my My Wandering

I had always resented the very concept of low cost this and that; the idea that something was conceived to be cheap, that someone would buy a flight ticket disregarding of the destination or without really wanting to travel, just because it was (such) a good deal. My ultimate image of low cost travel was that of a Glasgow-bound aircraft half the occupants of got drunk on low cost booze, belched on low cost food, swore and spitted abuse at female flight attendants throughout the flight duration, a few years back; furthermore, I had to take the airline to court because they would not compensate for the major delay of their onwards flight. This time, the only reason behind my choice was the better schedule. But, as I was just about to authorize the online payment for the flight tickets, I noticed the amount had changed. Instead of EUR 1408 (the grand total), it was now EUR 1448 (the amount to be charged). The relative difference was marginal, but that was not the point. There were two possible reasons behind this price change: either Dubai Government – owned low cost carrier FlyDubai had been bad at negotiating with the bank processing its payments, so that a nearly 3% mark-up was levied on credit card payments (a frequent policy in emerging credit card payment markets, I assumed not the case in the U.A.E.) or, more likely, that FlyDubai, like many other low cost carriers, had come up with various schemes of maximizing profits in the shadow of the typical low fare concept-centered marketing. Either way, I canceled the transaction and booked tickets, even though with tighter connections and slightly more expensive, with another, non-low cost carrier. I had always been rather strict when dealing with addicts, gamblers, swindlers and charmers, and I was not getting more flexible while growing older. Quite on the contrary, I cared less and less about giving such people or organizations second chances. My father’s audiologist was probably dumbfounded or – as it usually happens with egocentric people – thought me mad when I sent him back a USD 5,000 pair of hearing aids together with a message explaining how the major faults of his own service overshadowed the top quality of the aids and hence resulted in my decision.

I had wanted to travel to Saudi Arabia for 15 years or so. Fiercely, to the point of it turning into an obsession, with Thesiger’s thick ‘The Life of My Choice’ taking the central place in my bookcase, the place some people use for an equally thick, but usually dark colour cover religious book. I had written various government offices in Riyadh and the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Bucharest, I had contacted local and specialized foreign tour operators, I had even tried to find distant acquaintances that could eventually help me with an invitation. All to no avail, except for a couple of expensive tours not including many places I was interested in and at the same time spending too much time in the wrong district of the cities along the way, usually the top end hotel district. I had then given up, even though the missing part of the incense routes, the section between places I had visited around, such as Salalah or Shibam in the South, respectively Petra or Damascus in the North, was still on my mind.

Then came the news that the Riyadh government issued tourist visas for the first time and publicized its Vision 2030 grand project resembling more a water colour utopia than anything else. And still, despite my initial skepticism, things started moving. Having studied the travel business and also finding one of my greatest passions in this matter, I was utterly impressed by the extent to which everything turned out. Even classic tourism success story countries, countries that had been highly active promoting their travel business for decades or more, had not gone as far as Saudi Arabia did in only 2-3 years with, say, its national brand approach or Al Ula integrated tourism with the wide range of experiences there, while grand scale projects like the 17 billion dollar Diraiyah impressed one not through the Dubai style opulence and gargantuan size inexistent here, but through the fact that everything emerged from and ended with local heritage and culture carefully blended with an obvious functional perspective. It was not a particular sight that revived my interest and, beyond that, my curiosity, but whether, in all this impeccably planned and, as far as I could see from afar for the time being, implemented development, the street culture and ultimately the local lifestyle had been preserved. Funnily or not, my interest in Saudi Arabia had shifted perspective, from a ‘what’ to a ‘how’. And so, all the waiting, those countless e-mails, phone calls and research made sense now: I had not been ready for this trip at an earlier stage, when my interest had focused on sights, on stones, it was that simple. And for that I was thankful.

