In the Middle of the East

A Parallel Universe of Belief

2009-11-24T21:03:00.000-08:00

The experience of coming as a Christian guest to this Muslim country has been almost like being transported to a parallel universe of belief. Although the differences are many, the similarities are uncanny. Within each faith lie two distinct perspectives, each orbiting around a different center - either a book or a man. Each center is a source of authority and is determined to be infallible. For Christians, the infallible center is either the Bible and/or the Pope and for the Muslims, it seems to be either the Koran and/or the Imam. What side a person takes on these issues has a lot to do with how they handle the rest of life, because each choice comes with a very distinct identity. Protestant or Catholic, Sunni or Shi’a, the dividing line for each comes down to who or what is infallible and authoritative.

For the Muslims, this was an early split. Lines were drawn in the sand soon after Ali, Muhammad's son-in-law, was assassinated in 661 AD. This sparked a revolt by a group that later called themselves “Shi’a," which is short for “Shi atu Ali,” meaning "partisans of Ali.” Since Muhammad had no sons that made it to adulthood, the Shiites felt that his cousin Ali, who was married to his daughter Fatima, was his only rightful successor. According to the Shiites, this status granted Ali and his successors, not only political and religious authority, but also immunity from error and sin. In 880 AD the 12th imam disappeared, and much like the Christian anticipation of the second coming of Jesus, Shiites believe he will eventually return and bring justice to the earth.

The habit of unquestioned trust in religious leadership continues to this day among the Shi’a, as they believe that hidden levels of meaning of the Koran are only available to the imam and those he chose to reveal them to.

The Sunni represent roughly 85% of the Muslim world and have more of a "Protestant" view of religious authority. The Sunni get their name from the accumulation of words and actions of the Prophet Muhammad called the "Sunnah," now found primarily in the "Hadith" which supplements the Koran and is also treated as God's word. Immunity from error is attributed to the Koran and Hadith, and great effort is placed on finding the true meaning of their words. Without the guide of an infallible imam, Sunni theology has branched out into multiple "schools of thought," - just as early Protestantism did after the Martin Luther convinced many to question the ultimate authority of the pope. Sunni theology can now be broken down into four main schools that are almost region specific and have found a prominent place in government and civil law. Saudi Arabia is a prime example of this, as the court system is guided primarily by a branch of Shari'ah (Islamic law) known as "Hanbali." Like most prominent Protestant denominations do with the bible, "Hanbali" places utmost importance on the original intent of the Koran and Hadith and differs with other schools only in variation of emphasis on literal meaning or general guiding principle.

It seems that within each tradition lies a common thread - a rift between belief and practice. Every follower knows what he ought to do, but no one is completely faithful to do it. These differences vary as do the distances of planets from the sun, but most participants of any faith will readily admit the dichotomy. Perpetual guilt pervades the Middle East as well as America. It has been very intriguing to hear both a Muslim and a Christian say almost the same exact thing to me: "I am a believer, but I'm a bad one. Maybe one day I'll get my act together."

Most of us wander aimlessly in unfulfilled self-expectation, and the irony is our loneliness despite this commonality. Masks of spirituality isolate us from each other in either religion and skew our view of reality as we think we are alone in our struggle to be good. As a result the least religious among us can sometimes be the most honest.

Only In America

2009-11-20T10:05:00.000-08:00

Only in America can you find these things:

1. ATM fees
2. Cell phone companies that will both charge the sender and receiver for every phone call
3. Dates written with the month first instead of the day
4. Temperatures in Fahrenheit instead of Celsius
5. Measurements in feet and miles instead of meters and kilometers
6. Weight in pounds instead of kilograms
7. Coffee makers in hotel rooms
8. Monolingual people

Feel free to add some.

Prayer in Saudi Arabia

2009-05-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

The discipline of the faithful, here in Saudi Arabia, is incredible. Every morning they get up at first light and go to a mosque to pray. At this time of the year it happens around 3:15 am. (The earliest morning prayer is actually around June 13 at 3:10am.) Five prayers are required every day and happen at very specific times based on the position of the sun and stars. The first is at first light; the second at shortest shadow; the third when the shortest shadow has doubled in length; the fourth when the sun sets; and the fifth when the first star appears.

Accomplishing the prayer starts with a ritualistic washing of face, neck, feet, hands and arms all the way up to the elbow. Special floor level wash basins are often found in public bathrooms to accommodate this sort of washing but if they can't be found, it isn't uncommon to see men with their feet up in the sink, and water all over the bathroom when done. After the washing the worshiper goes into the mosque barefoot and makes either two or four prostrations (depending on the time of day) in the direction of Mecca usually on a rug. While prostrating in a very specific way, verses of the Qura'an are quoted by the individual or a chosen leader of a group. All this takes about 5 to 10 minutes.

The company I work for provides pocket sized prayer calendars so we can keep track of them. It's good to know when a prayer is imminent because everything shuts down during prayer time. All stores close their doors and if you are in a store you will not be able to purchase anything or conduct business until the prayer is done. You also might not be able to get out of the store. This prayer time can last 30 to 45 minutes, so the prayer schedule is quite handy allowing you to plan your day around them. If you plan it right you can order a meal and have it served just before prayer and then enjoy it during prayer since you won't be able to do much else. All Muslims are expected to participate in these prayers and all Saudis are expected to be Muslims. Special exceptions are granted travelers and the invalid, but even travelers are to make their prayers up later if they skipped some during travel.

Prayer is one of the "five pillars" of Islam and is a fundamental part of a Muslim's daily existence. It provides structure, solidarity, identity and a strong bond between fellow Muslims. No other religious practice that I'm aware of is done so frequently. It's like going to church 35 times a week!

I've Been Interviewed

2009-05-24T02:14:00.000-07:00

So, I just got interviewed today by a blogger friend of mine Malaine Wolfe. You can check it out at http://writinginthelandoftornadoes.blogspot.com/2009/05/interview-with-pilot-and-saudi-arabian.html

Shortcomings of Capitalism

2009-05-02T00:15:00.000-07:00

Interspersed among highly paid westerners on our compound is an army of South-Asian laborers clad in different colored overalls, each color representing their department. Grounds keepers are in green, street cleaners in yellow, maintenance in brown, waste management in orange, etc. The difference in income between them and those they serve is staggering, as many of them earn just over $100 a month. Since most of them are also supporting families in their native countries they find creative ways to supplement their income.

One way is to jump at every garage sale that comes up on the compound (presumably to resell purchases at higher prices). As my wife will testify, being a savvy bargain shopper herself, each of these garage sales start with a frenzy as workers clamor to take advantage of the best deals. It seems that what we find as a weekend hobby, is to them a struggle for survival.

Another method of survival is "freelance" labor. One of the perks here is quick service when things break down. We've had our washer worked on, lawn installed, roof repaired, front gate replaced, water heater repaired, etc. - all for free, courtesy of the company. Other services, such as gardening, house cleaning, chauffeuring, painting, etc. can be arranged at modest rates by calling the appropriate department who will then send out one of these contract laborers to do the work. This is all very organized and efficient, but the workers themselves do everything they can to circumnavigate the system to get paid directly. This is done in a variety of ways. Most of the time it's just outright solicitation, and a very hurt and dejected look when it is politely refused. Otherwise, if they have been sent out to do some work on the house, they will finish their assigned work and ask if there is anything else they can do. If we say "no" they will insist on giving their own personal contact information, should we change our minds. It seems obvious that they anticipate more generous compensation directly from us than what they normally get from the company they work for. Once we had a guy come to our house with a measuring wheel, insisting that he needed to measure the land around our house in preparation for planting our promised lawn. After I led him and his associate through the house to grant them access to the back yard, I watched them through the kitchen window as I did the dishes, and was perplexed to see them just stand there doing nothing. I came back out to ask if they needed anything or had any questions. The man with the measuring wheel said "no", but then sheepishly suggested that I really needed a gardener as my back patio was covered in leaves and looking rather messy. I thanked him for his offer but said that we prefered our privacy and would like to do it ourselves. After giving me a very disappointed look, he left our house without doing any of the measuring he had originally said he came to do.

