Shopping in the K.S.A.

Cinderella ball gowns: Saudi malls are chock full of these practical frocks!

  

Shopping seems to be Saudi Arabia's national pastime. We live about 40 minutes away from Hofuf, the nearest city to our compound in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Even in Hofuf, which is kind of nowheresville, there are huge shopping malls with Starbucks, food courts, children's play areas, and more clothing and jewelry stores than you can shake a scepter at. (In fact, you can buy a jewel-encrusted scepter there, and a matching crown, too. Am I kidding? No.)  

  

When we have a sizable shopping list, we drive a couple of hours north to Khobar. Up there are many familiar, western stores. We are really not trying to shop as though we never left the United States. However, when we need a set of bookshelves and some new drinking glasses, for example, we could spend weeks sorting out where to purchase these things in the small shops and then showing up at their doors repeatedly until one fine day when we happen to find them open--or we could just go to Ikea. I'm all for shopping local, but it's something we will have to ease into here, as we become more familiar with the neighborhoods in Hofuf and Khobar, and as Michael becomes more proficient in Arabic.

  

The road north to Khobar

  

So last week, it was time for a shopping trip. We woke up early and set out on the road north to Khobar. The shops open at around 9:00 or 9:30 in the morning, and close again for prayers between 11:30 and noon. The larger, western stores (Ikea, Carrefour, Toys 'R' Us) open again for afternoon shopping, but everything else stays closed until after 4:00 p.m. Then they close down again for 20 to 30 minutes once or twice more for evening prayers, and stay open until quite late--sometimes as late as midnight. Driving after dark on Saudi roads is a sketchy proposition for those who value their life. So the only realistic time to get anything done is in that two-hour window in the morning. So we had our list, we had our plan, and we were off!

  

Abaya on the outside; cutoffs and t-shirt underneath.

  

When we arrived at our first destination, I had to suit up: my abaya went on over shorts and t-shirt. With temperatures hovering around 120 degrees F, I get pretty cranky about having to wear this thing. Although it's actually quite beautiful compared to some other abayas, I still refer to it as my Hefty Trash Bag. That's how it fits, and that's about how it feels when I'm standing out in the heat. Anyway, on it goes, and we hit the stores. 

  

Ikea! Looks just like the one at home, except for the Entrance sign in Arabic. 

  

Here's the Ikea sign in Arabic.

  

Curtains for my office

  

I found some curtains for my office, thus finishing the last of the curtain and blind purchases for the house. The relentless sun makes window treatments really important here. Happily, there are plenty of skilled tailors in Saudi Arabia. So instead of using those ridiculous iron-on strips that Ikea suggests one uses to "hem" their curtains, I just take mine to the tailor on our compound for proper hemming. 

  

Watch and camera souk

   

Another view of the watch and camera souk

   

On this day we discovered a new shopping neighborhood, or souk, in Khobar. Like New York and many other cities, Khobar has little shopping neighborhoods devoted to particular goods. There are a few square blocks with lots of kitchen and plumbing stores, another area known for fabric stores, and this one, which is full of watch and camera stores. Perfect, since we had our broken camera with us. (Poor thing finally cried "Uncle" a couple of months after my India trip.) I took these pictures from inside the car because 1. I have been told by some people not to take pictures in public places (though others have said it's fine) and 2. Out on the street it was as hot as, well, Saudi Arabia in July!

   

KFC, Carl's Jr., and Krispy Kreme. One stop shopping for all your artery-clogging needs.

   

Saudi Arabia is in the process of being taken over by the creeping fungus of American fast food chains. Krispy Kreme shops seem to be proliferating the fastest of all. Dunkin' Donuts is also a contender, but Krispy Kreme is winning. That said, I also do see a lot of "broasted" chicken places, which look like family owned businesses, and are a good alternative to KFC and the like. All of the restaurants, even fast food places, have "family" seating sections and "single" sections. "Single" equals men only, since a single woman cannot go out in public. Even in the food courts at the malls, there are little partitions set up at the ordering counter, to divide the men's line from the women's line. 

