My Story

I am a 29 year old Punjabi girl, possessing a postgraduate degree in dentistry. My boyfriend was working in Uttar Pradesh (we were convincing our parents for the marriage) & I was working in New Delhi when I came across an advertisement for requirement of dentists in Saudi Arabia. The salary package they offered was comfortable (To say the least!). The interview was to be held near my home, so I and my boyfriend attended, just for the experience of an overseas interview. We had enrolled our name with overseas recruitment agency based in Delhi.

We waited in a nice five star hotel for our interview. There was a huge crowd which made me realize the number of jobless (or unhappy with their jobs) postgraduates in all fields available in India. It seemed like a cattle market packed to the brim with no place to breathe. We ended up waiting the whole day for our turn. The harried organizers repeatedly asked the crowd to maintain restraint, but they were like unrestrained bulls, butting this way and that, trying to get interviewed first. There is something in the Indian people which makes them wary of standing in queues or lines and wait for their turn. They like to develop personal contacts, jump over the rest and finish their work first. That’s the sign of a well connected, successful Indian. Democracy is just for owls!!

Most of the people in the crowd were Muslims, but I could see a fair smattering of other religions. All of us had come there with dreams of living in a developed country with a good salary package which we can remit to India (with a superb exchange rate). That was the wish list in everyone’s pocket. It was an interview for a university job in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Government jobs are considered as once in lifetime opportunities as they are secure jobs. Government university jobs are considered cushy, with relaxed working hours, good pay & lots of holidays!

The interviewer for medical sciences couldn’t come that day due to personal constraints and the organizers didn’t even know. That’s India for you!! The Arabs are used to a much, much slower style of functioning than the one we are used to in India (We got to know that later).

The organizer called us up at seven in the evening requesting for a telephonic interview with the interviewer whom he had located. That’s India for you too (Get the job done, whatever the obstacles).

We cleared the telephonic interview and got appreciated for our paper publications which were quite a few in numbers.
We got our offer letters which we could not show our parents (since we were not yet married!!). We accepted the offer like true Indians (Get the job done, whatever the obstacles!!). That was really funny, as we were neither married, now did we tell our parents that we are interested in working in a Muslim country. The story had disaster written all over it in bold, capital letters!

One good point about the offer in our current situation was that there was lot of paper work involved, and we had to join for work only after six months. So, we had six months to get the job done & have a happy ending (maybe we can call it a new beginning!!).

These six months can be collated into a whole new story like “2 states- the story of my marriage” by Chetan Bhagat. In fact there are so many similarities in our life and his story that the lines get blurred, where his story ends and our life begin. Suffice is to say that we got the wedding we wanted after all. Our parents agreed & we had a fairy tale wedding in the end of May. Now the next task was to inform our parents of the impending journey.

“Saudi Arabia….puri duniya mein ek yahi desh mila tha kaam karne ke liye??!!” (Did you get only Saudi Arabia in the whole wide world to work??!!). This was just the opening dialogue of an action movie starring my father & my just-married hubby in hero and villain roles. (You decide who the hero is & who the villain is!!). After a lot of resistance & a lot of convincing, finally he consented half-heartedly. We were also in a dilemma. Saudi Arabia does not have a very good reputation in the world as a nice place to live. Beheadings & chopping off limbs for crimes are quite common (supposedly). Women are oppressed and have no rights, whatsoever. So many bad tidings, are we really making a bad move? Are we going to land in hell with no way to get out?

Our (so called) friends delighted in telling us stories of Saudi (they had not been there, but a friend of a friend of a cousin of my wife lives there & he is the source of such information.) They confiscate god’s pictures, check portable drives, compact disks and lap tops for pornography & objectionable material. One little mistake and they throw you in Jail & play inky, pinky, ponky to decide which body parts to chop off. They grill you in an interview in immigration before allowing you inside where they really ascertain if you are man & wife. If a man is caught with a woman he is not related to be thrown in jail & castrated (…on this my hubby started!!). A woman caught with another male is flogged in a public place (Oh God!!). People should be crazy to go to Saudi Arabia for a job, especially if you are a doctor & have a nice life ahead of you in India. Why? Why? Why? Wherever we turned this was the reaction. Everyone thought we were mad & sniggered behind our back. A Brahmin Hindu couple going to a conservative Muslim country. A new variety of Hara kiri!