Although capitalism inspires initiative, it also inspires greed. It works well for those few people that have received good education, opportunity and a bit of wealth to start off with, but the rest of the world seems to suffer in its wake. The resources of the world are horribly distributed these days as those that have, start to hoard, and those that don't have, hardly stand a fighting chance. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating government enforced wealth distribution. I'm just suggesting we take a moment to step away from our perceived "problems" and take a look at the world as a whole. Uneven distribution of wealth kills people. Daily.

The Business of Happiness

2009-03-21T09:54:00.000-07:00

Abdulah S. Jum‘ah, made an interesting statement when he resigned after 13 years at the helm of the largest oil company in the world. In his farewell speech at the end of 2008, he said: “When I am asked what business I’m in, I don’t tell them I’m in the oil industry. I tell him or her that I am in the business of making people happy.” He explained that from the school bus giving children access to education, to the distribution of food, and power and heat to needy parts of the world, the oil business essentially made people happy. This statement swelled many of his loyal supporters with pride and has been echoed repeatedly, like ripples in a pond, at almost every company banquet, board meeting and seminar since the day it was mentioned.

If oil does in fact make people happy, it comes at incredible cost. Drillers need more than a pair of gloves and a lunchbox. Geologists have to find them places to drill. Pilots (like me) have to get them there and back. Doctors and nurses need to keep them alive, and dentists need to plug the holes in their teeth. Then there are the cooks, barbers, mailmen, security guards, travel agents, accountants, firemen, bus drivers, plumbers, lawyers, mechanics and teachers for all their kids. To keep up morale, these employees will need some sort of recreation, but this now requires libraries, tennis courts, weight rooms, bowling alleys, coffee shops, swimming pools, golf courses and hobby farms - with adequate staffing for each. Since the desert isn't always pretty to look at, grass and trees are imported from far off places, as is water, and grounds keepers to keep them trim. Air conditioning is a must most of the year, so repair men stand guard 24 hours a day. Pretty soon, departments are created to handle complaints, process passports, coordinate shipping, and board pets. It doesn't take long, and each driller has a crowd standing behind him like a Verizon subscriber and all he has accomplished is extract raw oil out of the ground. Now it needs to be processed and transported ... and if it can get past the coast of Somalia ... the world will be a bit happier.

To Be or Not To Be An Aristocrat

2009-02-26T20:14:00.000-08:00

The dirty little secret that expats around the world choose not to highlight when they return to their native home, is that... well... most of them have a little help around the house. This would be rare to see in middle class America, or perhaps any other "westernized" country, as it smacks of slavery, and reminds us of times when we were less than honest about living out our ideals that "all men are created equal". But a little tour of some of the less "westernized" countries of the world, would reveal, I would be willing to bet, nine out of ten Westerners still taking advantage of cheap labor to make life a bit easier. These helpers could be nannies, maids, "house-boys" (a term I always cringe at, since these are usually grown men), gardeners, drivers, etc. To be fair, life is often much harder in many remote parts of the world, and expats often come with a high level of expertise and are contributing some valuable services to needy communities. To spend most of their time with the daily chores of life would take away from that considerably. As well, having a helper, is employment for someone that might have otherwise not had a job. No matter how justifiable these arrangements are, they have somewhat of a status defining effect, and one can easily start ascribing differing amounts of value to people depending on their particular role.

I did not anticipate the struggle I would have with this decision before I came out here. At the moment we have no help around the house, but have turned away at least ten potential gardeners and a few house maids. We welcome your opinion...

Finding Our Way Together

2009-02-19T08:22:00.000-08:00

We have been in Saudi Arabia for a month now, as a family, and are far from a comfortable routine. I've been busy with work and endless other appointments for permits, licenses, I.D.'s, etc. that only I can do as I'm the only legal driver here in our family (women are not allowed to drive). Nikki, on the other hand, has been a bit stir crazy, unable to do much or go anywhere as Maddy comes home every day from school for lunch, and there really isn't time to get anywhere and back on the bus to go shopping etc., during the 2-3 hours Maddy is at school. So, often we join each other at opposite emotional levels - me wanting some peace and quiet, and Nikki longing for an exciting trip somewhere.

Speaking of exciting trips, the driving here is incredible! Since our new location doesn't come with a crew car service, I've been driving myself to work. My rental car shows about 4000 kilometers in the "trip meter" now in the last 4 weeks, while I've been waiting to get the proper documentation to drive our newly purchased '91 Honda Accord. During that time I've had to learn a completely different way of driving. Now, half of my attention is in the mirror, as I struggle to stay alive. Typically I'm on a highway with about 2 or 3 lanes and it seems like no one goes the speed limit. They are either 20-40 kph slower or 50-100 kph faster. So if you are cruising along in the middle lane at the speed limit (120 kph - or about 75 mph) you will invariably come across a slow service truck or guy on his cell phone going 80 kph. You will slip into the outside lane to get around him, and maybe two or three others he's following. Before you can get back into the middle lane, you will suddenly realize someone has come out of nowhere, and is tailgating so close that their windshield fills up most of your back window. Either that or you are being passed on the left shoulder by someone going literally twice as fast as you, and your car rocks from side to side as they whiz by within inches of your side mirror. This is an every day occurrence.

Exit lanes are also used very ...efficiently. Just the other day I took the exit off of one highway and had stopped at the end to yield to traffic on the next road I was going to take. I decided I wouldn't cut anyone off so I politely wait for a comfortable space to merge into. While I was waiting I suddenly realized cars were coming around me on both sides perfectly content to turn my one-lane exit into a three lane mass merging free-for-all. I was a sitting duck. I decided to let go of all courtesy and force my way into the crowd, as I really had no alternative. It's a different world out here. I usually can't wait to get to work so I can strap myself in an airplane, get it in the air, and finally relax.

Routines are starting to develop, however. Nikki has been going to Maddy's school to help out for a few hours a day. She's also been able to do some circuit training and yoga, and even has some Arabic lessons lined up. Thursdays (equivalent to Saturday's in the U.S.) usually are family days when we can go to the swimming pool, or library, and then come home, take a quick snooze in the hammock out back before we settle down to a rigorous game of monopoly. Fridays we go to a small Christian church on the compound, and maybe hit up a delicious brunch at the diner. I think I'm going to try to rejoin my water polo group on Friday afternoons, but I'll have to see how everyone else is feeling about that. Gone are my regular workouts and uninterrupted reading, but the sacrifice is well worth it. Peace and quite are not worth loneliness and separation in my book. It's much better this way.

Let's Get This Thing Started

2009-02-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

So here it finally is. My own blog. I've spent most of the last 14 months in Saudi Arabia, and the experience has been so entrancing that I've found myself irresistibly drawn to journaling. Since I was separated from my wife and kid most of the time (geographically), I sent some of these journal entries home as email attachments, so that they could get a bit of a taste of what life was like for me out here. My wife decided to send them around to friends and family, many of whom seemed to enjoy it. (The rest have wisely kept quiet.) Now that we have sent close to 40 entries out via email, it seems long past due that I step into the blog community and do it properly. So here goes...

