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EDITOR'S NOTE
The
Saudi-American Forum is very pleased to present "Honey and
Onions" by Frances Meade. This delightful memoir of
the early days of Americans working and living in the Kingdom will be
presented one chapter per week.
We
hope you enjoy it and you will join
in a discussion of the book [Click
here].
Previous
Chapters:
CHAPTER THREE
1996
We
are spending a quiet Friday afternoon at home. The house is
U-shaped, enclosing the small courtyard and pool where we are
enjoying the September day with its hint of fall coolness. The
sky is that clear piercing blue that almost hurts the eyes; a
blue unique to the desert. The wall is shadowed by the date
palms that surround the house. They are still heavy with fruit
that has not yet ripened and their fronds barely flicker in the
slight breeze. For ten years we have been happy in this
comfortable white house so similar in design to those we have
known in Arizona and we come back from our summer sojourns with
genuine pleasure. The pair of ringnecked doves that frequent our
courtyard swoop by hoping that we will go inside and leave it
for their exclusive enjoyment, and the Lab barely lifts his head
as they pass. Yes,
a very pleasant Friday afternoon at home.
1965
We rattled through the dusty
streets behind the Yamama on our way to view the company villa,
feeling that at last, we were making some progress toward
becoming true residents. Even
a look at our new home would be definite progress. The back
streets had more animal traffic than cars. Packs of wild dogs
roamed freely, but like street gangs staked out their own turf
and never left it. Herds of goats, shepherded by small girls and
boys, traveled established routes scavenging through the garbage
left outside the walls by the various householders; a very
effective form of waste management that anticipated recycling by
many years.
Near Sitteen Street we pulled up
to a tan wall and an elaborate gate topped by a pair of abstract
wrought iron birds. This was it. Stepping inside we were in a
small patch of garden in front of a one story stucco villa,
trimmed with stone in a checkerboard pattern. It looked quite
modern to me with a carport off to the left, a covered front
porch and steps leading up to the front door. So far, so good.
We were warmly greeted as we stepped into our future home.
The small entrance hall led to a
pair of double sliding doors painted a dark brown that reminded
me of my grandmother's old house, and a duplicate set opened to
the left. Our hosts invited us to step through the latter into
the living room, which was like walking into a kaleidoscope. It
had two blue walls, two green walls and an orange light trough
running around the white ceiling. Our predecessors had solved
this decorating problem by buying a bright blue carpet and
Scandinavian furniture upholstered in orange. It would not have
been my solution.
Proudly, they opened yet another
pair of sliding doors to show us the dining room. I was almost
afraid to look. But here, the decor was less hectic; the wall
colors remained the same, but there was no light trough. The
orange and blue carpet of vaguely oriental design recalled the
basic color scheme, but the dining table, chairs and buffet were
of simple local manufacture, and the shiny veneer was almost
black and relatively conservative. I felt I could eat in the
dining room, but I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to sit in the
living room.
Still, another set of doors
opened on to a central room from which the rest of the house
could be reached; a wing of two bedrooms and a bath, a hallway
to the kitchen and another bedroom and bath. Only the master
bedroom had been furnished; a double bed and dressing table of
local manufacture featured that same shiny veneer in white.
The white-tiled kitchen had a
sink with a marble drainboard -- standard equipment in all
houses of the time -- a wooden table with a bright red top, a
refrigerator, stove and two rather shaky free standing wooden
cupboards for storage of food and utensils. It was spotlessly
clean, and my hostess cheerfully remarked that the two of them
had all their meals there. Their tenure had been relatively
brief, so I suppose they had opted for simplicity, and by their
own account, they hadn't done any entertaining. I thought of the
tuxedo I had gone to such trouble to obtain and wondered again
about its potential usefulness.
Returning to the living room I
noticed a small flight of steps leading from the central room to
an entrance at the side of the house. They showed me that it led
to a corresponding gate in the outside wall around the corner
from the main gate. This was for women guests to enter directly
into the central room where the ladies of the household could
entertain in the privacy provided by all those doors. If more
space were required, the doors to the dining room could be
opened and they would still be secluded from any activity in the
living room and front hall where the men came and went. This
explained the jigsaw puzzle arrangement of rooms, and we
discovered later that it allowed for maximum flow of party
traffic when all the doors were open.
We spent a pleasant hour with
them, and I tried not to notice the two lamps, one standing, the
other tabletop, both of which sported astounding matching lamp
shades of some kind of skin stitched with thongs into cones a
good three feet high. They were simply appalling.
All the way home, we talked
about how wonderful it would be to get out of the hotel and into
the villa and how Woof would love being outdoors in the garden
where some eucalyptus saplings were already staked out. We tried
to plan how we would furnish the two empty bedrooms, one for the
girls to share and the other as a combination guest room and
office, since the radio would leave the Yamama with us and
needed a room of its own. No one brought up the subject of the
color scheme; it seemed a bit ungracious to criticize before we
actually took possession.