As mere sightseeing was not the main point of my trip and as my father was already 81 year old, with sickness and repeated surgery exhausting him, in the early phase of planning the trip I asked him if he wanted to join me. He did. It then dawned on me: there could be no better way of accomplishing this decade-old dream of visiting the country than by sharing it. By sharing it with the man that had taken me hiking and riding a bicycle for the first time, hence opening my eyes to the great outdoors, well beyond mankind’s typical misery. The end of December came, I returned to Bucharest from Kenya and Tanzania and, when doing the Covid-19 test required for entering Saudi Arabia, the result turned out positive, which had me self isolate for 12 days starting with the very day we were supposed to depart.

‘Your trip to Saudi Arabia is like prolonged labor; after lengthy preparations, it takes quite a while to happen, various aids and changes are required, and even then it turns out to be a painful process’, a friend replied upon learning my news.

‘We don’t cancel anything. We just postpone the trip for sometimes in March’, I told my father.

March commenced with frigid days and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

‘What do you think?’, my father asked as he was recovering from a painful herniated disc burst, when I was just about to issue the flight tickets.

‘I think it is warmer than here, genuine, not folkloric like here, hospitality stands at the bottom of specifically Bedouin and generally Arab lifestyle and, if the need arises, they have way better doctors and hospitals than we do here.’ After going through hospitals in Romania for nearly two years with my father’s serious medical problems, after having to change doctors due to incompetence not only once, that was nothing but the obvious, factual conclusion.

While in the transit airport in the middle of the night, two big screens mounted on some tall totems, facing one another. On one there were the Al Jazeera news in English, on the other one, the same news in Arabic, both with the sound off, but with the typical breaking news headlines on. A rather tall man in typical Kanuri attire slowly walked by, raised his head and looked at one of the screens showing Vladimir Putin while addressing the huge crowd at the 8th anniversary of the annexation of Crimea. He scratched his head, which had his cap come slightly over his forehead, then, as if suddenly coming to his senses, corrected the position of his cap and slowly walked away from the screen, sat down and wrapped himself in a big, cotton blanket so that it went over his head, covering his body entirely, from head to toes, and stood like that, immobile, resembling a a tent. Sheltering oneself from the madding crowd was that easy, as the Kanuri man needed no bunker, no missiles and no tanks to draw the demarcation line.

Perfectly set streetlight-lined highways. Going from the airport to Jeddah proper in the wee hours provided a ground image of the same impression I had got some 10 years before, when flying over Saudi Arabia into Oman and, later, out of Yemen, both times at night. This time I could add in the high rises I had not been able to spot during those flights. And, upon encountering some technical issues while running the Tawakkalna app (without the ‘Covid-19 immune’ status of which one could not enter an airport, larger shop, various offices, hence remaining with the vegetable status antivaxxers deserve for their lack of responsibility and plain imbecility) and referring to the hotel front desk staff, I could also add an invitation to a communal, superb foul served with tamees bread. It was that easy to feel far away from perpetually awkward Europe, the same Europe where a liter of gas cost almost EUR 2.00, while here it cost EUR 0.50.

Down to it, Jeddah proved to be exhilaratingly authentic. Al Balad, the historic district, was neither entirely old, nor a compact district. Heritage, sometimes crumbling (in certain areas where upcoming restoration was obvious), associated with a fast pace urban development left the old town resembling a war scene. 2-3 storey houses with their finely carved balconies and window frames fitting the city location between Muscat and Lamu or Zanzibar often stood next to the typical concrete, minimalist structure of the 1960-1980s that sometimes tried – but failed, most times miserably – to replicate the formers’ style. Furthermore, a few of these almost ruined old houses were no longer perpendicular to the ground and they leant forwards or sideways, standing out like a sore thumb with the background provided by some high rise behind them; while this factual description might indicate a disaster recipe, it was definitely not the case, as everything flowed naturally.

