Of Journeys and Departures

On many occasions, the very ordinary practical details of life have taken it upon themselves to elude me, none more so than when I am stressed.  At such times, I become extraordinarily liable to vacantly gazing into space, which propensity is greatly encouraged by the fact that, since our marriage, Fem handles it all.  Why fight what is superior in the management of the day-to-day?  Large-scale, national logistical research operations I have no problem with, it's the tiny decisions related to packing a suitcase that can really stress me out.   

So there I was, packed up and bundled off towards the general area of Africa, more specifically in the direction of a plane to get me there, shell-shocked by the rapidity of dad's decline.  Having put the fire of Allah under the Saudi's bums after Sylvia's phone call, Fem had managed, literally, to get me onto the next plane out.  He gave me one last hug in my wrinkled abayah, sent me through the initial gate, and departed.  

On my own, I stood there for a long moment, staring very hard at the signs.  One said, "Diplomats", three said, "GCC States" (which refers to a conglomerate of Arab Gulf states) and the ones to the left said, "Foreign Nationals".  Now I was no diplomat, no Arab, and harboured a distinct certainty that I was Foreign, though I was somewhat dubious as to the "National" bit.  But no-one was manning those booths.  So I walked through, didn't I?  Right to the boarding area, from whence I was promptly escorted back, surrounded by shouts of laughter, straight through to the diplomatic gate, with one guard guarding my hand luggage while the other yelled, thus tumbling the some official out of the orifice in which he was ensconced to come deal with this crazy woman, who was clearly attempting to exit the country without any stamp on my passport and that's when I discovered what that silly little bit of paper clutched in my hand which Fem had filled in for me was all about.  I was entirely unperturbed by all the fuss, taking it as my due - with Fem not there to carry my exceptionally heavy hand luggage - someone else would have to do it, wouldn't they?  And the pluriverse provided accordingly. 

Before I left, Grace from Ghana had felt called upon to pray that all the doors would open to me, and I would meet everyone I was meant to meet on my journey home, that everyone would be a friend to me, and so on.  I'm not quite sure if the unintentional smuggling of Eastern carpets into a foreign country falls under angelic jurisdiction, but even that was expedited, as it so happened.

Directly in the line that formed behind me in the miraculously opened diplomatic queue was: a Real Live Oil Explorer!  My first ever, besuited in grey, wearing glasses, carrying a most superior sort of briefcase - the very model of a successful elderly travelling insurance salesman.  He'd worked throughout the Gulf for over 20 years, but had possibly not read a local newspaper in all his time there.  A surreal day became even more so.  He was very kind to me, though.  Lifting his eyebrows to indicate the surrounding sea of black, he asked rhetorically, "So, when do you think the revolution will arrive?"  I said, "Already?"  He has just relocated his very young (second?) family to Dubai, and what he knew to do was find oil in sand.  He kept saying, "Where do you get this data?" to a recital of the basic demographics of the sociological hot-pot that is Saudi, with its ever-present, looming time bomb in the form of unemployment and an out-of-control, burgeoning population heading way over the crisis zone.  "The newspaper?" I said, tentatively.

He asked me what had struck me the most, this American.  I said the misery of migrant labour, dislocated from their countries and not seeing their families for up to four years at a time.  He was puzzled, said, "All the expats I know have their families with them."  I said, "And the Bengali, Pakistani, Indian, Filipino, Sri Lankan, Indonesian, Nepalese, Taiwanese unskilled labour, the millions of them?"  He said, "Gosh, I never even thought of that," and was clearly flabbergasted.  It reminded me of that wonderful sentence in the Great Gatsby: "It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment." 

Carrying the hand luggage proved to be more than I could reasonably handle.  Fem said it wasn't that heavy, but he forgets how formidably strong he is.  So there I was, lugging it with me as the moon drags her dark, unable to lift it above my head to deposit it in the quaintly named "Hat Rack".  The air hostesses obligingly stowed it in their luggage container.  Misery had set into my face like concrete, and everyone kept rushing in to my assistance.  Fem says he likes being married to me, we always get such special treatment from total strangers.    