I make no promises about frequency of updates or specific themes or content. Let's just see where it takes us. I'll start off with my last journal entry ...which never got sent to anyone ...due to distractions. If I can figure it out, I'll try to put some of the older entries in the archive section. Feel free to comment honestly. Polite platitudes will not be tolerated. Give it to me straight up.

Twilight of Separation

2009-01-01T12:09:00.000-08:00

I’m in Amsterdam right now, on the way back home. This isn’t a regularly scheduled leave, I just asked for a few weeks to finalize my worker’s visa for Saudi Arabia, which is the last link in the chain of events that should lead to actual employment, and most importantly, the end of my 13 month separation from my family. All this last year I’ve been an independent contractor working under a visitor’s visa, with no benefits or paid leaves, and no legal means to have my family in Saudi with me. That all should change in a few weeks. I’m greatly looking forward to it. As much as it was nice to be able to have a lot of time to myself without much in the way of obligations, it never felt like a very healthy way to be a father and husband. It also got harder and harder for Maddy to let go of me when it was time to go back at the end of my three week leaves. I don’t know if I could have handled much more of that. I look forward to quickly working back into a much more active role in parenting Maddy and relating with both her and Nikki (a new and improved spelling). It was nice to be able to talk to them and see them every day via the Internet, but there was still a relational deficit that can only be remedied by physical presence, I believe.

This brief interlude away from the normal, has provided me some unique opportunities that I will always cherish. Besides having the time to learn a bit of guitar, and Arabic, I have been able to develop some friendships with some very special people. Some, I’ve gravitated to more than others, but I don’t think I would have had opportunity to spend half as much time with these guys had I also been living with my family. What has also been a unique and growing experience has been the attempt to let go of the desire to have to categorize and define my life experiences. In an attempt to be more honest with myself, I have allowed a much greater amount of questions to remain unanswered. I don’t know if this has been a healthy move or not, but I have at least seen an apparent relational advantage. A guy with less answers, is more prone to listen to others. This has a remarkably positive affect relationally … and if I have learned anything this year, this would have to be it. Both Socrates and Solomon said that the person who thinks himself wise, is not. My certainty of so many important things remains illusive, but what I have become convinced of is that relationships are just about the only thing worth living for, and no relationship works without love expressed through a listening ear.

Another confirmation of the power of honesty has come to me through literature. I had an epiphany the other day as I realized, a bit more clearly, why I have loved Steinbach so much over the years, as well as Pearl S Buck, and Khaled Hosseini. This was made clear while I was reading a different author that just didn’t feel like it was of the same caliber. I realized, as I was reading, that great literature is often great because of its honesty. The book I was reading was a biography, and it was reminiscent of many biographies I used to read when I was much younger, as well as many funerals I’ve attended. The main character was overly praised and seemed larger than life, and therefore unreal. This might be necessary for biographies and/or funerals, as it would be very disrespectful to a main character’s family to paint too real of a portrait. The beauty of good fiction, I’ve now decided, is that it provides a platform for less restrained honesty. When the “hero” does wrong, and experiences guilt or shame etc., the effect on the reader is powerful. It puts writing on a whole new level, as far as I’m concerned...

Certainty

2008-09-17T17:22:00.000-07:00

I’ve wondered lately about the role of doubt in the life of a Christian. What is a bit ironic to me is that the gripe many unbelievers have with Christians is their dishonesty. The appearance of certainty seems fake and therefore uninviting. I wonder if we can have a more open dialogue with unbelievers if we are honest about our doubts. I wonder if less answers and more questions is a better approach to life.

In fairness, I see dishonesty on both sides of the belief threshold. Unbelievers often tend to not be honest about their motivations for seeking justification for their unbelief. Most of the time, I believe that an underlying urge to shed accountability fuels the fervency of their pursuit against religion. They want to do whatever they feel like doing without feeling guilty. If they can somehow prove that there is no God that is interested in their behavior, they can truly be free.

I don’t see any reason to hide behind a pretense of certainty. Faith is what we do despite our doubt. If there were no doubt, there would be no opportunity for faith.

But faith is also not blind. We have to have a reason to believe. For many of us it’s the easiest way we know how to function. It’s the path of least resistance. For others, it’s the best answer to our deepest questions. Many of us are driven to faith because we have experienced things that we can’t explain rationally. What has fueled my faith lately are the intangibles; stuff that can’t be explained rationally. It’s the sense of hope and wonder; the sense that I am being heard when I am alone; the beauty of music and art; the discovery that I am able to love others and not sense a need for their love in return (or for that matter the need for a drug or destructive habit to fill the void that is created when I don’t get what I feel I need from others). All of these, I believe, are fingerprints of the divine. I can’t explain many parts of the bible and why much of it rubs me the wrong way. I can’t explain why the earth seems older than 6000 years to people much smarter than me. I can’t explain why horrible tragedy is endured by relatively innocent people. I can’t explain much at all, but I’m not really sure I have to. There is still something inside of me that causes me to believe anyway; something mysterious and other-worldly that is much stronger than anything I could conjure up on my own. It was almost as if …, well as if it was intentionally placed there by someone else.

Ramadan

2008-09-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

The moon is almost full, which means that the month of Ramadan is almost half over. The Arabic calendar is based on the moon so each new moon starts a new month. This makes the Muslim year a bit shorter than ours and makes all holidays and special events slowly migrate year after year on our calendar which is solar. This also means that in the next few years, the holy month of Ramadan will slowly migrate closer and closer to the hottest part of the summer, and coincide with the longest days of the year. I mention this because the month of Ramadan is a collective fast of all food, water, tobacco and sexual intercourse from sunrise to sunset. With few exceptions, all Islamic people are expected to participate in this sacrifice. It is incredible to watch such solidarity and devotion of so many people especially when it’s 115 degrees outside with 80% humidity, and the days are 14 hours long. But I’ve come to learn that it is so much more than a collective fast. People really get excited about this time, and it has the meaningfulness that Christmas has to us, without the materialism. Everyone wishes each other “Ramadan Kareem” (which literally means “Have a generous Ramadan”). Work all but stops. People will typically shorten their work day to about 3 – 4 hours and take long naps. As soon as the sun sets, the “break-fast” becomes a huge celebration and everyone gathers together and eats with wild abandon. Then they stay up the rest of the night either in prayer, reading the Qur’an, or just enjoying each other’s company. Finally, a last big meal is consumed before sunrise (about 4 am in these parts) and if possible people go to bed for a few hours before going in for another short day of work.

“Credits” is the term my Arabic first officer used to explain why people spend so much more time in the mosque during Ramadan praying and reading the Qur’an. The closer to the end of Ramadan it is, the more credits one gets for religious activities (reading, praying, giving to the poor etc.) At first I was reluctant to ask, but I had to know, so I asked him what these “credits” were good for. I said, “Do you mean that people are able to get closer to God than they would otherwise at other times of the year?” He said, “no”. God is close to everyone no matter what they do. What these credits are good for is hierarchy in heaven. He said that there is heaven and hell, and if one goes to heaven, the religious activities they do on earth will determine their status in heaven in the afterlife. He said that some people spend incredible amounts of time in the mosque during Ramadan and are able to get lots of credits. Credits are also achieved throughout the rest of the year as people diligently comply with what is called “The Five Pillars of Islam”. They consist of a profession of faith, five daily prayers at specific times, giving to the poor, fasting during Ramadan, and at least one pilgrimage to Mecca.

