Oscar and I sat in the back of a shisha lounge called Green Light Cafe. The bar was tripped out and smoked in, a hopeless scene of smokers from all walks of life, not a one of them local, which meant no Dutch people.
Don’t get me wrong, you know — Dutch people and I have a lot of things in common and I esteem their practicality and straightforwardness. It’s just that, hell — I needed a fucking break from the freaks of blunt.
And for that I was thankful. In that pillow-covered hole of wall to wall carpeting and blue and green and yellow and red neon floating on the ceiling there were no Dutch people. Not even the barkeep, who alternates on different nights from being a beautiful and petite Thai girl and a chunky English douchebbag.
Worlds, man.
The music there is usually a mellow kind of Jazz remix that seems to have engaged in acts of coitus with punk rock and steel drums. The chilled out clientele — overeager Erasmus young’ns, dreadlocked white guys, hippie chicks and Israeli stoners — always in character. They’re all straight off the train, backpacks and all. Haven’t even found their hostels yet.
I watched Oscar blow elegant smoke rings from the shisha pipe we shared. The man’s been everywhere and when he says he learned to blow smoke rings in the Middle East, motherfucker means Mecca, man. Or, at least as close to it as non-Muslims can get.
“Jeddah is the coastal port on the Red Sea, just outside of Mecca,” he informed me after seeing the blank stare on my face. He seemed surprised by my ignorance and I snapped out of it.
“I know where it fucking IS, Oscar. I’m just contemplating what a fucking cool job you have that by the sheer will of the mind, you can, on certain weekends, decide to just hop on a plane into the port of Jeddah and smoke enough shishas alone on the edge of the Red Sea until you learn to blow smooth smoke rings that smash calmly into the ceiling.”
He dragged the pipe a bit, and still took a second deep breath, exhaling slowly, as if his soul was leaving his body through his mouth. “You know, man, this job…it’s great. But it’s not as great as you think.”
“How do you know what I think, Oscar,” I said, with a spritzy tone in my voice that I hadn’t intended. He wasn’t annoyed.
“I’m telling you that this job has its curses and isn’t for everybody. Especially if you have specific needs.” I nodded, my head in my hands, showing him how bored I was with that topic I’d heard so often, so many times before.
Still, the man has been everywhere, it seems. But I knew that there are two roads to Mecca: one that actually goes to the city and one that goes around it, for foreigners or non-Muslims that think they can see Mecca just because they’ve traveled for god-knows-how-long? Nope, they’ll put you back in your blistering car and send you off. Everyone has their own problems.
He tightened his lips and thought for a moment, eventually saying, “Yeah. That was an interesting weekend. What a fucking shit country, that is, though.”
“What do you mean,” I asked, reaching for my pint of Heineken. “You told me you went from an air-conditioned Marriott — with a pool, which you swam in quite enjoyably, to hear you tell it — to a beach-side restaurant to smoke and watch the sunset and then the next day you took a drive to the sandy penninsula to search for a boat and ended up meeting a bunch of Dutch guys on the docks…”
“First of all, exactly. I went to Saudi-fucking-Arabia and who do I meet there, as if I didn’t have enough of that around this town of lunatics? The Dutch. I don’t see what you see in these people, honestly.”
“In my defense, I’m not all that happy with them either,” I said, looking around and smiling. I’m pretty sure I let that little gem slip every now and again. You should pay more attention.” He hesitated.
“Anyway,” he said, “it was shit. The town lists TGIFriday’s, Chilli’s and Pizza Hut among their top ten restaurants. People who go there return with pictures of their standard rooms at the Hilton, of unimpressive statues, some sunsets and occasionally, sidewalks.”
“I can picture,” I said, “the kind of people that take pictures of their hotel rooms at the Hilton. Clear as day, right?”
He furrowed his brow at me and took a deep drag of the pipe. “You mean people from the midwest?” he asked, holding it in. Then he blew another elegant masterpiece that grazed my left ear.
“Never mind,” I mumbled, grinning.
He went on. “And did I tell you that when I was about to sit at the restaurant where I smoked that shisha — by the way, it wasn’t beach-side, it was water-side; they don’t have beaches in Jeddah. There are some stretches by the highway that hug the water that are lined with large rocks to muffle the waves, but definitely no beaches.”
“ANYways…” I said, suggestively.
“Right. Did I tell you that at that restaurant I had to sit on the second floor, away from the water because the section — the empty section, I should say — of seats by the water is reserved for family seating? No single men allowed.” He seemed happy to have gotten that off his chest.
“Really?” I asked. I knew that Saudis segregated their men and women, but I figured there was space to move or something.
“Single men,” he repeated, “are the lowest fucking rungs on their social ladder.” He folded his arms and leaned back into his chair, his long, curly black hair bouncing on his head. I was surprised no one in Saudi had ever suspected he was Jewish. In any case, he was very satisfied with himself for that story.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I remember when you told me of those boys on that lawn in Riyadh one time and how the police chased them down…”
“But they let me go,” he reminded me, “when the bell boy came out to explain I was a foreigner in the hotel.”
“An expensive hotel?” I asked him.
“The most ridiculous thing I’ve ever stayed in,” he said, which is saying a lot. “In the Egyptian Marble shower I could lie flat on my back and roll away from the showerhead, rolling five times before I hit the other wall. I know this for a fact. I had enough space to do cartwheels in that suite.”
