Brainscrubber

Did you know you have to buy groceries in Saudi Arabia just like you do in San Diego or Biloxi or Southampton?

Indeed, it is necessary to acquire food, dish soap, and toilet paper if one expects to maintain some semblance of normality. While there exist hundreds, if not thousands, of little neighborhood stores and miniature supermarkets, there exist five primary choices (six if you include newly arrived Danube) for grocery shopping in Riyadh.

Closest to where I live is Carrefoure, a French store modeled after the Wal-Mart Supercenters taking over the American landscape. Half the store contains normal grocery items, while the other half contains things one would normally purchase at a department store. It’s possible to buy bananas, berries, and ice cream, as well as a blender you can take home and use to make milkshakes – all in the same trip. Carrefoure is a major source of grocery purchases for both Saudis and expatriates. The store offers primarily European brands, but includes a spattering of American and Asian brands. Their primary selling point is convenience. There are at least five in Riyadh, all of which are convenient to a freeway, making it easy to stop on the way back to one’s house or apartment. I’d estimate (and I have no numbers to back this up) Carrefoure owns the majority of the market share in this city of 5 million.

Close on the heels of the French grocers comes Panda and HyperPanda. Of indeterminate international ownership (they may be Saudi in origin for all I know), Pandas are purely grocery stores, while the HyperPandas are of the same supercenter construction and layout of Carrefoure. Again, they offer primarily European brands, and they, too, offer easy access via major freeways. Most notable is the fact that, because there is no letter “P” in Arabic, the name is actually spelled with the corresponding “B” character. So, the literal translation is Banda.

If a shopper is looking for American brands, the primary source is Tamimi, formerly Safeway. Tamimi is a prominent Saudi family name, and Safeway changed its name a few years ago to reflect a growing need to reflect Saudi ownership. The stores are pure grocery stores, offering both European and American brands. But, pure and simple, they offer the widest selection of American brands available to shoppers in Riyadh. In particular, Tamimi has been the only consistent source of American frozen foods, which, good or bad, is a selling point when it comes to convenient food preparation. Unlike the two previously mentioned store chains, Tamimi is more neighborhood oriented and found deeper into the city. As far as I know, there is only one Tamimi available with freeway access. I pretty well split my shopping between Tamimi and Carrefoure.

Two other supermarkets deserve mention. Though much smaller, Othaim and Halwani markets offer a large presence in the city. They’re pure grocery stores, and they can be found both next to freeways and deep within the residential areas of Riyadh. One more to mention is the newly arrived Danube, found within the newly built Hayat Mall. Danube is an upscale supercenter, offering high quality durable goods, as well as both European and American food items. Danube offers nearly as many American brands as does Tamimi, but is not nearly as convenient to get to on the way to the house.

While this may be normal to some folks, I find it novel how they handle produce here in Riyadh. Here, the shopper selects and bags their produce. Then, they take it to a kiosk within the produce section, where the bag is sealed – the produce weighed – and a price label is placed on the bag. The checker simply scans the label. Tamimi was the last hold out where the checker was required to know price of each item; but even they have begun to convert their produce sections.

Long gone are the souqs where one would buy spices, meats, and other goods. I’m sure they may exist to some degree. It’s possible to find individuals selling spices and fruit on the sidewalk in front of stores. On the whole, though, the romanticized image of the spice souq is gone. The 21st Century exists even in Riyadh. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Copyright, Greg Hubbard, 2007.

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In the early part of the 20th Century, T.E. Lawrence got the news from his native Britain only when he happened across a newspaper that had found its way to the Middle East – probably only when he found his way back to a British military stronghold, such as Cairo in Egypt…maybe a letter that had found its way from home to him after 3-4 months. By the mid-20th Century, when Wilfred Thesiger explored the Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia, choices for news had expanded to include the broadcasts from the BBC World Service – the key news service for Europeans and Americans in much of the non-Western world. Today, not only is there a wide selection of news channels available to anyone with a satellite dish (and even the Bedouin deep in the desert have satellite dishes), but the Internet provides immediate news feeds from just about any country, in just about any language.

The BBC World Service still exists, both on shortwave radio and the Internet. This legendary news service provides a decidedly British perspective on events around the world, and it can be counted on to be up-to-date and expansive in its coverage. The same can be said of the BBC News website. I check this site daily, not only for news I might not get on American sites, but also for English Premiership news – of which I have become a serious fan. Additionally, BBC News boasts a very professional television news channel via satellite, providing general daily news, as well as in-depth news articles and celebrity profiles.

