Category Personal

Back from Beirut

The good news is: my presentation did not end up in a disaster. The bad news is: I did not have time to see the city. But overall it was a good trip: I met many great people and I have had fun.

On the first day we attended the 2nd Gebran Tueni Award ceremony, a big event witnessed by hundreds of dignitaries and guests. We enjoyed touching speeches by Nayla Tueni, Majida Al Roumi and others, and I was especially moved by Majida speech which demonstrated the anger and frustration of Lebanese people with the current political deadlock. The award was given this year to Michel Hajji Georgiou, a senior political analyst at the French-language daily L’Orient-Le Jour in Lebanon. He told us during the dinner party that night the he had to sell his car because he has been afraid of being assassinated by the pro-Syrian elements.

Except for one Saudi guy working for the LBC and has been living in Beirut since 1994, I was the only participant from Saudi Arabia and the GCC. Interestingly, many people came to me after the panel and said they could not believe that I was Saudi. I can tell that many in the Arab World have a certain stereotype for the citizens of this country. Anyways, I’m really glad that the session turned out to be fine and that many people liked it.

As I said earlier, I did not have enough time to go out and enjoy the different parts of the city, but I got to hang out with friends in Al Hamra, have breakfast by the Rawsha rock, and had a walk in Ashrafia and Solider. Beirut is a beautiful city, but because it has gone through a lot, it looks bruised and tired. I suspect that tourists would enjoy seeing the army everywhere searching their bags and asking them to stop taking pictures of the city’s landmarks. Let’s hope things would get better before the summer season.

Finally, I want to thank the organizers for inviting me to be part of this event and I hope to see them again in Beirut next year. I also want to thank fellow bloggers Wael Abbas and Mohammed Azraq, as well as Mahmoud Abdelfattah, the best moderator ever :-) Last but not least, I want to thank Alexandra, Hala, Maha, Mustapha, Sherif, Yumna, Rana, Zina, Adel, Virginie, Fadwa, and all those who made my first visit to Lebanon fun but I forgot their names.

P.S. The first picture is inspired by Roba.

Off to Beirut

Next Saturday I will be flying to Beirut, Lebanon to participate at the 2nd Arab Free Press Forum, a media conference organized by the World Association of Newspapers and An-Nahar daily. The conference will provide an overview of the latest press developments in the Arab world, from obstructive government policies, to case studies of newspapers that combine editorial independence with commercial success, to the rise of blogging and the role blogs play on the Arab media scene of today.

I will be speaking on the second day of the conference on a discussion panel titled “Blogs, an Alternative Way of Telling the News.” I’m humbled to be joined on the panel by Egyptian A-list blogger Wael Abbas, Jordanian blogger Mohammed Azraq, and Wadih Tueni, IT Manager of An-Nahar. The panel is moderated by Egyptian human rights lawyer Mohammed Abdelfattah.

It will be my first time to speak in a conference so I’m excited and nervous but I’m also looking forward to it. I hope I will be able to update the blog from Beirut, but I read that using the internet in Lebanese hotels is outrageously expensive. If any of you will be in Beirut at the same time and would like to meet up, drop me a line and we will see if we can pull something off.

Why Banks Suck?

Let’s say you are a twenty-something Saudi guy who happens to have an account with Riyad Bank, which doesn’t shy away from describing itself as “your bank” when for the most of time it’s not. It is your first and only account and you have been actively using it for the past four years mainly for the university’s monthly reward, hopelessly trying to convince yourself that putting that 990 riyals in a bank account instead of your wallet would make you spend them slower. Alas, with the high cost of living on your own in a city like Riyadh you always find yourself struggle to make it through the month.

So one day you want to go to Panda to buy some groceries but you realize you are out of cash so you decide to stop by an ATM machine on the way to the supermarket. You try to withdraw some money, and before you know it the machine rejects your card because it has expired. You look at the card and it’s true: it’s expired a few days ago. “Nothing is forever, I guess,” you say trying to console yourself.

The next day you go to the bank branch on Takhassosi St only to find it closed for prayer. You wait, and wait and wait, all while you curse this retarded tradition that clearly shows how no one in this country respects time, silently of course, because you don’t want anyone of those waiting with you to take offense at what you’ve been telling yourself. After more than one hour the bank was ready to open its door again and people storm in. You take your number and when your turn comes you go and tell the bank clerk that your ATM card has expired and you have not received a replacement.

“Are you sure? Have you checked your mail recently?” the clerk asks you. Yes, you have been checking your mail box everyday for as long as you can remember and, surprise surprise, your new ATM card was no where to be found. “I would really like to help you,” he says, “but the device for issuing new cards is broken so you need to come back tomorrow and I will be glad to give you a replacement card tomorrow.” You try to believe the man although you are still not sure if the smile on his face is fake or not.

