Hash!

Before you get excited, I should tell you that I'm not talking about the mildly psychoactive extract of cannabis. It's an easy mistake to make, and the reason that I now have six packages of Duncan Hines brownie mix in my kitchen cabinet. Just kidding. It's only two boxes.

No, when you say "hash" in Saudi Arabia, what you are talking about is the act of going out into the desert with a group of like-minded people for exercise and camaraderie. How it came to be called "hashing" is a long and convoluted story involving a group of Englishmen, two of whom were named Horse and Torch, which is just awesome. Back in the 1930's these guys were colonial officials in what is now Malaysia, and evidently they liked to spend their weekends drinking and carousing. Then on Mondays they would try to burn off the aftereffects by running around the environs of Kuala Lumpur like madmen. Eventually they formalized their little club and named it the Hash House Harriers in honor of the building in which they lived, which was nicknamed the Hash House for the bland and unappealing food served there (which makes me wonder how bad food has to be for English people to consider it "bland and unappealing"). Seventy years later the Harriers and the pseudo-sport they spawned are still going strong.

So, one sunny Friday afternoon (to be fair, pretty much all afternoons are sunny in Saudi Arabia) our group assembled at a prearranged meeting place for the ride out to the desert. There are only a few people who have cars, so you find a seat with whoever happens to have room. My friend Jeff and I ended up riding with a couple, whom I'll call Inge and Ivan, from the German embassy. Inge was a consular official, and Ivan was her husband, who was originally from Russia and spoke no English other than to point at himself and say "Russian. No Eengleesh." He repeated it a couple of times as if to prove it to me.

The day got off to a surreal start. As we were getting into their Jeep Cherokee, Inge asked me if I minded sitting in the front, since her husband didn't like her sitting next to him when he was driving. Okay, a little weird, but I thought maybe she was just a really bad "passenger-seat driver" or something. So we all climbed in, me in the front, Jeff in back with Inge, and Ivan behind the wheel. Here's what happened next: Ivan didn't know how to start the car. Oh, he turned the key, but only about halfway. You know, so that the electrical system comes on but the engine doesn't actually start? Then he put the gear shifter in reverse, and we just sort of rolled backwards for about ten feet. At this point he tried to go forward, and looked genuinely puzzled at the Jeep's refusal to comply.

From the back seat Inge said, "Ah, can you help?" So, after exchanging a what-the-hell-is-going-on glance with Jeff, I reached over, turned the key the whole way, and actually started the car. Ivan just shook his head as if to say, "Oh, yeah, I always forget that part," stabbed at the accelerator, and catapulted the car into traffic.

See, it turns out that Ivan didn't actually know how to drive. Apparently Inge had always been the family chauffeur, but in Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to drive, so that duty fell to him. He tackled it with all the enthusiasm and restraint you'd expect from the average fourteen-year-old. In a way it must be liberating to drive like Ivan. No worrying about things like speed limits or signaling for turns. No need for those pesky lane lines. Nothing but the open road, the feeling of speed, and the non-stop string of German and Russian expletives being hurled from the back seat.

I learned a couple of things on that ride. One of them was that I am capable of exerting sufficient force to leave a hand-shaped impression in the hard plastic molding of a Jeep's door handle. Another is that the kind of driving which is truly alarming on straight, paved highways becomes balls-on terrifying on twisting dirt roads. Roads carved through hard-packed, hilly terrain. Roads with open fissures, washboard surfaces, and sheer, 60-foot drops. Roads where the car in front of you kicks up so much dust that visibility is reduced to, oh, nothing. If any of this perturbed Ivan, he gave no sign of it. Certainly his speed never wavered. In fact, if I hadn't been so busy watching my life flash in front of my eyes I might even have admired his casual insouciance in the face of near-certain death.

But apparently fate protects fools and mad Russians, because we made it. And, once the dust settled and my blood pressure had returned to a state that didn't make my eyeballs pulsate with every heartbeat, I found that the desert was pretty impressive.

First of all, it's big. In fact not just big, but vast – and profoundly empty. You might even call it deserted, if you were the type to go in for puns and cheap wordplay (fortunately I would never sink to such cheesiness). Being in the desert is like standing in the middle of a fossilized ocean. It's a sun-dappled sea of beiges and browns that undulates across your field of vision, stretching from horizon to horizon. Here and there the stark landscape is broken by a wind-blown tree or low, scrubby bush clinging tenaciously to life in defiance of the serene desolation. But the overwhelming feeling is of boundless space and sublime solitude. If you were looking for something to make you feel truly insignificant in the face of nature's awesome majesty, you could do a lot worse than a trip to the Arabian desert. Allah does nice work.

One surprise was that it really wasn't very sandy. The ground was more like a hard-packed mixture of small rocks and dried clay. It crunches under your feet like gravel, and can tear sneakers to shreds with prolonged exposure. Serious hashers wear heavy-duty hiking boots or trail runners, and replace them frequently.