The two main standbys for news from an American-centric perspective are pretty much what one would expect: CNN and Fox News. I check CNN daily and Fox News 2-3 times per week. Both sites disappoint me. They focus so much on the United States (particularly Fox News) that important international stories, excluding major events such as the bombings that welcomed Benazir Bhutto back to Pakistan today, are seldom highlighted if reported at all. I certainly want to know what is going on in the United States, but there is a world outside of North America, and much of what occurs in other parts of the world has a direct affect on the daily lives of Americans. We’re just so well insulated from these events by the major news organs that we rarely are aware of what is going on elsewhere – unless it serves the purposes of the U.S. Government or American business interests to bring such events to the forefront of news coverage.

CNN International, headquartered in Hong Kong, is available as a satellite channel and offers similar fare to the BBC News channel. I check the channel about 3 or 4 times a month. I’ve seen no such satellite presence by Fox News.

For me, the most surprising find in quality journalism is Al-Jazeera English. This independent news service out of Qatar, unfairly derided by the American and British governments as a mouthpiece of Al-Qaeda, is the most even handed news service available in the Middle East. Yes, it retains a decidedly Arab perspective; but how is that different from the British perspective of the BBC or the American perspective of CNN and Fox News? The government in Qatar allows Al-Jazeera free rein in how it handles news, and it jabs sticks at the Islamists as much as it pokes at some of the more unsavory aspects of Western foreign policy. Some of the most critical news coverage of Palestinian activities has come from Al-Jazeera. Their coverage of the current crackdown in Myanmar is worthy of note, and their level of coverage of Africa is not found in most Western news services. One of the things I like best about their television coverage, which is available in both English and Arabic via satellite, is its raw nature. They don’t spend a lot of time editing their news feeds, and they quite often provide satellite feeds as the events are unfolding. This was true of the recent conflicts between Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army, as well as in the “civil war” between Hamas and Fattah in the Occupied Territories. I watched live feeds of shelling in the case of the former, while I watched a tense 2-hour feed involving 20-30 Arab journalists penned down in a Gaza apartment. In neither case did the news coverage break for an Ensure commercial. I normally check the web site 4-5 times a week, the television service at least once a week.

If you’re in the Middle East, it is impossible not to see news related to Israel. While not all of the news is as negative toward Israel as one might expect, there is a lot that is terribly negative – usually of the Zionist This and Zionist That variety. For me, the best place to get the Israeli perspective is from Haaretz. I started reading Haaretz a few years ago, when it was recommended by a Jewish friend who diligently keeps up on news from Israel. Haaretz offers a balanced view of internal Israeli events, including some of the more radically liberal voices in the country. I generally check this site 3-4 times per month. Probably the most surprising thing for me is that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia does NOT block Haaretz, and it is available to the population at large.

Often I just want a news feed without all the banners and popups found on many of the primary news sites. Google News is one source, but my preferred site is Yahoo! News. The layout is simpler and more straight forward, at least to me. Your mileage may vary. I check Yahoo! News daily. Another pretty good source for straight news in is Reuters. Though the web site slants more toward business news, there is good coverage of general news, and the Odd News section provides some of the more entertaining news items available on the Internet. For straight business news, albeit from a very conservative slant, it’s hard to beat Business Week. This free site provides in-depth coverage of subjects affecting both businesses and consumers. While decidedly pro-business, on the whole, the journalism is solid and fact based.

The French have jumped into the fray with a 24-hour news channel, available via satellite, in both French and English. I have not viewed this site a lot, but it has the same look and feel as CNN and BBC News.

I have to mention The Drudge Report, a pseudo news site run by yellow journalist Matt Drudge – often serving as a mouthpiece for the Republican Party. I don’t have much use for Drudge’s muckraking style (he never met a scandal he didn’t want to create), but his site is an excellent portal to scores of news sites around the world, as well as an outstanding selection of columnists representing both conservative and liberal points of view.

Probably the most important source of news, though, is email. While email may not usually provide in-depth coverage of global warming or Gore gouging, it lets us know the little things that are going on with our friends and family. Let’s face it – most of us are pretty self-involved most of the time, and the news that really matters to us is about our kids, our grandchildren, our siblings and parents, boyfriends or girlfriends, or our wives or husbands. The immediacy of email can’t be beat, and the ability to get pictures of a newborn grandchild, nephew, or niece is an anchor for which I, and many other expatriates, are thankful. The technical, insular world of computers and the Internet isn’t all bad.

Copyright, Greg Hubbard, 2007.

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Currently, I am enrolled in an Arabic language class at Imam University here in Riyadh. I’d link the university web site; but it’s in Arabic and unintelligible to most folks reading this blog. Notice the picture of the mosque on the right-hand side of the page. I walk out the front door of my apartment building, look to the right, and get a shot of that pair of minarets and that dome each day. The university, considered one of the top-notch Islamic universities in the world, is located right across the freeway from the compound in which I live. Over 20,000 students attend classes there each term.