I was seated next to an Egyptian lecturer in electrical engineering, I mentioned my time at Wits electromagnetic lab, and the technical writing I undertook.  It turns out he uses NEC2 and MatLab products extensively, but seemed quite jealous at the mention of the anechoic chamber and modelling facilities.  Having already read the Arab News, I wanted a complimentary Gulf News, so ended up sharing one with the person in the aisle next to me.  It carried as front-page news a press release from the Saudi government, distributed throughout the region, which is fairly unprecedented.  I read for the first time that they have finally figured they 6.8 million (legal) expats working in a country in which between only 2 and 3 million Saudi males work (700 000 of whom are directly employed by the government), with a population of 15 million, of which 60% are under the age of 20 and which is anticipated to grow to 30 million by the year 2020.  The net result: Saudi Arabia is firmly and officially committed to dispensing with a minimum of 150 000 expat jobs a year.  The good times, they are over, officially (in Saudi, everyone is officious but much happens unofficially, so it'll be a lengthy transition period). 

As a direct result of the newspaper exchange, a brawny and what initially appeared to be brash South African, looking like a ageing surfer turned pugilist, with a broken nose, began engaging me in conversation.  He was very upfront about looking for someone with whom to while away the 10 hours of so of dead night that would lie heavy on our hands at the airport.  By that time, Grace's Ghanaian magic had worked on me sufficiently that instead of worrying, I just went with the flow.  He bought me two beers (at the exorbitant price of about R 50.00 each), lugged, without prompting, my heavy hand luggage off that airplane, onto the next, and all around Dubai airport.  Basically, I was taken under his wing and looked after.  It would have been hell otherwise.  He works, six weeks on, six weeks off, the oil rigs, and has his family in Cape Town.  He was an absolute darling and a real soul-saver.      

We boarded at 3:30 am, and flew all day across Africa, with the lakes and arterial networks of rivers lacing their intricate pattern beneath us, over lakes with some small clouds sometimes interspersing between plane and land.  I thought of dad, and his family's journey across Africa, maybe even following some of the same route, so many years earlier.  And I knew then what my last sentence in his eulogy would be.       

Touching down in Johannesburg, I have never felt so foreign in my whole life.  Foreign to myself, to the entire country.  It was such an odd place, with which I could not connect, I felt utterly disjointed.  Every other time, I felt "home".  Now, all I wanted to do was get out of this whole trip.  The big blue suitcase was full of the 2 x 3 m carpet, and not much else; it was all I could do to lug it onto the trolley, emotional pain can make me very irritable.  Yet again, signs appeared not only perfectly devoid of meaning, but utterly  unhelpful.  I assumed my very best 'wet cat in a thunderstorm' expression and went to stand, dumb as a bell and just as easy to sound, directly in front of the customs official who stopped everyone else dead in their tracks as they attempted to ignore his conspicuous presence.  Confronted by my dead stare, one measured appraisal silently waved me through the "Nothing to Declare" queue, while subduing everyone else with his shouting.  As far as I was concerned, the only things I had to declare was a longing to see Enid's face waiting for me, a bath, bed to just get out of that whole darned place.  And as for the carpet?  Well, we had walked on it, to enhance its value, on more than one occasion, it was definitely "pre-owned". 

Daniel and Gavin, as well as Enid and Andre, helped me 'ground myself', and I was able to see Lisa and Angelo, and take a present to my god-daughter.  So the recovery time helped.  The next day, I drove home to PMB with Alison and Piers, and there was another journey and departure awaiting me there. 

On my way back to my Saudi 'home' I had a few "small" visa problems.  They needed to know from Fem that: a) I was still married to him and b) he wanted me back with him in Saudi.  Certainly, they are the forefront of the revolution, aren't they just?  Sylvia had a marvellous time with the Embassy (not), but ended up being escorted into the Ambassadors Office, and handed his gold card.  "Charming", he was; pity there are so very few of them.  I met an Irish woman on the plane, she'd just come from two weeks in South Africa with her boyfriend, flying back to Riyadh where she worked in intensive care units.  Such a well-brought up young woman, and so shy, you saw her lips moving, enunciating wildly, but hardly a strangulated Irish lilt came out.  It was very discouraging to attempt conversation with her, to say the least.  I became irritated by a newspaper picture of the leaders of some G7 countries wives, all be-dressed in power suits of electric blue and powder blue, turquoise and black.  How daringly original!  The question I asked was why did they have to go and employ Hillary Clinton's image consultant?  She said, "Maybe they don't have a choice."  I asked her what she meant - she felt that "possibly they have to dress like that, you know, they don't have a choice, they are forced to."  She was serious too. Irish. Adult. Educated. Travelled.  I'd have expected a slightly higher degree of sophistication. 

