Honesty is not always the best policy when you write about your
work. But I'll take a chance here. Reporting from Saudi Arabia was
the most difficult assignment I've ever had. I knew it would be.
I avoided it for years. But finally, having visited all the major
countries in the Middle East and with the bombing of a foreign residential
compound in Riyadh last May and the constant public pressure for
the Saudis to reform coming from Washington, I couldn't avoid it.
It was every bit as difficult as I thought it would be but in ways I could never have imagined. The place has first world infrastructure so getting around and creature comforts were no problem. But socially, Saudi Arabia's infrastructure is something else. Other than contacts with the intelligentsia in the big cities, people who had spent considerable amounts of time in the U.S. and Britain, I was unable to have in depth conversations or interactions with Saudis. I couldn't organize anything. There were so many social codes and rules that limited my ability to meet ordinary people.
By the time the trip was winding down I had reached a point of
surrender. You may know that that is what Islam means in Arabic:
surrender. So as I flew to my last destination in Saudi Arabia:
Abha. I had reached a point of where I would accept whatever happened.
Through a series of miscommunication the people I hoped to meet
there flew out of town as I was flying in.
So I was left on my own, with no fixer or translator in this distinctly
odd place. Abha is in the mountains in the southwest of the country.
At an elevation of 6,800 feet Abha is distinctly cooler and receives
a lot more rain than the rest of the country. But that doesn't mean
it is lush and green. The hillsides around which the city is built
are brown and scrub covered. They look like the hillsides of Southern
California looked before they were paved over and turned into one
never-ending suburb. Abha sits on the top of a plateau and a few
miles south of town the plateau falls away thousands of feet into
a fabulous valley. The scenery is quite gorgeous.
Because of the combination of cool air and fantastic natural beauty the Saudi government has decided to turn Abha into a resort. Cable cars connect the hilltops, conveying guests to luxury hotels. A small amusement park has been built in town. The nation's university for the study of catering and hotel trades is located here. I don't think profit has anything to do with the Abha complex. The cable cars and amusement park are only open for three months a year. But the Abha Palace Hotel is a year round operation even if by mid-October it seems to have a 10 percent occupancy rate.
When I checked in, I had time aplenty on my hands. I also had stress and general anxiety, as well. I decided to use the hotel's spa. A little steam, sauna and Jacuzzi action might just chill me out. I spent a pleasant hour making a three-way circuit among those facilities engaged in conversation with a friendly Saudi. I've picked up some Arabic and he, like virtually every Saudi has a few words of English, so we were able to sort of converse. When I had got myself good and relaxed, I showered up, got dressed and was on my way out of the hotel health club when my forearm was gripped from behind. I turned to find an Indian fellow looking at me with desperation. The opening of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner went through my brain. The grip, the desperate eye is what I imagine Coleridge's Wedding Guest saw when he was stoppethed by the bright-eyed Mariner.
"Mr. Michael, come with me," he said. He knew my name as I was the only American staying in the hotel. Indeed, from a cursory look around town I thought I was probably the only American in Abha (actually there was at least one other).
This gentleman took me into his office and told me his tale. He was an Ayurvedic practitioner from Kerala State in India. Kerala is a place I've never been but I long to visit. With high hills in the east and in the west a series of beaches and palm fringed lagoons it's a paradise.
Before I could even ask what this fellow was doing in Abha he launched into his tale. He had been hired to open up a massage center in the hotel. It was a twelve-month a year gig but the Abha Palace was only full during the summer time. In recent weeks, he and his team of massage therapists had been giving maybe one or two massages a week. That's a lot of free time to get through. Of all the countries I've ever visited Saudi Arabia is the worst place to have time on your hands. There is virtually nothing you can do except talk, or, if you're Muslim, pray. There are no cinemas, theaters, bars or music venues to visit. No contact with the opposite sex. For a non-Muslim from India there is only the office and watching satellite TV to keep from going slowly mad.
My Ayurvedic doctor seemed to be heading that way. He sold me on the concept of a massage for almost 15 minutes. I was ready to have one after about 30 seconds and kept trying to interrupt him to say, "ok, let's do it." But he obviously hadn't pitched anyone for days and just wanted to keep in practice. He took my blood pressure. We haggled over the price. Then he handed me off to one of his masseurs.
In the privacy of the massage room, the masseur admitted that business was bad. Saudi men follow strict Islamic dictates on modesty and are loath to get naked with a stranger, especially a Kafir or infidel. I, on the other hand, am a massage devotee. I have been rubbed down in bathhouses from Moscow to Istanbul to Manhattan's Lower East Side. In Boston, I've been seeing a massage therapist for years who pushes the jet lag out of my body whenever I fly to town to host at WBUR. I can now add Abha to that list. The massage went on for a little over an hour. It consisted of a rub with some kind of herbal oil. The lines of the body being rubbed were entirely different than those in Western massage. I kept thinking of a wall chart of the human body's chakras which was a very popular dorm room decoration back in my college days. After about half an hour of stretching, rubbing, and invigorating, my masseur started pounding me with poultices that had been steeping in hot oil. The little bags were filled with herbs and spices and I could feel their good properties being forced through my epidermis. It was a different kind of massage -- invigorating more than relaxing. When it was over I smelled like a plate of food in an Indian restaurant.
Abha was a place where the surreal finally took over and became real. I met a jolly, religious fellow who was in town to marry his second wife. He invited me to his room for a chat. He told me his first wife wasn't happy about it but the way around her wrath was to buy her the same gifts he bought this new wife. While we were chatting his new wife sat in the bathroom with the door closed.
He told me to visit his home village and hers (she was his second cousin), down in the magnificent valley on the outside of town. I never got there but on the drive to the scenic overlook I was nearly savaged by a monkey. I don't know how they got there but this part of Saudi Arabia is full of monkeys. I had my driver stop the car where twenty or so were lolling about. I took out my camera and framed the alpha male of the group who seemed fairly docile. Just as I clicked the shutter he leaped for me. I just made it back to the car.
I honestly did try to do some work in Abha. But as throughout this secretive society, I found the presence of a microphone killed conversation fast. That's why in my finished documentary there are no interviews from Abha. The only sound from the town is the dawn call to prayer rolling from dozens of mosques around the hillsides. More than any single word spoken in my documentary, the call to prayer is, for Muslims, the true sound of Saudi Arabia. For this non-believer, the true sound of Saudi Arabia is silence, and the vigorous pat-pat-pat of a poultice filled with garlic, fenugreek, cumin and other stuff being pounded against my stress-filled chakras.