Although most people gain a few pounds during Ramadan because of all the eating that happens at night, the fasting during the day has the purpose of not only helping people focus on God, but also helping them identify with the poor. Fasting is obligatory for all but the sick and those who are traveling. If a day of fasting is broken due to one of these reasons (which most of the Muslim pilots do if they are assigned a long day of flying) they are to make up the fast during the following month for the equivalent amount of days they broke fast during Ramadan. An exception is made for diabetics (of which there are many here). Safety is stressed by the company and little things are done to help people avoid making foolish mistakes when they are hungry. The most notable one is that free little boxes of food (dates, juice and yogurt) are passed out by volunteers at the compound entrance right at sundown so people won’t drive unsafely in their eagerness to get home or to any other feasting ground.

What amazes me about all this in how willing everyone is to fast. It seems to be more than an obligation. It is something they are proud of, something that helps define them and give them a sense of identity and purpose. It gives structure to their lives and a sense of moral superiority. All this is worth a little hunger and a little thirst.

What also is intriguing and a little puzzling is that I have been asked a few times if I am fasting, by people that are well aware that I’m not a Muslim. No one has asked me if I pray five times a day, or if I go to the mosque or on pilgrimages, but they have asked me if I fast. I am always honest in my answer, and say “no”, but I wonder how they feel about that. Why is this the only sacred pillar of Islam that I am being invited to participate in? Does it say something about my lack of respect toward their religion not to fast? I mean, I don’t eat or drink purposefully in front of them. Expats have been asked by the company to be discreet in their consumption. But why am I being asked if I fast? I wonder if I should? What would that say to them? There is so much more to learn here and I’m so eager to do it. I’ve been here now more than nine months, and my fascination with this place and it’s people, culture and religion continues to grow in intensity. The more I know, the more I want to know.

The Guilt of Fortune

2008-07-31T10:57:00.000-07:00

Eight months now and I’m taking a look back. I feel very fortunate to be where I am, despite the 120 degree temperature outside and the geographical rift between myself and my favorite two people. The economic climate in the U.S. looks pretty grim especially in the airlines. Many airlines have announced upcoming furloughs. Others are doing the same, or going under. My employer has recently hired at least three ex-Aloha pilots after they closed for business. I suspect the rate of pilots knocking on their door will only increase in the next coming months.

Another fortunate thing for me is the hierarchy here. As with the U.S. it all comes down to seats – what seat you drive the airplane from (left or right) and how many seats are behind you when you do. The natural order of things in the U.S. is that one starts off as a first officer for a regional airline, then “upgrades” to a captain position in that same regional airline (the position I was in when I left). In a few years that captain might find himself with enough experience to interview for a major airline where he starts over as a first officer in a bigger airplane. Finally, after 10 years or so he might find himself eligible for a captain position that same airline where he ends his career slowly improving his pay and lifestyle by means of his longevity with the company and/or advancement to ever larger airplanes. Let’s call these levels 1, 2, 3, and 4 respectively. Here things operate a bit differently. A first officer in the small airplane finds that his next opportunity for advancement is as a first officer in a big airplane (the Boeing 737 – which is the same airplane many major airlines use) instead of as captain of the small plane. After he has proved himself there, he can finally advance to being a captain of the small airplane he started in. As with the U.S. his final step will more than likely be the captain position of the big airplane. So in effect the order, as compared with the U.S., is 1,3,2,4. What that means for me is that since I am in level 2, I have unwittingly skipped a step, and find myself ahead of the guys that came over from the American system as level 3 pilots. Unfortunately for them, they have to retrace some of their steps. A few guys I know, were actually captains in the big airplane back home, and came here as first officers in that plane, which in effect bumped them down two “levels”.

Despite this reshuffling of our career advancement plans all the ex-pats here are pretty mature, and we all treat each other as equals. What continues to be harder for me to rectify, however, is the disparity of the South Asian workers here. I can see it in their eyes as they watch me and notice how easy my life is. I wonder what goes on in their minds. They are all really polite and friendly to me and many of them I know by name and interact with on a daily basis, but, I can’t help but think about the tinge of jealousy they must feel. For whatever reason God wrapped me in white skin, gave me a pointy nose and large ears. He also chose to give me access to American citizenship and English as a first language. Coincidentally this little “starter package” put me well ahead of most of the rest of the world in terms of opportunity. None of this would be anything I could logically boast about, as I really had nothing to do with it, yet here I am in Saudi Arabia with slightly darker fellow humans begging to serve my every need for pennies.

It’s hard for me to enjoy my affluence. Part of me would rather not have it, as it comes with a good share of what Khaled Hosseini calls the “guilt of fortune.” Hosseini is an Afghan doctor - turned author in San Francisco, who wrote two of my favorite books: “Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns”. I heard him once on an interview where he talked about a feeling he shared with the main character of his first book. The character was a Sunni boy in Afghanistan who was part of a wealthy and prestigious family and was served by a lower class Shi’a boy who became his best friend. The class difference was always unsettling for this Sunni boy and became all the more unsettling the more eager his friend was to serve him. Without ruining the story, I’ll just say that the Sunni boy turns out to have the lower character of the two, and lives the rest of his life bearing the guilt of the realization that the consequences of his moral ineptitude were suffered more by his much more “righteous” childhood friend. The very lack of external consequence he himself experiences does more to aggravate his inner turmoil leading to drastic efforts made in his adult life to appease his guilt. It’s a powerful book, and if you haven’t read it, I would strongly recommend it. Don’t watch the movie though. The acting wasn’t that great.

I wonder how life would be if social hierarchy were actually determined by personal character. In some ways it seems like it actually is. Everyone seems to be constantly evaluating each other on moral grounds, and despite their economic and political disadvantages, they appease themselves with the idea that they have a higher standing on this invisible moral scale. The more unsure a person is about this, however, the more effort they seems to make to point out the moral flaws of the more “well heeled” among them. Out here, the name “Ali Baba” is synonymous with “corruption”, and is frequently credited as the ultimate reason for all discomfort. (My bus driver friend, Anur, emphasizes his disgust with an over-dramatic mime of a person putting money in his front pocket whenever he speaks of the “Ali Baba” of his superiors. Somehow, highlighting the moral failure of others makes one’s discomfort (long hours, low pay, lack of appreciation etc.) seem more tolerable. Because of this, those of us that are more comfortable are watched like a hawk. Every reluctance we might display to share our “wealth,” is a moral point against us, and the more sensitive we are to this sense of guilt, the more chance we have of getting fleeced.

I wonder how much of my behavior is motivated by this guilt. I find myself smiling at and giving eye contact to as many of these disenfranchised workers as I can. Usually they smile back, and are eager to shake my hand when I offer it. If I get to know their name or a bit of their language they seem overly grateful … and it makes me feel good. The fact that it makes me feel good … and less guilty makes me question my altruism. Do I do all this for myself or for them? Oh, to not be plagued by this constant over-analysis. I long to not even think about myself; to operate out of a pure desire to help others, oblivious to any emotional benefit I might receive in the process. This will never be true in any pure sense, this side of heaven, but I can at least hope for true love to slowly replace my guilt as a means of motivation … love that I am only at the mercy of receiving from God, and am completely incapable of conjuring up on my own.

