Riyadh, the Saudi Capital

Sights to see:
First, there aren't many.
The old Mismak Fort, the center of Riyadh before the Al-Saud made the town their headquarters, lay in ruin when we lived there, but it was fun to wander through the shell that had once been a sturdy redoubt against raiding tribesman - as long as you didn't step through a rotting palm wood plank or slip when an adobe block crumbled beneath your feet.

The Water Tower, much venerated by modern Saudis and the "logo" of the city, is not impressive to the more jaded western eye.

Old Dirriya, the "palace" of the Al-Saud, some 20 kms away from the center of town, is probably the most interesting "tourist site" in town. This array of mud brick buildings have been very carefully restored to a state that is probably more pristine than they were when they were first built in the late 18th century.

As too often happens in Gulf, Dirriya has been sanitized - to the point of having been coated with a transparent plastic resin to preserve the adobe!

Quick Tips:

Expect the bizarre
Some scenes are mind-bogglingly strange: imagine seeing a woman totally enshrouded in black, from head to toe, walking along a street with a black scarf totally covering her face in 45 C heat while talking on a cell phone. Or suddenly being told to leave a supermarket in the middle of your shopping trip because it was time to pray. Or encountering a wizened man of perhaps 65 with a graying beard - but no moustache - wearing what looks like a night shirt that hits him well above the ankles, and brandishing a thin bamboo cane and yelling as-salah! as-salah! (Pray! Pray!) thereby causing everyone in his vision to scurry toward the nearest mosque. But most bizarre of all: on a Friday after prayer you see a crowd in front of the main downtown mosque and discover that one or more prisoners are about to be beheaded with a sword in public. All this and more will greet you if ever you visit Riyadh.

Essential task:
Learn to read Arabic numbers as soon as possible. (See graphic below).

Best Way To Get Around:

If you are in Riyadh for just a short time, take taxis or telephone "limousines" because driving is a nightmare.

There is a public bus system as well, which is cheap, but hard to use for newcomers because there are no bus maps.

Women take note:
You must ride in the separate women's section at the back of the bus.

Saudi Entertainment Reality Check
Riyadh, which is in the center of the Nejd, the most conservative region of the Kingdom, is a place where you have to "make" your own entertainment. There are no movie theaters, no bars, no night clubs, no theaters, and no concert halls. These traditional Western forms of entertainment exist only on certain compounds or inside the precincts of an embassy. If you don't have the right connections, then you're fresh out of luck. What to do?

Desert Exploration
One favorite activity of Westerners living in or visiting the Kingdom is to head out of town a few miles and into the desert surrounding the city. Assuming you have a 4x4, which is really a necessity for these adventures, you've got a lot of space to play in. If you connect up with the expat community, very soon you will find yourself bouncing over hill and dune and having a merry old time of it. People often have evening barbecues and maybe pack along a top-flight stereo system and have "concerts" in natural rock "theaters" that can be found along the escarpment the runs roughly north-south a few miles to the west of the city.

Driving in the desert is not without its dangers. The first rule is never to strike out on your own. Make sure someone knows where you're planning to go and when you're expecting to return. People do get lost; vehicles do stall in the middle of nowhere; and people do die of heat prostration if they're not careful. It's also unwise to pursue desert trips in the summer, when temperatures reach astronomical levels in the daytime. However, the winters are perfect for it, if a little cold after the sun goes down. And I do mean cold: temps can easily dip below freezing in January or February.

Bedu Encampments
While driving along the many desert tracks outside of town, you not infrequently run across what appear to be nomadic Bedu encampments. Often you will see huge Toyota Land Cruisers or Land Rovers parked alongside the camelhair tents. As you get closer you'll often hear the sounds of Arab music blasting across the sand out of loudspeakers hooked up to stereo systems, for these people are rarely "real" Bedu, but people who live and work in the city but spend their weekends getting in touch with their roots, as it were. That doesn't prevent them from maintaining herds of camels, either, which will also be seen either wandering around on their own or tethered nearby.

Desert Nights
The Saudi desert is best by night when the stars come out, there is only a faint,distant glow from the lights of Riyadh on the eastern horizon, and a million stars come out. I've never seen the Milky Way clearer and brighter than out there. I've spent many superb evenings huddled around a campfire, eating, drinking foul home-brew, and listening to tales of the Saudi expat.