Another revelation was that there are baboons living in the desert. Quite a lot of them, too, judging by the number of, er, leavings scattered around. In fact, it's hard to believe that there's enough food in the desert to enable the baboons to produce that much monkey manure, but what can I say? The proof was right there on the bottom of my shoe.

We followed the troupe for some time (it wasn't hard – they kind of leave a trail), but unfortunately we never got to see any up close, although a few people thought they spotted some on the rocks far below a line of cliffs to which the primate poop path had led us. Still, it was well worth the chase. We had a rest on the cliffs, and enjoyed a fantastic view of the plain stretching all the way back to Riyadh. As the day drew to a close, we were treated to the most spectacular sunset I've ever seen. In fact it was nothing short of breathtaking – a symphony of color and light that rose to a crescendo, then faded wistfully away as the last rays dipped below the horizon. It was a moment of such august grandeur that it almost made me forget that my odds of surviving the drive back with Ivan were, at best, 50/50.

Almost.

The Camels Are Not Amused

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you combined the size and strength of a horse, the endurance of a mule, and the haughty detachment of a llama? Sure you have. Who hasn’t? Today I learned the answer – you’d get a camel.

Riding a camel is pretty much de rigeur for anyone visiting the Middle East, so it was definitely on my to-do list. During our orientation at the hospital, I struck up a conversation with one of the new Saudi nurses, a very friendly guy named Hussein, who offered to show me and another Western expat, Paolo, around Riyadh and to take us to the camel souk (bazaar). So on Wednesday night (which is like Friday night here, since the weekend is Thursday and Friday, which is like Saturday and Sunday – confused yet?) Hussein picked Paolo and me up in his big S-class Mercedes to give us a tour of the city.

Riyadh is huge. Not huge in the sense of New York or Chicago - you know, towering skyscrapers, streets like concrete canyons, etc. That's not Riyadh. In fact, compared to most big Western cities the Saudi capital has a very low skyline, with few buildings taller than nine or ten stories. But in terms of sheer area Riyadh puts New York or Chicago or Boston to shame. Since it's situated in the middle of a desert which is, for all intents and purposes, endless, Riyadh doesn’t suffer from the shortage of land that has forced so many Western cities to build vertically. It's more like Las Vegas or Phoenix – just spreading out into the landscape in every direction. On the outskirts of the city are the bare bones of new neighborhoods, just block after block of empty roads, curbs, and streetlights waiting for new houses to be built. They won’t have to wait long. Cranes dot the cityscape like dandelions on a spring lawn. New buildings seem to be going up everywhere you turn. Riyadh is expanding exponentially.

A Riyadh resident told me that the city stretches 100 kilometers east to west and 60 north to south. Like all Americans, I’ll be deep in the cold, cold grave before I’ll use the metric system, so I converted those measurements into actual numbers: 60 miles east-west and 36 north-south. Based on what I’ve seen that's conservative. The city seems to stretch on forever.

Two of the more recent additions to the city’s skyline are the Faisaliah and the Kingdom Tower, the only true skyscrapers in Riyadh. Both are super-sleek and super-modern looking. The Faisaliah, which is right across the street from my apartment building, looks something like a giant, metallic pyramid with a ball wedged into the top. The Kingdom tower, about a mile or so up the road, is surmounted by two points that arc upwards from the center and are connected by a kind of bridge, leaving the building with a hole in the top. Some people have jokingly pointed out that the two buildings look like a giant carrot and a giant peeler. Others – less charitably – say they look more like a colossal penis and vagina. Hmmm. Paging Dr. Freud…

After the tour Hussein took us to a traditional Saudi restaurant, where we took off our shoes (good thing my weekly foot washing was the night before) and sat on the floor with cushions. We ate kabsa, a traditional dish made up of chicken and seasoned rice, which is absolutely delicious. It was accompanied by two side dishes that I couldn’t identify, but which were equally fantastic. One tasted a little bit like eggplant lasagna, and the other was something close to rice pudding. And the sheer volume of food they brought, for only three people, was staggering. Americans have nothing on Saudis for lack of portion control.

Our waiter was a guy from Yemen who was so excited to meet a real American that he asked to have his picture taken with me. He made me promise to print out a copy and send it to him so he could hang it up. I’m starting to get used to that kind of reaction. Children, especially, seem to be fascinated by me. With my blond hair, blue eyes, and pale complexion I must look like an albino to them. A lot of them stare. And when they find out that I’m an American it just adds to the mystique. Maybe they’re just surprised that I’m not wearing cowboy boots and carrying a gun.

The next day we went to see the camels. Here’s the thing about camels: they make it very clear that, while they tolerate living among humans, they in no way approve of us. In fact, the standard camel expression is something between polite disinterest and downright contempt. We will carry you across the desert, they seem to be saying, but we will never like you. They were curious, and would often come right up to my camera, but when I tried to pet one it began braying in a tone that reminded me of Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes. "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!”

