Saudi Arabia – We arrived in Jeddah touching down at 7pm as the sun was setting over the Red Sea. An hour before we landed the western woman started putting on their black hijabs; Saudi was here. 

As we walked down the staircase, buses were waiting for us; in Saudi the planes don’t taxi next to the terminal, the plane lands far out on the runway and buses take you in. We saw three black Mercedes sedans with their trunks open at the bottom of the staircase and white robed Saudi’s putting their luggage in. They were certainly not going to be riding a crowded bus after 14 hours and I suppose the FDA regulations are not strictly a concern here. This was a Saudi moment: Severe and beautiful landscape, exotic white robed men and bureaucratic regulations side stepped.  

My wife and I spent four years in Jeddah working as teachers at the American International School of Jeddah. The night after our arrival, we were taken to a “dry nightclub”; alcohol is forbidden. The word “alcohol” is actually an Arab word. Sisha, or the Hubbly Bubbly pipe, was the main source of decadent pleasure.  

The so called nightclub also had another barrier to contend with; men and woman were not allowed to talk to each other, a strict Muslim law enforced in Saudi. You are only allowed to be with family in public, except foreigners. How did the young and restless meet? By having their phones on roaming and texting each other when eye contact was made. We left at 2am on a week night, and walked out to an incredible traffic jam, bumper to bumper for hours. The Saudis live at night. 

Do you like shopping? Jeddah seems to have more malls per capita than any other place, most of them empty, but you better pick your times carefully or you will be waiting outside the doors for 45 minutes.  

Five times a day all shops close, while the Meudin call out their prayers through speakers that bellow out through the mosque minarets. Each mosque has a mullah, who sings out passages in the Koran; no recordings here.  

We were caught inside one day buying some things, and the Matawa came in. These are the religious police of Saudi, their official title “religious police for the prevention of vice and the promotion of virtue” 

The store manager was taken away by the religious police. The manager was warned but the second time he could be lashed. Every Friday people are lashed, men and woman, or beheaded, or have their hands cut off, at a mosque in the centre of the city. Last year there were 178 people who were beheaded, as reported in a major newspaper.  

Every restaurant is segregated, woman and children, or families on one side, and men on the other side. I would sometimes sit on the men’s side, where men spoke in hushed tones, as Saudis do, and smoke Sisha, read the paper, and enjoy the aromatic of Arabic coffee. All serene and quiet. 

Woman are not allowed to sit outside, as the men had to be shielded from temptation. My wife and I sat outside at a Starbucks once and we were asked to sit inside. Starbucks had a reputation as liberal place of refuge because they had music and an air of western taste. We went inside but continued to exhort the manager to stay outside, eventually they relented, as many Lebanese woman started to sit outside when they saw us and it was harder to ask a group of woman to come inside.  

The Starbucks in Jeddah by the Red Sea was the only place where woman sat outside, as far as I could ascertain, and I have to credit my wife for her pioneering act.  

After living there I would think of Jeddah as the LA of Saudi. By the sea and far more liberal than any city in Saudi, mainly because the area was once Yemeni and their allegiance in this part of the country was not absorbed by the Riyadh influence of the Wahab priests. 

If you like going for a country drive, think twice about doing that in Saudi. There are numerous road blocks because Saudi has many elements of terrorist acts and also desert tribesman carrying weapons that are not loyal to King Abdullah bin Saud, the absolute ruler of Saudi Arabia, with the power of life and death. A true medieval king. 

So there is dangerous sense when you leave town. The desert always had this. Sometimes at night we would hear Blackhawk helicopters, a sign there was trouble somewhere. When you go into the Hilton Hotel you pass by a sand bagged entrance with road obstacles and a 50 calibre machine gun sitting atop an armoured vehicle. Our compound, where we lived, had similar security. 

I purchased a motorcycle, a 2004 Suzuki 800cc, and rode out of town on weekends, a great escape, and of course my wife was unable to ride with me because women are not allowed to ride or drive cars. A girl in my class was asked to leave an arcade in a mall because she was driving a bumper car. The one thing I learned when I left town was that cities were oasis of modernism contrasting dramatically with the town’s people and desert dwelling camel herding Bedouin.  

Every time I filled up with gas I would have a few people come over and take a look at me and the bike. Motorcycles are not too common, so it attracts attention. I would always get the same questions: Where are you from, where are you going and how much is the bike. Forty minutes outside Jeddah and I was back several hundred years: 14-year-old boys camel herding, Bedouins living in tents, remote villages where throngs people come out and stare as you go by. Go west of Jedda and you come to the The Empty Quarter, Rub al Khalid, approximately 800 miles of sand; the largest sand area in the world. South, near Yemen, mountains 7,000 feet high. Sometimes I would stop on a lonely road in the middle of nowhere, just sand and low mountains, a thin line on a map with nothing around for 50 miles and a Bedouin would be walking in the distance, coming from some place and going somewhere.