   

Off-street parking

  

There's plenty of parking at the shopping malls, but if you're shopping in the neighborhoods, finding a space can be a challenge for the fainthearted. Fortunately, we have a sturdy vehicle that can easily climb curbs, yet is narrow enough to squeeze between construction barriers. Presto! Parking space. 

  

Saudi city planners (Guffaw! As if!) have a profound distaste for median breaks. If your destination is on your left and the road is divided, you may have to drive several miles further before you can do a U-turn and get back to it. Likewise, if a shop on a busy street has parking in the back, there may not be a turnoff that would allow you to actually access that rear parking until you are way, way past the store. Perhaps the craziest "city planning" thing here is the lack of buffer between parking lot and freeway. There are literally--literally!--ramps that connect freeways with shopping center parking lots. Not feeder roads to the shopping center. No. You're barrelling down the freeway at 100 km, you get to your exit, and the ramp actually dumps you directly into the parking lot. Parked cars. Pedestrians. Shopping carts. The works. Slam on the brakes and deal with it! The reverse is true, as well. When you exit the shopping center lot, you've got to wind it up on the tiny little ramp and floor it onto the right lane of the freeway!

  

Fortunately, we are making friends with families in our company's housing compound in Dhahran (the town right next to all this shopping goodness). So we generally end our frenzied Khobar sprees with a nice, home-cooked dinner and a relaxed visit. After this kind of pulse-racing day, it feels great to drive onto the quiet, slow, safe streets of camp and be greeted with a cold drink by our friends.

 

The Abaya, or, The Ladies’ Invisibility Cloak

In most parts of Saudi Arabia, all women—even non-Muslim women—must wear an abaya when they are out in public. An abaya is a long garment made of thin black material that looks a lot like a choir robe or a graduation gown. Some abayas are made so that they also cover the head, but it is more common to see abayas without the head covering. Generally, women cover their heads using separate head scarves. That said, in the two Eastern Province cities where I have been so far, women who are clearly westerners do not cover their heads, and as far as I know there would never be a situation where a non-Muslim woman would be compelled to cover her face.

Once your eyes adjust to the dark (abayas are always black), you can start to notice that these ubiquitous robes are not all the same. Many have some sort of decorative trim on the sleeve, around the neckline, and/or along the line of the robe’s front opening. Sometimes the trim is done in embroidery or beadwork; sometimes it is made of a contrasting fabric. I saw one woman wearing an abaya that had what looked like Adidas stripes running down the sleeve, like some kind of farcical ladies’ warm-up suit. (Were they riffing on Run D.M.C. when they came up with this design? “My-A-Baya!”) At the other end of the spectrum, there is a shop that specializes in abayas trimmed with Swarovski crystals.

As someone who has been in the country for all of two weeks, I am not really qualified to talk much about the regional differences between fashions in the large city of Dhahran, versus the more conservative Hofuf, which is the nearest town to the compound where I live, deep in the Arabian desert. But I won’t let that stop me…. What I have noticed is that in Dhahran, some women wear more fitted abayas. They’re not tight, by any stretch of the imagination, but they are cut so that the waist is slightly fitted, giving some hint that there is, in fact, a woman under there. In Hofuf, though, I have only seen what can best be described as the Hefty Bag fit.

The day after we arrived at our new home, in a compound out in the desert in the eastern province, our neighbor, Holly, borrowed an abaya for me to wear, and she and her husband Jonathan took Michael and I to the mall in Hofuf. Like the ones in Dhahran, the mall in Hofuf is brand new, huge, and upscale. The top floor of this four-story marble and chrome palace is given over to an amusement park with carnival rides and a small roller coaster. In the United States, I’m not much for shopping malls, but I am beginning to see that in the K.S.A., going to the mall is the major social activity outside the home. (It should be noted, though, that in this country, all of the really important social activities happen in the home. Entertaining at home here is much more formal, sophisticated, and elaborate than it is in the U.S.)

