Soul Pics

Last night our new friend, Ben, spoke of Sara in a way I felt but hadn't articulated before. He said it doesn't have a soul. I see what he means, what with all of the ornate gardens and immaculately swept streets lined with pruned trees and sidewalks and villa after villa that looks exactly the same except for the minor efforts to individualize them, plants, welcome mats, wind chimes and bikes parked out front. Indian men washing vehicles under the carport canopies, Indian men trimming the gardens in the back ("Hi, Boss"), Indian men selling me my milk at the grocery store ("Thanks, Boss"), Indian men (Sanjay, to be specific) cooking lambchops or salmon on the grill for all the hungry people unwinding at the end of the work week, Indian men driving three wheel bicycles with baskets full of supplies around the compound heading to or from jobs that need to be accomplished, just like Dave Rom drives his plumbing truck back and forth around Aitkin county. There are plenty of pickups, too. Yep, white Toyotas, everywhere, with the Saudi Catering Company Logo on the side that makes me think of the Dharma Project from the TV show Lost, every time, other apt comparisons: The Truman Show, The Stepford Wives, Groundhog Day. Occasionally I see a calico house cat on the hunt walking through the garden out the back window or sliding between the villas and running across the road under the street lamp at night. The cat is a like a an exclamation point at the end of a run-on sentence.

Ben is right to an extent, although a place is also about what you bring to it. We create our own reality, especially here, where everything is secure (seeming) and gated, at least the two institutions that will come to define our life in Saudi Arabia.

Yesterday afternoon there was a celebration at school. The social committee, about six women, organized a potluck (I brought potato salad) for the staff that was also a baby shower for Niha, who is about to give birth any day. There were a pile of gifts. But that is not the only thing it was. It was also a welcome to the new staff members in the high school along with a small gift for each of us, a celebration of the July - September birthdays and a best dressed contest judged by the principal and the vice principal as everyone was asked to wear pink or blue in honor of Niha's baby.

The high school vice principal and Niha

Then, there were the pictures--lots and lots of pictures, small group pictures, large group pictures, pictures of the food, pictures of departments, pictures of receiving the welcome gifts, pictures of the birthday people. It was joyous. The women (there are only three male teachers) were ebullient in their colorful clothing and they danced around and laughed and so many were just overcome with joy.

The High School Staff 

Some of us more reserved types, hung back and observed but it was filled with energy and goodwill. They had done this before and loved it. It was the first time since I've been here that I had a real sense of being welcomed to the staff and saw how excited they were about us as evidenced by the steady stream of selfies. I have a great picture with my adopted English department home away from home. There has been enough time now sitting through the interminable, mind-numbing meetings and we are coming to know each other and getting comfortable, slowly forming a bond that's going to naturally develop in a small group of people working toward a common purpose in the face of an educational bureaucracy that is even more of an alphabet soup of acronyms than back home--IPGP, KUD, UBD, PLC, ad infinitum.

Nishat, Sadaaf, Humaira, Me, Asmaa

This is the reality.  I think it's the recognition of the insanity (or inanity) of a administration that keeps those they administer sane (or enraged, dumbfounded,  punchdrunk, etc.). There are problems everywhere, but here, just like there, it's the people, my people, and my students that matter. Take care, friends.

On this 50th Anniversay of Star Trek

This solo mission
of space exploration,
accreted psychic meditations,
tuned up
cosmic perambulations
incontinental
blasts of flash frozen
astronaut excrement
destined
to drift soundlessly,
immemorially
through
the vacuum of space

Flux Capacitor

Yesterday I felt funny, like my underwear was on backward or something. The day and my expectations for its progression did not align and so no matter what lense I tried to look through, it appeared to me out of focus and time was thick and lacked any kind of viscosity.

My friend Chris thinks he is still suffering from a bout of culture shock and maybe that's what it feels like sometimes. We anticipate the cost of our moves so that it becomes second nature--both the quality of time and what that time can purchase.

Yesterday, everything was mismarked--either over priced or under priced and I felt like either someone didn't know what the hell they were doing or I was being taken advantage of and there was nothing I could do about it.

At ten o'clock in the morning I thought it was three o'clock in the afternoon. I ran around the perimeter of the compound on two separate occasions, once early in the day and once later, probably trying to gain a sense of equilibrium, wrap my head around the invisible clock, the fields of energy that we operate within--but it was not to be.

Now here I am the next morning writing this, awareness of my perspective reclaimed.

 The feeling I had yesterday wasn't my underwear, the lubrication of my minutes or some cosmic blue light special--just Saudi Arabia messing with me.

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.

Convocation

At the end of our district convocation at the Dahrhan campus we made our way through the gate, returning our visitor pass lanyards to the guards through a little drawer at the bottom of a window where they then returned the identification left when we'd arrived. Just outside was a long narrow walkway covered by a canopy to shield us from the sun as we waited for the van to collect us for transport back to our villa.

It was a busy area of women and children waiting for rides, some clumsily donning their abayas and others, like us, climbing into white Toyota passenger vans where we buckled our seat belts, the sweat evaporated from our bodies and gave our lives to the drivers, men who did battle everyday on the roads of Dammam and Al Khobar where it seems no traffic rules are followed and vehicles honked their horns, jostled for position, slowed down, sped up, avoided collision and encountered close calls, all as a matter of course.

Just as we pulled away, my friend motioned for me to look down into the small white car alongside us where a woman sat in the passenger seat, her head and body entirely covered in black except for the small eye opening in her niqab. She was the senior member of a department at the high school, always beautifully covered in layers of colorful fabric and her head perfectly wrapped, covering her hair, ears and neck framing her face alone. She spoke confidently and with purpose and it was clear that her colleagues respected her judgement. I exchanged a glance with her, looking for what I'd heard as she turned from us and her husband pulled away from the side of our van and we turned and made our way back to the compound.

Swimming at Night

Last night I swam outside in the pool while the full Arabian moon hung overhead and the call to prayer sounded in the distance. A few BAE guys were gathered around the outdoor restaurant gesturing with their arms and reacting to one another with facial expressions I couldn't read. The air was thick and heavy and pushed me back to Waukenabo and a Minnesota night when I had the same view as this Middle Eastern one. Clay and Ann hung on the side of the pool and chatted with Amy, slowly getting to know one another. Carolyn swam alone on the other end of the pool taking in all of the changes that brought her to this place. Chris had left earlier, frustrated, he walked home after returning from an excursion to purchase a guitar from a local vendor where neither the quality nor the price were satisfactory, but what could he do? He wanted to make music and so far this was all there was. Until we have our iqamas and feel our feet beneath us, the uncertainty will remain.

Traveller

A small tuft of bog has broken loose and drifted into the center of the lake. It looks lost and alone as it moves further from its source. This is the natural order of things it seems, a conspicuous separation, an imperceptible severing of the fibers and humus and peat, the loose strands hanging bare and exposed in the deep water, the dry grasses bent in the stiff wind , new grass bright green and thick hugs the surface of the hummock as it drifts with a wind toward a new margin somewhere across the lake.