“That explains why the guard didn’t give you a hard time then, right?” I offered.
“Right,” he said. “But that’s not the point. The point is that single men, especially young ones, are scum, the lowest class.”
“Why do you think that is,” I asked, suddenly kind of seriously pondering the reason.
“Honestly? I think it’s society’s way of projecting their own self-hatred onto something. I mean, I just can’t reason with the notion that separating men and woment results in anything other than repressed sexual urges. Just look at the Catholic Church.”
“Mmmm,” I nodded, and it felt like he was on a roll, so I didn’t say anything.
“I think that somewhere deep within them where human needs can’t be touched by silly rules, religious or otherwise, there is at least the faintest whisp of a wish that those men didn’t need for marriage to be their highest priority in order to escape the social hell it puts them all in. A kind of a obtuse logic: single men cannot be in the presence of or seen with a woman to whom they are not related. Deep within people must find this repressing and wish it weren’t so. And if all single men were married, they would not have this problem. Therefore, single men are frowned on.”
I looked at him in awe. “Oscar, that was, by far, the craziest thing you’ve said tonight. And that’s following your story of rolling on the floor in the shower in your hotel room in in Riyadh.”
“I know,” he said, half-ignoring me, sort of beside himself for nailing a thought like that down. And then his face lit up. “And what about the Catch-22 of how a boys meets a girl?” he asked excitedly. “Have I told you about that?”
I shook my head no and reached for my beer.
“I had been wondering –” he explained, “after being in that country for 2 months with no alcohol, cheap gas and nothing but sand and flat land around me, how it was that people could, in the 21st century, still go along with the notion of arranged marriages.”
I nodded again, and sipped my beer. He dragged the pipe again and let the smoke pour out of his mouth slowly, like a waterfall. That fucking guy.
“So I did what I normally do when I want a straight answer,” he said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He smiled, and blew the dense smoke off the table in front of him. “I ask a cab driver,” he said, pursing his lips and raising his eyebrows. Fucking Oscar.
“And?” I demanded.
“And…” he dragged it out, “he told me that when parents won’t look away or pretend that they don’t know what’s going on, what the kids do is go down to the shopping mall with their mobile phones…”
“Mobile phones?” I interrupted.
“Yeah. He said what they do is set the Bluetooth receiver on the phone to be discoverable and when they find a phone they like they start texting and chatting with them. If the kids hit it off, they agree on a meeting place and a way to feign either marriage or relations for long enough to be seen in public before they become engaged.”
I was stunned. “Was he lying?” I asked, only half-kidding.
“No,” Oscar said. “I did this in a mall in Riyadh once and used my Bluetooth thingy to search for other discoverable devices. What came up was sort of sad.” I tried to sip my beer, realizing that I was sipping an almost totally empty glass. “A list of at least 30 or more phones came up. Their names were mostly illegible, but there were some with names like ‘Sexy, Sixteen and Single’ and ‘Ready for love, boy’.”
“Yikes.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Look, the pool was nice and all, but talk about a vast emptiness… I mean — who pays for all that gold trim?” he asked. I shrugged in agreement. He continued.
“In Jeddah, after wandering around the immediate neighborhood and finding nothing to do I finally found someone who understood enough English to be cajoled into telling me something, even if it was to give up hope. Those are the stakes.”
“Yeah?” I asked. I was partly distracted by the young Israeli kid rolling a joint of hash next to us.
“Yeah,” Oscar said. “This young Jordanian manager at the Marriott, when I badgered him enough about WHAT TO DO there he sort of lowered his voice and lowered his shoulders, leaning in to talk to me. He said, ‘listen, I’m a foreigner trapped here too. None of them will tell you but I’ve been here for two years and all there is to do is go to the mall.”
“I wonder why,” I said out loud, with a grin.
“‘Nonesense,’ I said to him, sort of startled by his honesty. ‘There must be a café where you can go read a book by the sea, right? These people are pious to a fault but they can’t be averse to a good life.’ I decided. He cast a look that told me he was not getting through to me.
‘It’s worse than you think,’ he said.
‘It can’t be,’ I countered. He smiled.
‘You’ve been to Riyadh?’ he asked me.
‘I’ve just come from there,’ I told him. ‘I’m here for the weekend’.
‘What do you think of Riyadh?’ he asked.
‘It sucks,’ I told him. ‘That’s why I came here. At least there is ocean here, right?’ I have him a smile. He smiled back but it was more wishful than it was agreement.
‘Look, the only thing the ocean adds to in Saudi Arabia is humidity.’
My heart sank for a moment. ‘That’s ridiculous. You’re telling me that there is nothing to do in Jeddah except either pay $250 for an hour for a wave runner or else drink tea in the hotel lobby all afternoon by yourself? Why are there even hotels in this place? Why are you people here?’
He adjusted in his seat and a grave feeling dripped all over his face. ‘I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you. I think I understand what you want. You won’t find it here.’”
—
“And that,” Oscar said, “was the greatest reaction I’d gotten there, by far. By FAR.
—
His circles of smoke glided over the pages I was reading in the dim light, casting strange shadows and faint shapes over HST’s words. I struggled with my crude attempts at such cool manufacturings and eventually just gave up, sucking it all down and expelling it forcefully towards the dark blue ceiling.