We endured all this & decided it’s worth a try. If we don’t like the place we won’t sign the contract and just take a plane back home. We would think of it as a really expensive vacation (minus the sightseeing!!). So, bull-headedly we stuck to our guns & said we are going. All the formalities were completed, time flew by, our visas arrived & the date to fly drew near. The news brought a fresh wrinkle. The Babri Masjid verdict was going to come out one day before we flew. Everyone predicted riots & our parents were worried we would be lynched when we step down the plane on Saudi soil.
Nerves frayed, suitcases groaning, adrenaline rushing….the day finally arrived. We boarded Saudi Arabian airlines flight to Riyadh & onward to Jazan (Jizan, Gazan), a small city in the southern coastal area of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (called K.S.A for short) bordering the Red sea. My hubby was pleasantly surprised to see air hostesses on the flight!! A conservative country where women are segregated from men and are not allowed working together. Maybe the winds of change blow through this desert too. Before takeoff there was a short prayer to Allah & words spoken by Mohammed Prophet. We landed in Riyadh expecting full body searches, luggage checking and tough immigration interviews. What actually happened was a damp Squib!! The sleepy looking guy at the counter took my husband’s finger prints, photographed him & waved us through. Females are not photographed in Saudi Arabia as it’s not considered decent & by law only the woman’s husband and blood relatives have a right of seeing her face. The process took five minutes in all!

Riyadh Airport is huge. It has twenty odd terminals, with each terminal having 5-10 gates. The number of passengers it processes is enormous, especially during Hajj (the holy pilgrimage of Muslims to visit Mecca, a revered city in the heart of K.S.A). We roamed around the international airport, our first international trip, first international job…we were on the process of becoming N.R.I’s. The term has a wonderful ring to it, with the sound of dropping coins in the background & the smell of fresh, new, crackling currency notes. All the people who are earning in dollars, pounds, dinars, dirhams, riyals…convert their money into rupees every month and turn into rajas & maharajas!!
An Indian porter came to help us & asked for ten riyals (120 Rupees for carrying luggage!!) to take the luggage to the domestic terminal. We agreed and then realized the terminal was just around the corner. What an awesome beginning. Step on foreign soil & get cheated by a fellow Indian!! We had international coffee, international French fries & international potato wedges (brand names which we had neither seen nor heard). We bought Saudi Arabian sim cards for our mobiles so that we could inform our distraught parents that we had arrived safely. The three main network connectors available are STC (government), Mobily & Zain. All three are quite good. The entire kingdom is considered as one and there is no concept of STD or local. When we as smart Indians asked for full talk time, the sales man (a tamilian) informed us that all talk times are full talk times as there is no tax. All goods sold are without government tax, even the salaries given are tax free. The advantages of living in a rich nation!! I enjoyed roaming around the international terminal with my hubby. Nice life partner, newly married, new place, good ambience, exciting times..Ah!! This is life. The connecting flight was right on time & even that had air hostesses (beautiful ones at that…I caught my husband staring twice!!) I had worn my abhaya in the Riyadh terminal and covered my hair with my dupatta. I felt depressed and bad about it for a while as it seems a repressible & abhorrent custom, but then I guess you compromise a few things in life to be happy. When in Rome, act like Romans!! When in a strange land, better blend in with the crowd. I saw a few girls travelling on the same flight who didn’t wear abhaya at all. We landed in Jizan in the night around eight o’clock. The airport is really small and the toilets were horrible. A university person was there to greet us and take us to our hotels.

