Eye Witness

Last night was first of its kind for me in Riyadh. I had spent all my night from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. in AlTahleea Street. Also, I had a great company with a good guy. I’ve seen closely how mad the crews can go. It’s like Egypt any way, but for the sake of self-expressing and having fun, Saudi youth can do everything.

I’m going to describe two separated dilemma, yet they are very connected: religious police, and girls. The interaction between them is just like Tom & Jerry. The great haunting between those oppose teams is infinite. It may have started when religious people for their surprised realize females don’t have the gear they have. They had searched deeply for the missing piece in the female anatomy. Since they couldn’t find, they announced the war against the different gender.

First thing I could witness is the process of dating in a coffee shop. The car parked for almost 10 minutes. Then a guy left the car, followed, after one or two minutes gap, by a girl from the same car. The guy was moving slowly, he picked up his phone like making a phone call. The girl was just after him, exposing a part of her breast from her Abiya, and also trying to make a phone call. For any one, they would look without any connection. They entered the family section of the coffee shop. After like 13 or 15 minutes, which are enough time for a male orgasm process, they had left and walking next to each other.

Thanks to medical school, it taught me how to observe. Thanks for the community, it taught them how to hide and date. Also, the religious police, they are the secret beneath the hide and seek play. When I described the suppression of id, I couldn’t imagine I may witness the result very closely like this. People are horny, gosh; you don’t know how horny they are.

Religious police didn’t catch the guilty people. However guilt concept is very broad for those crazy long bread men. They were scouting and patrolling all over the street. Three jeep cars for them were distributed near the mall, the beautiful girls’ restaurant, and one like special units car. The situation was very tense, the street is very congested, boys and girls are very where, and the religious police is just hunting them down. Until, one car for those police back reared a car. An Indian driver left the car to call the police. But directly two religious police men left their cars, approached the poor driver, hit him, and drag him to their jeep. I missed what happened next, but a lot of guys gathered there. The regular police men were there doing nothing. Eventually, the jeep left the site.

I couldn’t realize how thrilled Riyadh can be in weekends after mid night. I should repeat the experience, as this was my first close encounter with religious police, and the young people madness. Now, I’m in my way to Syria. I plan but not promise to publish on daily basis.

P.S: this was supposed to be published Friday night or Saturday morning. But it's really hard to find internet access in Syria. Also, they require an ID.. 

College Life

How to survive in 50 degree centigrade hot weather? It’s really melting hot. The Saudi practice of dressing could co up well with the climate. The thob is a piece of clothes designed like a female dress,  except for the long sleeves and minor changes. It allows the air circulation and ventilation, special of the lower manly organs. A teacher in my intermediate school listed the benefits of wearing thob. It’s easier to go to bathroom with thob, easier to practice sex with it, easier to run and fight or flee. However, when a Saudi guy holds his thob between his teeth, most often it’s running is for fleeing. The other piece is ghotra. It’s just a scarf over the head, and from now and on it will be coded as SoH. Talking about scarfs, the story is completely different at the female side. They wear the same manly dress but in black. Can you imagine all the heat and sun rays absorbed to that poor black body?

SoH

I always have this fancy of walking with my upper scrub piece and a boxer below.I want to do that, for sure, at the hospital wards, not anywhere else. This is not greys anatomy influence; it’s just I like and admires my boxers so much. The Saudi dressing code proved its failure in the recent heat wave. It’s only June, and it easily goes up to 55C and more. So, boxers are the solution. If you go out wear only a boxer, or even go outdoors naked. It’s really hot, hot and horny. A friend of mine was telling me that Saudi people are always sexually aroused because the heat. And usually they seek a window or a hole to release this heat. 

I just finished my 5th year in Riyadh, the international capital of dust. The experience I gained in there is really enormous. It’s only 400 km away from my home town, though life there is very different in term of decades. It could be not only life; it is also the stage of my life I spent there, the college life. As far as I know, in any place other than Saudi Arabia or Riyadh or College of Medicine in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the college life has 1 important element: celebration and parties, beside many others. Well, the elements of my college life were nothing, just studying, Starbucksing, loneliness, surviving in such a terrible climate and interacting with the real world.

I’ve been discriminated on 5 bases by the real world:

1. Religion: though I’m not religious, and most discriminators were not.

2. Ideological: many religious people were calling me liberal, weird, and strange.

3. Tribal: and for those who don’t know what tribe is. It’s to know your 25 great grandfathers. This’s little under estimating to it, we may talk more about it later.

4. Demographical: I’m not from Najd; Riyadh, Qasim, Kharj, or wherever there. I’m from East, and the easterners are loyal to Iran, because they’re from there.

5. Socioeconomic: I’m stranger, oh god how suspicious is a stranger in Riyadh. Given I don’t really involve myself into their life style; I don’t go to the mosque at all, I don’t hang out with class mates, I don’t dress in Thob and SoH as they do, and I am silent most of the time. Also, I do everything they don’t do.

However, I learned how to be a pain in the ass, and surviving these harsh conditions. Indeed, I lost a lot, still, there’s some reasonable gain. I changed to another person, could be worse person. So, the other college life element is being a jerk. Just please before I go to the other topic, I didn’t do any harm to anybody under any condition in my whole residency in Riyadh.