The trip that evening to Wazir
Street to shop for furniture gave us an insight into the
difficulties our hosts had faced. Other than Karawan, a store
that had the monopoly on Scandinavian furniture, everything else
was made in the souk in either very ornate or pseudo-modern
styles. There seemed
to be an endless supply of gleaming veneer in all colors. Not so
the upholstery, at least on the imported furniture; it came in
green and charcoal gray and only in wool, which might have been
appropriate in its native Scandinavia, but less so in a hot
desert. The orange we were to inherit seemed to have been one of
a kind; we never saw anything like it anywhere we went in
Riyadh. We were the
only lucky ones.
The important task was to order
furniture for the girls' bedroom and the guest room/office. We
went Scandinavian with attractive teak beds, which were,
however, rather spartan -- no springs, just wooden slats and a
mattress. We hoped they would promote strong straight backs in
our progeny who in any case would be going off to boarding
school in a few weeks.
We felt we were now ready for
the move, but there was one more essential acquisition -- a
houseboy to occupy the servant's quarters cum laundry room on
the roof. Dick had
tentatively arranged for this one through a Sudanese headwaiter
at the Sahari Palace hotel; a candidate was available and
waiting for an interview. We trooped off to assess this
potential addition to the family, and Mohammed came into our
lives.
The headwaiter introduced us to
a tall, white-robed, turbaned Sudanese of impressive appearance
who beamed at us with such genuine good will that we knew at
once that we were meant for each other.
The subsequent interview conducted through the limited
interpreting skills of the headwaiter was simply pro forma; the
outcome was never in doubt. He spoke no English.
We spoke no Arabic. We never gave it a thought, and, in
truth, it never mattered. What mattered was that we had acquired
a devoted friend, whose presence enriched the 11 years he spent
with us. Having been told that the dog might prove to be a
problem, we could only hope that the interpreter had correctly
informed him of the canine in our household, but Mohammed
treated Woof or "Borf," as he persisted in calling
her, in exactly the same spirit as he did the rest of us.
It is laughable to say that we
acquired him. He
simply took us in hand and molded our lives to fit his own
standards of how life should be lived in a western household in
Saudi Arabia. He
had very definite ideas on the subject ranging from child
rearing to entertaining and a rigid code of what was and was not
appropriate. We had yet to learn how pervasive his influence
would be in our lives, but we knew at once that he was one of
us.
When the great day came, we
escorted our predecessors to the airport and broke all records
back to the Yamama to check out once and for all amid the
smiles, of relief no doubt, and waves of the staff, and move in
to the villa. At last, life in Riyadh was about to begin;
everything else had been a prelude to having our own home.
The children's bedroom furniture
had arrived, and we set about to do our unpacking while Ali
Harbi, the driver, went off to fetch Mohammed who shortly
appeared carrying a number of bundles and disappeared to his
rooftop quarters. It was obvious that his cleaning abilities
were not required the first day since the villa was spotless,
but there was bed making to be done and an assessment of what we
had on hand in the way of cooking and housekeeping equipment.
We made lots of discoveries as
we explored the villa. There was, surprisingly, a speaker in
every room including the bathroom so that one might plug in a
tape recorder and have music resounding throughout the house.
Unfortunately there
were no individual controls in the various rooms; it was all or
nothing, and when the girls were in residence, you couldn't have
a bath without the Beatles pouring out over your head.
Even more surprising was the
bell box in the kitchen, a feature I had only seen in films
about the great houses of the Victorian era. Pushing a bell in
any of the rooms caused a little card to pop up in the kitchen
with the name of the room inscribed upon it, but the inscribing
had been done by the contractor who built the house and we had
some interesting designations. The bedrooms were slipping rooms
and the living room the saloon. It all seemed a bit unnecessary
in such a small house, but it did convey a sense of personal
grandeur to summon Mohammed to the saloon. In fact, he couldn't
read English or Arabic and simply walked around the house
looking for the source of the summons but what a touch of class.
A less pleasing discovery was
the realization that the electricity supply could support only
the one air conditioner in our bedroom. Elsewhere were desert
coolers, which consumed
only a fraction of the wattage but put out only an equivalent
fraction of the cooling. I reminded myself that this was to be
an 18-month adventure, and we were lucky to have any kind of
cooling at all.