The mall was noisy and full of families out for the evening. Michael and Jon stood out in the hall, leaning on the shiny chrome and glass railings, while Holly and I shopped for my abaya. The small store was staffed, as all the stores are, by men. When it was time to make the purchase, our husbands came into the shop, haggled a little over the price, and then Michael made the purchase.

Properly worn, an abaya is floor length—an unfortunate fact, since the bottom of a woman’s abaya can get pretty dusty and dirty by the end of any outing. However, I am 5’11”, and there was no floor-length abaya to be found for me. And, in looking around, I could see that some women were wearing abayas that came only to their ankles. So, that would have to do.

Holly found the abaya that I ended up purchasing. It is made of a very lightweight, semi-translucent black silk on the outside, but lined in cool silk-satin with a beautiful, Asian-inspired floral pattern. In bright light, the robin’s egg blue and vivid pinks and roses of the lining fabric shine through the outer black layer, and a glimpse of the lining can also be seen on the inside of the wide sleeve openings. This abaya cost considerably more than the more basic model I had initially chosen. However, the satin lining makes this one much cooler than any other abaya I have seen (most are some sort of lightweight wool or polyester blend). Plus, I think it is really beautiful, which is important. It’s a big culture shock to be compelled to wear an abaya whenever I leave my sheltered little community, so I ought to at least enjoy something about its aesthetics.

Navigating in my new abaya has been somewhat of a challenge. I have stepped on the bottom of it. I have dragged the sleeve through my plate of food. I have come very close to having it sucked into the top step of an escalator. I have looked down and noticed, as I was sitting on a bench, that a gap had opened between two of the snaps and exposed—gasp!—a bare knee. I feel like a tomboy wearing a party dress. I have only had to wear it a few times, though, and like most things, I’m sure it will get easier with practice.

What might not get easier as time goes on is the fact that, out in public, women wearing abayas are practically invisible. It is considered impolite for a man to make eye contact with a woman, and yet only men work in the shops and restaurants. A woman not wearing an abaya is subject to leering stares and wolf whistles; a woman properly covered is ignored.

To be honest, this is an oversimplification of things: I have been treated fairly in quite a few establishments. It seems that the more international or cosmopolitan a place is trying to be, the more acknowledgement they give to women. I could be wrong about this, though; I have already seen exceptions even to this seemingly common-sense theory. I’m sure I will develop a more nuanced understanding of how to conduct myself in public as time goes on, and will begin to pick up on social cues that are now going right over my head.

Because I am wearing my Invisibility Cloak when my husband and I are out together, it is easy just to let him do the food ordering, let him do the price negotiations, let him handle payment for everything, let him figure out the bus schedule, let him carry all the packages. It’s a hassle for him, of course, and I can see that it will keep me from learning how to navigate in this country on my own. Maybe that’s okay, because there won’t be many occasions when I am out in public in Saudi Arabia by muself. However, I have to make sure that I don’t allow this passive way of being to seep into my behavior patterns when we are back home in the States, or in other, more western countries. Also, since I plan to do a lot of solo travelling outside of Saudi Arabia, I must not allow myself to become too comfortable in this sheltered role.

In short, I must learn how to behave correctly when I am wearing my Invisibility Cloak. And I must be diligent about shedding those behaviors instantly when the abaya comes off, stuffing them like a scarf into the beautiful silken sleeve until the next time I venture outside the compound’s walls.

Next: the beautiful beaches of Saudi Arabia!

Will the Real Saudi Arabia Please Stand Up?

Chicken is simmering with lemon, olives, and garlic on the stove, and the table on the patio is set for a late supper. A neighbor called from the bleachers, at her son’s soccer practice, with a question about IKEA bookshelves. The repairman came to fix the dishwasher earlier today. My husband is out for a run, and the house is quiet for the moment.

Just another day in American suburbia, right? Wrong. I am living in Saudi Arabia—but this isn’t “real” Saudi Arabia, to be sure. My husband Michael and I are Americans, and he is working for a large company that maintains a series of compounds—they call them camps—for upper management and foreign employees. Our community looks like a manicured small town in southern California. There are neighborhood parks and tennis courts, a school and a little movie theater, a library and a grocery store, a swimming pool and a post office.

