RuKsaK

I’m a moderately paranoid person. I used to be worse – it doesn’t matter which sock goes on first anymore, I don’t place my toothbrush within a bathroom tile’s grouted border in a north-west direction anymore. Really, I used to. I’m not joking.
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Age, and terror, has thankfully rattled this nonsense out of me.
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I was in Russia from early 1998 until late 2002. Then in the KSA until mid-2004. Take a look at the Terror Timeline link on the sidebar – click on the relevant flags. Russia’s list’s as long as Saudi’s.
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However, Saudi was the first time I felt truly mortal. We all know we might not make it to the end of each day and use clichés like ‘you never know what’s around the corner.’ In Saudi I’d leave for work in the morning and not feel quite so flippant.
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The Jeddah-Makkah highway:
Twice a week I went down this road. It’s one of the world’s unique roads. First of all, it’s violent. It records dozens of fatal crashes a year. It’s seen an increasing number of shoot-outs with militants in recent years, with police and suspects killed. The scenery on this road is incredible; a scorched moon, with mangled cars along the way and few baked stalls dotted down it. It also ended for me, sooner than most others on it. Not being a Muslim = entering Makkah is forbidden. I was teaching a little group of Bedouin factory workers about 10km outside the Holy City. On each of these days I got as close to Makkah as a non-Muslim can. There’s a turn-off for infidels to enable them to get into the industrial estate there. My driver, Mohmin, a miserable Bangladeshi with a great line in pessimism had me sitting in the back of the car.
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I was coming back from the non-Muslim turn-off, waiting in the queue at a Saudi Forces checkpoint, when the English language radio station announced Saddam Hussein had been captured. Mohmin AKA ‘Moaning’ looked back and spilled a perfect example:
‘You need be careful now. Many Saudis not happy of this. More foreigners will get killed. You be very careful, because you no look like Arab man. Now I afraid to drive you.’
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I believed him and still do. Other news in coming weeks compounded this belief; the inspection of Saddam’s mouth, Abu Ghraib, the slaughter of 18 non-Muslims in Dammam.
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I soon changed my scenery on this road and others. It became grey and furry – the ceiling interior of Mohmin’s car. That way nobody could see the obvious non-Arab sitting in the back. If shot, I wouldn’t be the first foreigner to be killed waiting at traffic lights.
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Now we don’t live there.
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But, all the time, although I clearly knew there was risk and didn’t and don’t want to die, I felt ‘when I’m out of here these stories will make me more interesting – more deserving of the face weather and genes have given me.’ Another badge, bed-notch, t-shirt… I felt this, but didn’t want to die. I talk about Saudi terrorism with earnest, but under the fear, there was this sense. And under this is the knowledge of how decadent that is; the blood of other’s may make me interesting – I feel like the stupid American Bolshoi Dom met (ask him or wait for this in a later story).
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That’s as deep as I’ve dug into my thoughts on that one. It’s my expedition in life, to collect experience to make me more interesting, as with most of us – maybe? So, habitually, I just bundle it all together and carry it in a plastic bag with ‘I don’t really care’ written on it. So, when I die I expect droves and droves of folk lamenting what a man I was.
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Well, at least I know one thing; it won’t come in the back of a taxi on the fucking Jeddah-Makkah highway, with Mohmin thinking ‘I told you so.’

Sunday, October 24, 2004

A more interesting person