I had a blissful, magical day in Dubai, thanks to Toni and Marcelle, friends of Sylvia's, who responded to an SMS and arrived to collect me at the airport, since a 16 hour layover in an airport, no matter how beautiful the airport, is deathly.  By that stage, I'd been five harrowing weeks 'off-keel' and just wanted to be back with Fem, so the 42 hour journey, driving from PMB to Pretoria, then taken by Sylvia to the airport, with the 16 hour layover before a one-hour hop to Dammam was perfectly acceptable when I booked the ticket.  Dubai is what the rest of the Gulf States should be; forward-thinking, liberal, highly progressive, a jewel of a city in the midst of the desert.   Everything in pristine condition, and so clean!  A marked contrast to the dust and filth of Khobar, where you have to be truly inspired by something other-worldly to consider an entire flotilla of plastic bags floating against dirty concrete walls to be beautiful.  Buildings clad in glass winking in the clear light, everything felt so translucent at dusk.    We went to the beach with Marcelle's dogs,  so I finally got to bathe in the Gulf.  I was able to shower, given scrambled eggs and toast, lots of tea in a tea-pot (they even managed to find a tea-cosy), a bed in which to sleep that afternoon, and was thoroughly spoilt.  After biltong and red wine, they drove me back to the airport. 

At the bar (it's got the only really soft seats in the whole airport), I met JK, a Palestinian artist, flying home to his mother in Jordan to ask her to find him a wife ("Not that I can't, on my own, find a woman . but - it's cultural").  His father died of diabetic complications last year, and his studio burnt to the ground in America, where he had been very commercially successful.  So now he makes his way around the Gulf states, painting palaces and pizza parlours, re-evaluating of his life.  I told him he should be extremely thankful all his work burnt!  He was nonplussed at that, so I said maybe the pluriverse had to give him a severe wake-up call.  Why wasn't he being a real artist, true to what he wanted to do?  He said when he is established financially, he will be one.  I said, "Do you make good money?"  "Yes."  "Extremely good money, in fact?"  "Yes."  "So, what are you waiting for?"  (Toni, Marcelle - what DID you add to the wine?)  I was very clear that he could start now, just doing some of what he really wants to do.  He looked at me for a long pause, then said, every time he enters a competition, he is awarded the Grand Prize.  So I said, "What are you waiting for?  You could be great.  Go ahead: Be great."  Then saw that my plane was boarding, so rushed off leaving him staring into his mug of beer.  Consider me the airport muse of a hitherto unknown Palestinian artist.   

I was the only white woman on the flight to Dammam, the contingent of Filipino maids was escorted to one side, the black South African nurse who was first in my queue of four women treated with dismissive contempt.  I buried my head in a book and tried to feel utterly inconspicuous and very innocuous.  The next two Indian lasses were treated in a similar fashion, but they were slightly less long-winded.  Finally, it was my turn.  They took an elaborately long time, but were jocular and over-friendly with me, telling me to "come visit us every day!" and finally, close to 40 minutes after I'd collected my baggage, it was over.  I had snarled sufficiently at the little Pakistani men who attempted to intercept my baggage, but was obliged to pay one riyal for the "use" of a trolley (they deviously tie them all up with string, so you have to pay a 'gratuity'? for the use thereof.)  And finally there was Fem.  In the purple T-shirt I made for him, which constitutes my only foray into the realm of sewing, towering above all the "short, crazy Arab men".

We went off to Jeddah for a wonderful two weeks; the only recompense for all our separations this year has been a series of 'honeymoons'.  He took the computer with him, so I have been able to write about the Red Sea, and the desert, and Osama, the gifted child who's been teaching me how to be an art 'teacher', and will post those sometime. 

And we have another departure coming up.  His first year of the contract finishes on the 8th August, and though they asked him to stay for a further two years, sometimes, you just gotta say - "Khalas!" (Enough! Finish!)  There is a possibility we could come back to Saudi, but we both feel more like Johannesburg.  I miss the green so much.  Even when it's brown, it's green, if you know what I mean.  We've taken a huge amount out of the experience, and it's been an accelerated learning curve for us both.  All the old Saudi hands say, "Never say Never".  But for now, it feels like enough. 

Written in June 2001 - my father died on the 23 May 2001