A couple of blocks had been restored from the pavement of the alleyways and streets around to the houses that had not seen, thankfully, any aggressive intrusion in terms of contemporary insert or comfort gratuity. Instead, the restoration left behind plenty of evidence showing the passing of time and the period atmosphere was induced by hundreds of period items. A few houses had been turned in museums that provided a welcome shelter against the midday humid heat while allowing one immerse in a bygone era, but the greatest thing about them and actually about their owners was the fact that there usually missed the ‘Do not touch the exhibits’ or ‘Do not sit on armchairs, sofas and chairs’ one invariably encountered in many museums elsewhere. Instead, a couple (or rather a few) of the rooms in these old houses had been turned in actual sitting areas, adorned with small tables, pillows and majlis, where visitors were invited to relax and, in one particular case, were treated to dates and coffee on the house, while in another case a real cafeteria had been set up with the same style – and approximately the same age – of furniture and decor. This so natural approach allowed a museum to be a living part of the city and not a corpse hidden under a thick layer of makeup. Compared to this, the fancy ‘cultural’ cafeterias in European museums were nothing short of gloriously tacky.

On the other hand, bazaars were often large and saw a lot of contemporary elements, from the tin roofing to new buildings, a melange of commodities and a lesser degree of specialization especially as far as foodstuffs were concerned. Other than that, the merchant specialization was obvious, with clusters of lanes hosting the same range of commodities. Overloaded hand-pulled carts plying the sidewalks with their owners looking for customers or struggling to maintain a functional balance while negotiating potholes, stones, cars, pedestrians or other carts, children or young men carrying trays of tea or to go meals, as well as an absence of the usual bazaar urgency impressed the visitor. Not least, people were both reserved and spontaneous when they were addressed politely and warmly. Merchants rarely approached people down the road until they entered their shop or asked something specific. Asking for a toilet for my father immediately opened unnoticed doors into private quarters, putting the right hand over my heart when greeting always brought out a warm smile and reciprocal gesture and conversation never commenced out of need, want or convenience, but with reciprocal questions about one’s well-being that turned even the worst humid heat into a cool, refreshing breeze. When all was said and done, Jeddah resembled a mezze with different meals in different  colours, of different texture, but it was a superbly welcome one. And a mezze that was still pretty much pristine, with most tourists heading to scuba diving or glitz properties in the new town, while cruise ship loads were not thankfully very frequent and passed rather quickly through Al Balad.

Out of the maze of winding alleys and lanes in the old town, Jeddah gave one the impression of a well-planned and carefully developed city, where infrastructure was put together in tight relation with the housing and business projects envisaged, with a functional approach in mind. Glamour was part of the game in certain areas, but it was not the central point like in Dubai or other cities that had a single purpose: to impress at all and any costs. The miles-long Corniche and the grand properties plying it, even the huge Ritz-Carlton, somehow blended in and fit the same picture. Furthermore, just like with the few private museums set in period Al Balad houses, private initiative had a great say in the cultural life of new Jeddah as well, with the fine example of the Abdul Raouf Khalil Museum and its excellent displays of traditional life, as well as outstanding collection of glass and copper ware, ceramics, rugs, furniture, paintings and calligraphic manuscripts.

’Halas?’

’Aywa!’

The woman driver wore the typical black abaya and big black sunglasses, a mud colour shayla over her hair, as well as equally beige, delicate silk gloves; on her right hand wrist a beige belt smartwatch reflected the intense sun outside. A beige purse was placed on the front seat and her mobile phone had a beige cover. The SUV she was driving had beige inserts in the door upholstery and central console. In a way, her appearance reminded one of Umm Kulthum during the latter’s hugely popular concerts; the same Umm Kulthum many here had not forgotten, as I had seen her portrait printed on, among others, chairs and decorative dishes in the Alawi Souq. Back to her, the woman driver tried neither to impress (which would have been betrayed by nervousness) nor to go unnoticed and blend in. She instead drove smoothly, preferred to say nothing, but instead to look sharply at the driver that cut her off.