It tasted like apples.
—
A long-haired blonde down the bar continued to throw suggestive glances at Oscar while shaking her shoulders in time with the mad noise the DJ was making. He glanced up from his writing every now and again to return them. I got the unshakable feeling he was playing some kind of game but I wasn’t a part of it.
He was deep in thought and I had just taken a deep inhale of the pipe when I saw her, out of the corner of my eye, get off her barstool looking over in our direction. I panicked and looked across the street at the signed bolted to the next building. It read, fortuitously, “Obstakel“. I knew exactly what it meant.
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“My Kingdom will survive only insofar as it remains a country difficult to access, where the foreigner will have no other aim, with his task fullfilled, but to get out.”
- King Abdul Aziz bin Saud, c. 1930
Boy, if that was true back in 1930 then I’ll venture to say that in the almost 80 years since then they must’ve been working tirelessly to perfect their finely honed objective in Saudi Arabia…
Protectionism. What an ugly word. It strikes a tone of anxiety in a song of fear, conjuring images of caged rats, each lashing out individually in frightful fits, ultimately helpless when pitted against a striking viper. A pointless endeavor, especially in the world of the 21st century, where connection is everything and everything is connected. In today’s world, a state and a people left to grow only from within will develop as well as a Star Trek geek playing World of Warcraft in his mother’s basement.
We’ve gone too far with our urges for interconnectedness to slam on the brakes now. As the world becomes more mobile and global, access will be paramount to development and obstacles to connectivity should not be tolerated. It’s disturbing then, to see that so many travel hubs like hotels and airports still try to charge complicated fees for internet access.
It used to be that you could tell how much a person travels for work by their mileage accounts, or their hotel points, or if all else failed, the wrinkles and bags under their red, sloppy eyes. However, you can now tell who’s been around by looking at the list of wireless networks to which one has connected, or attempted to connect.
And if wireless connections were whores at port, I’d be a goddamn sailor.
–
And speaking of whores, let me get to the point of this little rant. Even as times are changing, outdated notions of a quick profit are being attempted in the spirit of capitalism and Adam Smith’s fucking invisible hand.
There was a time not too long ago that in order to compete for the business of business, hotels offered their corporate guests free internet connections with either a DSL line in the room or in some cases even a direct T1 line. But you’d be connected - on the grid, as it were. You know — in the parlance of our times.
But then came T-Mobile. And Swisscom. And, fucking, Joe’s corner WiFi, or whatever. Like a wildfire it spread. Today, in hotels across Europe and North America you can get a whole box of exotic teas, coffees, water bottles, towels and even a nice desk set, if you pack efficiently. Just for checking in. I’m not advocating theft of hotel property, you understand — I’m just saying it’s an easy option.
But you can’t get free internet.
Which is weird. You can get it in hostels. You can get it at bed & breakfasts. You can get it at mom & pop cafes, though not at places like Starbuck’s. And of course, god bless the few and the proud who still keep their wireless signals open and blissfully unencrypted to those wandering on the streets, unafraid to check for good souls.
Obviously there is a dollar to be made by letting a single company have exclusive ownership of your wireless real-estate. But there’s something about free WiFi that can keep people lounging in a place indefinitely and I’m not sure why these large hotels and café chains aren’t on board with the concept yet. It’s the reason why I can sit in a dingy, grimy dark pub in London that smells of greasy sausages and spilt ale and have breakfast, lunch and tea while I work. It’s also why no matter how nice the scene from a café on the Zürich waterfront, if they’re going to charge me 80 CHF for the day, I’ll be moving on, thanks.
I’m not normally optimisitic for the future, but in this economy, I can’t help but hope that there will be massive investments into infrastructure, like there were in the 30’s after the Great Depression. They built highways and bridges and I hope that in a way, so will we. There is a lot of work that needs to be done to the current internet infrastructure and we are due for a a revamp of the hard lines if we are going to advance in this endeavor. Otherwise we’ll be stuck with Al Gore’s invention and Orin Hatche’s tubes for another few decades.
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The sky didn’t darken until late in the afternoon that day in Amsterdam. It’s normal for it to rain at least once every day here but I had confused the shadow of the towering thunderheads with the coming of night since their coming coincided completely.
Our trio had hurried home from a stroll around the old center of town that had culminated in our stopping by our favorite Thai food place in Amsterdam, “The Bird”. We’d ordered the usual takeaway pad thai and other miscellaneous dishes. We went back up to my flat at the Nieuwmarkt and finished the hodgepodge we’d wandered out for earlier that night. Then we filled up the glasses on the table. Each of us had a half pint of beer in front of us and it was Shane’s job to keep them full with the tall boys I’d scattered around the kitchen. He and I also had small tumblers of bourbon that I was to keep wet. Jo had a glass of wine since she was wary of the Jim Beam I was pouring, and even more afraid of the unopened Jack Daniels that stood eagerly over the fridge.
I’d recently returned from my trip to Saudi Arabia, where I did business for two weeks straight plus another two weeks after a pause. I’d suffered in their heat and their strange customs for what seems like longer. I’d spent almost two months on the road, coming home for barely six hours at one point just to do laundry during a coincidental layover in Amsterdam. I’d strolled in Rome, hopped to New York, hung out in Barcelona, slaved in Riyadh, taught in Prague and then made a sale in Zurich, with a bit of time to head back to Amsterdam and take some sailing lessons. It had taken a brutal toll on my body. And, you know, it doesn’t really end there: Edinburgh and Istanbul are next.