The commissary here is the size of a small-town American grocery store, and is reasonably well stocked. Fresh produce includes locally grown mangoes, peppers, mint, cilantro, carrots, and melons, which are cheap; you can also get imported tomatoes, potatoes, and onions, which can be pricey. I checked out a couple of Middle Eastern cookbooks from the library, and will start shifting my everyday cooking to include more common and thrifty ingredients. Already we’re drinking mango juice instead of orange juice (cutting it with water because it’s so thick and sweet), and having some kind of yogurt dip or raita with most meals. The milk tastes richer and sweeter here, so we’re drinking more of that, too. We have been adding lemon slices to our drinking water because it tastes a bit odd to us, and yet we know we have to drink water all day long to stay hydrated here in the desert.

The water here is piped in from the sea and desalinated. All of the tap water is technically potable, but it tastes brackish. There is a single “sweet water” tap in each house for filtered drinking water. Like those found in some American houses, ours is at the kitchen sink; it’s a smaller tap right next to the normal kitchen faucet. I have not yet visited a home outside of our compound, so I don’t know how their kitchens are typically set up.

This is our first experience with a western enclave in a foreign country, and I understand there are quite a few. The lifestyle is so lush and easy that it makes me a little nervous. By American standards, we don’t make all that much money, and in fact part of the reason Michael has taken this job is so that we can recover from the collapse of my small business last year. Here, though, we are living in a big, comfortable townhouse in an eerily safe, clean village that rises like some kind of strange fantasy out of the sand, dust and wind of the Arabian desert. This place was created and stays standing thanks to untold amounts of oil money and desalinated water, and a seemingly inexhaustible supply (in quantity and in energy) of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers.

Lots and lots of labor is needed to keep a compound like this going. I have been here just a few days, so this extremely high level of everyday busyness and maintenance is still a complete shock: gardening, window washing and sidewalk sweeping is done daily to keep the dust at bay. Also disconcerting is the razor-wire fencing around the compound, and the double set of armed security gates. If you have fair skin and speak English, like me, everything seems to go smoothly coming in and out of the compound. Darker skinned people tend to be scrutinized more carefully. (Hmm. I guess that part is a lot like home.)

Some Muslim women on the compound wear abayas (an abaya is a thin black cloak that looks like a choir robe) and headscarves, and some Muslim men wear thobes and ghutras (white robes and red-and-white headscarves with a black ring that sits like a crown on the head to help keep the scarf in place). However, here in the camp most people wear western clothing. I took a walk in the cool of this morning wearing cargo pants and a short-sleeved t-shirt, and didn’t feel at all out of place. One of my biggest concerns in coming here was that I would have to “cover up” every time I walked out my front door. That has not been the case at all. However, I have been dressing in loose, cool, and, I suppose, more conservative clothing during the day in order to protect my skin from the sun. I don’t appreciate the notion of having to hide myself under yards of black fabric in order to avoid ridicule and persecution out in the local town (about which, more next time). But from the standpoint of someone who has already had melanoma once, the covering up thing makes a whole lot of sense.

It is November 9, and today the temperature at 7:00 am was around 73 degrees Fahrenheit. At noon it hovered around 90 degrees, and by evening it was back to a perfect, breezy 70 or so. We arrived at a great time of year. In the summer temperatures can top 140 degrees Fahrenheit. I will try to plan my travel so that I’m not here then!

While we are living in the Middle East, it is my intention to do as much travelling as I can, since we are now so centrally located to Europe, Africa, and Asia. In this blog I hope to convey some of what I experience as an American, and as a woman. I am interested in people’s home lives, their family and culinary experiences. I want to talk about the domestic pleasures that bring people together. I recognize that there are serious social injustices and dangerous, ever-shifting political issues unfolding here. I don’t wish to make light of these or pretend that they don’t exist. But there are many other places to read about those issues, and they are not going to be central to this discussion. 

Next: shopping for an abaya!