I was surprised to learn that camels come in many colors, from white to black and pretty much everything in between. I'd only ever seen brownish tan ones, the color of my camel hair blazer (hey, I wonder if that's where the name comes from?). Hussein, who’s father raised camels, told us that the white ones are usually the most expensive, fetching upwards of 300,000 riyals (about $80,000) at auction. That’s a lot of money for an animal that can barely stand to be around you. But they are an absolute necessity for living in the desert, and, while modern Saudis no longer need them as a tool for survival, they remain an important status symbol. The number of camels a man owns directly correlates to his level of wealth and success.

To mount a camel you climb on its back, right behind the hump, while it's squatting down. Then you grasp the thick, wooly hair on the hump and hold on for dear life while it stands up. The whole process is accompanied by a sort of bored resignation on the part of the camel. You can almost hear it sighing.

The camel I rode was a 10-year-old female named Hawani, which translates as something like “sweetheart.” Since her distaste for me and my kind was evident from the start, I can only assume that the name was meant to be ironic. Like when a fat guy is called “Tiny.” Her owner was from Sudan, and the two of them, man and camel, seemed to have settled into the kind of relationship you often see in couples who’ve been married for a long time: a mixture of interdependence, familiarity, and mutual indifference.

Hawani dutifully trotted me around and deposited me back down to ground level on command. All the time she and the other camels eyed us with disdain. Earlier Hussein had told us that camels, despite their reputation, rarely spit at people. From what I’ve seen, they probably don’t think we’re worth the effort.

An Evening With Mo & Mohammed

Hospitality is a big part of Saudi culture. A really big part. You’ve heard of “Southern hospitality?” Not even close. Compared to a Saudi welcome, Southern hospitality is the equivalent of a kick in the nuts.

Case in point: On November 4th, just three days after arriving, we (I and my fellow expat friends Lucien and Dave) were exploring the city, trying to get the lay of the land. We came across what would probably be described as a nightclub at home, except that since there’s no drinking or mixing of genders here, there really isn’t any point in having nightclubs. Whatever it was, the entrance looked like it had been made from a gigantic dinosaur vertebra. Lucien was curious and darted inside to look around. (At this point I should explain that Lucien – tall, handsome, charming, and French – has absolutely no inhibitions about striking up conversations with total strangers or wandering into anyplace that piques his curiosity. It’s a trait that I, as an introverted New England WASP, admire and envy.) The interior of the place turned out to be as interesting as the exterior. It looked like a tastefully decorated cave made of giant bones, all indirectly illuminated in an eerie electric blue. Sort of Pottery Barn meets the Flintstones, but with mood lighting. Very chic.

The guy at the front counter didn’t speak English, so he motioned for us to wait and disappeared up the stairs. A few minutes later a large man in long white thobe and red-checked ghutra appeared. When we explained that we were new to the country and had simply been curious about the place, he broke into a huge grin, motioned us to follow him, and boomed, “Come in, come in, you are my guests,” in excellent English.

It turned out that this was a private club, something like a combination old-fashioned gentleman’s club and restaurant. Our host was named Mohammed, but he insisted that we call him Mo. He took us back into the private VIP area, which was decorated with plush, low-set furniture and an eclectic mixture of stuffed animals and bric-a-brac, much of it with an American western theme. He introduced us to his friend, a tall, very dark man, also in thobe and ghutra, and also named Mohammed. (By now you may be thinking that everyone in Saudi Arabia is named Mohammed. You would be right. Or at least very close to it. Mohammed is an extremely common name, and, in fact, if you don’t know a man’s name it is common to simply call him “Mohammed.” Sort of like the way an American might call a stranger “buddy.”)

For the next two hours Mo and Mohammed plied us with rich Saudi treats and told us about Saudi Arabia. Well, Mo did. Mohammed rarely spoke, but laughed and reinforced Mo’s stories in a manner that made me think of Ed McMahon sidekicking for Johnny Carson. Heeeeeere’s Mo!

This encounter with Mo was our first evidence that maybe things weren’t as strict in the Kingdom as we’d been led to believe. He certainly didn’t talk the way I imagined a Saudi talking. His speech was frank and funny and laced with English expletives. He told us that the Mutawwa (religious police) had no legal right to harass Westerners and that if they attempted to do so we should just tell them to “go fuck themselves.” He talked about partying in Bahrain (the neighboring country, just across a causeway, where alcohol is not only legal but apparently encouraged) and his desire to live in a two-room hut on the beach in Ibiza (“In one room I eat, in the other I sleep and fuck”). He told us about smuggling a bottle of Johnny Walker past Saudi airport security, and about the many wealthy women he knew who drove cars in spite of the restriction. From time to time he would aim a friendly little barb at Mohammed for being a Bedouin (a native tribesman), at which Mohammed would invariably laugh self-effacingly. What’s a little casual racism between friends? Just like chillin’ with my niggaz back home.

Before parting, Mo gave us his telephone number and told us to call him if we needed anything. It wouldn’t be the last time. Remember the TV show Cheers? There was a line in the opening theme, “Where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.” That’s Saudi Arabia. Except they don’t always know your name. In fact in many cases they have difficulty pronouncing it.