The university had thoughtfully arranged hotel accommodation for a week & an advance on our salary to pay towards renting a house. The hotel was clean & decent having a nice bedroom, bathroom and a small kitchenette. Since we had smartly brought an electric cooker, rice and a lot of ready mixes we had hot, homely food for dinner. Good food is something that elevates your mood instantly, good Indian food in a foreign land is even more invigorating. That night, dinner menu was palak paneer and white rice. Technology jai ho!! The next day we set off to the university to get the paper work done. Lots of forms to fill up in duplicate & triplicate, photos to be attached & blood tests to be done. The list is exhausting and seems endless. To give credit where it’s due, the university people were very patient & extremely helpful. The whole process took us about a week to clear. By the end of a fortnight we had our iqhamas (Identity cards which are mandatory in K.S.A which should be carried at all times) & had opened a bank account. So professionally we were ready to start attending college and receive our salaries (…the latter is, of course, more important!!).

The next major job was searching a house. House brokers are available who help you in searching a house. Their fee is generally paid once you agree to take the house & draw up the rental deed. The shop keepers of small groceries & provision stores (called bakalas) are also quite helpful. We saw a lot of houses…small, big, one bedroom, two bedrooms and three bedrooms. One of them, we instantly liked and decided to rent. The university was giving us an adequate house rental allowance & a very thoughtful, much needed furnishing allowance (one time). We moved in and had a very nice time selecting appliances & furniture. What color curtains, what color sofas, matching carpets, matching quilts & bed covers. What is life without color!! This was the first time we were setting up a house together so we had lots of fun!! We discovered a market called the Asian/ Bangladeshi market (here markets are called souks) where cutlery, consumables & other household items are available for good prices. My favorite is a one riyal store (Everything available for 1 SAR)!! We got news that the King of Saudi Arabia his highness Abdullah (as he is popularly called) had granted a gift of four air conditioners to each staff that had joined Jizan University for this year. Long live his highness & may his reign never end!! There is a saying that suites here “Bagwan jab deta hai, to chappad phad ke deta hai”!! Finally, we were settled into a cosy, nice house.

A lot of my friends ask me, “How is life in Saudi Arabia for a girl, especially a Hindu??”
Let me describe the life style. Arabians are used to a strict, segregated lifestyle where men & women are rarely in contact in work as well as in pleasure. Therefore all restaurants, shops, banks, offices, colleges & supermarkets have a family section and a male section. If sections are not present then they have differing timings for the same. Males unaccompanied by a female are considered bachelors irrespective of their marital status. Family and females are given supreme importance, in queues, waiting areas, airports; banks etc. Females have to wear burkha or abhaya (a black, full length, loose gown worn on top of your clothes) and cover head with a scarf. But some women additionally wear a nosepiece or nakab (a face cover that only exposes eyes) but that is a personal preference. Apart from this, the freedom a female enjoys is entirely based on her father or husband. It is a strict patriarchal society with little say for the female. She can’t travel unaccompanied by male relatives anywhere outside cities, through the country. She is not allowed to drive a car. A divorced woman is anathema & looked down upon. Therefore in order to have a nice life in K.S.A you need a good life partner.

The description about Arabic life style without describing Arabic males will be an injustice. The males wear their traditional ankle length white gown (Tog), under which they wear a normal kurta pyjama, nice stone studded watches and cufflings. Most of them wear differently styled flat slippers and cover their head with a white and red checked cloth (sometimes plain white also) with two black colored head sized rings stabilizing it.

Life in Saudia (as a lot of people call it) is centered on Allah & prayer. The day is divided based on prayer times which are five everyday (Fazhr, Zohr, Asar, Magrib & Isha). Prayer alerts are sent as sms over the phone!! Life, shopping, eating out, roaming around mainly starts after the evening last prayer (Isha salah) at around seven thirty and continues up to one o ‘clock in the late night (or early morning). The place is very safe and chain snatching, pick pockets, thievery is unheard off. Ladies and couples are seen roaming around at midnight without any fear. The police and judiciary are extremely effective & swift, getting caught in a crime often means severe punishment. They believe in the proverb, “An eye for an eye.” Smaller crimes may be punished with cutting off hands while murder might invite beheading. Therefore crime is a relatively rare phenomenon in the gulf region. The religious police (Muttawa) are a controversial part of Saudia. They enforce salah & sometimes are known to check identity cards to ascertain unrelated men & women are not moving together. We have often seen them moving in a police vehicle in the streets around prayer time shouting, “Salaah!! Salaah!!” All shops have to be closed for prayer time, no excuses. Supermarkets shut down during prayer times with people still present inside. When it occurs the first time in your life it is a disturbing experience (later you get used to it).

