The Waiting Room Instructoress

LADIES WAITING ROOM

Have you ever come across the Waiting Room Instructoress?
I find her a fascinating, mysterious woman.
She is found in the female waiting area of doctors clinics or hospitals.  One might think she wields a great deal of power and influence though, having come across her often enough, I believe she has a naughty, mischievous streak that encourages her to play with social practices, choosing which she will adhere to on any given day, and which she will ignore.

The Saudi Instructoress waits till the time is right before making her play.  Usually it's while there are only two of us present (myself and she), in the female section of the doctors waiting area.  She will call out to her husband, older son or whatever significant male is waiting just over the barrier in the men's waiting section.  He will hear the call, make his way to the ladies waiting area and, standing an acceptable distance outside its boundary, await instructions from her re:whatever they need instructing about.

The Saudi Instructoress beckons him in.
He hesitates.
He looks round the corner of the barrier.
Words are exchanged.
Her eyes (if uncovered) flicker towards me.  If covered, a silence descends on the waiting area and the slightest movement of her head lets me know she's looking in my direction.
The male just outside the waiting area is always cautious initially.

He steps a little closer, looks in, sees me reading.
If I look up and meet his eyes, sometimes with an 'Is there a problem' look, other times a quick 'I Can see you lookin' at me' glance, though more often than not these days with the beginnings of an 'I know we're both pulling your chain' smile beginning to lift the corner of my mouth, he hesitates.

More words are exchanged and then, at the insistent tone of his elder, who is presumably saying 'Don't Worry About Her' (the Waiting Room Instructoress is always older and usually has walking issues), he steps slowly into forbidden territory to receive her directions.

I don't mind.
It doesn't bother me.
It's a bit of humour in my day.  Or if I'm not feeling humourous, it's always a good time to ponder the ins and outs of living a Saudi life.

Once he is treading the Waiting Room carpet, I usually leave my reading long enough to smile at the lady in need of extra assistance, then I might also smile upon said male who sometimes smiles back, other times looks anywhere but at me, or acts like a possum caught in headlights and pauses, for the briefest moment, before focusing on the Instructoress and his task at hand.  I simply return to my book (it's always a good idea to take a book to the hospital, especially for later in the day appointments).

Obviously these women have reached a stage in life, perhaps the wisdom of age, where they feel the rules of the land are a bit silly and should be flouted, and men made to feel uncomfortable, whenever it suits their needs.   Either that or they think infidel me has already gone to hell and there is no saving me.  (Maybe she's right!).

Once or twice I have contemplated engaging the Instructoress.  I would love to get inside her head and see what she is really thinking.  But she is, more often than not, fully covered and seated just far enough away to make starting a conversation a little awkward, hence turning me into the 'Waiting Room Conversation Starting Weirdo'.  Plus, being older, I'm not sure how much English she would speak and I'm ashamed to say that my erratic efforts studying Arabic have not yet made me anywhere near fluent.

So, I am left to imagine who she is, what she thinks and why she's leading men onto the Waiting Room path to hell.  Yes, the Waiting Room Instructoress continues to amuse and mystify me, but I think I like her.




Ka Kite,
Kiwi

Airport Farewell

It's 7a.m. The taxi pulls in beside the path and I take a deep breath to prepare for the chaos so common at the international terminal that makes up Riyadh airport.

Sweet wrappers litter the curb and men of South Asian extraction lie about on a number of boxes piled atop the pavement.  It occurs to me, in that fleeting half thought lost in the mists of time sort of way, that there aren't as many people or boxes as usual, perhaps because of the time of day.  I pay the driver and the men stare at the western woman exiting the taxi, then turn away when her husband jumps out of the car too and grabs the bags out of the boot.

I'm prepared to wave off the men in green who usually run up too close for my comfort, jabbering and pointing in the direction of my suitcase wanting to take it from me and wheel it into the terminal.  Their presence is only useful for people who are too pathetic to wheel their own luggage, or those who have packed their bags to over-bulging, overweight and can't lift them onto the scanner.  Today though, there are no Green Men and it starts to sink in, as I look up and down the terminal entrance exhaling a pent up breath, that the airport is unusually quiet this morning.

The doors to the terminal stand closed, uninviting, their frosted panes covered in tattered, aging stickers warning non-travelers to stay outside.  Another deep breath is consciously taken before heading through the doors that, for all their visual unpleasantness, slide quietly and smoothly open.

Inside I stop and look around in surprise.  The airport is empty.  No lines of worker expats waiting to be allowed to check in, their plastic wrapped or rope tied belongings piled high beside them.  No throngs of black abaya's clustered around white thobes.  I look at my husband who, still in his own 'Riyadh Airport Attack' mode, is striding over toward the baggage scanning.  I quick march to keep up.

I thought there would be hordes of illegal expats trying to get home - that's the impression all the newspaper reports have been giving of late. Perhaps the new extension to 'The Grace Period' has eased their panicked exit from the country.  Or perhaps the early days of Ramadan has kept everyone at home.

With so few people traveling, check-in is quick and easy before lining up in front of the customs booths.   An Indonesian maid is being handed her tickets by a bearded Saudi man and is directed to follow us in the queue.  Her Bearded Saudi then stands by one of the large silver pillars disappearing into the high terminal ceiling, watching as the line inches towards the customs desk and, every now and then, rearranging his headware.

I point him out to my husband.  Whispering in hushed, manly tones he tells me that Saudi Sponsors must make sure their charge leaves the country without any issues when on Final Exit, which requires personally delivering them to the airport and watching till they are gone.  A thin smile tugs at one corner of my mouth as I lose myself in imagining Saudi Sponsors as comic characters running to and from the airport to farewell the thousands of expats who have decided to leave recently.

