
The result is today’s segregated society, conformist and conservative on the surface. There are no cinemas or theatres, it is said, for fear of what might happen in dark spaces. Restaurants are divided: single men on one side and women and families on the other side. Women are not permitted to drive and, in public, must be accompanied by a male guardian. And they may not travel alone without written permission. All this, say the clerics, is for the protection of society.
A side effect of this constant surveillance is Saudi Arabia’s acute respect for privacy. The home is the only urban unregulated space and, given the complicated nature of public life, many people find it more pleasant to socialize at home. The profusion of satellite channels and availability of DVD’s means you can watch on television what you can’t see in a cinema and, when going out for a meal involves wrapping up and veiling, take-away services cut the inconvenience.
Consequently, Saudi domestic architecture is defensive. Exterior windows tend to be small, and houses are hidden behind high walls, with trees or lattice work screens arranged to give shade and deflect prying eyes. Entrances open onto a courtyard or a garden first, rather than directly into the house, and most houses are divided into public and private areas so visitors won’t inadvertently end up where they shouldn’t be.
From the outside, Saudi Arabia looks like a country of individual gated developments. or urban havens, depending on your perspective. At home, providing no one can see through the window or over the wall, anything goes. Drive around Jeddah on a Wednesday night 9Thursday and Friday are the Saudi weekend) and you may well hear snatches of loud techno music or a burst of voices and laughter from behind a wall, as private parties make up for the lack of public entertainment.
Not that Jeddah is short on those options. Infamously liberal, the country’s oldest city attracts more domestic tourists than even the spectacular remains of Madain Saleh, Saudi Arabia’s own Petra. Some visitors are drawn to Jeddah’s heritage, such as its white-washed coral merchant houses, some up to 500 years old. But for most adult visitors, Jeddah’s real draw is the Red Sea beach resorts and the seafront Corniche, which is one of the world’s largest outdoor museums. Among the horse carts, picnicking families and shawarma vendors are hundreds of sculptures including Moores, Miros, Calders and a Vasarely or two.
The teenagers come for the cafes. Maybe it’s the sea air, the cosmopolitanism of a city that, as the gateway to Mecca, has welcomed millions of pilgrims from all over the world, or maybe because its original inhabitant was a temptress - Eve apparently lived here after being kicked out of paradise. Whatever the reason, Jeddah is friskier than Riyadh.
At the simple shisha bars, where the fruit-scented smoke of water pipes fills the air, or in the glitzier lounge clubs, you can watch mocktail in hand, as gilded Saudi youth pushes public propriety to its limits. At first this seems to involve little more than eye contact, then you see that messages are being exchanged on mobile phones and laptops. In a country where meeting people isn’t easy, new technology has turned flirting into a national sport.
Take Bluetooth. All you do is turn on your device, search for others nearby, pick one of the names on your list - nicknames, such as HotChick, ArabianHorse or the more gender specific Sexy Saudi, make choosing a little easier - and send a message. If you’re lucky, your target will reply. If you are luckier still, they will flirt back. It’s still more miss than hit, but compared to the days when making a date meant tucking your phone number into a CD case at the music shop and hoping that whoever bought it would call you rather than the police, hooking up is now child’s play.
This scene is still more bubblegum than Babylon, but most Saudis don’t want their country to become a fleshpot like Bahrain or Dubai, even if thousands of them flock to both destinations each weekend to really cut loose. But get yourself invited to one of Jeddah’s private parties and the illicit stimulants (anything stronger than RedBull), the mixed crowd, the music and the dancing prove that where there’s a will, there’s a way and plenty of Saudis do in private what their counterparts elsewhere do in public.
Exactly what Saudi Arabia does want to do is up for discussion. A series of domestic terrorist incidents and differences that have been exposed by the ongoing government-sponsored National Dialogues have proven that there are some things in Saudi society that simply aren’t working.
Changes are happening, albeit gradually. It wasn’t until 2004 that female presenters were permitted to read the news and it’s only in the last year that photos of Saudi women have appeared in magazines and newspapers, a practice that remains highly controversial.
Other red-lines have also been crossed. Outspoken books, like Rajaa al Sanae’s Girls of Riyadh, something of a Saudi Sex and the City, have given people an acceptable reason to talk about unhappy marriages, domestic abuse, sex-starved singles, and homosexuality. Women were allowed to compete for the first time last year in elections at Jeddah’s Chamber of Commerce and the country had its first experience at municipal elections.
Perhaps it’s all due to the New King; perhaps it’s because 70 percent of the population is under 24, so change is inevitable; or perhaps it’s because, after the profound sense of shock and betrayal many Saudis felt when, post 9/11, their country was portrayed as an Osama bin Ladenland, Saudi Arabia is turning talk into action. For the first time in years, there’s a sense like something big is coming.
Cynics say the country has always waited for change and it has never materialized. They point out that persistent rumors about women being allowed to drive remain rumors. Others say the introduction in May this year of another controversial innovation, tourist visas for small groups of non-Muslim travelers, means other reforms are certain to follow. After a long period of self imposed isolation, Saudi Arabia has cautiously begun to welcome the world and is keen to show that it is not a nation of Islamic despots.
Beyond the religious police, the stickers in hotel rooms indicate the direction of Mecca, and the loudspeakers broadcasting the call to prayer through shopping malls, restaurants, and office buildings, Saudi society isn’t much different from Victorian Britain or, for that matter, parts of the Bible belt today.
So when you touch down for the first time in this Midwest of the Middle East, picture yourself not so much as Ninetto Davoli in Arabian Nights or even as Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, but more as Kevin Bacon in Footloose. You’ll be surprised how quickly everything starts to make sense.

