CULTURE
Saudi Arabia: The Blog
By Stump Connolly and Maps Apley
PART TWO: The Football Arrives
Stump
Wednesday, October 02, 2002
4:54:03 AM
Bill Kurtis -- aka “The Football” -- arrived tonight, just in time for the buffet at The Al Khozama. They had on the mist system again, a light spray to keep the air a balmy 76. Dinner was delightful, as pleasant as sundown in Tuscany.
After dinner, we took Bill out to the Faisalah shopping center to check out Friday night in Riyadh.
It was a scene straight out of Saturday Night in America. Cars lined up bumper-to-bumper along Oleya Boulevard, boys flashing cell phone numbers in car windows at passing girls, women in black abayas making their way through roller-blading youths doing obnoxiously x-treme tricks, lots -- and lots and lots -- of Tupac, Nelly and DMX on the car radios. A madhouse of pent-up testosterone.
Bill waded into the teen traffic like he was living in the old Channel 2 News days. At one point, he was interviewing a young woman in face veil and abaya when she complained loudly about America’s refusal to reign in Israeli attacks on Palestinians. Bill asked her what she held in her hand (a cell phone.) She recoiled at his touch. “It’s a bomb . . . for you and America,” she said.
I think Bill is shell-shocked at the modernity of Riyadh, and how people here naturally assume western goods were invented to serve Muslim culture. Every store is filled with designer brands. Even the women, clad in their simple abayas, go to great lengths to accessorize themselves with Fendi bags, Manola shoes and make-up that, even under abayas, denote their special eyes, fingers and ankles. Did you know that Saudi Arabia annually imports $26 million of cosmetics from the United States, and more than that from France and Europe?
We sent Bill back to the hotel to rest up. Then, while trying to get some general street footage, we got popped by the security police for shooting without a minder. Lucky for us, I had xeroxed the approval forms we got at the Ministry of Information. The security policeman called Al-Ateeq at home and got the lecture of his life.
That’s my Al Ateeq, always contributing to a better understanding of our world.
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Stump
Thursday, October 03, 2002
11:10:34 PM
The Al Maliks of Quassim
The
Al Maliks of Quassim are the story of Saudi Arabia, told and retold in the
life of a single family.
The patriarch, only 60 years ago, was the leader of a Bedouin tribe that roamed north of Riyadh along the fringes of a little village known as Quassim. Through three wives, he begat 29 sons who gather every week in a weekend retreat outside Riyadh.
Saleh, whom you’ve already met, invited us to join them because, he said, to understand Saudi Arabia, you must understand the role of the family.
Saleh’s brothers and cousins grew up in the 60’s and 70’s when the riches of oil were spreading out into the general populace. Although his father could neither read nor write, Saleh points with pride to the fact 22 of his 29 relatives hold advanced college degrees, most from United States universities.
Their education was paid for out of the treasury of the royal family, and many have repaid that investment by serving in the Saudi government. Saleh returned to Saudi Arabia from the University of Michigan, with a degree in demographics, to become a municipal acquisitions director. In 1992, when King Fahd formed his first consultative council, he was one of the first 60 private citizens chosen to administer the country. His brother Ahmed started his career as a procurement officer for the Saudi Department of Defense, then rose through the ranks to become head of the central bank. Other brothers, with degrees in engineering and petroleum, took posts in the Oil and Minerals Department.
But the most successful of the bunch, Saleh jokes, is his youngest brother Fahd, who skipped college to take a job selling Cadillacs to the Saudi nouveau riche and has become the wealthiest of them all.
Their weekend “clubhouse” lies on a 500,000 sq. meter piece of land Saleh and his brothers acquired in 1989 and, as their fortunes improved, developed into a family recreation center.
Half of the compound is reserved for the men. It includes two soccer fields, a lounging patio, banquet hall and washroom lined with showers, sinks and stalls. The other half, which we were not allowed to visit, is a woman’s area equally well appointed.
Under balmy skies, in perfect weather, we sat with the brothers for almost six hours. Everyone arrayed in a line, resting on lavish pillows, drinking green tea, eating dates, talking on cell phones and conversing.
Dinner was the ever-popular slaughtered lamb, fruits and rice -- eaten off floor mats in the traditional way, by scooping it up in your fingers. The children played soccer for hours into the night. The men played cards, twirling worry beads and talking with Bill -- extensively -- about their alarm over America’s policy in Palestine and the growing strain in American-Saudi relations.
I’m not sure how much of it we got on tape. Given that “The Football” traveled 20 hours yesterday, skipping nine time zones, one thing is clear.
We have to get this guy to sleep!
