Category Saudi Arabia

Movies in Riyadh

Despite the fact that cinema theaters are not allowed in the country, it seems that an active community of movie enthusiasts is flourishing these days in Riyadh, offering several opportunities for people to watch films at special screenings in different parts of the city. If you are in town these days, you might want to check them out. Here’s a short guide for the movies that will be screened starting tomorrow:

The following screenings will be at King Fahd Cultural Center (map) and they are open to women only:

Tuesday, July 8

10:00-12:00 — Four Arabic short films
14:00-16:00 — Four Saudi Short films

Wednesday, July 9

10:00-12:00 — Letters of Iwo Jima

For more info, contact Hana Abdullah: haom at hotmail dot co dot uk

The following screenings will be at the Society of Culture and Arts (map) and they are open to men only:

Wednesday, July 9

21:00-21:12 — Absence (Drama from Bahrain)
21:15-23:00 — An Inconvenient Truth (Documentary)

Wednesday, July 16

20:30-23:00 — United 93

For more info, contact Faisal Auda: face_off995 at hotmail dot com

All screenings are free of charge.

Why We Are Happy

When John Burgess published a recent post on Crossroads Arabia titled “Happy Saudis!” I was like “Huh!” The post links to a chart from a study conducted by the World Values Survey based at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research which states that Saudi Arabia is the 26th happiest country in the world. “It’s widely believed that it’s almost impossible to raise an entire country’s happiness level,” says Ronald Inglehart, political scientist at U-M and the director of the World Values Surveys.

The “surprising finding” has prompted me to think what possibly could be the reasons behind the overwhelmingly positive attitude of my countrymen…

See? The list is endless!

How about you fellow citizens? Why are you so goddamn happy?

Who Knows the Laws?

While waiting at the train station in Ahssa, I thought it would be a good idea to take some pictures of the arrivals and departures schedule so I can consult them next time I take the train. Well, maybe it wasn’t the best idea.

Police Officer: HEY YOU! What the hell are you doing?
Me: Taking a picture of the train schedule. Is there a problem?
PO: Don’t you know that photography is prohibited?
Me: As far as I know, there is no law banning anyone from taking pictures here.
PO: Says who? Photography is prohibited in government buildings.
Me: I’m sure the law clearly states that photography is allowed in all public spaces except military buildings and places which have a sign in view saying “Photography Prohibited,” and I haven’t seen one here.
PO: There is no such law! If there was one how come I never heard of it? Show me the pictures you’ve just taken.

I show him the four pictures, he tells me to delete them, I delete them, and he tells me to go back to the waiting area. I walk back to my seat, shaking my head in disbelief of what just happened. I hear the officer loudly calling me again.

PO: Why are you shaking your head like that? You don’t like what I have told you?
Me: It doesn’t matter if I like it or not. I just found the whole deal absurd and that’s why I was shaking my head.
PO: Are you Saudi?! Shoe me your ID!

I hand him my ID, he inspects my name and asks me where I live. I calmly and politely answer in the same manner in which I responded to all his previous questions. He stares at me and then angrily shouts: “Go back to your seat!”

What happened with me at the train station could happen to anyone. You do something seemingly harmless and you find yourself in for a stupid long questioning with one of those ignorant, incompetent and rude police officers. The difference here, however, is that I knew the law was on my side. My arguing irritated him, especially that he looked like he had no idea what law I was talking about. He expected me to apologize for an offense that I never did, and I when I didn’t he didn’t know what to do with me. It didn’t help that his younger colleagues where standing there watching the scene.

Similar incidents happen all over the Kingdom all the time and one problem is that most people don’t know their rights according to the law; the other problem is that some low ranking police officers seem to believe they can abuse people just because they carry a few stripes on their shoulders.

NSHR has been working to raise awareness by publishing and distributing booklets educating people about their rights according to the Law of Criminal Procedures, which is a good step, but they also need to work with law enforcement officials to ensure that police officers know citizen’s rights and respect them.