PICKZ

Restaurant- Aside from the abundant fast food chains, quality restaurants can be hard to spot. Najd Village in Riyadh has superb Saudi fare. Be sure not to pass up the upscale lounge serving amazing fusion cuisine, Bubbles, while visiting the Corniche in Jeddah.
Bar- Not to be missed, Globe Coffee & Cigar Lounge in the Al Faisaliah Centre, boasts cuban cigars, I-can't-believe-it-isn't-alcohol fruit cocktails, fusion food and shark-skin chairs in a gold-tinted ball 250m above Riyadh. All Glamour baby! Javalounge is the closest thing to a nightclub you'll find while in Jeddah.
Shopping- Numerious shopping malls dot the city scape. For something more ethnic, try Souk Al Thumairi where you can paruse a variety of Middle Eastern goods in this former execution square. Remember: bargain or get burned! Kingdom Center is also a must.
Hotel- Riyadh's regal Al Faisaliah Hotel in Norman Foster's Tower has vast rooms the service redefines 'comprehensive.' At Jeddah's Intercontinental ask for a room above the fourth floor for Red Sea views. Known for their big, downy beds.

Additional Comments:
As noted, try to obstain from distinctly 'Western' customs. Your travel guide will go over the necessary requirements as you travel about town. Also, probably the most useful resource to foreign, non-arid dwellers, is the various Coffee Day chains about the city. You can sit under mist machines on the terrace to cool off while sipping your mint lemonade as you take a break from the merciless Saudi sun.

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Photos

Kingdom Center
View of Riyadh by night with The Kingdom Center rising above the city lights.

Al Faisaliah Centre
The Globe Coffee & Cigar Lounge is located in this sphere high above Riyadh.

McDonald's
Even in the overly abundant fast food chains there is segregated sitting areas.

Comments

[yaser]

wow
what an amazingly revealing exposition. i loved your article. thanks for sharing. *one minor correction though - in the islamic tradition eve is no where regarded as the temptress. in deed muslims are quick to point this out to their jewish and christian fellows in the on going struggle of one-upmanship. adam and eve are both equally and independently accountable for their transgression. yaser

[mahaboob sharief shaik]

details
plss let me know more abt cigar lounges