 The line moves forcing me out of my own head and, once we have shuffled forward, I turn to take another look at  theBearded Saudi waiting patiently.  He doesn't look like the Saudi Sponsor in my imagination.  His demeanor is quiet, calm.  He makes me wonder when our Final Exit day will come and who will escort us.

Two more maids are soon ushered into the queue, their Saudi's not as as reserved as the first, making a rowdy show of handing over tickets and papers.  The newly arrived Saudi's then speak to one of the airport security men who are directing passengers, pointing out the two maids and obviously asking the guard to keep an eye on the women who are looking lost and overwhelmed from too much fuss and too many instructions in an unfamiliar place.

Then the Saudi's disappear. I search the near empty terminal to see where they have positioned themselves, like the first Saudi, but they are nowhere to be seen.  'Perhaps these women aren't on final exit', my husband responds to the question in my raised eyebrows.  Or perhaps the Saudi still standing by the terminal pillar takes his role more seriously than the showy two who are not seen again.

A conversation comes to mind between myself and a friend, a Muslim woman, who, on her husband accepting a job in what they believed to be the exalted home of Islam, was so excited.  Once they arrived, however, their excitement was replaced with a disappointed at the reality of the place.  People are people, I remember telling her.  Everywhere.  Including Saudi Arabia.  It didn't help her.  She remained disappointed and, hardly surprising, her husband soon found another job, in another country.

At the customs counter our visa's are checked and our passports stamped.  I load my hand luggage onto the second baggage scanner and walk through the thick curtains that hide the area for scanning ladies, where I'm wanded and directed out the other side.  My husband has his satchel over his shoulder and is waiting for me.  As I pick up my belongings, the  Indonesian maid who was behind us in the queue is loading her bags on to the scanner.  I look over toward the silver pillar.  Her Bearded Saudi has gone.

Lawn Mower

Fingers are dancing their way across the keyboard, eyes focused on the words that materialized in the wake of each fervent rush of taps, a black trail of prose across a white and waiting canvas.  The 'whish whish' of the washing machine was busy in the background, its familiar sound ignored by the woman staring intently at the screen of the computer balanced purposefully upon her lap as she types and reads, types and reads. 

The typing stops as the woman tilts her head, her eyes no longer held by the tale she is weaving for an audience she imagines exists, and a frown creases her once young brow.  She listens to the sound that has snuck its way under her veil of concentration like the wafting scent of another woman's expensive perfume.  A low rumble is reverberating its way through the closed, lightly curtained windows.

As the noise grows to a roar, the metal door that separates the baking heat of a Saudi summer sun from the air conditioned cool of her one bedroom apartment, begins to emit a metallic 'twing', something it has never done before. 

The woman sits back, and lifts her eyes from the computer screen  'Is that a lawnmower?' she wonders.

She whips the computer from her lap and stands to gaze through the netted curtain, browned by the ever present Saudi dust and in need of another wash.  'OMG', she whispers to herself, a smile of disbelief tugging at the corner of mouth, her unplucked eyebrows raised in astonishment, 'it is a lawnmower! 

The contraption was snarling it's way over the patches of grass huddled between flower beds that would be bursting with healthy colour if the petals weren't limp and leaning under the blazing, orbed sun.  Smoke was pouring from the machines carriage, cloaking the green body driving it in a petrol fumed haze.  'OMG', she says again, exhaling a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding.  'It's a lawnmower!'

That was last year.
I couldn't believe it.  A lawnmower had arrived on the compound.  It was a crappy old thing in need of a spark plug clean among other things.  And the blokes obviously weren't used to it.  They were having trouble maneuvering it between the numerous landscaped tree trunks and clay brick bench seats that adorn our outdoor common areas.

That fact that progress had come to our patch of Saudi real estate in the form of a lawnmower made me chuckle a little to myself.  At the same time, I wondered what would happen to the Bangladeshi guys that had been arriving en masse each week to hand cut our ever green, well watered grass with hedge clippers?  They would creep over the lawns in little huddled groups, crouched on the ground in their dark green overalls, the only sound a snip, snip of clippers or a word spoken to each other in a language I didn't understand.

These days, the hedge clippers are saved for those hard to reach places the mower can't get to.   I'm wondering when they are going to rock up with a Whipper Snipper, retiring the clippers from lawn maintenance duties.

The garden blokes are well versed in the use of a lawn mower now.  It's not a old crappy thing any more, and it doesn't smoke either.  It even has a catcher!

It's funny the things that can capture your attention, isn't it.  Lawnmowers powering their way over back and front yards is a regular occurrence in NZ, and most other places around the globe I presume.  You hardly pay them any notice, except when you have to turn the telly up because the rip of the lawnmower right outside the lounge windows is disrupting you viewing pleasure or wayward blades of grass wind up in boot shaped splotches on the kitchen floor when the lawn mower pusher trudges his (or her) way indoors for a well earned glass of iced water.

The sight and sound of a loud, beaten up lawnmower that the Old Lawmower Club would probably be proud to give a home (I bet you didn't know there was an Old Lawnmower Club did you?), made me feel a little homesick when it arrived that day, a year ago.  Now, of course, the sound of the mower echoing between the compound walls affects me a little less emotionally though, some days, I wouldn't mind getting my hands on the thing and cutting a few strips in the lawn myself just to make me feel normal again in this, oft times, surreal country.


Ka Kite,
Kiwi