Old Dir'aiyah, located on the northwestern outskirts of Riyadh, is unquestionably the most interesting historical site in the area. Established in 1466 by an early ancestor of the Al-Saud, the Saudi ruling family, it was their stronghold until the early 20s when King Abdulaziz, king Fahad's father switched his headquarters to Riyadh. Gradually it fell into decay; it was not until 1974 when a decision was made to restore the ancestral home.

Today, the visitor can wander through a maze of walls, houses, and palaces, some more diligently restored than others. Indeed, some have been, in my view, over-restored, to the point that adobe walls have been coated with a plastic resin that fairly glistens in the sun. On the other hand, this is one place in the area where you can take pictures with impunity; signs actually invite visitors to do so, although they do forbid video cameras -- or at least did when I was last there.

Architecturally, the site is very plain, befitting the traditional Bedu insistance on simplicity. There is little decoration, beyond triangular holes in walls that promoted air circulation through the buildings and helped divert rainfall run-off so that it didn't pour off in one particular place thereby compromising the solidity of the adobe. You will also find wooden doors and doorways decorated with simple, geometric designs executed in resin mixed with earth. Builders also created textural designs on the surface of walls, which is often no more than squiggles in the plaster made with their fingers.

In a city where most forms of entertainment are forbidden on theological grounds, shopping has been raised to a kind of art form, and you can get just about anything imaginable in Riyadh.

Gold is one of the best purchases you can make -- and this is also true in the rest of the Gulf as well. You pay the going London spot price per ounce plus no more than 10% for workmanship. The savings are spectacular: I paid $85 for a pair of hoop earrings for my wife, who saw virtually identical ones in Minneapolis for almost $600!

Tailors are also very cheap. If you have some time -- say 10 days -- take a favorite garment to a good tailor and ask him to copy it using the fabric you've provided. A man's shirt costs around $10 to have made.

Watches are often very good deals, too. Arabs LOVE watches, so you can find every brand you can think of and usually at prices much lower than anywhere in the West.

Perfume is an excellent buy as well. Arabs can't live without it and you can find any imaginable scent. Be sure to go to Gazazz, which is Saudi's best perfume shop. They give away amazing free samples, too!

One of my favorite pastimes in Riyadh was to wander down to the square in front of the main Friday mosque early on a Friday morning to chat with the Saudis who gathered there every week to show off their birds and exchange hunting stories. Whether this is still possible now that the entire downtown district of Riyadh has been torn down and rebuilt from scratch is doubtful.

Be that as it may, when I lived there in the early to late 80s it was a great experience. As many as a couple dozen men with three times as many birds would be there. They would stick their wooden perches in the ground, tether the birds to them, and proudly show them off to anyone who happened by. The atmosphere was quite extraordinary for Saudi Arabia. Here, strangers could talk and relax. And if the odd foreigner like myself popped up, all the better. One or two of them would usually know some English, and if you were lucky, they'd put a glove on you and perch a bird on your wrist.

A Note about Falconry
Beneath Saudi Arabia's 21st century technological patina lies a deeply conservative, traditional society. This manifests itself in many ways, one of the more intriguing of which is the abiding love of falconry, a sport that dates back millenia. Enthusiasts -- almost exclusively members of the Al-Saud royal family -- spend huge sums on the birds, which must be captured in the wild if they are to be of any use for hunting. Since there are no indigenous birds left in the wild, they are "imported" (read: smuggled) into the country from places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. Although the princes try to protect local endangered species, this does not necessarily hold true for the raptors they require to maintain this "sport of kings"

Living in -- or even visiting -- Riyadh requires patience, adaptability, and tolerance in roughly equal measure. If you don't possess them, don't even think about going even if for just a little while.

The first thing you'll notice when you go out for the first time is the lack of women alone in public places, whether on the streets, in hospitals, in banks, in shops, supermarkets, or in the suqs. You see almost none. The reason for this is that according to the Qor'an, women must be "protected" at all times; in other words they must be accompanied by someone. Aside from going out with friends, the only males they can legally be seen with are brothers, sons, husbands, and fathers. They must also cover themselves. The Qor'an dictates that only their hands and faces may show, but this is the liberal interpretation. The conservative Wahhabi sect of Saudi Arabia does not even allow their women that freedom: they must cover their faces as well. Some will choose a mask-like face covering, so that the eyes will show. Most do not, however. So how does all this affect the foreign visitor?