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Maps
Thursday, October 03, 2002
8:14:22 PM
Oh my God, we lost Greg
Bill
and Virginia decided that we still had plenty of time to get in a little shopping
at the souk. So while Stump stayed behind to work on the blog, the rest of
us grabbed the camera and headed down to the city center. It was crowded so
it wasn’t long before we were drew a crowd -- and the security police.
Since I had the permission slips, I was the first line of defense. Then Bill joined in, and Virginia said her piece. Eventually, even Joel stepped up. By then, in the hubbub, Greg and the camera were gone. Disappeared.
Joel and I took a cab back to the hotel to get Stump involved, but Bill and Virginia said they would hang around to look for him (and keep shopping.) When we got to the Al Khozama, there was still no sign of Greg.
We knocked on Stump’s door. “You have to come quick,” Joel said. “We got popped at the souk and Greg has disappeared.”
“What the fuck?” Stump said, always the producer. “How can you let a $50,000 camera disappear?”
We went down to the lobby where Virginia and Bill were just pulling in. Still no Greg. Having the world wide news experience he does, Bill soon decided this was just like Nicaragua where another of his cameramen went off to live with the guerillas for three days. He suggested we probably ought to start thinking about a) calling the police b) calling the embassy and c) packing our bags to get the hell out of there
"I think we ought to get Magid in on this,"
Stump said.
"Who's Magid? Some ministry of information contact?" Virginia asked.
"He's the bellboy," Stump said.
"How's the bellboy going to help?" Virginia harrumphed.
"He got us phone cards. Magid can do anything," Stump said.
Just then, Greg walked in sipping a frappacino. “Man, what a terrific sunset. I got some great shots,” he said. Then he looked at everyone’s faces. “What?”
“Boy, are we disappointed to see you,” Bill said.
“Guy, you could have told someone where you were going,” I said.
“It was looking kind of hairy, so I just grabbed a cab out of there,” Greg said.
Later, Stump ran into Magid in the lobby. He was sorry he could not be of more assistance. “You call me if you have any other kidnappings,” Magid said. “I have many brothers.”
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Stump
Friday, October 04, 2002
9:18:36 PM
Saba
This
may be the appropriate time to mention Michael Saba, the American who lives
in Frankfort, Tennessee, but in his spare time serves as PR representative
for Prince Abdullah bin Saud, one of many grandsons of Saudi Arabia’s
first king.
We are on our way to a picnic Saba has arranged for western journalists at Prince Abdullah’s “farm” in the shadow of Diryadh’s hallowed walls. Prince Abdullah is, at the age of 50, considered one of the bright stars among the 20,000 descendants of King Abdul Aziz bin Saud. His job in the government is to encourage western investment in Saudi Arabia. But Saba is his ace in the hole. He is an American who understands how American media works.
It was Saba who picked our application for press credentials to enter Saudi Arabia out of the multitude of applications stacking up at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington. “Bill Kurtis, you want him,” he said. And once Prince Abdullah said yes, all the details of our trip suddenly fell into place.
So when Saba said attendance at Prince Abdullah’s picnic was a “courtesy,” we knew it was mandatory. We arrived to find at least a dozen other journalists whose credentials Saba had also shepherded through the bureaucratic processes. At a time when most Saudi officials are gunshy about facing American reporters, Saba has been aggressively showcasing this example of the royal family's best and brightest.
For weeks, Saba has been telling me that Prince Abdullah has been waiting for us to arrive. He did not tell us that ABC, CNN and NBC were being similarly strung along. In the end, Bill got his 20-minute exclusive interview with the prince. But so did the others. And we all followed dutifully along in our tour group when the prince took us on a trip through the ancient land of Diryadh, a place he remembers growing up in as a boy. That was, of course, before he became an oil billionaire.
Whenever you think you understand Saudi Arabia,
you probably do – and probably do not.
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Stump
Saturday, October 05, 2002
9:24:34 AM
The Customs Office
Maps and the gang went off today to shoot a day in the life of America’s ambassador Robert Jordan. My assignment – as the producer -- was to go down to the customs office to retrieve our tripod and case of spare tapes and batteries. But I only had two hours since the boys were shooting up their last two cassettes.
The tape and batteries were left in Paris by Air France just before the airline went on strike. While our tripod made it to the hotel five days later, the tape and batteries case was held up at Saudi customs on suspicion of contraband -- to wit, a pair of subversive walkie-talkies Joel decided at the last minute we might need.
Being Stump Connolly, the sneaker into all things forbidden, I entered the customs facility through a back door by showing my driver's Saudi ID card and proceeded to the director's office using my own unique brand of hand Arabic. (Lesson One in Hand Arabic: point at paper. Shrug shoulders.)
The director was not in. It was only 10 AM. But the assistant director looked at my papers, offered me a seat and disappeared into another room. In time, the director appeared with my papers, but walked right past me into an office marked "Legal Section." The director and the lawyer looked at the papers, then looked at me, then looked at the papers, then the lawyer, Abdullah Hanaki, who apparently drew the short straw, beckoned me into his office.