This is my last summer as a student. Next year, I’m going to start my internship as soon as I finish the school. Finally the long harsh 7 years are approaching the end. Unfortunately, it sounds to be a busy summer. There will be no chilling, relaxing, or travelling abroad. So far, I am trying to apply for an anesthesia elective attachment in some hospitals around. I have a lot in my mind regarding some of my younger brothers. Alost, there are much more to do regarding my community. I may have a couple of weeks in September, so if you were in my place, what would you do?

The Chain

A sequence of events passed very quickly in my mind. I was in my friend car, listening to some music, I could at the point feel the unity of the guitar tone and me. The chain started from the guitar tone, to a conversation with a colleague, passing through a violin, and ending to me, having high standers, in life and friends. I want to take you with me in detail through this chain of my thoughts. However, recently, I’ve been through a lot of events, and I couldn’t catch a moment to write.

Violin, speaks the saddest sound a musical instrument can speak. I received one, 2 weeks ago, in a plan to learn how to play it. When I, first, held it in my hand, brought it closer to my neck, I realized that the arteries and veins that coming and going back to my heart lied beneath this instrument. That makes it very different to any musical instrument. I believe its sounds speak to and from my heart, my sorrow, and my ambition. In addition, it’s not very common to find people who can play such an elegant instrument.

A colleague asked me, while I was talking about my violin, why I didn’t buy a guitar. He didn’t ask why I bought a violin not a guitar. He didn’t ask me what’s so special about violin that I bought it and I didn’t buy a guitar. The nature of his question was very closed ended. I believe he assumed that nothing is better than guitar and asked based on his brilliant assumption. You can’t dare to discus him if guitar is not the best, as long as he believes so. This strict mentality fits the religious environment this boy was raised into. In the end, he only lives in absolute righteous and sure answers for every question, where no place for doubt. I’m not sure of what I’m saying next: (being liberal is accepting the chance of being wrong and admitting it, and many other advantages, like the freedom in sex practice, beliefs, and life options.) Anyway, I’m sure that my colleague community is eliminating different individuals. That’s why I’m fucking up eliminated in Riyadh. I can say I’m sure I’m different, and I’m very proud of being different. In the end of the conversation he asked me: (what’s violin?)

I was thinking between myself and myself ego, of Ahmed after 10 years for example. Myself ego was wondering between titles that I can be called. It was thinking like; Ahmed the doctor, the thinker, the writer, the poet, the revolutionist, or Ahmed the violinist. Well, I preferred to be called (The Violinist), it’s touching me deep within. The violinist is very extra ordinary.

Music, in any form, is amazing. Back to the beginning of this entry, and it all started there. I was listening in my friend’s car to a song; its name is La Llorona. La Llorona is an ancient Spanish legend, which in Spanish means “The crying/weeping woman”. The basic version is that La Llorona was a beautiful woman who killed her children to be with the man that she loved and was subsequently rejected by him. She drowned the children then killed herself, and is doomed to wander, searching for her children, always weeping. The story doesn’t end in here. I’ll be back soon to continue.

To be continued…

Prophecy

I’m waiting for the prophecy. Listening to the silence, silently, to show respect to it. It’s just the heave of trees, rain dance while it drops in joy, and birds singing. I keep my eyes on earth all the time, seeking for the fallen star.

I’m alone and lonely. It’s echoing through the empty walls of my cells, my heart, my chest, my room, my block, my city, my country, and the entire world around me. Oh, is it the world around me, or am I surrounding it? That may explain the echo! As well, it may explain my loneliness. However, it could be good to listen sometimes to yourself while you talk, to realize how stupid you talk.

People continually change, starting from atom level up to mental level. We may change for the best or the worse. We may progress or regress. We may give life once, we easily die. We change for sure. When I review my changes, I figured to have been changed a lot through previous years, either passively or actively. Ok, let’s review some changes. When I say we, I mean me and myself, as to respect the difference between my spirit and my mind. So, I’m getting more isolated, more silent, and less socially. One nice friend told me that these are signs of prophecy, I’m getting more prophetic, and soon I’ll be prophet. It has been three weeks abroad, without any social contacting. I’m just being more listening, thinking, and deciding not to make any friends.

I am not sure of what I feel. My other dear friend told me to get marriage soon. I’m ruining myself by my own, staying alone like this. So, it’s me enjoying myself alone. I think Riyadh experience and atmosphere are stuck in my lower conscious and hunting me with loneliness. It tells me no body fits me, I’m alone because I’m superior to everybody else. So, Riyadh did the worse to me!

It’s very strange place to live in, because it’s a desert. Whom stupid enough to live in a desert? I chose to do so, 5 years ago. Now, my heart, soul, mind and I live in a desert. They are in a desert all the time even in Eden. It’s more like mental status. Is it mentality of being alone, more unique? Is it being more alone, safer? Is it not secured sensation all over my heart? Yet, I think no heart has left to me after 5 years experience.

I’m gravely sad to myself, ending up like this. Cry myself a river for being lonely.

Reviewed later on.