We seemed to have enough kitchen
equipment to satisfy Mohammed, the most vital being the big pot
in which water would be boiled for drinking, cooking and dish
washing. Mohammed had this going at once, and it became a
permanent fixture on the stove. The company handbook had been
right about this one; there was no bottled water available, and
the local supply was not yet potable. The instructions were many
on the subject of pure water and the care to be taken in the
preparation of all fresh produce. There were also strictures
about the cleanliness of servants, and I combined all of these
into an omnibus rule that had Mohammed washing his hands as well
as the dishes and vegetables in a clorox solution. He accepted
this as a peculiarity that he would have to endure, and we lived
in such a sterile environment that I was to come down with
bacillary dysentery in no time. Fortunately, the girls went off
to school before their intestinal flora had been completely
eradicated and ate everything in the streets of Beirut without
ill effect. Dick had already built up his immunity during the
months before I arrived.
We went to the Mission for
dinner and spread the word that we had moved into the villa and
would now be at home in every sense of the word. This was
particularly important to the girls who were anxious to have the
opportunity to return the hospitality they had enjoyed at the
homes of some of their contemporaries whom they had met at the
Mission. We too had kindnesses to repay and looked forward to
entertaining friends in the foreign community.
Secure in our new status, we
spent the first night in the villa. There were more discoveries
to be made. I came awake with a start, not quite believing the
sound that had awakened me. All was quiet and then I heard it
again. I still didn't believe it. I felt Dick moving and saw him
sit up.
"Dick," I whispered,
"did you hear a lion?"
I could barely bring myself to ask the question. It was
too ridiculous and surely Dick would give me a disdainful
explanation of what I had heard.
Instead, he said,
"Yes."
I cleared my throat. "There
can't be lions in Arabia," I said with some assurance.
"There aren't supposed to
be," he said, "but it's either that or a tiger, and it
can't possibly be a tiger."
He lay down again, and we were
both silent. There it was again. We said nothing. There was no
sound from the girls across the hall, just the lion somewhere
out there. Speculation seemed pointless, and we were both so
overwhelmed by the impossibility of what we were hearing that we
simply turned over and went back to sleep.
Susie and Patty slept soundly
through it all, but the following morning, they made a discovery
of their own -- sand flies. Both of them had hard little red
bites on their arms that itched painfully. These nasty little
creatures were small enough to come through the window screens
and were a plague in both the spring and the fall when the
weather was changing. The air conditioner in our room had
dropped the temperature enough to discourage them, but the girls
hadn't been so lucky with their desert cooler.
The bites itched painfully, but
Mohammed knew at once what it was and promptly dispatched Ali
Harbi to buy some Dettol, a European disinfectant we had never
heard of, but one that did the trick. We would have been more
concerned had we known how potentially dangerous these bites can
be; one of the company employees contracted leishmaniasis from
similar bites and had to be evacuated to the hospital in Beirut.
Well, now we knew how to deal
with the sand flies, but we still had the lion. We couldn't ask
Mohammed or Ali Harbi because we didn't know the Arabic word and
even if we did it seemed in the light of day too outlandish to
take seriously. But, I told Dick, I really thought he would have
to find some explanation before night fell again. Off he went to
the Ministry, rehearsing lighthearted inquiries like, "Say,
about those lions," or
"Do you have trouble sleeping at night with that roaring
going on?" The unexpected answer was that it was indeed a
lion, one of the collection of ex-King Saud that had just been
moved from the palace in Nazrieh to the site of the present zoo
on Al Ahsa Street well within roaring distance of our house. We
felt rather foolish until other recent arrivals admitted that
they had been equally dumbfounded by the sounds of a neighboring
feline who should by rights be living thousands of miles away in
Africa.
The girls and I busied ourselves
with settling in, rearranging the orange furniture and
discussing decorating potential.
The practical alternative seemed to be white walls, and I
vowed to make painting my priority.
We loved the windows. Each one
had four double hung casements that folded inward, matched by
external shutters that folded out with a very pleasing effect.
They were very picturesque, but far from airtight, and Mohammed
spent a good deal of time dusting several times a day in
sandstorm season.
We finally got ourselves
sufficiently organized that I actually sat down in our vibrant
living room with a book, and the girls went off to their room.
Suddenly, a clamor at the gate
shattered the peace of the August afternoon. Terrified and fully
expecting the gate to come down at any moment, I dropped my book
and dashed into the front hall where I stood trying to catch my
breath and decide what to do. As the noise went on, I tried
desperately to imagine what we had done in the first 24 hours to
inspire the obvious wrath of whoever it was who was attacking
our gate. Were all the doomsayers, who had assured us of the
unspeakable dangers to be faced in this new country, right after
all? The girls
joined me in the hall, and the looks on their faces were graphic
reflections of my thoughts.
The door to the kitchen opened,
and Mohammed stalked
grimly past us and out the front door, slamming it behind him.
We rushed into the living room to peer through the shutters. As
the gate opened, we caught a swift glimpse of a bearded man with
a large rock in his hand before he was
blocked from our view.
Even so, we could see gesticulating arms appearing and
disappearing around the edges of Mohammed's thobe and hear quite
plainly a ringing exchange of Arabic.
Suddenly, it was over. Silence.