Women
First, women, if they want to feel half-way secure on the streets and do not wish to be stared at, really should wear an abaya, a light-weight, black, floor length cape of sorts that covers the body and the arms. A head scarf -- at the very least -- is wise as well. Under no circumstances should a woman go out in public wearing, let's say, a pair of shorts and a tee-shirt. If you are seen by a mutawa -- a religious policeman -- you will most likely be caned on the spot and very possibly arrested. It goes without saying that a bikini is totally out of the question around a pool or on the beach. (The only exception to this is on a company compound that is strictly off-limits to Saudis.) If a woman rides in a taxi or in a limousine alone, she must always ride in the back seat. If she doesn't, the car is involved in an accident, and she is determined not to be the wife/sister/daughter of the driver, she will be subject to arrest and deportation -- along with her husband or family. If she rides a city bus, she must always ride in the rear women's compartment. There is a buzzer in the back to signal a stop, but it may or may not work...

Prayer Times It's hard for Westerners to understand the extent to which Islam dictates daily life in the Muslim world until one goes to Saudi Arabia. Very soon after arrival, the reality sets in: when the muezzin's call to prayer issues from the loudspeakers of every mosque, all business stops. If you are shopping, you will be asked to leave the premises. If you're in a restaurant, the doors will be locked and the blinds closed. If you are driving in a car, you may see someone pull over, stop, get out, and begin his prayers. This happens five times a day: once at sunrise, again at noon, a third time around 4:00, again at sunset, and the final time is around 8:30 or so. I say "around" because prayer times are very precisely timed for each city and are published in the media each day. TV and radio programs are interrupted by the call to prayer as well.

Holiday timings
Except for National Day, which is a very low-key affair in the Kingdom, all holidays are religious. The two 'Eids are the most important. The first comes at the end of the fasting month of Ramadhan; the second during the Hajj the month of the pilgrimage when pilgrims from across the world converge on the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Since the Hegiric calendar operates on a lunar schedule, a year is but 355 days. Therefore, all holidays "move" by about 11 days backward around the Gregorian calendar. And since the month begins when the new moon is physically seen, the precise day of a holiday can never be predicted. Indeed, it will often be different from one country to another. All this causes immense confusion, especially when you're trying to plan a vacation!

Restaurants
Restaurants are divided into two sections: a general eating area for men and a separate and usually smaller section for "families". This is either on another floor or is completely screened off from the view of anyone in the male section. Depending on the diligence of the mutawas, single women may or may not be allowed to eat alone in the family sections. And at fast-food, take-out restaurants there may or may not be a special window for women. If there isn't and there is no family section, either, then single women can't order anything at all.

Banks, Hospitals, and Government Offices
These all have separate entrances for men and women. Hospitals and government offices will have separate waiting areas as well. The same holds for any kind of clinic ordental office.

Censorship
The Ministry of Information keeps a tight rein on the media and all publications entering the Kingdom. Any reference to Christianity or Judaism is strictly expunged: if a photograph appears in a newspaper or magazine that shows a cross or a star of David, it is obliterated with an opaque magic marker. The same thing goes for any exposed flesh above the ankles or below the neck. Bare shoulders will even be blacked out. Any article appearing in a news magazine that is critical of Saudi Arabia, for example, will be similarly obliterated. This kind of thing can be carried to ridiculous extremes: while transiting Riyadh on a flight between Islamabad and New York, security nearly confiscated a coffee table book about Pakistan because the inside cover showed Islamic (!) geometric designs that were similar to stars of David -- except they didn't have the cross pieces that turn the star into a pentagon and five triangles.

Bureaucracy
Beyond the strictures about women, this is the single-most aggravating and infuiating aspect of life in Saudi Arabia. Whatever you do, from arranging the installation of a telephone to applying for a driving license you find yourself running around looking for obscure offices and personages from whom you must obtain a signature. This bureaucratic two-step is enough to drive you to drink -- or worse. It took me six weeks and 7 taxi trips to offices 20 kms away in order to get my driver's license, for example. Telephones are even worse. Foreigners not only have to jump through the government hoops but must have a Saudi national who will guarantee the application because too many have left the country leaving horrific telephone bills.