But they are always glad you came.

Mad Dashes & Machine Guns

Passing through Saudi customs turned out to be much less of a production than I had anticipated. Whether this was because it was late or because we were a large group or because we were met by hospital officials I don’t know. But most of us just sailed through security. A quick look at the passport, a few stamps, a scrawl of exotic-looking, indecipherable writing, and that was it. The guy minding the x-ray machine asked me in a sort of languid, disinterested manner to open one of my bags, whereupon he glanced into it and waved me on. I had heard horror stories about people’s luggage being scrutinized with microscopic obsessiveness, or being detained for seemingly no reason, and possibly these things do happen, but fortunately I had no problems at all.

King Khaled airport is a masterpiece of modern Arabian architecture. From it’s vaulted ceilings to it’s inlaid marble floors to it’s glittering fountains, the whole place conveys a feeling of wealth and opulence that befits a country possessing the world’s largest reserves of the world’s most valuable natural resource.

And here, at last, was the real Saudi Arabia. Men dressed in the long white garments (called thobes) and red-checked headdresses (ghutras), women swathed in all-concealing black robes (abayas), the sound of Arabic, so guttural and alien to American ears, being spoken all around. Yup, this is the place.

We were greeted by representatives of the hospital, who collected our bags and piled us into a large white bus for the trip back into Riyadh proper. I didn’t get to see much of the city on the way, because the bus’ windows were heavily tinted (a precaution against the relentless Arabian sun) and nearly impossible to see through at night. Not that I would have seen much even without the tint. Saudis, it turns out, like to drive fast. At the speed the bus was traveling – somewhere between “holy crap!” and Warp Factor 9 – the scenery would have been little more than a blur anyway.

Twenty minutes later I was shown into my hospital-provided apartment in a nine-story building in the Olaya district. Now, "Olaya" isn't really an address – more like a general reference point. It turns out that there are no addresses as we know them in Saudi Arabia. Buildings aren’t numbered. In fact, many of the streets in Riyadh don’t even have names. It makes finding things a challenge, to say the least. And address listings are pretty interesting. If you look up a business in the Riyadh telephone directory, for example, it will list the location as something like “Olaya Street, across from Al Khozama Center.” So, basically, to find anything in the city, you have to know where everything else is.

Olaya 6 is something of an anachronism. It was built in the 1970’s, and with its marble floors, high ceilings, and heavy oaken doors it’s easy to see that it was once a hell of a place. The problem is that it never really moved past 1979. The appliances seem to be the original ones installed during the Carter Administration, and, while everything works okay, it has the general air of The Building That Time Forgot. It’s like finding an old Abba LP tucked away in the bookshelf – once really cool, but now just dated.

The Olaya district itself is the commercial heart of the city and very posh. Right across the street is the sleek, ultra-modern Faisaliah tower, one of the jewels of Riyadh. So our building, surrounded by barbed wire and concrete barricades, is kind of an eyesore. These are precautions taken for the safety of the Westerners, although it hardly seems necessary. A few years back there was quite a bit of tension after several compounds were bombed, but things have quieted down and loosened up quite a bit since then, according to those who have been here for a while. Nevertheless, there is only one entrance point to our building, and it is guarded round the clock by a contingent of Saudi military. There’s even a machine gun nest. Granted, it’s manned by the most bored-looking group of guys this side of a “Vagina Monologues” audience, but it’s still a machine gun and therefore totally freaking cool. I’ve made friends with two of the guys who arrived with me, and together we’ve been chatting with the guards and generally making nice, so hopefully it’s only a matter of time before they let us take pictures of ourselves manning the machine gun a la Rambo.

I wonder if they’ll let me shoot it?

Touchdown!

My first impression of Saudi Arabia was that they sure have one hell of an airline. The flight from London to Riyadh on Saudi Arabian Airlines was a lot more pleasant than the one from Boston to London on American. Bigger seats. Better food. Free headphones (okay, they were the type of headphones that were common around 1986, but still, they were free). They even passed out warm, moist towels at the end of the flight. I know that this is supposed to be a sign of ritzy service, but I have to admit that I’m never entirely sure what I’m supposed to do with it. Call me old fashioned, but I was raised to believe that the towel is only supposed to be wet after you use it.

The guy sitting beside me was a Saudi. He didn’t fit the image that I had in mind. He was dressed in trendy clothes that would not have looked out of place on the cover of GQ, and he had that slightly-tousled/slightly-spiky haircut favored by male models. The overall effect was sort of “Queer Eye For The Arab Guy.”

His name was Abdulrahman. He was a student in Scotland, and he was returning home for a holiday. I have to say that he was exceedingly pleasant and welcoming, and spent a long time telling me about his country. Some of what he said surprised me. For example, I had expected to encounter a strong, possibly even oppressive, air of religious strictness. Not so, according to Abdul (as he insisted I call him). In fact, he said, in recent years the authorities had come to regard anyone who was overly zealous in their display of religiosity with suspicion. Even the dreaded Mutawwa (religious police) had lost much of their authority.