“So there is no way I can get the ATM card today? Because I kind of need it, because, you know, a boy’s gotta eat.” He says you probably can if you have enough time to go to another branch. You fly to another branch, the one in Raed district, and you sit at the disk of another clerk, but this time with no smile, genuine or fake. You repeat what has become a boring story by now. The clerk does not seem impressed nor interested. “Look, you need to call the bank phone service and ask them to reissue your card and it will take a few days before you receive it, or you can get it right now if you were willing to pay the SR 100 fine,” he firmly says as if to tell you: get off my back you stupid customer with a tiny account we won’t give two sh*ts if we lose two hundred accounts like it.

“It’s not as if I received this card and then lost it,” you say, “so why should I pay SR 100 to replace something I have not received in the first place?” Because that’s how the bank system was designed, you are told. Since the guy in the Takhassosi branch said nothing about paying money to have your card reissued you decide you are going to wait until tomorrow. You go there and you wait; another wasted hour of your life that no one cares about. It’s your turn finally, excited you go to the same clerk you met yesterday, and this time you are quite sure the smile he is hanging up his mouth is clearly fake.

He starts doing the paper work in order to reissue your card, and minutes later he gives you the papers to sign them, but before you do that he says in a rather apologetic voice, “but the bank has to charge you SR 100 for this process.” You tell him what you have told his colleague yesterday: “why should I pay SR 100 to replace something I have not received in the first place?” and he gives an answer similar to his colleague’s that you hoped you would forget his face by that time.

This makes you angry, but being the polite person that you are, you say nothing and you think you would just pay them the money and get it over with. Suddenly you have an idea, so you ask the guy to wait for a moment. You take your mobile phone out and call a relative who happens to be a manager for another branch of the same bank in a different city. You tell him a short version of the story and he quickly advises you to ask to meet the branch manager. You do that, and the clerk does not look pleased with your request. “The manager’s office is upstairs,” he says.

You go upstairs and find the manager standing outside his office saying goodbye to what looks like a ‘hamoor.’ He asks you if there was a problem, and you tell him there is one. He listens, he smiles, he signs at the top left corner of your papers and tells you to go and tell the guy downstairs that you don’t need to pay nothing. The whole thing took less than five seconds. Again, the guy does not look pleased but this time he doesn’t seem to have much of a choice. He tells you to wait for a moment. You go to to sit down in the waiting area and you realize he wants to make you wait just to make you feel that he is still in charge and he can control your financial destiny no matter what his manager says.

After more than half an hour of waiting you finally receive your new ATM card, but by that time you have started to ask yourself if you really had to go through all that hassle. Was it worth it? You are not sure if you want to continue doing business with them but for some unexplained reasons you decide to give them what seems like an undeserved second chance.

Donuts and Pretzels

It was Dotsson who first reported that Krispy Kreme has finally arrived to Saudi Arabia, and now Mochness has the first review after getting a chance to try their donuts before the grand opening which is expected on the first day of Eid al Fitr. I had my first Krispy Kreme donut on my last night in Washington DC. We were like: “we ain’t leave DC without eating them!” But the thing that I really wanted to try while I was in the States was pretzels. Sara Dickerman in Slate says she is surprised by how little respect pretzels get in the snack-food world. I had a chance to try pretzels in New York and I have a picture to prove it! Now I need to know if there is a place in Riyadh that makes good pretzels.

eating pretzels

Thoughts on America

Upon my return from the United States, and even during my trip, this was one of the most frequently asked questions: What surprised you the most about America? My answer was always: nothing. Sorry to disappoint you guys, but there was no major surprising findings for me during the two weeks I spent there.

I’m not a big fan of Thomas Friedman, but probably he was actually onto something when he said the world is flat. Thanks to satellite television and the internet, we have been exposed to the American culture and lifestyle for a long time. Of course, many Americans say mainstream media misrepresent them: the boy doesn’t always marry the girl, and the likes of John McClane usually die. But I think that consumers of media around the world have come to learn not to take everything offered to them as facts.

As soon as I arrived to Washington DC I received a copy of the program schedule and was taken aback by the number of meetings. In general, the meetings were good and thought stimulating, but I honestly was not used to this kind of intensive 8-to-4 days of consecutive meetings. And with this kind of schedule, we had little time left to do other things such as discovering different parts of the city and going for sightseeing. Nevertheless, we visited some parts of the Smithsonian, had some fun in the Black Family Reunion, and I had dinner with Jordanian blogger Natasha Twal Tynes as well as some American friends who used to work in Saudi Arabia.

My favoutie discussion out of all the meetings in DC was about federalism and government system in the States. The individual is the most important element of this system and individualism as a value is highly regarded and protected. This may sound contrary to the conventional wisdom in this part of the world where conformity is the norm and any leaning to being different is frowned upon, but I think the goal of any system should be to find a delicate sustained balance between the interests of the individual and the interests of the whole. The maintenance of this balance is the responsibility of the different branches of government which should be independent and transparent.