A short and relatively bumpy (due to the strong wind gusts) flight delivered us in dusty land of very wide wadis surrounded by low, dry crests apparently devoid of any form of life. Al Baha did not impress one much, at least at the first sight, as its riches had been confined to shops instead of the legendary market that had lost its soul and functionality when it was razed off, in mid 1970s. But, asking around from shop to shop, one could eventually trace Arabic coffee, Karak chai, an excellent variety of dates and figs, perfume and pastries. And then, after crossing what appeared to be a low crest, one went down the often 10% incline King Fahd Road complete with its 24 tunnels, just as many bridges and one million switchbacks as it went down the steep, rocky, dry mountain slope with only an army of baboons as permanent residents, and some aggressive residents to be more precise. The effort would soon pay off however, at least for one good reason at first sight. Because Thee Ain soon came into sight, with its fine setting atop a marble cliff, with its cluster of square houses made up of perfectly arranged stones which needed no mortal or plaster. While the building technique was not the same, the village setting, as well as the dwelling structure reminded one of the Yemeni highlands.

The driver taking us to Thee Ain was a school teacher rounding up his income by working as a cab driver. And an invitation to a cup of Arabic coffee at his father’s place in a nearby village turned out into an invitation to dinner. The son of a retired school master, Shariq’s brothers were also teachers. His father was rather quiet and somehow needed no common language or smart bore app to communicate with my father, while Shariq’s brothers took the time to show me around their property, where mint, sage and miswak bushes grew. Their small children were only apparently shy, but that was actually just the impression, the result of their sense of respect for those older than them: when they first met us, they greeted us politely, then took a bow and gently kissed our hands with a warm, yet reserved smile. The meal was both simple and extremely generous, with plenty of kabsa, hummus with za’atar, foul, harees and loaves of steamy tameez. With the late afternoon sunlight blending in with the breeze and the Central Afghanistan-like haze in the air glittering, this meal felt like traveling back in time to a moment when warfare was a ground-only business and Houthi-launched drones could not have hit places hundreds of kilometers away on Saudi territory as they had done just the day before.

Another old village, Al Atawlah, meant yet another driver, a retired Royal Commission clerk. While not at all larger than Thee Ain, Al Atawlah was more scenic, with winding lanes, trees and clay houses apart from the rough stone ones. The drive to Al Atawlah and back followed the typical highway that cut through cliffs and made its way across the rugged, desolated terrain, which had my father correctly put it: ‘Europeans should come here and learn road planning: you do not build a single lane road first, then raze it, build a two lane per way road, then raze it as well, build a highway, and eventually realize the highway does not obey to the newest Euro regulations and start all over again’. Also looking at the road scene, it struck one the fact that most cars in a rather rich country were either South Korean or Japanese and, to a lesser extent, Chinese, while American brand trucks were also a frequent occurrence. While they did prefer big cars (also a consequence of the big family norm), Saudis had a very good sense of proportion, a common sense the Western world had lost when it choked itself with strawberry flavour consumerism.

The flight to Jeddah was over two hours late, which had passengers confined to the rather small waiting hall at Al Ula Airport, with the situation getting a worse when another flight was about to depart and another aircraft passenger load added to the already crowded hall. And yet, nobody complained (save for a couple of Americans going back and forth while obviously concerned that time, therefore money, opportunities, tasks, skills, achievements and other corporate junk, was being wasted). People were quiet, some had coffee, others went to the praying quarters, some read, others dozed, and most looked straight through those big windows opening towards the apron, obviously not looking for a plane that was still in Jeddah, but rather beyond the dust-filled air or the intense sun. After a run through Jeddah Airport, we boarded the Al Ula-bound aircraft and were hit instantly by the noise, loud talking and cacophony of attires.

A couple of young men in shorts, a group of black-clad hipsters with their glitz haircuts, a few women wearing flower-power-in-the-mix dresses, as well as the unmissable group of mid-aged men in their dark blue, respectively dark grey suits, either on a business trip or taking a day off but forgetting to also actually take the respective day off. I had always wondered why business men, as successful as they might be, are fond of these suit colours (apart from the big watch and shiny shoe obsession). And I reckon it took me years to understand that the reason is that simple: they know no better, as their whole life means social status and the aforementioned list of tasks and objectives, tasks they need tick and objectives that turn in other tasks that need be ticked as well. I felt uncomfortable on the Al Ula-bound flight. Out of place. Out of order. Out of foul and kabuz. These people had no interest in history, tradition or even respect for such matters; when you go in shorts to a place one of the bottom values of is modesty and decency, you are a plain and irrecuperable idiot, the same breed with the freedom-for-freedom’s-sake, antivaxxing lot that ignored Art. 4 of the 1789 deed they invoked to justify their actions. Instead, these people headed to Al Ula for some glitz show, because it was fashionable and their egocentrism felt pampered this way; then, the upcoming Jeddah Formula 1 Grand Prix meant they could kill two hares with one shot: racing and Mada’in Saleh, how cool is that.