No Reason

I am invited to participate at the GlobalVoices Summit ‘08 that will take place later this weeks in Budapest, Hungary. I already have the airplane tickets, hotel reservations and everything else set up. Today I called the Hungarian Embassy in Riyadh to inquire about my pending visa request. The Embassy told me that my visa request has been denied. When I asked about the reason(s), they simply said: “no reason.” Bummer. I was really looking forward to this event.

Thank you Usama bin Laden. Thank you terrorists. You not only managed to slander our reputation and make travel an extreme misery for the rest of us, but thanks to you I’m also not going to be able to attend Santana free concert next Saturday in Budapest Heroes’s Square.

Dirty Games

I never liked the Saudi Arabian Football Federation (SAFF). Not just because of their lame policy of erratically and irrationally sacking one coach after another, but also because the overall performance of our sports teams is simply not comparable to the talent pool we have in this country. I can’t think of any reason for this situation other than mismanagement of resources available at the disposal of this federation.

A long running saga of SAFF involves building a new football stadium in Jeddah. The current Prince Abdullah Al-Faisal Stadium in the coastal city was built in 1980. I could not find any solid numbers regarding the stadium’s capacity, but Google thinks it’s somewhere between 25,000-35,000 spectators, which is considered medium by today’s standards. Jeddah is the home of two major football clubs in Saudi Arabia, Al-Ittihad and Al-Ahli, which means a large number of matches is played on the stadium every year. Add to that poor maintenance and lack of any renovation effort and you get an outdated, ugly mess.

Rumors about the new Jeddah stadium, expected to be named after Crown Prince King Abdullah, have been circulating for, I don’t know, like the past ten years or so. SAFF claim that they have all plans ready for the new stadium but they are waiting for the Ministry of Finance to allocate the needed money for the project. SAFF have been blaming MOF for taking such a long time to approve the budget of the project and allocate the money.

However, if what Arreyadi sports newspaper has reported today is true, then I don’t blame MOF for putting the plans on hold. The newspaper cited sources at MOF saying the delay in approving the plans is based on their conviction that the estimated budget by SAFF is quite exaggerated. SAFF say they will need SR 10 billion to build the new stadium.

For the sake of comparison, the construction cost of the Emirates Stadium, one of Europe’s newest and most expensive football venues, is £430 million (~ SR 3 billion). Why SAFF are asking for this exorbitant amount of money when they actually need just a fraction of it remains a mystery, unless we get a chance to see their plans for the new stadium, which better include some architectural miracles and never-seen-before technologies to justify this huge budget.

I understand that Arreyadi is not very friendly toward SAFF for reasons beyond the scope of this blog post, but even if their report is not accurate, it nevertheless sheds the light on an important issue that has been long overlooked. Saudi Arabia has not built any new football stadiums since the opening of King Fahad International Stadium in Riyadh in 1989.

The Glorious Eighties

My brother Hasan has been asking me to change the header picture. I was hesitant to change it because I loved the “legs in jeans” header. But since many people were positively surprised by my new Facebook profile picture, I thought I would use it here too.

two_headers

This picture of me is unusual because I’m wearing thobe and ghotra instead of the usual jeans and t-shirt. The other thing is that I’m not wearing glasses; I was wearing contact lenses for the first time. The picture was taken by my brother Abdullah during my cousin’s wedding last summer.

Pictures can bring nostalgia, and nostalgia can bring more pictures. I took the chance of being home for the weekend and asked my mother to show me some photos from my childhood. I’m glad and thankful that my early years have been relatively well documented photographically by my parents.

I’ve posted one picture from when I was a kid here, and I thought I’d share a couple more of these old pics with you today:

This pictures was taken when I was probably 9 months old, some time around the winter of 1985. Apparently I was trying to eat what looks like a fork instead of the vegetables my mom allegedly cooked for me :-)

Here, I’m standing in front of the flamingo lake in Riyadh Zoo, summer 1987. Guess what? The absurd arrangement for having separate days for men and women at the zoo has been in place since the ’80s and still going!