The Journey

This morning I listened to an Onbeing podcast and tuned out the conversations in the van. I looked out at the small, scalloped drifts of sand partially concealing random old tires from vehicles of different sizes scattered across the landscape. Our back route to school is particularly ruinous. Each day we pass by a lone toilet gleaming white and standing alone out in the sand, another half a kilometer and there's an overturned sofa half drifted over. As we turn the corner and slow for the intermittent speed bumps we pass by an entire neighborhood of city streets and light poles presumably laid out by some city planner, only there are no buildings, just streets laid out in blocks and a vast boulevard that stretches around it lined with dead palm trees each fallen over in the same direction as if they’d melted under the heat of the sun. The light poles stand erect, some straight and others at crazy angles that communicate chaos. We turn on to the four lane highway and begin the middle stretch of the trip where there are always two large excavators with enormous jackhammers affixed to their cast iron proboscis chipping away at a hill of stone while a road is being constructed into the distance behind them. Meanwhile, our talkative friend, a Jacksonville Jackie Gleason with a dash of Paul Giamatti holds forth in a blast of anecdotes and commentary on a forty minute loop occasionally broken by other van mates squeezing in their own words edgewise and abbreviated. We pass trucks of Arab men who stare shamelessly at the unclothed arms and uncovered heads of the Western women they find alongside them on their morning stretch of road. As we approach the last few blocks, there is a vast urban lot covered in trash and the occasional skinny stray dogs that sniff and probe the edges of a giant putrid pond, a kind of fountain of filth with a shore of trash rimmed by plastic bottles; the water inexplicably rises and then recedes. Yesterday, it was over the road and our driver slowly rolled through but today it is back from the road. We pull up to the gate of our school where what appear to be two freshly employed men in ill fitting polyester uniform shirt and pants roll mirrors around the underside of our van as we pause before pulling into the courtyard to be deposited at the back entrance.

This is enclave living. People arrive and depart the school for the most part in small white passenger vans, some with curtained windows and others without, from which they are collected or deposited from their islands in the ocean of Saudi culture. Their original lives aren’t here but their home country--Pakistan, India, Lebanon, Syria, South Africa, places that may be imperiled by war or riddled with economic strife or simply a lack of opportunity. Maybe some, like us, just wanted to do something different. Their husbands are businessmen or engineers or doctors or college professors here, where they practice their vocation within certain limits but are safe from the vagaries of statelessness, as they’ve been allowed to be here because they have something valuable to offer. I am one of these people. I teach their children. My students, clutch SAT practice books to their chest and snapchat their friends, day dream of playing video games after school or hope for the opportunity to play basketball or participate in drama club. Girls giggle around a magazine as they read quizzes and lists shaded with innuendo and boys pull books from the shelves on virginity and terrorism and joke and laugh. “Bin Laden is a Saudi?” One asks incredulously. “Egypt didn’t want the statue of liberty?” “I hate reading.” “Is this ok?” as he shows me a slim picture book. Kids.

The librarian, a lovely Indian women whose eyes are magnified by thick glasses glides through her presentation in an incomprehensible, musical accent occasionally stopping to scold a student who doesn’t appear to be paying attention. “You’re smiling; this boy is not listening!" She pauses for effect. "This is for you!” She pleads. Embarrassed, he is quiet. Then she lifts her gaze and continues with instructions on how to log into a research database.

Meanwhile, the floors are ceramic tile, the walls are concrete, the ceiling tiles are a non porous plastic and the students speak in a variety of accents creating a cacophonous clatter I am only beginning to understand. But it will come.