Luckily, an hour later we landed on what could have been described as the Moon, with the red dust and equally red distant cliffs further reddened by the setting sun. And, less than an hour on, helped by the teenager acting as cashier, waiter and cook at a modest looking restaurant in the quiet neighbourhood we were lodged, I took a table and two chairs out and placed them on the sidewalk, so that we could enjoy an excellent foul and lentil soup, together with karak chai in the cool evening breeze, with only the call to prayer from the mosque across the street as background.

I had anticipated that Al Ula would be quite a lot ahead of European tourism, and I had been wrong. Al Ula was light years ahead of European tourism. Even though not at all my cup of tea (but that was just my being subjective), everything worked smoothly, like fresh labneh or hummus. Buses took one from the parking lot to the heritage site, where rawis waited and accompanied visitors to the respective area, then buses ran to the next site every 20 minutes, so as to allow visitors all flexibility they needed without allowing bottlenecks or crowds to occur. The first and the last bus stop also had a vast, shaded sitting area where Arabic coffee, water, dates and dried fruit where provided. There was no money involved anywhere once one had booked the ticket, everything had been planned so as to make things easy for everyone, avoid the typical frustrations that occur when one is charged EUR 5 for a bottle of water in the Alps and nonetheless make room for both small and big groups without the sardine tin feeling in Petra or the conga line in Dubrovnik. A similar strategy applied to other heritage sites, such as Dadan-Ikmah.

While the Nabatean tombs at Hegra or the Dadan tombs farther South were a familiar sight after so many books and online materials read, after so many years of trying to get that visa and make this trip happen, it was the actual vastness of Hegra and the old town of Al Ula with its extensive oasis and red sandstone cliffs overlooking it that greatly impressed one. The 900 year old old town had been vacated, with the last family residing there leaving some 45 years back, and it was true that the original souq had been restored and turned in a souvenir and cafe lane. But that was not all. The mentioned souvenir lane was nonetheless a very tastefully set one, and the Royal Commission had spared no effort and obviously no money when implementing the tourism project. Different kinds of dates were placed in hemp sacks, rugs were hung on the clay walls, restaurants and cafes had camel wool pillows and the overall atmosphere was relaxed, without crowds, without the noisy haggling.

Negotiating the nearly 700 km. ride into Dolmat al Jandal failed to occur, as in order to negotiate something, one needs first find a provider willing to sell that something. In our case, local drivers declined to make the journey, as it was long, they did not have the appropriate papers, they had other appointments or their main job did not allow it. Therefore, just as I usually do in such situations, I let the situation brew while we visited the region, and on the way back, at past 6 PM, we stopped at the SAPTCO bus station I knew the schedule of and the fact that a change of bus, respectively a long layover in either Tabuk or Ha’il would have been required, which was not a solution for my father. Being directed to a driver, the negotiation was actually meant to make him agree to drive us not only to Ha’il, but all the way to Jandal, it succeeded, then the price was surprisingly decent and unsurprisingly fixed given the former. In the company of the high spirits resulted from this success, we ended the day with mouth-watering moutabbaq at a local restaurant staffed mostly by children (including in the kitchen), when a twisted ‘Ah-salaam!’ directed to us came from the darkness. There was this mid-aged man with his head shaking due to an obvious nervous illness; the previous night he had been sitting on a small chain at a badly lit street corner and had invited us to have a cup of coffee with him, which we had politely declined. This time, probably noticing that, except for a nearly empty bottle of water there was no drink on our table, he went inside and came out with two Pepsi cans he then simply placed on our table without any other sound, comment or ado. It was a gesture that made me instantly recall all kindness we had experienced for the last days, often without having asked anything.