Mohammed closed the gate, and we headed once again for the hall
to find out what had happened. That our lack of a common
language might inhibit his ability to give us the information
didn't even occur to us. We stood expectantly like baby birds
waiting for their mother's return to the nest, and we were not
disappointed. He smiled. For all the years he was with us, the
vertical tribal scars on his cheeks were our cultural barometer;
when they crinkled upwards, all was right with the world, but
when they lengthened, we
could expect the worst. Even now at the beginning of our long
association, we took comfort in that smile. He then said, "Shai."
Instant satisfaction. A word we knew from our Yamama days. This
was further clarified by drinking gestures. We nodded, yes, yes,
and he embellished the tale with an out-flung arm in the general
direction of the street. Clearly, the man at the gate had been
asking for a cup of tea. General nodding from our side. But wait
-- he held up five fingers and pointed to each one of us in
turn. Mystification. Patiently, he pointed to each one of us
again while sipping tea with the other hand and ending up with
another flourish toward the street.
Of course. We had been invited
to tea. At five o'clock. But by whom and where? Surely, it must
be one of the neighbors but which one? We assumed that Mohammed
knew and that would have to suffice. But why the assault on the
gate instead of simply ringing the bell? As with so many other
facts of daily living in the Riyadh of the sixties, we had yet
to learn that the random comings and goings of the power supply
made doorbells less reliable than the time-honored use of a
handy rock readily available in the unpaved streets. We soon
became attackers of gates ourselves.
Meanwhile, we couldn't wait for
Dick to get home from the office. Even though our waiting skills
had become finely honed in the absence of a telephone, it was
hard to be patient when we had the exciting news of our imminent
plunge into the neighborhood social scene. Upon arrival, Dick
demonstrated his superior cultural sensitivity by asking
Mohammed if this was a ladies' party or if he too was included,
a distinction we had never thought of. According to our social arbiter, he was indeed included, and
we all went to dress for a prompt five o'clock trip across the
street. The hour came, and we told Mohammed that we were ready
to go. Consternation. Elongated tribal scars. This was not the time.
But -- I held up five fingers just as he had done and pointed to
my watch. Comprehension. Crinkled cheeks. He pointed to the hour
of six. The incident at the gate had occurred at one o'clock and
the invitation was for five hours later. Yet another abyss of
ignorance on our part, for in those days, Arabic time prevailed,
and invitations were couched in terms of so many hours before or
after sunset. The Sudanese aptitude for charades was not up to
explaining this concept, and he had settled for the number of
hours remaining between invitation and event.
When the time was finally right,
we trailed Mohammed across the street and, feeling a bit
foolish, watched him pick up a rock and bash the gate. It was
opened by the same fierce-looking man we had glimpsed earlier,
but this time the arms were thrown wide in greeting, and the
smiling welcome had us all grinning in return and muttering the
few greetings we had learned. Mohammed swept back across the
street having discharged his obligations to his pathetically
inept employers, and
we were ushered into a delightful garden where the members of
the family waited to welcome the new foreigners to the
neighborhood.
The eldest son greeted us in
English. He was among the first students of the Saudi secondary
school English program and justifiably proud to be able to
demonstrate his abilities.
Even without him, I'm sure we would have had a most
enjoyable time, but having him there to introduce all the
members of his extended family, which included the two wives of
our host and their respective sets of children as well as a
cousin or two, made our first contact with a Saudi family a very
special occasion.
Out came the tea -- I think they
skipped the traditional cardamom coffee in deference to the
undeveloped tastes of their guests -- and there under the trees,
I felt truly at home for the first time since our arrival in
Riyadh. The tea was hot, sweet, almost thick in texture and
surprisingly fragrant, served in little glasses like miniature
mugs. Sitting among the colorfully dressed ladies and the men in
their white thobes, I congratulated myself on the very fact of
being there. This was what I had envisioned when we made the big
decision to come to Saudi Arabia -- to be a part of something
exotic and rare in a land few Americans had even heard of at
that time. It didn't take long, however, to realize that we
ourselves were the exotic and rare. Our hosts were as obviously
interested in us as we were in them, and they had the advantage
in the ensuing game of 20 questions since the translator was on
their team and seemed to find it easier to translate the Arabic
questions into simple English than vice versa.
But, we learned about unspoken
things that one absorbs through the senses -- an ease of
hospitality, an unquestioning social confidence, an acceptance
of silence as a natural punctuation of friendly conversation.
Our afternoon in our neighbor's garden was a springboard
into the cultural waters of our Arabian experience, and we
remained forever grateful for it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frances
Meade is an American who has lived in Saudi Arabia
since 1965.
Born in New York, she and her family moved to
Arizona in the '50s and still call it home.
She has a degree from Mount Holyoke College and
has written and edited educational texts as well as a
monthly magazine column.
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