It wasn’t the travel, though; I’ve been doing this for far too long for my body to complain about small confined spaces like economy seating and the perils of jetlag. I’ve been doing this for long enough to have withdrawal symptoms if I stopped, come to think of it. No; what was taking a toll on my body was a combination of stiffled desires and high levels of stress induced by the rigors of social mores in Saudi Arabia and a very serious lack of fun. Never knowing what’s appropriate and what’s not, not inclined to be the jackass American and start guffawing inappropriate questions left and right and no access to good information will drive a writing traveler insane in no time at all. I’ll get to that in a minute.
Because for a moment there I was back home and there we were, drinking ourselves silly under the pretext of discussing international politics and the place of culture in business and ethics in culture.
“Is it true that they have no women there?” Shane asked, only half joking. I guess that’s because I could only be half sure, since all you have when in Riyadh is half a notion that someone is a woman covered in a black abaya, or else a ninja assassin, which is what I told him about.
“How do the women feel about how they’re treated?” Jo asked.
“You mean the ninjas.” Shane corrected her.
“Yes, Shane, the ninjas. How do the ninjas feel about how they’re ranked in society?”
“Well…” I started, already knowing it would make little sense. It never made sense to me and I had to go there just to understand why it would never make sense to me. “I asked around, because nothing I ever read made any sense to me. It still doesn’t, but I can tell you what they told me.
“I talked to these two women at the airport, foreigners, of course. A Brit and an Ozzy. They were wearing their abayas, though not covering their faces. I approached them at a coffee place at the terminal and using my charm and signature reporter’s notepad, told them I was writing a piece on women in the international marketplace. They must’ve assumed I was from the New York Times or something.” I paused, then looked up at Shane and Jo.
…
“Yeah. You must’ve been SOOOOO charming.” She said, breaking my silence cynically as all hell. She can do that. Shane smiled his goofy smile and waited for my comeback.
“Yeah, well. They talked to me, so, there. She didn’t retort but Shane looked disappointed, and rightfully so.
“They told me that their agency had told them to get abayas before coming and that they had to put it on before they got off the plane! Crazy, right?” I could see they agreed.
“Yeah, but how did they feel about it?” Jo asked. Obviously, her interest in the matter was more deeply rooted than Shane’s.
“Who? The foreigners or the Saudis?” I tried to clarify.
“Everyone!”
“Well, the foreigners are pretty much in accordance that they resent it and don’t understand it, but do it because it’s not their law and they don’t want to make a commotion. The locals don’t seem to love it, but that’s what they’re used to - taking it away from them would leave most of them in a distraught state of disarray. Not to mention that to them tradition is more important than history or happiness. Or at least maintaining the illusion of tradition. Understanding is not a requisite of obedience for them.”
Blank stares. I knew it. I didn’t understand it; how could I hope to explain it? I tried again.
“It’s like I heard the other day: ‘you’ve got to catch a girl without getting caught’…” I paused, hoping they would get it because a taxi driver had told me this with a lot of confidence, and I didn’t have time to have him explain it.
But, nothing.
“Look, as an example: I asked 3 cab drivers, 3 Saudi co-workers, 3 co-workers from Dubai and then did some reading…there’s no legal or acceptable way for a boy and a girl to meet.”
“WHAT?” snapped Shane, incredulous.
“I know. Crazy.”
“Does it have to be arranged, then?” Shane followed up.
“Legally, yes. But no one does it. You can imagine kids our age these days… our generation, as spread over the globe and facebook and myspace and all that… it is knows enough about the size of the world to realize that arranged marriages are about as good an idea as moving to Kansas City… it’s bound to fail.”
Shane laughed but Joanna didn’t get it and just mumbled, “… you American boys…”
“So how do they do it?” Shane asked.
“Well, there’s chat rooms online, but most people use bluetooth technology on their phones to find people within 10 meters of them and chat that way, and if they like each other they agree to meet secretly.
“I turned my phone on once and searched for available devices… you wouldn’t believe the shit that came up, man.
“In the airport, with parents and what not all around them… all I saw were children, between 10 and 16. The older girls were already old enough to cover themselves with veils and abayas… but a list of at least 40 different phones came up, with names like ’so good to you’, ‘lonely and looking’, ‘girl unclaimed’, and ‘what’s your mobile nmbr sexy?’ I was appalled. I’ve never heard of such sexual frustration. Not even at an airport.”
“This is nuts!” Jo proclaimed.
“Everyone knows, of course, but the important thing is not to get caught. Parents supposedly facilitate it for their kids by looking the other way and giving them some privacy, but if caught, the fines and jail sentences are steep. It’s a savage place, man.
“Do people get out?” Shane asked. “You know - like the Dutch from Holland?”
“Some do, but it’s very difficult. You have to either be unemployed or else have permission from your employer to leave. And god help you if you’re a woman. Then you need a husband’s permission or a father’s… or you can go to Bahrain like the older men do for prostitutes.