As we approached Riyadh, Abdul gave me his phone number and email address and insisted that I get in touch with him so that he could give me a tour of the country. I had read that hospitality is a big part of Saudi culture, but even so I have to admit that his warmth and willingness to open up to a perfect stranger was something I didn’t expect. Granted, it’s entirely possible that it was all a ploy to lure me into some kind of weird sadomasochistic sex dungeon, but I don’t think so. Besides, what are the odds of that happening to someone twice?

As the plane banked down over King Khaled airport, I got my first glimpse of the place that was to be my home for the next year. Out of the blackness, the lights of Riyadh twinkled like stars as far as the eye could see, from horizon to horizon. The city appeared to stretch on forever like some gossamer blanket spread out over the desert.

The plane touched down with a thud, and Abdul reached over, shook my hand, and said, “Welcome to Saudi Arabia.”

This shit just got real.

Almost Halfway There

You know how every time you have to take a trip somewhere everything works out perfectly and there are no problems at all? No? Really? Good, I was afraid I was the only one.

People like to wax poetic about the romance and adventure of traveling. In fact, there are entire sections at bookstores devoted to it. It’s all a Big Lie. OK, sure, it’s exciting and interesting to see exotic places and all that, but the act of traveling itself just plain, flat out sucks. Airport hassles, cramped quarters, food that stretches the definition of the word “edible” to its very limits. Sure, they may seem like nothing more than a series of petty inconveniences, but taken together they become a colossal pain in the ass that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Well, alright, maybe on my worst enemy. But that bastard deserves it. (If you’re reading this now – you know what you did. I’d watch my back if I were you.)

As I write these words I’m sitting on the plane to London, the first leg of the trip to Saudi Arabia. Of course, the words aren’t being typed directly onto the blog, because although modern science is capable of allowing nerdy guys in Texas to remote-control toy cars on the surface of Mars, it has not yet figured out a way to enable us to connect to the Internet on a plane. If only there were some sort communications system on the aircraft that enabled contact with the outside world. And what if computers could somehow be made to tap into that system without wires – “wireless,” if you will – and connect to the Web? Ah, what a mad dreamer I am!

So I’m using a word processor. Once I land at Heathrow I will actually be able to post the entry. The upshot is that I have the opportunity to edit more thoroughly than usual, so you, gentle reader, may enjoy an even higher quality of wit and cutting social commentary from me than that to which you have become accustomed. Also there’ll be no tpyos.

My original intent was to spend the flight watching downloaded movies on my laptop, but that plan was thwarted by the Apple corporation. You see, I recently upgraded to their new operating system, and as a result I have to re-authorize the computer (whatever that means) before I can watch any of the videos I’ve purchased from iTunes. This “authorization” has to be done online. And, as we explored two paragraphs ago, “online” doesn’t exist at 36,000 feet. Well played, Apple. Well played indeed.

Oh, did I mention the screaming baby in the seat in front of me? Let’s just say it’s a little distracting. You could simulate the effect by putting a cat in a blender, turning it on, and then trying to write a letter to a friend while sitting beside it. (By the way, I am in no way advocating the torture of cats. Unless you happen to have a toothless dog who likes cat frappes. But only then.)

Well, according to the in-flight map we’re just to the east of Newfoundland. Only 4,000 miles to go! To the halfway point, that is.

Ticket To Ride... Coach

As my disappointed legion of fans are well aware, it's been a while since I've posted a new entry here at Jon of Arabia. Mostly this is because there was really nothing new or interesting to say. At least nothing worthy of the compelling subject matter I've already covered. Remember the Nipple Shadow? Yeah, it's been a hell of a ride. And I haven't even left yet.

As I write these words my departure is just over a week away. A few days ago I got my ticket confirmation – I'm flying out on Halloween night. That's a good omen, right? The first leg of the trip is a six-hour jump across the pond from Boston to London, then, after a six-hour layover (I like to use that word because it sounds vaguely titillating), another six hours on to Riyadh. That's eighteen hours in transit. I figure by the time I land I'm going to look like an extra from "Night of the Living Dead." I'll definitely need a good, stiff drink after a trip like that... oh, wait. Dammit.

The Boston-to-London leg of the trip is on American Airlines. Now, it just so happens that I have a $300 credit with American from a flight I had to cancel back in June. "Aha," I thought (yes, I actually think the word "aha"), "I'll use that credit to bump myself up to first-class." Six hours sipping Courvoisier from a crystal snifter and relaxing in a body-conforming seat richly upholstered in soft leather culled from the underbelly of fetal goats? Oh, hell yeah.

So, excited about getting my sophistication on, I called the airline. A regular, coach-class ticket to London costs just over $800. Guess how much a first-class ticket costs? Go on, guess. Don't be afraid to guess high. Just take a shot.

Seven thousand dollars. You read that correctly. A first-class ticket from Boston to London costs seven thousand dollars. That's a seven followed by three zeros. $7,000.