Passports & Exit/Re-entry Visas
Each time you leave the Kingdom, you must obtain a combination exit/re-entry visa, which costs around $30 each time. These are obtained through your Saudi sponsor, who also, by the way, keeps your passport for the period of time you are in the Kingdom. In lieu of one, you carry a small identity card -- brown for non-Muslims, white for Muslims -- called an iqama. This must, theoretically, be on your person at all times you are out and about. The iqama stipulates that you must remain within a radius of 60 kms of your place of residence; otherwise you need a letter from your sponsor that will allow you to go elsewhere. In practice, this proviso is generally ignored if you fly from one city to another.

Tourism
Recently, within the past six months or so, the Saudis have begun to issue tourist visas to small groups of foreign visitors. Not unlike the old Soviet Union, you MUST be on an escorted tour and all reservations must be made in advance. Most foreigners in the country are there to work.

The Holy Cities, Mecca and Medina
The two holy cities are off-limits to all non-Muslims. Each has a ring-road and a freeway bypass with check-points at the exits for the two cities where cars are always stopped to determine if each passenger is a Muslim. You will have to turn around if you can't produce the proper documentation.

Photography
Photographers must be exceedingly circumspect in where they aim their cameras. I never had any trouble, but I was always extremely careful. You're in the most danger if you try to shoot women. Not once did I even aim a camera in the direction of a Saudi woman. This has gotten lots of people in hot water. Otherwise, it's best to avoid photographing government buildings of any kind. This can get you in lots of trouble. The same goes for airports, too, of course, though I've certainly taken shots at KFIA airport and out of aircraft windows and had no difficulties.

An Introductory Caveat
Central Riyadh, what could be termed the "downtown business district", was pretty much totally reconstructed after the Gulf War, in large measure because of the destruction caused by Yemeni shopowners who torched their stores after receiving the news that they would all be deported after Yemen had sided with the Iraqis. The alternative was to stand by while all their wares were confiscated by the Saudi authorities. Therefore, my description of the city I knew will probably not bear a lot of resemblance to what one sees today. That said, the few old "monuments" depicted in the photos below do -- apparently -- still exist.

Batha -- Downtown Riyadh
The old district referred to as Batha, pronounced "BAHT-hah" was roughly described by two parallel streets, Al-Batha Street and Al-Wazir Street, which traced long, shallow, opposing S-shapes across the area. Between them lay the old Arab suqs or markets, a rabbit warren of small streets with (mostly) two storey shops on each side. Here you could find all the daily necessities: large areas sold incense, for example, or foodstuffs, or clothing... Like all Mid-Eastern and Asian markets, certain areas sold certain things. Most of the shops were run by ethnic Yemenis, who had come to Saudi Arabia after the late King Abdulaziz had consolidated the region into what is now the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Many had come on the Hajj or Pilgrimage and never gone home. Others had family already there. In any event, it was they who dominated commerce in the old sections of the city.

The Bedu Suq
My favorite section of the suqs lay between Wazir Street and the large plaza known by expats as "Headchop Square". Here you could find all manner of antique Bedu (Bedu is the plural form of "beduin", which is more commonly seen in English.) handicrafts. In those days much silver jewelry was still available not to mention camel saddlebags made from pieces of carpet or crude kelims, a nap-less carpet meant for the poorer segments of society. There were also wonderful brass and copper pots, trays, lamps, and assorted other bric-a-brac available. Some was Saudi made, though most had probably come in from other sources. Be that as it may, it was a fascinating place to wander around.

Riyadh Park
Just off Wazir street and above Khazzan Street was Riyadh Park, a fairly large expanse of "gardens" that were more or less green most of the year. It was a very difficult thing to do considering Riyadh's heat. However badly it might have compared with Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne, it was nevertheless a bit of greenery appreciated by all. In the evenings it would be crowded with men, mostly foreign laborers from S. Asia, SE Asia, the Levant, and Africa. Very few women would be out and about, of course. Those whom one did see were always accompanied by a male of some kind. In one corner of the park was the Water Tower (see below), which was (is?) the "logo" for the city. As water towers go, it's fairly attractive, but it's not something one necessarily has to see, if you know what I mean. Nevertheless, because of its fame, every other Saudi city simply must have one; a sort of water tower race was in full progress in the Kingdom.