“Surprised? You shouldn’t be. It’s like putting too much liquid in a glass bottle. You can’t try to stuff it in there; it’s got nowhere to go. People have needs, man.”
“Why do you keep calling me, ‘man’?” Jo asked. A fair question, I thought, but I ignored it all the same.
“But that’s just HYPOCRITICAL!” Shane announced. I agreed.
“I know. But it’s no different then those Catholic priests in Boston, man. These guys get on a plane in Riyadh on Wednesday nights (their Fridays) bound for Bahrain, a plane full of men in traditional and pious clothes. Everyone knows why. They get off in Bahrain, or Dubai, or wherever they went and their first stop is the duty-free shop, where they load up on whiskey, vodka, cognac and cigarettes. I’m talking CRATES.
These rich guys disappear into the prostitution houses of Bahrain and Dubai and when they come out on Friday (Sunday) they have their traditional clothes on, their heads covered and their smiles soft, likely like other parts of their bodies at this point. They get on a plane back to Riyadh and live out the rest of the week proclaiming how bad alcohol is for the spirit and so forth.”
“That disgusts me,” Jo said. I told her I understood.
“What’s really weird is how there is a lot that is similar to Brazilian society, at least on a detailed and fundamental level. You know, things like male-dominated structures, strong sense of religious propriety and favoritism for outsiders. Actually, that’s just like anywhere that has allowed religion to dominate the society…
I paused for a second, contemplating the fact.
“But nothing quite like Riyadh. Take this time, for example, just outside my hotel on like, the 2nd night that I’m there…
“I had gone to the food court at the mall across the way for some fish & chips and spring rolls (yeah, that’s a combination they’re into) and was going to eat them sitting in the middle of the grass. It was 11:30 at night and the heat was starting to get bearable. That and there was a fantastic full moon I wanted to get familiar with.
“I didn’t know whether it would be ok for me to sit on the grass in front of the hotel… I didn’t know if there was a policy or religious rule, you know, that said that that kind of thing is or is not ok… but I went and sat anyway.”
Shane scoffed at me. “You rebel.”
“I know, right? But soon I saw a handful of kids come running out onto the grassy area where I was sitting, doing cartwheels, sommersaults and basically being boys. They fell somewhere between 12 and 16 years of age but in that kind of crowd, boys will definitely be boys.
“They were chased off of the hotel’s grass suddenly and efficiently by 6 men in black suits that came out of nowhere. 4 men in desert fatigues came after them, armed with automatic rifles and vests that looked heavy with something or other. I froze, trying to reason that I couldn’t possibly be in any real danger there, right in front of the hotel but totally unsure of that. Riyadh is not a place to dick around and kids here have to learn fast or else get their balls cut off.
“Well, on that day, 2 of them were arrested, it seemed. I guess all I know is what I saw. They were 14 or 15 years old and they were dragged off by a group of 6 to 8 armed men… who KNOWS where they’re being taken or what became of them?
“As I watched the kids go off in a dark sedan I noticed a black figure coming towards me across the lawn. Still sort of frozen, afraid to run and unsure of what to do if I stayed, I squinted until I could see that it was a thin black man in a dark suit, approaching me at a pretty committed pace. Even though his stature was small and his face was thin I was filled with a sudden panic. His stride was long, his steps, purposeful. It was definitely ME he was coming for and I didn’t know why. All I was doing was eating bad fish & spring rolls and drinking orange soda at 11:30 at night… but then, what were those kids doing?
“He walks with no swagger, but full of purpose - scrawny, unshaven, like so many of his ilk…
“My left hand shakes, ever so slightly. ‘Don’t let them see it, Pete’ I tell myself, unsure of what else to say. ‘Don’t let them smell the fear on you…’
“Another black suit approaches on my left. The air is warm. The night is fiercly dark and the dust is building in the atmosphere, but things are well-lit by the full moon. As the man on the right approaches he has a stern, slightly confused but genuine look on him of what-the-hell-do-you-think-you’re-doing? I remain silent, sure I’ve had it for good this time but still curious to know why, to know how deep this hole here goes. I must understand the obstinately obtuse resolution of these people. I say nothing. He says something in Arabic and I quiver but I don’t cower. How bad could this be?
“The man on my left approaches, smiling like he recognizes me. Must be a security guard from the hotel, I think, to kindly tell me to leave the hotel’s grass. That’s fine, I think to myself, having figured that I was pushing it anyways. But the other guy…
Uh-oh. The other guy is pretty upset, still.
“Then I hear the word ‘guest’ from the smiling man. He repeats it to the upset man, ‘hotel guest’. He smiles at me and tells me I can stay, ‘it’s ok, alright, please.’ he points to the place where I was sitting.
“‘Hot damn,’ I think. Thank God for preferential treatment for foreigners. They’re just like Brazilians in that sense. Man! I love a good string pull.”
Shane chimed in: “Yeah, I’ve heard the people there can be very angry-sounding.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Yeah,” Shane replied.
“Totally,” I said. Joanna shook her head.
—
“So what about this heat?” Jo asked me with an urgency that suggested her next meal selection might depend on this knowledge.
“Well, it’s serious,” I said, trying to get it across. “I mean, 45 degrees isn’t a number to be taken lightly. And it’s DRY, you know? Sometimes at lunch time I have to walk something like, 5 blocks to get to the shopping mall where there’s food. In my work shirt and pants, I walk 5 blocks in 45 degree heat and don’t sweat a DROP. It’s nuts.
