Elephant & Castle from my window
Trophy room
Amsterdam
Al-Diriyah, Riyadh
A visit to Al-Diriyah on the northwestern outskirts of Riyadh produced some unexpected sights. The original home of the Saudi royal family and capital of the first Saudi dynasty from 1744 to 1818, Al-Diriyah is now an area of wattle and daub ruins being renevated and restored. However, the taxi driver let me and a friend out across the road from a crumbling mosque on the edge of the area. We don’t know why the mosque had been demolished. It proved to be much more interesting than the ‘ruins’ further into the area. It was difficult to know where to walk - construction vehicles and metal fencing littered the old town and seemingly aged buildings revealed breezeblock interiors.
Just as we were leaving the mosque, a car pulled over and an older man got out and approached us. We’d half expected some attention from locals or police. The man gestured to our cameras and then pulled his mobile out to show us one of his own photos. At first I didn’t know what I was looking at but with a few key words from him like ‘baby’, ‘sheep’, ‘you’, I realised the image was of a sheep giving birth. Excitedly he pointed in a direction over some houses. He wanted us to come and document his sheep giving birth. He gave us his number, jumped back in his car and sped off. We didn’t call him, maybe we should have.
A curious flick through ‘OK’ in a bookstore revealed some interesting handiwork. White plastic tape is the blocker’s preferred tool of concealment here, rather than the black permanent marker you usually see. Does the ‘blocker’ have to do extra amounts of soul-cleansing after hours of peering at prohibited midriffs and luring thighs? Mind you, if I was forced to look at thousands of images of desperate D-list nobodies all day I’d scrub extra hard in the shower too.
Poor Kylie. It makes you think there’s something extra horrible there.
On sale in Jarir bookstore, which sells pretty much everything. These gems were two of a whole wall of works crafted by the same fella. I think this one, possibly titled ‘Breaking Through’, might have gotten him a C at GCSE.
I don’t know.
Gordon Brown, in front of two to three hundred university academics and teachers, starts explaining the premises of The Apprentice and Dragon’s Den. I look around the room for sniggers or surprise. Nothing, just me then. While I creep round the back of the room to get a better position with my camera, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Is he really describing the rules of Dragon’s Den? Yes, he is. Did he just mention that Lord Sugar is his good friend? Yes, he did. How, a week-and-a-half after arriving in Riyadh, did I find myself in front of the Ex British Prime Minister telling a room of Saudi Arabians about the UK’s most twattish telly programmes?
Until the night before we were expecting another mid-term day at an empty King Saud University killing time with table tennis, coffee, cards and gym, when everyone received an email instructing us to take buses the next morning to the main campus to listen to Gordon Brown and ex New Zealand Prime Minister and President of the World Trade Organisation, Michael Moore, speak about global entrepreneurship. Wow, we thought, what an honour. Beats playing Shithead for four hours, etc.
Where I and other new teachers fresh off the boat were excited by this school trip-style distraction, other long timers groaned, they knew what this was all about. We drifted into the main auditorium of our own accord and took our seat for the big show. Others half-heartedly wandered in but by the time proceedings commenced, half of the seats in the stalls were still empty and the upper balconies weren’t being used at all. Where were the political elite? Where were the Saudi businessmen? Where were the students – tomorrow’s entrepreneurs? A scattered audience of university officials and immigrant teachers was, apparently, the best they could muster.
Michael Moore stepped up and talked succinctly for five to ten minutes. Short but very sweet – he encouraged the nation to be open to new ideas and to the rest of the world, and he boldly talked about the importance of women in building a progressive society and a successful economy independent of oil. I read that currently, the number of females attending university in Saudi Arabia is equal with the number of males, which begs the question, what do they do afterwards? How are they used? How do they contribute to society? Michael Moore was pushing these points. Then, after an hour-long speech/rant/lecture, (who knows, it wasn’t translated), by a university official, everyone began filing out.
Gordon Brown sat onstage, looking uncomfortable and bored, leafing through a pamphlet left on a side table, his little puppet legs thrown in front of him off the sofa. Gordon Brown’s head is massive. It’s at least as big and heavy as you’d imagine. It doesn’t turn much from side to side; it’s rooted to his shoulders by its magnificent weight. His Punch & Judy legs don’t look strong enough to support his hulking upper body. Disregarding his odd appearance or lack of presence, he was the British PM for three years - why was everyone leaving before he’d said his piece? We emptied out into the main foyer, a huge, cavernous space like Victoria Station, confused and underwhelmed. Then we caught someone saying that he was talking to a room of people upstairs. Feeling out of the loop we made our way up uncaringly. All this obviously wasn’t for the likes of us. We were just ‘room meat’, making up the numbers.
Me on the screen taking the photo
We nudged our way into the second room and saw Gordon answering questions from the audience, cue the The Apprentice/Dragon’s Den moment. The room was male only, apart from two female aides. Many were expecting something special from the big man but I think most people were nonplussed by his performance. He walked out of the room surrounded by cameras and officials and was then directed through double doors into a lunch room. We trailed behind and noticed Michael Moore making his own way to lunch, ignored by all, as if he were just another teacher at the university. Burly guards blocked the lunch room but, just as we were about to turn away and find our own lunch, a chemical researcher we’d met during Gordon Brown’s talk ushered me, Mike and Ed in. Stifling schoolboy grins we were shown to a large round table set with grand silverware and bubbling dishes in the middle. Gordon was a couple of tables over. Waiters plopped fancy bits and bobs onto our plates and filled our glasses with non-alcoholic drinks. The main was a huge king prawn as big as a hand and a fillet of prime white fish, the dessert was a mango crème brûlée. Looking around, again we noticed that half the room was empty. That’s why we were allowed to slip in – we were making up the numbers.
To my left was the chemical researcher, a Manchester born Arab, and to my right was an Egyptian doctor of medical rehabilitation, both of them teaching at the university. The doctor was at first cautious in his words, which made me feel a little out of my depth, but he soon eased up and seemed to enjoy our conversation. When I mentioned the university’s high world ranking for medical studies, he was quick to point out that, ‘with money you can buy anything’, and went on to state his dislike for the Saudi culture, saying ‘it is unnatural and unhealthy for the mind. I won’t bring my family here, my children are better to study in Egypt.’ After the meal we posed for photos and swapped mobile numbers and me, Mike and Ed considered catching Gordon as he and his entourage walked past, but we couldn’t think of anything interesting to ask him. He already looked uncomfortable enough.