As the sun went up and hundred upon hundred of kilometers flipped by, the red sandstone cliffs slowly got shorter and less steep, they then turned into sand and gravel hills, then even those turned more distant and less dramatic, eventually the view opening up across a vast, desolate pancake landscape, with only herds of camels and sheep granting it all a sense of life while grazing on the sparse, dry shrub and grass. It was rather cold and windy, but the sun was intense when we reached Doumat al-Jandal, which granted the land a whole new perspective. Even though cars went up and down its streets pretty frequently, the town was sleepy, save for a handful of hotels there was no tourist venue, while a guard there told would-be visitors that the imposing building on which two big stainless steel titles announced its function as ‘Regional Museum’ was to open 2 years later. And still, next to the museum there was the fascinating Ma’rid Castle with its stone and clay round bastions, as well as the Omar ibn al-Khattab Mosque, respectively Al Dar’i Quarter. The very setting, with the ruined houses, the palm trees and that omnipresent clay colour said ‘Arabia’ in a powerful voice, while the black contemporary building across the street or grand Regional Museum next door could not remind one of present Saudi Arabia and its shift towards the Vision 2030 project.

Stepping out of the airport and being given a ride across neat districts, along impeccable highways lined with fancy shops, imposing office buildings or various businesses, as much as one had read about it, he or she could not have got a real image of the Bathaa Quarter. A constant buzz, with plenty of people coming and going, with various dialects of Hindi replacing Arabic pretty much everywhere, with sacks, boxes and scraps of merchandise everywhere and a neverending flow of everything grabbed one by the collar and threw him or her straight to Delhi’s Paharganj, yet a Paharganj devoid of tourists, because here in Bathaa foreigners worked hard to make a living, they were not on a leisure trip. Entering a restaurant and asking what there was on the menu so that we could fit my father’s medical restrictions, we got a thorough, prompt and apparently single word (by the way the whole thing was pronounced) answer:

‘Sit-there-chicken-masala-tikka-masala-biryani-chapati-dosa-churri-karak-what-do-you-want?’. After days of exchanging courtesy before even buying a bottle of water, after taking the time to talk, see, try, talk again, then being silent again, then pondering and being silent again, this felt like a hammer hitting in full force a French porcelain plate, therefore sending it and all Louis figures, straight to hell.

The Diraiyah project was not at all impressive. It was hugely impressive. Grand, yet not opulent. Basically the whole Al Turaif and generally Diraiyah old town district were being turned from ruined, long abandoned mud brick dwelling clusters into an exquisite residence, commercial and cultural town within town, with condominiums, restaurants and cafes, various other businesses, parks and museums, all set in respectfully restored old buildings or newly built ones that respected to the tiniest of details the construction technique and appearance of the former ones. At the end of the day, Diraiyah stood as solid proof that one needs not kill old towns by turning them into open air malls hosting only the typical plethora of hotels, restaurants, cafes, travel agencies and brothels, as was the case, for instance, in countless European cities that managed to extinguish all genuine traditional function from their old districts, replacing that with cute postcards, souvenir shops and theme venues.

As the project, while in an advanced phase, was not complete, we could only walk along the streets around, respectively up the Wadi Hanifah and, kindly talking to the security staff there, up the terraces just off the walls, respectively into some old houses and new ones set in original old style. And this was not all, as in the city centre, whole blocks were built following the same design of times past in an attempt to balance the demolitions that razed most of the old city centre, the last of which took place in the 1980s. For instance, while it was obvious Masmak Fort was a heritage property and Imam Turki Bin Abdullah Mosque was a contemporary structure, the two and the shop-surrounded square between them coexisted beautifully, as the new inserts had been carefully designed – from the beige colour scheme to various decoration patterns and big picture layout so as to fully integrate, while at the same time not pretending to be something they were not.