When I first determined I would be coming to Riyadh, I set up a Google news alert for Riyadh. Back in June, one of those alerts hit my inbox, and I noticed a tidbit about a class in Arabic being offered for Westerners who work in the Kingdom. I enlisted the aid of an Arabic co-worker, and he called the Institute of Arabic Teaching (one of the branches of the university) to determine what was needed to enroll. In the meantime, I began asking around work to see if anyone else was interested in taking the course. I found nearly 11 individuals with an interest, so I – with the help of my Arab friend – set things in motion to get the proper enrollment forms, requirements, and other miscellaneous information.

The enrollment process is reflective of some of the issues faced by the several million alien residents residing and working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. First, it is impossible to accomplish some tasks successfully without the use of Arabic. Sure, enough folks speak English to get some things done, but it is impossible to know what is actually going on when conducting business without at least a basic understanding of the language. Often, as I did, it is better to hire a trusted friend to conduct business of this nature in one’s stead. I paid 200SAR to a friend (his time is worth something)who took care of all of the administrative minutiae for all the interested parties, and it proved to be money well spent. Everything went smoothly, and my friend even guided us to the proper building, as well as the office of the Institute’s director.

A few folks lost interest along the way, and a couple of others balked at some of the entry requirements. For example, it was necessary to have a letter from our “sponsor” stating that we had permission to attend the classes. There is something demeaning in being an adult who’s made up his own mind for for nearly 30 years having to ask permission to attend a life enrichment class. Still, though, sometimes it is necessary to swallow a little pride to accomplish a desired task. Probably the most bothersome issue for potential enrollees was the necessity of providing a copy of one’s iqama, along with five photos. Fear of location by extremists who might be attending the school surfaced. The school’s largest college teaches Islamic theology and Sharia legal instruction. Without a doubt some of the individuals there regard Westerners as a blight on the Kingdom. On the other hand, there are a lot of students who are there simply to attend school. So far, I’ve found such concerns to be misplaced paranoia; although it is important be careful how, and when, such information is dispensed.

For others, the cost of the course proved an issue. Most of us send the bulk of our money home to our wives, keeping a monthly allotment for our own use. Some keep more than others, and others keep a lot less than some. The initially quoted price was 600SAR, which is about $160. We hit upon a bit of luck with regard to the price, however. The Institute of Arabic Teaching named a new director, a genial fellow with a good handle on English (he taught in the US), who decided to cut the price in half for this term, as well as to extend the length of the term from 8 weeks to 14 weeks (28 class sessions). When we showed up to take the required placement exam, the director told us that, based on what he knew of our backgrounds, we could skip the exam and just enroll in the Level One class. We agreed and did not take the exam.

The make-up of our class is one of the elements that I enjoy the most. We are comprised of 7 or so Americans (amerikee), several Hindis, several Pakistanis, two African (africanee) diplomats, at least one Indonesian (indoneesee) doctor, and a few more from other countries of southern and southeastern Asia. A few of us are managers (madeer), while a larger group work as engineers (mohindis). The vast majority of the students have an informal understanding of spoken Arabic – mostly colloquial – and little or no written skills. However, they are at a distinct advantage when conversing with the teacher (mu’allim). One of the disconcerting facts we Westerners face, particularly we Americans, is that the Arabic word for university student is talib. To make it plural, as in speaking of all the students in the class, one adds -an to the root word. Therefore, we students, as a group, are taliban. Talk about a word getting twisted around in its use.

The class is an immersion class. The teacher uses English only to clarify terms that cannot be made clear using context or pointing to items. This fact creates quite an intense presentation of the materials. There is absolutely no way to drift off into a daydream without coming back to reality lost as hell and unsure how to catch up. Couple that with the fact the teacher calls on students randomly, and it is paramount that everyone pay close attention.

The teacher is a good-natured fellow named Turki who is probably in his early 30s. He is very patient with the Americans. We have had little exposure to using the language, and he knows that. I knew the alphabet and phonetic sounds before I started the class, and that has helped me immensely. Unfortunately, that hasn’t helped me a lot when we start declining nouns or conjugating verbs. Through it all, he slows down a little and coaches and coaxes us to the right word or pronunciation.

There is no way to really do well in the class without doing a fair amount of outside study. We’re out of class for the next 2 1/2 weeks due to the end of Ramadan and the Eid vacation that follows. I, for one, am using this time to solidify some of the information that’s been thrown our way over the last several sessions. This has now become one of my biggest academic challenges ever, and I refuse to surrender to the intermittent thoughts of chucking it all and relaxing in the evenings instead of doing homework and attending class. A challenge is good for the soul.

Copyright, Greg Hubbard, 2007.

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