It didn’t take long for my experiences in Saudi Arabia to jolt me into realising that the Eurocentric world vision is just as limited as any other, and that I too had been influenced by a whole lot of nonsense about ‘the Magic Kingdom’.
For a start, most of the Saudis I met in my three years there – in three very different regions – were welcoming, warm, and fun.
What was more challenging about Saudi Arabia, however, was living with 250 other English language instructors in a gated university campus just outside the capital, Riyadh.
You had to be a certain feisty type of Western woman to choose to work in what at that time was a hermetic country, to arrive there alone, and comply with the prison-like restrictions of the contract. And of course it’s the feisty among us that find it most difficult to obey rules.
For example, you couldn’t get back out of the country unless three of your bosses authorised it with their signatures. You could be dismissed within minutes though, and deported on the next flight out. Your visa was in the hands of your employers, you had to share an apartment with a colleague you’d never met, you couldn’t be seen with a man in a public place, and on top of all that, it was forbidden to discuss various key topics in the classroom ( outside it too, so it was not dissimilar to the United States at the moment ). Also, women weren’t allowed to drive then, and there was no Uber, and no public transport.
The reason of course most of us went to Saudi Arabia – and happily signed our contracts – was the time-honoured immigrant worker’s pursuit of money, but the country attracted people for other motives too, which became clearer as the months went by.
Out There & In Here 