But for an Indian who goes there for a white collar job, it is a very nice place. Arabs by nature are courteous & friendly. Since they are a rich country, greed and a mentality of making money in everything are relatively much less. The people are friendly & sometimes go out of their way to help a family in need. We have seen unknown good Samaritans offer spontaneous help to get our work done. Safety is not at all an issue in Saudia. It is difficult for single girls to work and travel very late in India, but here you would find many single girls working as nurses, doctors & dentists. Language is the major problem faced by Indians in Saudia as Arabs understand only Arabic (English is rudimentary & often not understood). Signs & symbols and a smattering of local words picked up in daily conversations often works wonders!! The climate is hot & harsh, but air conditioners are available dime a dozen. All shops including barbers, tailors, and small coffee shops are air conditioned. Electricity is also cheap, in fact three a/c’s running full time for one family will get an electricity bill of about 80 to 100 SAR a month (that’s about 1200 INR). If u run three a/c’s all the time in India (provided there is uninterrupted electricity, of course!!), I shudder to think how many zeros the electricity bill will have (They will most probably have to attach an extra sheet just to write the figure!!). The only places where I did not see air conditioners were the metal, plastic workshops & car repair garages.
The common hi-tech things seen on every table in the university (Unlike Indian government office tables with filled ash trays, files scattered all over!!) includes an automatic stapler, stapler pin remover, hand sanitizers and tissue box. Every building has a prayer room and buffet room and every room has a water dispenser, from where they get hot water to make their hot black tea. Tea without milk is like… If you want it with milk you might not find it the way it is made in India. Here it is prepared with condensed milk, which gives a totally different, queer taste to it. To expect it with elaichi & ginger is like expecting the moon!! I have not gone so far in speaking Arabic language to ask for all of these additions to my tea. (Easy solution – Prepare it at home!!).

The stationary available needs to be seen to believe. It’s not only hi- tech, but also quite decorative and attractive.
Universities like all government and private offices follow the five day week, with holidays on Thursday & Friday. Major festivals are Eid-ul-zuha in mid-September & Eid-ul-fitr in mid-November, for which they have two weeks of vacation. The annual vacation is in July-August consisting of two months holidays and a ticket to the person employed and his family to fly home. The working style is extremely relaxed compared to the hustle & bustle in India. We would like to use our holidays for some nice exotic international destinations. The European continent, Africa, Egypt, Jordan, Dubai are some places closer to the gulf countries so these are on my must see list (International holidays are anyway a thing to dream about on an Indian pay cheque!!).

The Arabic script is written from right to left unlike the English or the Hindi script which is left to right. The hilarious thing we saw was that the stapler pins were also placed on the right hand top margin of the page!! Students write from the last page (our last, their first) in books. Another funny scene is when we have interdepartmental meetings in the college or the University. The dean informs us about something like, “The internet connection will come up soon” & says Inshallah (If Allah wills) and we all dutifully (like school students repeat teacher’s words) repeat, “Inshallah!!” Everything spoken with a reference of the future is automatically followed with Inshallah. The plumber might come today, Inshallah!! We will get our salary tomorrow, Inshallah!! Will you be coming to college tomorrow?? Inshallah!!
International work involving two governments like India & Saudi Arabia (Visa processing, Passport procedures etc.) have to be done much in advance as they take time. India goes on weekends on Saturday and Sunday, Arabia goes on weekends on Thursday & Friday, and the only working days remaining are Monday through Wednesday!!
The students are divided into males & females and segregated. . Male teachers rarely take classes for females and if they happen to take it, they teach the black gown wearing females covered fully from head to toe, with just eyes popping out (So easy to yawn and make faces behind that nosepiece!!). The whole campus is divided into two sections, two of everything: labs, clinics, lecture halls even cafeterias!! Students are basically smart & jovial in nature. They get doubts mostly in English as a language and are slow in uptake as they are introduced to English only in college. Here all professional courses are one year longer as they need a preparatory year of English & basic sciences. Islamic studies & Arabian writing is by law to be part of every semester. Exams are usually multiple choice questions (MCQ’s), fill in the blanks, true/ false & match the following. Long essays are avoided as they are difficult for the student to write (and much more difficult for the teachers to read!!). The students here are also relaxed and work at a leisurely pace. They do not believe in taking notes. At the end of a class, usually students will walk up to you and request for the data to be given in a compact disc (CD) or a pen drive!!