Cultural Origins

2008-06-17T11:32:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting time the other day with one of our new Saudi pilots. This is the same guy I talked about previously who grew up in Kuwait and experienced the Gulf War first hand. He called me up and offered to take me into town to get something to eat. We had talked earlier about my desire to experience authentic Arabic food, so he took me to a restaurant called Al-Macbus. We tried to get there before prayer time, but we were a bit late so the doors were closed. (Apparently if you get in and are served before prayer time, you can stay there and finish eating until prayer is over. All doors are closed and all work stops during prayer time, which happens 5 times a day.) Anyway, since we got there too late he decided to show me the construction of this house he plans on renting with his brother. It wasn’t that far away, so we soon found it, and he gave me the tour. The walls were all cinder block smoothed over with cement. Wood was sparse, but used for a few things like door frames and molding. Otherwise all the decorative aspects of the walls and floor etc, was done with tile and ornate stone. It was two stories, the bottom floor having two “living rooms” and two “dining rooms” (one set being for “outside guests” and one set for family). The second floor had four bedrooms, and a few bathrooms. The flat rooftop also had plenty of room and could easily be also used for social gathering as it was very spacious and had an 8 foot wall all around it giving it privacy. The only covered area on the roof was a maid’s (or servant’s) quarters at one end. It was almost exactly like I had envisioned houses looking like in biblical times. It seemed all the houses in the neighborhood had this sort of layout. None of them were very colorful, mostly variations of beige. The classiness of each was mostly demonstrated in the ornate texture of the walls. One house we passed had some bright yellow trim. Bander said that even though it was eye catching, the owner would probably have to repaint it every year. The constant sand-storms make anything colorful quickly look grungy around here so most people settle with beige or grey.

We then went back to the restaurant and had quite the cultural experience. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at when I first walked in. There were no tables, only cubicles about 6 feet squared with three foot walls surrounding each, topped by another foot and a half of frosted glass. The aisles in between each cubicle had sandals on the floor, and inside were men sitting barefoot on carpeted floors with cushions lining the walls to lean against, and a few other cushions to lean on. People ate with their hands out of large metal wok-like dishes that sat on disposable pieces of plastic. Everyone sat in relative privacy (unless someone intentionally looked over their cubical walls at them). I was a little more awkward than everyone else as I had to remove my shoes with my hands – since I had shoes with shoelaces, then borrow Bander’s sandals to go wash my hands before and after our meal. Everyone else just slipped on and off their sandals without using their hands every time they went in and out of their cubicles. After a very spicy soup (that was eaten with a plastic spoon) our dishes were mostly rice with about a half a chicken in the middle. Besides a few chilies and some onion, there really wasn’t much in the way of vegetables. The rice was pretty greasy and there was a white sauce to put on the rice to help make it more pasty and add flavor. At the bottom of one of the dishes was a sort of flat bread that was soaking wet with the sauce the rice had been cooked with. We shared each dish “community-style” only eating with our right hands. I had learned how to eat with my hands a few months ago with my Filipino friends, but Bander helped me refine my skills a bit, laughing at my exclusive use of fingers and resistance to get my whole hand “dirty”. He said, “You’ll never get it right until you use your whole hand”. Eventually I figured out that I had to grab the food I wanted and squeeze it in the palm of my hand until it all stuck together. Then, without leaning forward, or tipping my head back, I was to scoop my newly formed ball of food in my mouth with the back of my thumb. It wasn’t long and Bander was calling me a pro.

Bander told me that despite the Western influence in Kuwait, he had grown up almost exclusively eating on the floor with his hands. He really didn’t learn how to use silverware until after he graduated from high school and went to the U.S. for college. He said that even though he loved the American culture, there were times he would get very homesick, and long for his family, especially their tradition of eating together on the floor. He said that he would more than likely eat on the floor when he had a family of his own, no matter where he ended up. He said that more and more people in Kuwait and Saudi are using tables and have adopted many other Western practices, but you will still find a large percentage that prefer the “old ways”. Even among the members of his family that have now grown up there is a 50-50 split. I asked him if he was close to his family, and he said “very”. He said there isn’t a week that goes by that he doesn’t talk to his parents and all of his nine brothers and sisters. He seemed very proud of this. He said, that was partly why he and his brother were planning on renting such a large house. He envisioned constantly having some, if not sometimes all his extended family over to visit, and it was very important to him to be able to house them and make them feel comfortable.

It’s hard to express the way I feel about being out here in the midst of such a rich blending of cultures. In some strange way, learning about others seems to help me understand myself. Where did I get this “work ethic” and is it really a good thing? Why do my relationships with family and friends seem so shallow and so poorly maintained? What is this tension I feel between scientific rationalism and faith? I’ve been reading a book I saved from college called “History Through the Eyes of Faith” by Ronald A. Wells, that I’ve enjoyed very much. It explained how our Western ideology traces its “radical individualism” all the way back to classic Greco-Roman philosophy. Much of what prompted the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution comes from the ancient Hellenistic philosophy that “man is the measure of all things” (p17). At first, we were much like the Middle East is now with a strong sense of community and a sense of obligation to religious authority. The end of the Middle Ages was marked by a rapidly growing distrust in established religious authority culminating in a reawakening of classical thought. Man was his own priest, according to Luther, and he didn’t need another person to understand the bible. Although there were many positive aspects to the Protestant movement, the continued trend of Western thinking evolved from a God centered world-view to a man-centered one, and eventually the “essence of human nature” was believed not to be “that humankind was created, but that humans create” (p170). Another subtle change was from the Christian “expectation for a perfect life in heaven” that was eventually “secularized and promised on earth” (p172). This spawned a ruthless, unchecked form of capitalism that saw plenty of “progress” but at the expense of community. When people saw their own ability to pursue happiness (a concept that made it all the way into the American Declaration of Independence) they began to strive for their own good and not for the good of the community. This caused them to feel great alienation, something Karl Marx tried hard to fix, so far unsuccessfully, with socialism.

So, I think it’s been good for me to understand who I am and what my culture and world view has been influenced by as I compare myself to my friends here in the Middle East. There is a lot to appreciate and learn from out here, and I’m grateful for the time I have to process it all.

The Wake of a Prince

2008-06-15T01:39:00.000-07:00

The Saud royal family is fairly extensive and apparently there are hundreds of princes. One of the princes needed a ride from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to Beirut, Lebanon, and I was asked to do it in our little Dash-8. This particular prince is the governor of the eastern province (where I live) and I’m sure would be in a much nicer airplane if he were more important, but the way people acted around him made me realize he was no ordinary guy.

They took out most of the 37 seats in our little Dash 8 and put 12 first class seats in and a nicer looking carpet. I’ve never seen such an ordinary airplane look so comfortable inside. As we got ready for him and his 10 companions we had a little snag that was starting to turn into a pretty big deal. Catering had not provided any cups or coffee and said it would take them an hour to go get; an hour we didn’t have. So after a bit of heated argument we finally chose to buy the stuff ourselves from a coffee shop in the building. We were way overcharged, but there was nothing we could really do about it. The mechanic we had with us was extremely helpful and volunteered to go get the cups and coffee for us while we continued to get ready. Pretty soon a few members of the entourage came and scoped out the scene. Then the prince came out with the rest of his traveling companions and about 10 other people that came to say goodbye to him. They all took turns bowing and kissing him out on the tarmac, while I stood next to the door of the plane with the main ramp coordinator next to me. The prince shook each of our hands and paused long enough to graciously thank each of us with a genuine look of gratitude. I was surprised how genuine he seemed. I guess I was expecting a sort of political showiness, but none of that seemed to emanate from him. He and a few of the older passengers had on a dark robe over their white thobes with shiny gold lining along the edges which added to the regal look. Otherwise everyone had the same white thobe and checkered cloth (“gutra”) on their heads secured with the usual black chord that almost every male wears in Saudi. It wasn’t long and we were starting engines, only 9 minutes late!