Could someone please explain to me just exactly what goes on in first-class that could possibly justify that price? Okay, the seats are bigger and nicer. I get that. And even my admittedly rudimentary understanding of aircraft architecture is sufficient for me to grasp that bigger seats take up more space, which means fewer passengers in a given area. But even if the seats take up twice as much space, that would still only make the ticket cost about twice as much, right? Throw in some nicer food, a hot towel, manicure, free tote bag (have you ever flown first-class? Do you know for sure that they don't give you a free tote bag? Yeah, I thought so), and that still only comes to around $2,000. What's the other $5,000 for? Any way you slice it, $7,000 is just an outrageous price for a ticket. If John Lennon and George Harrison rose from the dead and reunited with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr for one show and one show only, I might consider paying $7,000 for a ticket to see it. But only if they didn't play "Old Brown Shoe." I hate that song.

And business class costs $4,000. I guess their fetal goat leather isn't as good. Peasants.

So no first-class for me. But I'll tell you this: As God is my witness, I'm eating two bags of peanuts.

Getting My Ducks In A Row

Well, I finally got my new passport last week. Here's what happened: Back in early May, I mailed my old passport in for renewal. The State Department's web site assured me that this would take about six weeks. Six weeks came and went – no passport. By eight weeks I was getting a little impatient. By ten weeks I was chomping at the bit. Finally, at about eleven weeks, I returned to the State Department web site, which provides a convenient passport query form. I duly filled out and submitted this form on the morning of August 8th. That evening, I had an email response which informed me that – by what must surely be the most astounding of coincidences – my passport had been completed and mailed out that very day! Weird. It's almost enough to make me think that the people at the passport office just basically sit on renewals until they're given a figurative kick to make them get off their fat bureaucratic asses and actually do their jobs. But that can't be true, can it?

With that hurdle successfully jumped, and a clean bill of health from my doctor, my papers are now officially in order and ready to be submitted. At least, I think so. As I've mentioned in an earlier post, the Saudis seem to have a preternatural fascination with official paperwork, so it could easily turn out that an i is dotted or a t crossed improperly. In any other situation, that would just be a figure of speech. But, given that the applications and medical forms were accompanied with instructions whose level of detail would make even the most nitpicking IRS auditor hang his head in shame, I'm not so sure. I can't rule out the possibility that the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia (doesn't that sound impressive?) could still deny my visa application for any seemingly arbitrary reason they choose.

From what I've been reading, I should get used to it. The Saudis, unlike most Americans, have an extremely deferential attitude toward authority. And that authority is applied very strictly. A number of sources have already warned me in the strongest terms about Saudi rules and taboos. Alcohol, for example, is strictly forbidden. This really isn't a problem for me, though, as I find that alcohol only serves to dull the effects of my beloved marijuana. Ha ha. No, but seriously, it really does.

So booze is unavailable in the KSA. At least officially. Off the record, many Americans and Europeans apparently brew and consume their own hooch within the walls of the Western residential compounds. This is at least tacitly permitted by the Saudi authorities, so long as no alcohol is provided to Saudi citizens. Anyone who does that is subject to the full force of Saudi law, which can be harsh by Western standards. They still have public executions, for example. Get the picture? (Even this prohibition is apparently not hard and fast, however. Rumor has it that high-ranking Saudi officials enjoy free access to alcohol, while facing none of the penalties suffered by their less influential countrymen for such a transgression. Double standards for the rich and powerful? Well, that could sure never happen at home! Oh, wait. Never mind.)

There are lots of other prohibitions. Narcotics are at the top of the list – the penalty for possession or trafficking in drugs is death. No questions asked. Other restricted items include pornography (and what they consider "pornography" could include such innocuous material as an L.L. Bean catalog. Yeah, baby, work that flannel!) and non-Islamic religious icons. With all these prohibitions, I have had to reluctantly admit that I will probably not be able to continue my lucrative side business selling crack cocaine, "Jugs" magazine, and velvet paintings of Jesus. Oh, well. The upshot of all this regulation is an enviously low crime rate. A few public floggings would probably make the streets of Detroit or Baltimore a heck of a lot safer, that's for sure.

So now it's on to more mundane matters. Like, what exactly do you pack for a year away from home? Will they have the brand of deodorant I like in Saudi Arabia (Right Guard "Xtreme" Fresh Blast Invisible Solid Anti-Perspirant/Deodorant)? What about toothpaste (Aqua Fresh Triple Protection)? Shampoo (Suave Naturals Cucumber Melon Splash)? For that matter, what about other hair products? What if – perish the thought – they don't even have hair product at all? Will I be relegated to spending a year in a foreign land without my hair having the casual, slightly-tousled look I work so assiduously to achieve? What kind of representative of my country would I be then? Not a properly metro one, that's for sure.

Me & My Shadow

Today I underwent the required medical exam in preparation for Saudi. It was every bit as, uhm, up close and personal as I thought t would be. It was the sort of experience that normally begins with the participants agreeing on a "safety word." And the doctor didn't even buy me dinner first.