Classes are fun as they go something like this:
Teacher (me): “A dentist has a duty and responsibility to behave well with patients.”
Student: “Duktoor, what is meaning of duty, responsibility….I not understand.”
The girls bleach their eyebrows and then draw them with a black marker to make them look perfect!! Make up seems to be the national past-time as all girls come dressed and prepared as if they are coming to a wedding or a ball dance. Gowns, pants, jeans are commonly worn under the abhaya & beautifully embroidered, colorful gowns are available in all the cloth stores. My hands itch to buy the low cut, shoulder strap gowns but sadly one has to have an hourglass figure to wear them. The beauty parlors are difficult to spot as neither are they colorful nor is the language understandable (sign boards are rarely in English!!). I tried a parlor and ended up paying 100 SAR (that’s 1200 INR) for a badly done facial. My friend got a hair cut & it was done well. Saudi parlors are best avoided, Pakistani parlors are said to be better, but I am yet to find one. The best grooming advice I would prefer to give someone coming here is to become proficient in eye brow shaping with a plucker & thread!

Medical facilities are in general better than in India. They use german medicines which are more effective. The doctors are invariably Indians, so talking to them is easy. The availability of specialists depends upon the place & its development. Riyadh, Jeddah & Dammam have many multi-specialty hospitals. Smaller towns might not have so much of choice. The main area of concern is that in the smaller cities the gynecologists are also male (which is obviously very embarrassing for the Indian women!!) Many Indian schools are available all over the kingdom. Indian embassy schools are usually good and they cannot deny admission citing full strength. The variety of choice again depends on the city & region. Segregation of students into males & females is present in schools. Condoms are available in pharmacy shops, I had read somewhere in the net that they are banned so we had taken a huge stock with us. (The clerk in the store in India where we bought them looked at us with jealousy. He would have thought, “Lucky guys, they do it all the time!!”)

The most surprising aspect is the wide, superb roads and the cars zooming at one twenty kilometers per hour inside the city. The Arabs call ten cars waiting for a traffic light to turn green, a traffic jam!! Wonder what will be their state if they have to drive in India, they will pull their hair apart in clumps & go mad. They have a lot of malls dotting the whole country. Luxury items, electronics & cosmetics are cheaper than in India. The quality & variety of consumables like milk & milk products, juice, bakery items and confectionaries have to be seen to be believed. Even eggs come with an expiry date!! Once food stuff cross the expiry date, they are disposed off immediately. The amount of plastic waste is enormous. The gulf countries can be called everything except being eco-friendly!

The other day a few Indian families went to the beach. The first thing we noticed was the absence of crowds. Beaches in India are so crowded you will be lucky to catch sight of water. Here beaches are practically empty. If you have still not understood what Saudia is all about, here comes the punch line. Even the beaches have a family section & a bachelor section!! The bachelor section has showers put up every few meters to wash off the salt water after swimming. The ladies predictably wear burkas even on the beach!! Many nice beach umbrellas in the shape of mushrooms, palm trees & pyramids are available with a circular table and seats for having a picnic!! The water is pure & sparkling and the sand is garbage free. We all had a huge picnic which we call the one dish party (every family prepares one dish of their choice). You will have a real good time if you live with a lot of Indians as get-togethers, dinners, picnics; festival celebrations reduce your longing for home.