The vast, contemporary National Museum existed in a similar symbiosis with the picturesque – especially as far as the inner courtyard was concerned – Murabba Palace: the same mud colour of the latter had been used to pave the lanes and square around, as well as to cover the walls of the former, while a few narrow lanes divided different sections of the contemporary structure, hence creating an old town atmosphere, with small oasis-like open areas, where small fountains and palm trees had been tastefully added. New buildings following a traditional layout, appearance and design abounded in Riyadh, there were hundreds of them, from large scale, imposing administration or corporate offices all the way to residential quarters. At the end of the day, it was that easy to have a harmonious, balanced town development: just use a main feature of the past to build the future without squeezing or pushing things unnaturally. Use beige and respect the traditional town living patterns for instance. The image of the woman driver in Jeddah in her mud colour private world came to my mind.

The Saudi society had puzzled me in the first place, even after having traveled quite a lot across the Middle East. While the country on the whole was rich (which, of course, did not mean everyone was rich and therefore was no guarantee for anything), its societal rules and customs had not been wiped off by wealth as was the unfortunate case of many other countries, from Switzerland to Czech Republic, which had long traded their core culture for a shiny cardboard package and convenience. Luckily, Saudi Arabia had been a closed country for foreign tourists during its period of development, and the many expats or immigrants either lived in a bubble or adapted their lifestyle to the Saudi values, hence not dramatically altering the local culture. Then, religion obviously played a major role there, but other Muslim countries showed it would not have sufficed: the U.A.E. were a good example for that. Therefore, while a square or street was no longer paved with stones or dry mud, but rather with concrete slabs or cobblestone, families still congregated while sitting on the ground, shiny, typically peeked coffee pots came and went, men talked in low voices. the call to prayer saw lines form by the entrance to various mosques and hospitality was not just a Marketing tool, it lay deep in the Saudi Arabian’s heart, it had almost turned in an inborn instinct. And now, once the country had got rich and was stable, even though it was open to tourism (on which it relied part of the shift change from an oil dependent economy), things were luckily less likely to dramatically change from this point of view.

‘Are you from Syria?’, I asked the man behind the counter in a small kebab joint, pointing at a modest painting of two round, wooden water-raising machines with a verdant background.

Over his face mask, his eyes instantly turned from narrow and serious to round and almost watery.

‘This is Hama…’, I carried on.

‘My… my home town. Beautiful Hama.’, he replied.

‘I visited it before the war, some 15 years ago. And my father here visited Syria a few years later.’

He looked at us without uttering a single word and without picking the phone that had started ringing a few seconds before.

I remembered the Afghan with his business in Al Ula, half of which was a car repair shop, the other half a restaurant with huge rice and mutton stew bowls. The Lahore man in his small shop in Riyadh selling all sorts of cups, glasses, tea and coffeepots. The Filipino teenager making a living by selling fresh sugar cane juice also in Riyadh. The 5-6 year old Sudanese walking across the square off Masmak Fort, trying to sell packs of napkins for SAR 5 a couple and putting on a big thankful smile every time he saw us again after my buying them. The Pakistani man in his grey shalwar kamis on the plane back home, having worked as a welder in Riyadh for 12 years and now moving to Bucharest for a 2 year contract. In fact, we are all immigrants. Some, to another city or country, on business trips, as expats, fleeing wars or poverty. Others, to the depths and faraway shores of our own souls, fleeing ourselves, our own reflection in a mirror or fleeing others.

‘Look here’, said the mid-aged man while picking up a small piece of fabric on which there was imprinted the familiar Saudi coat of arms with the two crossed swords above which lay a palm tree. 

‘If you follow the right path in life, you will get the dates in the palm tree. If you instead go sideways, you will inevitably run into a sword.’

We had been talking for half an hour and his words were by no means a joke or an attempt to convince me of anything, he was instead just honestly expressing his belief, as subjective and politically incorrect as that was. And his words reminded me of something, a part of a surat came to my mind and its echo kept on bringing it back every time it seemed to fade away:

‘And verily, this is My straight path, so follow it, and follow not other paths, for they will separate you away from His path. This He has ordained for you that you may become righteous.’

There are things one misses without being aware he or she actually has them, and actually all they need to come to life is one’s inner will to bring them to the surface. A path. A mud colour desert path will do.