All this uncomfortable getting to know each other was also punctuated by one slightly scary interlude. After a chest x-ray I was told that there was a "spot" on one of my lungs, and that they wanted to take another film to be sure. Since both my father and grandfather died of cancer, this was a little unnerving, to say the least. So off I went, back to radiology. You'd be amazed how slowly fifteen minutes in the waiting area goes by when you're wondering whether you're going to spend the next year in the Middle East, or undergoing a course of chemotherapy. To their credit, the radiologists read the new x-ray right away. It wasn't a tumor. The spot had been caused by (get ready for it)... a nipple shadow.

A nipple shadow. I didn't even know there was such a thing. Sounds like what you'd see on Jessica Simpson's abdomen on a cold day. Yeah, I went there.

So one more step taken. Next up: getting the State Department to give me my damn passport. It's been six weeks since I sent in the renewal, and still nothing. Is it too much to ask that our bloated government bureaucracies be prompt?

How Do You Say "Red Tape" In Arabic?

It's 3-and-a-half months before I am scheduled to leave for the Middle East, and I've already learned a few things. The first is that Saudi Arabia is properly referred to as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, abbreviated as "KSA" or simply "the Kingdom." This is the terminology that Saudis prefer, so it seems appropriate for me, as a guest in their country, to use it. Sort of like how when I have guests I like them to call me "The Baron."

The second thing I've learned is that the Saudis - or at least Saudi officials - love paperwork. In fact, they don't just love paperwork, they LOVE paperwork. They love it in a way that makes the Registry of Motor Vehicles' love of paperwork seem like nothing more than a vague but non-binding preference. I know this because of the sheer volume of paperwork that they have already sent me. My employment contract alone weighed almost a pound. That's right, it had measurable weight. There were six separate documents to it, and each document had to be completed in triplicate. No photocopies. I had to sign my name over twenty times. It's sort of like how I imagine it would be to be president, signing all those documents. Except that, unlike the current president, I can correctly spell my name without assistance well over half the time. I'm also not a draft-dodger, a former cokehead, a spoiled daddy's boy, or a shill for the big oil companies. But that's a different blog entirely.

An interesting side note is the number of times I was asked to state my religion. This really isn't all that surprising, inasmuch as the KSA is a nation dominated by religion. What's really interesting is that "none" is not an acceptable answer. It says that right on the form. It seems that a society centered on religious faith simply cannot get its brain around the idea that not everyone shares their priorities. If I were being honest, then "none" would be my choice. The recruiting agency told me that the simplest thing is to simply put down "Christian," since that's the religion Saudis associate with Americans. That makes sense. Obviously, "Judaism" isn't an option. So, after briefly considering listing myself as a Jedi, I chose the path of least resistance. Pat Robertson would be proud.

The next thing I have to do is get a "Police Clearance Letter" certifying that I am not a criminal. Something tells me that the police in my small New England town are not going to have any idea what I'm talking about. I have visions of myself walking into the police station and asking for a "Police Clearance Letter," only to be met with the kind of expressions that you might get after asking to borrow one of the squad cars for the night because you're going to a crack party and your car is too small for all the hookers to fit. We'll see.

After that I have to have a comprehensive medical exam. And I mean comprehensive. Comprehensive in a way that would cost you a lot of money in the back room of a "gentleman's club" in Rhode Island. And, of course, it has to be accompanied by a prodigious amount of paperwork, which, in an added twist, must be filled out and signed by an MD. Not a nurse practitioner. An MD. They won't even accept a DO (a doctor of osteopathic medicine, which in the United States is equivalent to a traditional MD). Have you ever tried to even get an appointment for a routine physical with an MD? It's nearly impossible. (It's ironic that one of the most common arguments that opponents of socialized medicine like to trot out is that, under such a system, there'd be "long waits" for treatment. Well, I pay a buttload of money for my private medical insurance, and I still had to wait six weeks for an appointment. And that not even with my usual doctor, but one of his partners. Don't those people ever get tired of being stupid douchebags?)

Red tape from 6,000 miles away? That's impressive.

The Journey Begins...

Well, sort of.

Here's the story so far: I'm a nurse at Shriners Burns Hospital in Boston. It's a terrific place to work, and the people there are great. I'm also proud to say that it's almost universally recognized as the premier pediatric burn facility in the world. I've been there for two years, and I can honestly say that I love my job. That's no small thing – in fact, it's a claim that very few people I know can truly make. Nevertheless, Shriners is the only hospital I've worked at since graduating nursing school. So my experience has been kind of limited.

With that in mind, I began to think a while back about broadening my horizons a little bit. And not just professionally, but personally too. A good friend of mine, a classmate from elementary through high school, has lived not just all over the country, but all over the world. That's always made me a little jealous – not least of which because I've always had an interest in other countries and cultures (at least partly out of a hope that other countries aren't as enamored of country music, oversized SUV's, and reality TV as ours seems to be). So the idea began to gel in my mind of putting my nursing skills to work overseas.