Also of interest to me is how the system was designed to minimize the interference of the government in citizens’ lives. This might also be a little bizarre to people in our country where the government is very large to a degree that it has become hard to make it functional anymore.

After five days in Washington DC, we flew to Montana. It was a long trip and we had to change planes at Chicago, but after arriving to Bozeman we realized it was going to be very different. Montana is considered a rural state with a small population, and none of the people we met in DC knew much about it. The pace of life there is painfully slow and boring, and due to the fact that the population is dominantly white (~ 97%) we were stared at wherever we went. The reason why it was picked is the presence of six Indian reservations there. We met a native American scholar in the state university to talk more about that, and the conclusion is that there is more to do on both sides: the Indians and the government.

Montana was boring, except for the day we spent at Yellowstone National Park. I always wanted to go to a place like that, where nature remains unaffected by the pollution and fakery of modern life. One day is absolutely not enough to see much of the wonders of that place, but I’m extremely glad we had the opportunity to make it.

So five days were kind of a kill for a state like Montana, but we managed and we were ready to fly again. This time, the trip was longer and we had to stop at Salt Lake City and Atlanta before landing at Montgomery, Alabama. I was really looking forward to go there because this is the place where the civil rights movement was started and took shape. Standing in the podium where Martin Luther King gave his famous speeches and seeing the place where Rosa Parks was arrested were just indescribable.

I was forewarned by an American friend before going to the south that I might be faced by many people who still strongly support the Bush administration and blindly repeat whatever Fox News is feeding them. “They like Fox because it makes it so simply to them: ‘here’s the good guys and here’s the bad guys’,” he told me. Well, that didn’t happen. I guess the reason why that didn’t happen is because we had only two days there and most of the people we met were highly educated intellectuals, not regular guys on the streets. But ironically, one of these people that my friend told me about was actually traveling with us as an interpreter. He is an Egyptian immigrant who came to the US more than 20 years ago and now has the citizenship and is married to an American. I can’t recall a single political discussion where he took a stance different from the official PoV of the Bush administration.

As I said earlier, Alabama wasn’t so much fun, but it was certainly inspirational. The stories of murder and torture we’ve heard were horrific, but how the African-American community overcome all the tragedies to gain their full rights overshadowed the horror. I truly believe that we in Saudi Arabia have much to learn from this experience: the non-violent approach, the resilience, and the impressive sense of community. We desperately need to understand these values and make them a part of our thinking if we want to reform our country.

Finally, it was time to go to the place we wanted to see the most: the World’s Capital, the Big Apple, New York, Baby! Unfortunately, we had very short time in NYC. Just a little over 40 hours in a city where most residents say it took them years before seeing it all. We’ve been to Central Park, Ground Zero, China Town, and few other places. I was also lucky to meet some good friends over there such as Mona Eltahawy and fellow blogger-on-hiatus Aya. I apologize to all the people who wanted to meet me and I couldn’t make it happen due to time limitations.

“So, after what you have seen in America, do you like it?” This is the other question I was often asked while I was there as well as after returning home. But this question does not usually come up until people learn that the program was sponsored by the Department of State. Why would they spend this kind of money if it wasn’t to make people like them, right? However, this is not the case. As fellow blogger John Burgess, who is a former US diplomat said, the goal of this program is not to make people like the United States, but rather to give them a better understanding of life and culture in America.

After fourteen days, twelve planes, seven airports, six cities, and four states, I’m back home trying to enjoy the remaining days of the holy month of Ramadhan, and also trying to catch up with the classes that I missed. Got questions? Feel free to ask in the comments, but I can’t promise to answer everything, because in case you didn’t notice, I’m no genius.

Back to Boredom

Arrived safely to Riyadh on Tuesday afternoon. We had tons of fun in New York despite the short amount of time we were given there. Of course two days are absolutely not enough to see even a little part of this big city but we tried our best to use all the time we had while there. The highlight was attending The Lion King in Broadway. The show was truly amazing and the way Times Square was buzzing with people and lights is one of a kind. I guess I will be probably writing a longer post about the whole trip shortly, but for now I’m exhausted and I need to get some rest after all the traveling.

It was ironic that we only had 48 hours in New York and it took us almost as much as that to travel from NYC to Saudi Arabia. We were supposed to leave NYC to Frankfurt and then take another plane to Riyadh. The departure from JFK was delayed and we could not catch our connecting flight. The next flight to Riyadh was about 11 hours later and it had to go first to Abu Dhabi where we also had to wait for another six hours. The return trip was really tough and exhausting.

I want to thank those who nominated and selected me. I want to thank all the people I met in the States during these two weeks. You made this trip so worthwhile and unforgettable. I want to thank my friends who accompanied me on the program for making this trip fun and informative. And finally special thanks to someone who made these two weeks far more enjoyable than I was expecting them to be (you know who you are ;-)