“And they keep the air conditioning in the office down to like, 4 degrees. That’s like a refrigerator, dude! These people have no concept of the term “comfortable work environment”. I have to take my suit to work because it’s too cold to work without it. And then when you leave the building, if feels like you just stuck your face next to a catalytic converter.”
“Wasn’t there a sandstorm you called me about once?” Shane asked me. I remembered back to the first time I’d seen a sand storm in Riyadh.
“Was there! The sky that morning had a yellowish hue to it, as if a field of mustard had exploded in the distance and spread over the horizon. Around the time I got to work and viewed it from the 13th floor of the al Anoud tower I could tell that whatever it was, it was closer than it had been before breakfast, and coming on fast. By noon time most of the city was covered as if by a thick desert fog, cutting visibility down to less than 200 meters. Riyadh had disappeared right before my eyes in the matter of a few morning hours.
“‘What IS that haze that’s covered the city?’ I asked no one in particular as I paused my work and stared out the window for a bit. The office didn’t even have cubicles, but was one of those ’shared workspace’ environments that are getting more popular these days: just open desks all over the place. I suspect that it has to do with making people less apt to surf facebook or other such riff-raff, but anyone who walks around any IT office environment knows that hasn’t stopped.
“‘It’s a sand storm,’ said Hiatham, a friendly and deeply religious Saudi co-worker. ‘It’s the season for these. This is the 3rd one since you were last here.
“‘Sand storm…’ I mumbled to myself, remembering seeing these in films and having no idea there were this viscous. I’d always thought it was an exaggeration of Hollywood. But this thing was consuming radio towers and football fields and beginning to pile sand high against the corners of buildings still under construction. Nothing stays young for long in that place, man.”
“I’m glad you got back with your life,” Shane said.
“Me too,” I agreed.
“COME BACK ‘ERE WIT’ MY PANTS, MATE!” we heard some dripping wet English bloke yelling outside my window on the streets. I appreciated the distractions of Amsterdam, and was, surprisingly, still getting to know them well.
Outside there stirred our own great storm, fierce and violent like ancient angry gods. Whenever we saw the flashes we’d get giddy, and when the thunder roared, we cheered. When the sky brightened we jumped, laughing like hyenas and we felt like children staying up past their bedtime. It brought back memories of those afternoons in Brasilia and of those nights in São Paulo, where all the world was in a spiral around the tower of my hotel, where it seemed the very wind wanted to whisk me out by the throat, where the lightning wanted me saved for its own prickly little fingers. That was a turbulent time for me, when my divorce was still in its early stages of conception, when the trouble was brewing slowly and the bubbles hadn’t even reached the surface yet. And that lightning and that noise grounded me, gave me focus. I remembered it well.
But what I saw now only reminded me about the good parts of those days, like the fury and the texture of the violence in the wind that was such a rush to me. It brought back none of the loneliness or guilt or regret that I struggled with then because here, there was company. Good company.
Jo changed the subject, fumbling with a bowl of M&M’s and running her fingers through them like it was a beach full of sand: “I’m glad you’re back too,” she said, “you boys need to stop and stay in this town for longer than a day or two sometime. It could be fun, you know?”
Shane and I looked at each other.
“You didn’t tell her?” I accused him. “She’s gonna be pissed!” Shane shrugged, unsure of what to say.
“Tell me what?” Joanna asked, sort of innocently.
“Jesus. Jo, Shane lost his job and has to go back home.” Shane looked at me accusingly.
“Yeah, well, HE’s decided to move back to the States and start a business with me,” Shane said, putting what I thought was a little too much emphasis on the ‘HE’, but whatever.
“Oh,” she said, after some pause. We didn’t know what to say. I knew how badly the three of us needed each other’s company in this lonely place and I was afraid that with the two of us gone, Jo would either retreat into a corner somewhere or else blow her top and go absolutely nuts. Maybe she’d find a Dutch guy to hang with, or maybe she might even move to Belgium. You never know what a person will do in the throngs of sudden desperation, right?
“We need to get drunk, immediately,” she decided. I was relieved.
And then we did.
Posted in Anecdotes, Rants, Travels | No Comments…
Yo.
… nah, that’s not a good way to start from such a long absence.
–
BEHOLD!!
–
That’s better.
Yes, I’m back, and just in time too, from the looks of things. For nearly 10 weeks now I’ve been gone, lost, trapped, held against my will. I throw these terms around loosely, but you can read into it to your heart’s content. The fact is that for most of this time I was in what could be described as “the wilderness,” depending on how you define “wilderness”, or “the”. Defining your terms is important.
The animals kept me there, you see, huddled in the dark, reciting English terms and asking of Brazilian futbol and the EuroCup 2008, forced to read scripture and learn the ways of their people without proper food or drink.
And don’t bother asking for things like REASONS. I don’t know WHY they didn’t like me, or WHAT they wanted me to do. They were animals, beings led by instinct and the metaphorical equivalent of a falafel, a system of beliefs held together, seemingly by nothing.