It turns out that the nursing shortage so publicized in recent years is not confined to the United States. Just about every country in the world is desperate for nurses. That was good news for me. The bad news was that, since my foreign language skills are limited to schoolboy French and German, and as such are wholly unsuited for the kind of complex interactions required in medicine, my options were somewhat limited. That, I figured, essentially left the English-speaking countries: Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and possibly South Africa.

"Hold on," you might say at this point, "Canada isn't a country." But it turns out that it is. They have their own laws and government and everything. Nevertheless, I ruled it out pretty much right off the bat. First, while it's a beautiful and progressive place with many admirable qualities, Canada (at least the English-speaking part) is not so different from the US that it would offer much in the way of an "international" experience. If you were drugged, thrown in the back of a car, and transported to, oh, Edmonton, it's safe to say that it would probably take you a while after coming around to realize that you were in a foreign country at all. Second, Canada is cold. I'm talking testicles-retreating-into-your-body-cavity cold. I get enough of that in Massachusetts – I am sure as hell not looking for more. So Canada was out, eh?

The UK was actually my first choice. Anyone who knows me is well aware that I am an avid anglophile. How much of an anglophile? Let me put it this way: I have a very close friend, a man for whom I would willingly take, say, a crossbow bolt to the thigh. This friend has (jokingly, I hope) suggested that he might get a tattoo of an American eagle spitting fire on a Union Jack (which is correctly referred to as a "Union Flag" unless it is flown at sea – but I digress) because he believes that the English occasionally need to be reminded of the fact that "they got beaten." Despite my love for this man, I have made it very clear that if he actually gets such a tattoo, I would probably be forced to sever all association with him. Now, possibly I've misunderstood our relationship, and that this is not so much a threat as an incentive. But regardless, I think this story accurately illustrates my feelings toward all things British.

Unfortunately, the British don't pay their nurses very well. Even with my experience at a prestigious hospital, I couldn't expect to make more than about $30,000 per year in the UK. Given that the cost of living there is about the same as here, that's just not a possibility. It turns out that the situation is pretty much the same in Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. It's even worse in South Africa, which has the added minus of having a high crime rate.

So I was starting to lose hope. But, somewhere in the back of my mind was a hazy recollection of hearing that a lot of Americans work in the Middle East, and that the salaries there were typically pretty good. So I fired up The Google. It turns out that my memory was correct. There were many, many sources on the Web advertising nursing jobs in the Gulf states. So, after some research, I contacted a reputable recruiting agency and submitted an application. Within a few weeks I had a telephone interview with the nurse manager of a pediatric surgical unit at a large, prestigious hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Not long afterward I was offered a job.

It's a pretty good deal. The hospital itself is supposed to be a very advanced, highly regarded facility. In fact it prides itself in being the match of any top American hospital for quality of care. It's also gigantic – literally hundreds of beds, quite a jump from Shriners, which has a maximum capacity of only 30 kids! The base salary is respectable by American standards, and that's before overtime (of which, I've been told, there is an ample supply). But that base salary is greatly enhanced by two factors: 1) it's tax-free (I have verified this with the IRS – US citizens resident in foreign countries pay no income tax on earned income up to $82,400), and 2) the hospital provides living accommodations. No taxes, no rent, virtually no financial responsibilities. It's like being Paris Hilton, only without the venereal disease. It's essentially the same as earning 50% more than you would in the States. And since, according to my research, the cost of living in Saudi Arabia is relatively low, it's possible that I could come back from a year in Riyadh having banked some serious scratch. How serious? Well, maybe enough to be in new BMW territory. Pretty tempting.

And Saudi Arabia would certainly provide the exotic foreign experience I'm looking for. In fact, for a Westerner, Saudi Arabia is probably about as exotic as you can get and still be on the planet Earth. Language wouldn't even be an issue, because although Saudis speak Arabic, the hospital conducts all its business in English. They even provide interpreters for the nurses to speak to the patients.

Still, I was ambivalent for a little while. It's a year's commitment, which is a long time. I could miss a lot. For example, one of my friends (the Britain-basher mentioned above, in fact) and his wife will be starting a family soon, so I could miss the birth of their first child. But, as the potential father pointed out, even if they had a baby while I was away, he or she would only be a few months old when I got back – it's not like the little nugget would even know who I was in that time, anyway. There'd still be an entire lifetime of messing with the kid's head for my own amusement. Then I thought about my life one year ago. It really wasn't very different from today. Sure, some minor details have changed. But the fundamentals haven't. I still live in the same place, work at the same job, hang out with he same people. Okay, I drive a different car. But that's about it. So what's a year? It feels long when you're in the middle of it, but when it's over it seems like hardly any time at all.

So in the end I decided to do it. I'm going to Saudi Arabia. There's a lot to do before my departure date, which right now is scheduled for October 31. Turns out moving to a foreign country for a year is sort of a big deal. Who knew? Medical tests, immigration papers, etc., etc. And, of course, setting up a blog with a name that would probably make Peter O'Toole cringe. I'll keep you posted.