My beautiful and lovely wife, Carla, was adamant that I cobble together some words for my largely neglected blog this week. Soon thereafter, a good friend, and maybe more importantly, water ski mentor and partner of mine, also inquired about my recent silence. Ok…ok, I get it. I never knew anyone really cared what I had to say.
Overall, things are going well. I am safe and I am in good health. I’m a bit homesick and miss Carla and the kids. However, I think I would be a little worried if I didn’t. The weather in Saudi Arabia has been pretty mild as of late. It is in the 60s to 70s during the day and then drops in the 40s and 50s at night. This past week we were subjected to a pretty violent sand/wind storm.
As for my continued integration into Saudi society and culture, well let’s just say that I think you would have to be certifiable to voluntarily want to live here. Now don’t get me wrong, compared to Iraq this country is very safe and has a solid legal and security structure. However, the social and religious culture is just ridiculous. My day starts at about 515 am every morning with the Muslim call to prayer. They blare this song-like chant of versus out of the Koran for 10 minutes at 100-plus decibels all over Riyadh. This happens five times a day, the first one coming an hour before sunrise. It wakes me up every single morning and I just yell “shut up” at the top of my lungs—occasionally with some other colorful language sprinkled in. My alarm is set for 545 am and I don’t think I’ve ever made it. Speaking of the call to prayer, according to Saudi law, all businesses are required to close during the prayer time. As a result, you better have a copy of the published prayer times. If you go to a business or a restaurant leading up to prayer time, you won’t be allowed in. The businesses are required to close for about 30 minutes for prayer. On one occasion we were out and about in Riyadh and decided to visit a restaurant for dinner. About the time we pulled up and started to head for the door, we heard that bloody call to prayer. We decided to stand outside and wait it out. This wasn’t a good idea. About five minutes into our wait the religious police came by. Oh, the religious police…
In Saudi Arabia, it isn’t the King or the business owners that have the power; it is the clerics and there minions the Mutawaa (religious police). They are like Hitler’s Storm Troopers. Imagine a pack of Jehovah’s Witnesses showing up to chastise you about not falling applicable religious laws. These guys patrol all public areas. Making matters worse, these guys dress like they are in Al-Qaida. They have long beards without a mustache, wear short thobes (white robe/man dress) above their ankles, don’t wear the rings on top of their ghutra (scarf thing on their head), and they carry canes. They started yelling at us to go pray. It does no good to argue with these people. We ended up going and sitting in the truck until the restaurant opened back up. About two weeks ago, the religious police stopped a family in front of a touristy area in Riyadh. It was a Saudi mom, dad, and teenage son. The son’s hair was too long and prevented him from correctly wearing his headscarf. Consequently, the Mutawaa decided to take matters into their own hands and gave him a haircut right on the street. When mom and dad tried to step in and intervene the Mutwaa beat them—literally—with the sticks/canes they carried. Only in Saudi Arabia…
As you probably know, when the Saudi women are in public they have to be covered. They wear an abaya that covers their entire body and a hood that only exposes their eyes. We call them ninjas because they look like Japanese ninjas all decked out in black. Try going to a mall and just seeing a sea of black ninjas. Recently, there was an article in the Saudi press that suggested that Saudi women should have to wear a new hood that covered their eyes. According to the author, some women were making their eyes too provocative with makeup and it was going to result in prostitution. After I read it, I could only shake my head. I could go on and on with this stuff…
I’ve concluded that the Saudis dislike labor and work more than any people on Earth. I know Americans aren’t wild about doing manual labor and we normally hire it out to our friends from Central and South America. But I swear, if a Saudi could hire an Indian or Bangladeshi to walk for them they would! Furthermore, these people have go to be the luckiest country on earth. If it wasn’t for their incredible oil reserves in the Eastern Province they would still be living in tents and tending their goats. Instead, they live in these incredible villas and drive every manner of luxury car you can think of all because of the oil. There are no taxes here. All of the government’s revenues come from oil sales.
I was talking to a U.S. Army officer the other day. He is here as an advisor to the Saudi Army. He told me that he recently had to teach the Saudis a basic class on mission planning. He spent a week teaching this class to a bunch of mid-level officers. At the end of the week, the Saudis were supposed to plan a hypothetical mission and brief it to their commander. They couldn’t do it. Again, he was teaching them just basic organizational and planning skills. The point is, we have allowed them to become “too big to fail.” Much like we did to our banks and auto manufacturers and had to bail them out. I have no doubt that if any country tried to do anything to Saudi Arabia we would have to intervene on their behalf. Funny, they know it too and frequently say as much.
In other news, I’m still trying to get my thesis published. For those of you that don’t know, while I was in grad school last year I wrote a thesis on the impact of the Russian depopulation on national security. Within the past few weeks, I had two scholars agree to read and assess my work. I’m sure it didn’t hurt that NIU agreed to pay them to do it. One guy works for the U.S. Census Bureau and the other for a D.C.-based think tank. That said, assuming they do provide me a review, NIU is going to publish a portion of my thesis in either an ad hoc product, or shop for a journal or periodical willing to do it—pretty cool.
While this isn’t official or in concrete, I was informally told that I will be headed to the Pentagon after I finish my tour here in the Kingdom. I was kind of holding out hope that I would be headed back to DIA at Bolling AFB. However, the Pentagon will do me just fine. My organization’s headquarters was recently relocated from Andrews AFB to Quantico MCB due to the BRAC. As a result, I’ll take the commute to the Pentagon over Quantico. I guess I’ll have to figure out whether it is better to take the Marc Train or the Metro…decisions…decisions.
All of my guys are doing well. I lead a team of 20 people and on any given day, I have people all over the country. By and large, my military guys are pretty easy to deal with. The bur under my saddle always seems to be the two translators I have. As you probably know, my Arabic speaking isn’t too good. As a result, we employ government contractors to translate for us. I have two guys that are in there 60’s and are “hyphenated Americans.” That means, they immigrated to the States at some point in their lives. Obviously, they have there own quirks and issues. Unbelievably, these guys get paid a six-figure salary to translate. Other than being able to translate, they have no other skills or education. They take jobs with the U.S. Government overseas because they can’t find work in the States. Sadly, they are separated from their families for very long periods of time. Anyways, day in and day out, there is always some issue or catfight with these two. It was the same when I was in Iraq, but it gets old playing referee.
Where does that leave us? Well, I’m creeping up on the halfway point of this assignment. I’m scheduled to return home for a three-week vacation around mid-May. Hopefully, we’ll have some good weather for water skiing, raft ups, and trips into Annapolis. Carla and I are making plans on how we are going to demolish our kitchen and install something totally brand new, more open, modern, and warm. In our whirlwind of a first year in the house, the kitchen was about the only room we didn’t tackle. Considering it hasn’t been updated since the early 1990s, it is due.
I hope that each of you is doing well. I would love to hear from you. My email address is brian.sharman@gmail.com
I’ll leave you with this off-color joke that I recently heard that sort of anecdotally captures Saudi society: four newborn babies were resting in the pediatrics ward of a Saudi hospital. There was German baby, Jewish baby, Saudi baby, and an Indian baby. The German baby shouted out “Heil Hitler” and gave a salute! As a result, the Jewish Baby violently lost control of his bowels, which resulted in a big mess. The Saudi baby looked at the Indian baby and said, “get over there and clean up that mess!”