I was alone there too, as no other humans were kept anywhere near me, and my interactions were limited to the occasional cell phone signal and the shuffling of creatures past me in polished white granite hall ways and new office carpet. You know, the kind that makes you realize that those patterns had to be designed by someone. It was all I could do to mind my breathing, enter a trance and survive the ordeal using the ancient Yoga techniques that I managed to catch from working at the Rec Center back in university. The loneliness was overwhelming, but the BO of my captors was worse, and I’d often recoil into the toilet area for refuge from their stench.
Leaving was risky, and mostly not an option. I had to negotiate, whinge, cry and blasphemy in three different religions - which took effort, seeing as that I never really studied any of them - and that was just to get their attention. When I finally ditched them, though, it was based on sheer will, on desire, reasonless purpose. And it’s all thanks to the genius that you would probably refer to as “temporary” while I refer to it as “mine”.
Pot-Ay-to, Pot-Ah-to.
The details of my escape are irrelevant for now, and have to do mostly with the fact that it turns out I have WAY more frequent flier miles than I thought.
But nevermind that. We have bigger issues to wonder about. Like media. I learned, through some of the processes involved in my escape that a thing as small as my return here might be called news in some circles. Unless CNN gets wind of it, in which case, WATCH OUT! Suddenly they’ll have a story. That’s what they do over there. When that happens, remember: there’s no story to my escape, just like there’s no real story behind any of their headlines. It’s all mostly theatrics, and if you’re interested in something they’re saying, it’s probably a lie.
But I left, and that’s enough, for now. I recounted to my boss the tale of grim treatment in the hands of my captors in faraway lands with no whiskey or bourbon. When I requested something a little less medieval than my last assignment they gave me a client in Holland for which I must travel locally. Yes. I’ve been given the privilege of driving dozens of kilometers for hours in each direction in organized Dutch traffic, forced to stare at the bare and pointless scenery that is the horizon in the Netherlands as a result of my summer of sacrifice.
Um…
My employer simply doesn’t get it.
Nevertheless, I am free for now, and therefore I come to you with an explanation of what is going on, and more importantly, how it’s been affected by the US Presidential race going on across the Atlantic, since that’s all you people will pay attention to on the news…
–
Amsterdam Centraal was crowded and the people there seemed particularly touristy last Saturday. It had already been a sad morning, having had a particularly fun-filled week with friends, family and general social productivity, which is a luxury of the natives in this place. Then, that morning, I’d taken my best friend to the airport, the last of the group of visitors I’d had recently. And just like that I was alone again.
Returning from the airport, everything seemed smaller; the buildings looked shorter and the seats on that very yellow train felt more cramped. I struggled to get out of the station through the confounded crowd that walked steadily in my way and would suddenly stop to look up at a sign or down at a map, tripping over their shoelaces and rolly-wheel suitcases. It was like returning a punt against a football field of idiot linebackers that outnumber you 50 to 1.
The air was thick with humidity and the temperature mimicked that of southern Spain in August. It was strange to see no clouds in the sky over Holland, people at the beach and a sense of merriment about the town that probably sprang from something akin to denial. But then, it was a strange day.
The sky had become slightly hazy over the course of the day, and now looked almost overcast, with patches of blue sky here and there. The rumble had been happening for some time apparently, but suddenly I became very much aware of it.
“What’s that noise” I asked Maryla. “It sounds like either a hundred 747s criss-crossing directly above Amsterdam, or else a mad thunder indicating the approach of something horrible!”
“Well, yeah, Pedro - it’s thunder,” she said, matter of factly. “Don’t you feel the humidity? It’s going to pour any minute now.”
“But I can see the blue in the sky,” I told her. “… I think.”
But when I looked up and strained a bit, I saw a quick whisp of light arc across a cloud that was so deep grey that it looked blue against the dark backdrop of the darkening day. The rumbling continued, and then there was a large crack of lightning to prove Maryla’s point.
“See?” She said.
I saw.
What I couldn’t understand was the speed with which the storm had approached. I never saw it coming. I was so pleased with the clear sky of the previous day that I had made all kinds of fun assumptions and what I thought were safe bets of what my plans should be come the next few weeks with regard to sailing, bike riding, mushrooms and other fun things that you can do when the weather is good. It never occurred to me that a goddamn lightning storm could overtake the day in the length of time it takes to drink a cup of coffee. And we don’t even have large mugs.
The rumbling never really stopped, and only grew louder. It was a magnificent rolling noise like large aluminum trash cans constantly smashing into each other as they fell over a giant flights of stairs, and it pretty much finished the summer that I never got to have, all because of the goddamn animals that kept me captive during May and June in their desert.
…so much for a summer in Amsterdam.
–
In the late afternoon, moaping and morose from the departure of so much good company, I sat at my window overlooking the Kloveniers canal next to the red light district and sipped my coffee.
The Kloveniersburgwal is a canal in Amsterdam that runs parallel to the center, just a block east of the Oudezijds Achterburgwal, better known as the red light district. The interesting thing about the Kloveniers is that it dead ends at the Nieuwmarkt, a public square surrounded by Dutch cafes, cheese shops and soft-core junkies. At the center of the square is a castle, the Waag, which today is a restaurant. I’m told it was a church at one point in time.
I live right on the canal, just north of the last bridge before the Nieuwmarkt. Consequently, my bedroom window, which I stare out of a lot, sits in a great position to watch anything that passes by on the water. What this means is that right way, I know a lot about the boats that I see out my window. Pretty much any boat that goes by my window once, will either permanently moor itself at the Nieuwmarkt, or else it will pass by my window again.