Getting good paneer (Indian cottage cheese) is another interesting story. The super markets have a wide variety in cheese like falafel, feta, Naboulsi, Egyptian, mousli and some other unpronounceable, tongue twisters for names. Most of them are extremely salty. A lot of them have the consistency of cream (maybe it is used as a spread for sandwiches). After intensive research, we discovered that naboulsi cheese comes close to Indian paneer (if you adjust for the high salt content).

We set out to roam the city. Here nobody walks, everybody uses a car. Motorbikes are just for adolescent young men, who ride it for thrills. When we walk on the roads, people look at us curiously!! But I have a theory that the best way to roam around a city is to explore it on foot. We packed food from a Pakistani hotel, the hotel had a big hall covered with a carpet having arm rests (cushions) just thrown around. Along with the food you will be given a big plastic sheet (daster) that is supposed to be placed on the carpet to collect spillage and thrown away with it. A lot of Pakistanis serve as cabbies here….and their language resembles Punjabis & Sikhs in India!! The language is so similar that for a moment you are taken aback, “what a Sikh, without a turban, is doing in a predominantly Muslim country. It’s strange that back home, the same set of people kill each other in the name of religion & nationality. The Pakistani food was very cheap and yummy. It tastes exactly like food from a north Indian restaurant in New Delhi!! Since we are vegetarians, the choice of dishes available is quite limited, but non vegetarians will feel they have entered paradise. The variety, quality & price of meat, poultry and fish products in stores & restaurants are amazing.
Today on the way to college our iqhamas (identity cards) were checked. The policemen are quite thorough matching the individuals face with that on the identity cards. The photo for the identity cards is not the one you submit with the forms but the one taken (for males only) on your first entry into the country. Carrying the iqhama (copies are not accepted, the original must be with you at all times) is a must & people found without it are detained until a friend or relative gets the iqhama for you. Losing your iqhama and making a new one invites a heavy monetary penalty. Travelling without an iqhama is considered an offence punishable under Saudi law. It is said that Saudi women are not allowed to travel beyond city limits without a male companion. It is mandatory that they travel with a male relative & if caught the cabbie or the person driving the car also falls into trouble.

Saudi Arabia is also moving towards modernity in thought and a less restrictive lifestyle. I always thought that the segregation of sexes is an abhorrent practice. But, here when I and my husband roam around a beach or a mall or a park any time in the day or late at night, we get a feeling that’s a little difficult to get in India. We feel safer here!! Groups of males sit apart from areas marked for families. Sometimes (especially weekends) unaccompanied males are not allowed in food courts & malls. Since alcohol is banned drunkenness & disorderly conduct is unheard of. Men generally avoid looking or talking about women on the streets as a complaint of harassment from women is taken seriously. These are not signs of a repressed society; in fact they are signs of a safe one.

If you are somebody who likes to let their hair down & paint the neighborhood red..this is not the place for you. This is not the place for clubbing, hip hopping, rocking and wild partying. But, for a couple who find ways of having fun (without barfing every time just to prove you had a blast) its home. Here you have time on your hands and people who want to keep moving might find the speed of life very slow. There are no movie halls, so the only movies you watch are on television (a channel called Zee Aflam, shows only bollywood movies….sometimes the voice is dubbed in Arabic – minus love making scenes!!).

Even the azaan (call for prayer) & prayer timings don’t feel uncomfortable once you get used to it (after all, praying five times a day is not exactly bad…as long as you are not forced to do it). Crime is said to be lesser than in India. Policing seems effective and the place appears safer. A lot of places are more deserted than what we get to see in India, but then even there we have seen police cars on patrol. Tales of rape, robbery or kidnapping are very rare. Whether that is because of repression of the media or less of crime is a point for the conspiracy theorists.
All in all, if you ask me, it’s not a bad place to live in for a few years, earn good money & enjoy a luxurious lifestyle. Maybe, after reading my story you might also agree.

Arundhathi

 

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