We made one fuel stop in north-central Saudi Arabia on our way up. It was interesting to watch the varying topography along our journey. North-central Saudi has about the most amount of agriculture that I’ve seen out here in the desert, with hundreds of crop circles. The mechanic explained that there were lots of underground springs in the northern area that allowed it to produce much of Saudi’s domestic food. Eventually we were flying over bare sand that, from our altitude, seemed to have large ripples in it, all facing the same direction. Once we got into eastern Jordan, the sand was very dark with much more rough and random patterns. I don’t remember seeing any sign of civilization in this area. Next we crossed over southern Syria and the sand got lighter again but quickly turned into a pretty steep mountain range. The highest mountains served as the border between Syria and Lebanon, and, believe it or not, had patches of snow on them. Once we crossed these mountains I couldn’t believe the beauty before us. Like a huge grandstand with the Mediterranean Sea as the stage, the terrain naturally sloped down to the water for more than a hundred miles. There were a lot of buildings on these slopes, each with an unobstructed view of the sea. There were trees everywhere (we don’t see too many trees in Saudi) and the visibility was much clearer than we had had the rest of our trip. The city of Beirut sticks out into the Mediterranean on a sort of peninsula, with the airport just south of it. We made a wide circle over the sea around the western side of the airport from north to south and landed to the northeast.

Once we landed we slowly made our way to the General Aviation ramp and were parked right in front of a private terminal. A bunch of stout Lebanese men dressed in Western suits came up to our plane and greeted us, as our passengers proudly deplaned in their flowing white robes, checkered head cloths and trademark Saudi goatees. Despite the fact everyone was speaking Arabic, there was an obvious contrast in cultures. Everyone seemed happy to see each other, and it was nice to know we had been a large part of making it happen.

After the mechanic and flight attendant had their cigarettes and catering had refilled our plane with enough food to feed a small village we took off for our 4 hour journey back home. We had enough of a tailwind to make it all the way back without a fuel stop, so we reluctantly left the beauty of Lebanon and retraced our flight path over the mountains, across southern Syrian and eastern Jordan avoiding Iraqi airspace sometimes by only about 20 miles. The food was incredible; shrimp, lobster, raw salmon, crab, fruits of every kind etc. What a feast! We had so much food in the plane after we landed that everyone we met, including customs officials, mechanics, ground handlers, etc got trays and trays of food from us. Everyone was happy and eagerly received everything we gave them.

An Inside Perspective on the Gulf War

2008-06-08T02:48:00.000-07:00

I’ve been back in Saudi a bit more than a week now. Not much has changed except the heat is greater and we have a few new pilots. The first four or five days averaged a high of around 113. Now it has settled down to around 105 or so. On one particular day I got out of the plane and was walking to the terminal with my crew and there was something I felt that I’ve never felt outside before and it was probably the result of a combination of the heat (about 117 that day) and it’s reflection off of the concrete, and the northerly wind that faced me at the time. It was almost identical to the feeling you get when you open an oven door to pull out something that has just finished cooking. It’s a sort of stinging sensation mostly on your cheeks. The only difference was I couldn’t close the oven door to stop it.

Enough about the heat. I knew it was going to be hot before I came here, so there is no sense in complaining about it. What I did want to capture in this entry was a fascinating conversation I had with one of our new pilots I’ve been helping to train. I was assigned an added new role of “training captain” soon after I came back, which I gratefully accepted. All that this means is that alongside my normal duties as line captain, I will also occasionally train the new guys that come in, and will check the standardization of those already here. I’ve always liked training and am glad to get back into it a bit. I’m pretty sure I will enjoy it.

This new pilot, Bander, is a very nice guy and already showing great aptitude. He’s a Saudi by nationality but grew up in the northern part of Kuwait. His citizenship is Saudi Arabian because his father is Saudi, but his mother is Kuwaiti and he feels more Kuwaiti than anything else. After high school he went to Louisiana and got an accounting degree, and then went to North Dakota to learn how to fly, using an company scholarship. When he told me about his Kuwaiti upbringing, I immediately thought of the Gulf War. I asked him if he was in Kuwait at the time, and he said yes and proceeded to tell me about it. He was 8 years old at the time and remembers his father being captured by the Iraqi forces at the beginning of the 8 month invasion of Kuwait. His father was a pretty important lieutenant in the Kuwaiti army and was posted near the Iraqi border. The frustration of the Kuwaiti forces at the beginning stages was that they were not given any orders to fight back. The Iraqis capitalized on this and seized everyone over 18 years of age that they could find. After about 3 months, Bander’s dad was released (due to his high position, apparently) and he immediately smuggled his wife and 10 kids into Saudi Arabia for their protection. I asked if there were a lot of Kuwaiti refugees in Saudi at that time and he said yes. He also said that he remembers the incredible hospitality of the Saudi Arabian people. Almost without exception every Saudi home was opened up to the refugees to live in, and for the most part their dignity and comfort was preserved. I gather that the family soon returned back to Kuwait and he spent the rest of his childhood there. I’m itching to ask him more about this. He seems open to talk about it…

Home

2008-05-28T03:04:00.000-07:00

As I write this I am on way from Seattle to Bahrain via Amsterdam, on my way back to work from my second leave. After Bahrain I will take a cab into Saudi Arabia and get to my little apartment at about 2 am. It’s different now flying to the other side of the world compared to the first time I went over there six months ago … and not just because I’m in coach instead of first class. It’s different because there aren’t many surprises this time. The field of the unknown is much smaller and so is the excitement. Maddy (my 5 year old daughter) is starting to see the pattern, and almost seems to be getting used to it. We sat in the kitchen today and hugged each other. She felt my chin hair and asked why I didn’t shave my beard this time. She is so perceptive. The last two times I left I had a clean-shaven face. I wonder if she now associates my clean face with me leaving. She touched my nose with hers and then put her cheek next to mine and said “Home Sweet Home”. I had explained this new term for her when I used it earlier in the day. I said that it just meant that home was pretty sweet to me, ...like Agave Nectar … and she said “in warm milk” … I said “with whipped cream on top” … and so on until we had completed the recipe to her latest passion she calls “hot milk”; something my wife has been making for her lately. I had tried to make it a few times, but would always mess up on a detail or two. “But mom always gives me a bit of whipped cream to put in my mouth before she puts it away”. “Oops,” I would say as I opened the fridge and pulled the whipped cream back out.

Part of what makes home, “home” is more than just a place. For many of us it’s routine. This is certainly true for Maddy. This routine was difficult to adjust to when I first got back. It took me about a week to get out of my independent “bachelor” mindset and blend in. We spent more time getting in each other’s way. Like the warm up session before a symphony, there was a lot of dissonance. It was a shame the concert itself wasn’t much longer than the tuning of the instruments.

We went on a few short trips while I was home, but what Maddy missed most was the routines. Once we forgot to bring a CD set that had “Charlotte’s Web” on it read by the author. This is what she listens to when she winds down to get ready for bed. She’s probably listened to it 50 times by now. Nothing else will do. It makes her feel at home, I think. (I wonder if this is where OCD comes from … some sort of desire to recreate the familiar … to bring back a sense of home.)