It feels like control, but I know it isn’t.
And that’s sort of what I’ve been doing since I was here last, readers. I’ve been working on a story, a manuscript that feels like it will be forever an infant, screeching and wailing and begging to be changed.
Relax, they tell me. Even Ernest Hemingway wrote for 8 years without any recognition. Hunter Thompson was broke for a decade, brewing his own beer and living like an out-of-control rodent with the pygmies of the Amazon before he did anything of note. The Rum Diary wasn’t published for well over 20 years after it was written. F. Scott Fitzgerald died soon after some kid sweeping the floors a bookstore told him he’d never heard the name…
Well - Who cares? I ask. Fuck those guys. They never had to deal with the Dutch. And besides, who said anything about writing?
Look, it’s one thing to fall horribly flat when you throw yourself at a pursuit and persist at any cost, ending up in places undreamed of, heaving overboard things you always expected would be yours forever just to stay afloat amidst the game in which you’ve managed to mix yourself up. It’s one thing to let that last for months, years, dourly insisting with an iron fist that if you fail it will not be for lack of trying. It’s one thing to never even really understand what you’re missing, so long as you know what you’re chasing.
It’s another to not have a clue where you’re going, what your immediate goals are. It’s another to know nothing for sure except that you’re tired of what you’re doing, even though every one else thinks it’s sensible, labels it fortuitous, says they’re jealous and calls it lucky. Call it the curse of someone else’s success, I suppose, but this is not a good place to be. Better than some? Perhaps, but not good enough for me.
–
Alone and full of whiskey is not a good time to be philosophical or deep. Especially not in public. You’re liable to notice things and write words that on any other day would make you cringe at the prospect of who you might actually be under the skin you hide behind. So you have to be extra careful. Who KNOWS who that guy is or what he’s thinking?
This may be the onset of despair. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow.
Posted in Politics, Rants, Travels | No Comments…
So I’m at the gas station the other day, pouring MTBE hydrocarbons into my vehicle. I admit it, I use gasoline just like the rest of you mortals, and I also feel the recent upward swing in gas prices. It sucks.
Remember when gas prices dropped to a dollar and a penny a couple years ago? Gone are those times, eh?
But it’s all relative. Do you know how much gas costs in other countries? How much it has always cost in other countries? In Brazil, gasoline has cost — for as long as I can call myself a person — about R$2.80 a liter.
What the hell is a liter? You might ask. You and about 98% of all other Americans.
A liter is close enough to .25 gallons — in other words, there are 4 liters in a gallon.
The Brazilian Real converts to close enough to 2 Reais per dollar at the time of this writing, which is to say that a liter of gas costs around $1.40.
Multiply that by 4 liters to get a gallon, and we start getting to the very frightening and desperate conclusion that gasoline in Brazil, a country where the minimum wage of $350 per month is held by over 50% of the population costs a whole lot of money. Specifically, this means:
$5 a gallon for gasoline.
This is hella expensive, and Brazil’s condition concerning gas prices is pretty representative of most other places on the planet.
So my question to you people becomes: What the hell are you complaining about? One fewer latte per day ought to cover that. Quit your bitching.
Allow me to put it in perspective, as it was recently brought to my attention by my younger sibling: let’s say that gas prices hop to $2.80…oh wait, we’re already at $3.40…ok, that won’t work.
Speaking of which, remember when gas was about $2.80? Well, yeah. Those days are gone too.
But let’s go with this $3.40 per gallon business. That converts to $.85 a liter.
85 cents.
Those studying physics, chemistry, foreign languages or at least those of you that have already read the above tangent may already know what a liter is - for the rest of you, it’s the volume of a standard Nalgene™ bottle, or the larger Aquafina bottles with which Pepsi chooses to adorn their selected university campuses.
I have yet to hear people complain of the high cost of water, or suggest that we bomb small island nations to lower the high water costs to our own citizens. Maybe that’s because there is no OWEC (Organization of Water Exporting Countries, for anyone who missed the OPEC reference), or perhaps because that’s just silly.
You decide then, since you’re so good at voting in a president who knows what he’s doing. I digress.
What I have seen instead is people dropping a buck-twenty on a liter of water without batting an eye.
Water. $1.20.
–
Am I getting through to you? Is this starting to make sense? Because I’m still confused…
And let’s not forget that there is free tap water available in most places where you can get a liter of the precious liquid for $1.20, and that in the Bay, at least, that tap water is good stuff.
I’m not saying that oil prices are fine and people should just shut up and pump their gas. You’re paying for that oil anyway because the US is among the governments that most subsidizes oil prices. That keeps its oil addicts happy and complacent - ergo, quiet.
Nor am I offering a solution to the problem of inflated water prices (yes I am, actually - drink tap water and quit giving money to Pepsi and Coca-Cola). But if you think that gas is too expensive then consider riding the bus, walking, or biking to wherever it is that you need to go. It’s free, and 2 of the 3 options contain no MTBE.
…and if I hear an SUV owner complain I cannot be held responsible for my actions. Don’t laugh, you bastards. This is serious.
Posted in Politics, Rants | 2 Comments…