He reached his hand out for my passport, then my airplane ticket, then my lost baggage claims -- scanning each silently. "Sit, sit," he said. "It says here 'walkie-talkie'. What do you need 'walkie-talkie' for?"
I explained why we were in Saudi Arabia, our problems at the Paris airport and what was fast becoming our dire need for the 40-odd HDTV cassettes contained in the case.
"Ah, TV program," he said. Then he stood and walked out of the room.
In time, he returned all smiles. A server appeared with three cups for tea and a gold, sliver-spouted teapot. "Now, we wait," he said.
While we waited, he told me how he came to Riyadh from Quassim, a farming region northwest of the city, and took the job at the customs office 30 years ago.
Abdullah said he has lived in America four times -- in Seattle, New York, Florida and Memphis, Tennessee. He spent three weeks in Memphis at a school for customs agents (and you thought they couldn't teach this stuff) that prepared him for the difficult chore of inspecting our suitcases.
He opened them and carefully looked over the contents, lifting out the walkie-talkies and turning them slowly in his hand.
"It's on a list of approved equipment we gave to the Ministry of Information," I said weakly.
"Electronics. It must be inspected by the electronics division,” he said. “Five days. You leave it five days and come back to pick it up."
I told him we couldn't wait five days. We needed the videotape now. He pondered that.
"You come with me," he said. A Bengali porter grabbed the bag and we all trooped down to the Electronics Division.
Unfortunately, there was a line.
An American serviceman had apparently been caught trying to bring a DVD copy of "Ben Hur" into the country. He had been detained and his DVD confiscated until the officials could decide what to do with him. He sat patiently at the door while the two electronics inspectors handed “Ben Hur” back and forth between them. It was never clear what made “Ben Hur” contraband in the kingdom so, in the end, the customs officers released the soldier but kept the DVD.
When our turn came, the inspection manager asked me to open the offending case and show him the videotape.
"Beta?" he asked.
"Actually, its HD," I said, "High definition, beautiful pictures, 16 X 9, 1080i or 24P switchable--"
"Beta," he said.
"Beta," I repeated.
He rummaged around the suitcase to see what else it contained.
"Ah, walkie-talkie. We must inspect. Five days."
Abdullah was now coming around to my point of view. He tried to argue with the electronics manager, but there apparently was no give. So we trudged back to the legal office, with the porter once again bringing along the suitcase.
"We'll get a letter from the Ministry of Information," Abdullah suggested. One phone call later, our man at the ministry, Mr. Al Ateeq, said it would be on the way. "No problem."
Two hours later, while Abdullah ducked in and out looking for the fax of the letter, I noticed something very peculiar about the office. In all the time we had been there, I was the only customer. The phones never rang. I had the place to myself. So I decided to look around.
Next to one desk were two confiscated bags, both open. One was filled with bundles of cell phone 'Smart Cards." The other contained dozens of small cans of Reno Brand LIVER SPREAD from the Philippines. The ingredients included "pig, beef and mutton parts."
"Smugglers." Abdullah startled me. He had returned to find me reading the can. "Tell me. Why do they call pork 'pig'?” he asked.
"It's an American expression," I said.
With time running short, Maps called to say they were down to the last cassette. I offered to just take the tape and leave the walkie-talkies for another day. I thought we had a deal but, alas, it was prayer hour.
"Prayer time," Abdullah said, walking out the door and following a stream of coworkers down the hall.
Half an hour later, he was back writing up a two-page explanation for the officials on how he had resolved the matter. The porter picked up the bag and led me back to the main entrance. I was almost all the way across the parking lot thinking “home free" when the gate guard decided he too needed a personal inspection before he could release me. I opened the suitcase once again.
"Videotape?" the guard asked.
"Beta," I replied.
“Ah, yes, Beta,” he said. He stamped the papers. And I was out of there.
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Maps
Sunday, October 06, 2002
3:58:39 AM
A Day With The Ambassador
While Stump waded through the red tape of the customs office, the rest of us ran around the city following the US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia for what turned out to be another fabulous day.
There was plenty of security around. I know more about how to prevent a terrorist from banging into your car on the expressway than I ever wanted to know. But I also learned that having an ambassador in your entourage opens a lot of doors. Basically, instead of having to strip down, open up all the cases, and run our gear through an x-ray machine, the Ambassador's assistant simply says, "They're with me."
The life of an Ambassador is hectic. Since there'll be a big chunk of it in the show, I'm not going to go into great detail here. You'll just have to watch.
Tomorrow? Who knows? The Al Murrah or Jeddah? Every day is a new adventure depending on where Stump takes us.
Click HERE to read
PART THREE: Into The Desert