Technology has come so far now that I am able to talk endlessly with Nikki and Maddy and even look at them and catch all the subtle facial expressions that do much to enhance communication, while I’m at the opposite side of the world. But I can’t touch them. I won’t be surprised if even that will be somehow possible in the future in some sort of virtual way, but I will miss it now. I still smell Maddy’s drool from when I kissed her cheek goodbye as she slept in her car seat in front of the airport. Images come to mind from my brief 2 ½ weeks at home. I still remember seeing a flash of my own boyhood face in the rear view mirror when I watched her smile to herself while she looked out the car window in some sort of wistful, quiet, daydream. The feeling and smell will soon fade and I know I’ll miss it. The images will be different when I come back. She will be older then, and a bit more of the innocence will be gone...

I have never thought of myself a “homebody”. Since I’ve had such a nomadic life there is no place on this earth I can honestly call home. But I’m realizing there is something other than a place that calls me back to itself. The invaded personal space; the sparse time to myself; the constant interruptions; the month-old goldfish crackers in the car seat …it’s all home. And even though it always takes time to adjust to it, and it never is completely perfect, I miss it horribly right now … and I haven’t even been away from it for a day.

True Myth

2008-05-08T20:25:00.000-07:00

I found myself recently in an interesting perspective shift. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve spent a lot of time lately trying to understand the mind of the unbeliever. Most of my attention has been on the atheist point of view. Much of what makes it hard for the atheist to believe in God and Christianity is the idea of the supernatural. To many atheists, science, over recent centuries has done a lot to answer questions that religion used to. A classic example would be epilepsy. Before it was better understood by science, they would say, religion attributed it to demon possession. Now that science has answered this and many of our other questions, religion has less of a functional role in our lives. Science, being more credible, has completely taken over the role of “God” for many of these guys. So when those of us who still hold on to a belief in the credibility of the bible try to have a discussion with these guys, they find it incredulous that we still believe in things like creation, Noah’s arc, and the virgin birth of Jesus, etc. They would say we can’t let go of the past. Although many important questions aren’t answered by the atheist, they still feel they are on more intellectually honest ground than we are, and no further discussion can happen until we let go of our “myths”.

I developed a bit more of an appreciation for this point of view the other day while flying with a Saudi first officer who was helping me understand some of the Muslim sentiment regarding the importance of their two most important cities: Mecca and Medina. He was telling me Medina is important because that is where the “holy prophet Muhammad” is buried as well as most of his successors. It is where Muhammad fled to when the people of Mecca didn’t like his insistence that there was only one God and they should give up all their pagan gods. Eventually Muhammad was able to come back to reclaim Mecca when he had finally developed a large following during his time in Medina. Mecca is significant to the Muslim, not only because it is the city where Muhammad was born, but also because the Kaaba is located there. The Kaaba is a cube shaped, one room stone structure that is traditionally believed to have been built by Abraham and Ishmael. Set on the outside of one corner of the structure is a black meteorite that is solemnly kissed by all pilgrims who can gain access to it. All Muslims are to visit the Kaaba at least once in their lifetime, a tradition that actually started well before Muhammad. All the prayers of Muslims are to face the Kaaba. Near this shrine are some large preserved “footprints” that are believed to be Abraham's. My first officer used his hands to show me these footprints are roughly two feet long, and he explained that in the early days people were much bigger than us and have gradually gotten smaller. He also told me that the Kaaba has been long held by Muslims to be the middle of the world, and science has recently been able to corroborate this. Another part of the Muslim pilgrimage in Mecca includes circling the Kaaba seven times, walking fast between two mounds near the sanctuary seven times, marching three miles to Mina, then proceeding six miles to Arafat, listening to a sermon, and then marching back to Mecca where a sacrifice is offered in memory of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of his son, followed by one more circuit around the Kaaba. Somewhere in this journey is a spring of water that my first officer claimed was the water that God gave to Hagar when she was dying in the wilderness after being sent away with her son Ishmael. The water of this spring has become “holy water” for Muslims and is distributed all over the Muslim world. He said it has a distinct taste that he doesn’t particularly like, but is evidence that it is special and unique.

While he was telling me this I watched him intently looking for any hint of disbelief. There wasn’t any. He really believed everything he said about the footprints, the center of the world and the spring and all that. I couldn’t help but think of the Midwest American myth of Paul Bunyan when he was talking about the footprints, and both the holy water Catholics use in their ceremonies, and the Ganges River in India, when he was talking about the spring. I realized that this must be the feeling atheists have when Christians profess their belief in the miracles of the bible.

One of the concepts that helped C.S. Lewis convert back to Christianity from atheism was the idea of “true myth”. The bible has plenty of fantastic stories that are used to teach a lesson or bring home a point. The literalness of these stories is a bit challenging to believe, but to discount the literalness would be to undermine the bible’s overall authenticity. Jesus referred to Adam and Eve, and Jonah as real people. Sorting out what is true and what isn’t is a difficult task for those of us who believe in the supernatural, but I feel that an appreciation for the difficulty of belief is important if one is to have an open and honest conversation with an unbeliever.

Respect

2008-05-06T11:44:00.000-07:00

Three memories come to mind that I think relate. One was quite a while ago. We were boarding a flight that was to take people from Dammam (our home airport) to Riyadh (the capital city of Saudi Arabia). The rest of the flights we do in my airplane only have men as passengers. This is due to the fact that all the oil wells and pump stations we serve are only staffed by men, and transporting these men is primarily what we use the Dash-8 for. Riyadh is a different kind of flight. I’m not sure what department pays for it, but we usually carry a mixture of men and women on these flights. The women are often going to Riyadh to shop and the younger ones are going to college there and coming back home every weekend. I’m not sure why the men go. Maybe it’s for similar reasons. None of it seems to be actual company business, but I could be wrong on that. What is interesting is that the men and women are segregated in the terminal waiting room. Then they come out to the plane in separate buses and all end up intermingling in the plane. I don’t think they actually sit next to each other in adjoining seats, but there isn’t much more than an aisle separating them much of the time and I’m sure this intermingling is viewed as a sort of necessary evil.

I’ve said all this to create a bit of a background for my actual story. As the boarding process was nearing its conclusion my Saudi first officer, and I were wrapping up our preflight procedures and checklist and had settled into a very relaxed and amiable “catching up” of each others’ lives. Suddenly our very senior Saudi flight attendant came up to us and rather agitatedly told us he had asked an elderly lady to change seats out of an exit row, and she had refused. The exit row she was sitting at had an exit door that had no stairs and a 4 foot drop, so the flight attendant felt it was necessary to put her closer to the door with the stairs attached to it. My first officer immediately took it upon himself to try to calm our flight attendant down. He suggested that maybe we should just let this lady have her way, as she was old and was obviously not trying to rebel. We could all plan on doing our best to help her out of the plane if we had need for an evacuation, instead of embarrassing her in front of the passengers. This discussion, by the way, was mostly in Arabic, so I was only getting bits and pieces of it and relying largely on body language. Every once in a while I would get a brief synopsis, but what I saw in the body language was that the calming intention of my first officer was ineffective. Our flight attendant remained passionately incensed and demanded a resolution. Apparently he had gotten in trouble for the very same thing on another occasion, and wasn’t going to have it again. We were already about a half hour delayed due to a maintenance issue that required us to change airplanes so I was feeling a bit of a time constraint. I was also struggling internally with my feelings of obligation to both follow the rules, and support my flight attendant. When I noticed nothing was being resolved I felt it was time to step in and blunder my way through some sort of resolution. I asked the flight attendant if he wanted me to go and talk to the lady myself. He said yes, so I did. Since she was in the front row it wasn’t far for me to go. I went up to her and squatted down in front of her so I would be at her eye level and so as to minimize the attention I was creating. All that I could see of her were her hands and her eyes. Everything else was covered in black (as it was for the rest of the women on the flight). When I looked at her eyes, I could tell she was crying and quite shaken. I tried to explain to her why she needed to move, and that it was necessary for her to follow the orders of the flight attendant. As I was saying all this I made probably my worst cultural (and religious) blunder. My hand was open and facing upward as would be natural in the middle of an explanation, but then I instinctively rested the back of my open hand on her knee. I’m not exactly sure why I did it. I think it was partly to comfort her, and partly to get her attention, but looking back I’m surprised I lived to tell about it. Talking to non-relative women here is very taboo and must be strictly business related and in the company of others. Touching a non-relative woman here is downright obscene. Somehow I got away with it. I asked her politely to change seats with another gentleman close to her but she continued to refuse. Her crying, however, seemed to stop. I told her we wouldn’t be able to go until she moved. After a bit of a pause she finally did move, but very slowly and reluctantly. This involved the moving of four people, actually, to avoid anyone sitting next to someone of the opposite sex. When it was finally done, I got back into my seat, and I could tell that my first officer wasn’t completely happy with what I had done. In his view I had disrespected an elder and this was more of a wrong than disobeying our rules or supporting our flight attendant. We sort of agreed to disagree and got back to regrouping ourselves for the flight …but it wasn’t over. It wasn’t a minute later, and the flight attendant came back up to the flight deck even more agitated than before. He declared that he was quitting right then and there, and that we would have to find a replacement for him. The lady had continued disrespecting him and he was not going to have any more of it. My head was swimming. Was I going to have to kick this lady off of the flight? As my mind groped unsuccessfully for a solution, the first officer came to my rescue. Like talking someone out of a suicide attempt at the edge of a bridge or tall building, he smoothly but definitively gathered up all the charm and persuasiveness he could muster, and successfully dismantled the emotional bomb that was just beginning to blow in front of us. I was in awe. Despite the fact that I couldn’t understand a word he said, I watched as in a matter of less than a minute the flight attendant rescinded his intentions to leave and went back to his duties with nothing but a bit of residual muttering.

Not knowing what else to do I asked my first officer if we were now good to go, and he said yes. Without saying a word about what had just happened we started up the engines and took off toward Riyadh. Once we were in the climb I thanked him for what he did and said I was indebted to him. I admitted that I had been at a loss as to what to do and he had done exactly what was necessary. After we had been flying for a while he called the flight attendant on the inter phone to check up on him. Apparently he was okay. There was even some laughter in the conversation as he joked about now having to stare at this lady for the rest of the flight, who was sitting face to face with him. When we got to Riyadh, I helped the lady down the stairs of the plane and into her wheelchair, after the other passengers had gotten off, and she thanked me. The flight attendant was calm now and in good spirits, but was still bothered by what he had endured.

I realized that the tension in this situation was largely a result of a disrespect of status and position, rather than just being ethnically based. Other tensions I’ve observed, however, have been across ethnic lines. We had an Indian flight attendant yesterday as we flew what we call the “pump run”. This is a long day of flying where we cross most of Saudi Arabia along the east-west pipe line, hopping from pump station to pump station to transport workers in and out of each one. We were briefly pausing at Pump Station #6 to pick up a few folks and take on some fuel. The flight attendant stepped off briefly to talk to the ground staff, and when he did so, a passenger sneaked off the plane to have a smoke. He at least went out to a designated smoking area, but when he came back, the flight attendant reprimanded him and asked for his badge number. The man refused, and once again I was brought into the picture. The flight attendant explained everything to me, and I eventually realized I needed to do something about it immediately. I asked if he wanted me to talk to the offender right then, and he said yes. I went to the guy’s seat and explained to him that I needed him to obey the instructions of the flight attendant. He didn’t say much. Then I asked him for his badge number. He mumbled it, and I had to ask him to repeat himself a few times. After I got it, I thanked him and went back to my seat while the flight attendant looked his number up on the manifest and filled out his report. I was a bit nervous at this point as I knew we now had a somewhat agitated and defiant passenger on board, but since he had obeyed me and seemed to somewhat understand a bit more of the gravity of his offence we pressed on. What complicated the matter was that my first officer had taken advantage of the short break as well to do the very same thing, and he and the offending passenger had actually enjoyed the smoke break together. In his defense he had thought that the passenger had been given permission to do this, but he was, however, obviously agitated once he realized our flight attendant had been disrespected. He brought it up multiple times during the course of the next flight, saying that this is a problem with uneducated Arabs. He said that he has observed them disrespecting people of other ethnic groups many times before, and didn’t like it. He claimed that you don’t see this so much among the more affluent and educated Arab population.

My last memory that relates to this theme of respect, but a little more loosely this time, happened this week as well. We arrived at Haradh in the middle of a sand storm. The visibility had dropped from seven miles to half a mile in just the short hour it took to get there, and the wind increased from 10 knots to a 27 knot direct crosswind. This was all within our limitations, so my first officer expertly wrestled the plane to the runway and did a nice job of landing it as well. We pulled up to the pump and were asked how much fuel we wanted. Before answering we asked how many passengers we were to expect, and they said 30. Our next flight was only going to take a half an hour so we calculated how much fuel we would need to be able to land there under our max landing weight and then decided that since we didn’t have a full load of passengers (37) we could add another 600 lbs of fuel to give ourselves an extra safety margin, due to the rapidly changing weather conditions. All was well until the boarding was done and we were told that we in fact now had 37 passengers. Now we were faced with a tough decision. We would have to either off-load 4 passengers, or plan to circle over our destination and burn fuel for about half an hour before we landed. We presented these choices to the dispatcher at Haradh and he mulled it over for a bit. After talking to the dispatch team at our home airport, they elected to let the choice be mine. I talked it over with my first officer, and we decided the best thing would be to remove 4 of the late passengers. Well, the decision wasn’t going to be completely mine as this wasn’t completely satisfactory to the dispatcher and he began to negotiate with me. He said that there were 3 passengers on board who were contractors (which usually means they are South-Asian expats that are notoriously treated pretty poorly here), and he would rather ask them to get off, than the Arab passengers who had been late. It was explained to me that the Arab passengers were returning to their families and the expats were just being relocated to their quarters in Dammam. Not knowing the full situation, I reluctantly agreed, but said that we would still have about 200 extra pounds of fuel to burn before we landed. This was finally the resolution we all agreed on and we took off about half and hour late. While on the way to our destination we creatively came up with all the inefficient ways we could fly there, the final choice being to fly the complete approach with the gear down (which would require more power and therefore higher fuel burn for the same airspeed). This worked, but I kept thinking how absurd this would be to do in the US with the current cost of fuel. On the flight, my very sensitive Saudi Arabian first officer mentioned multiple times how bad he felt for the contractors that got kicked off. We both agreed that it would have been better to kick off the late arriving Arabic passengers.

This issue of respect is obviously not just a Saudi Arabian issue. We deal with it all around the world. We all carry biases whether we realize it or not, and even our attempts to not be biased often serve only to reveal other biases (as was the case with my second story). The statement “those people are usually racist” is itself a biased statement. I have long been aware of the disrespect that goes on here and I’ve tried my best to give all people I interact with all the dignity I feel they deserve just for being fellow members of the human race, but I never imagined that my job as a pilot would require me to intervene in the biased based conflict of others. It’s going to take a while to get used to this. I hope I can keep my social and cultural blunders to a minimum in the process.