MEMORIES: HOME AND BACK AGAIN

West Fork, Black River, Southern Missouri

MEMORIES 10^th Installment

(Scroll down for previous installments) 

HOME TO MISSOURI, LOS ANGELES, AND BACK 

©Edward R. Close 2018  

At the end of my eighteen-month contract in Yanbu, to my surprise, I was offered a new contract, with a 30% salary increase. I think it was at the prompting of the Saudi Royal Commission, who were pleased with my work. I turned it down, and they came back almost immediately with a new offer of double my original salary. I thanked them politely, but again turned it down. Jacqui had had all she could take of Saudi Arabia, with the oppressive attitude toward women. She could go nowhere without me, her husband, with the exception of the women’s shopping bus to Yanbu, and she had to be covered from head to foot.

I worked ten-hour days, six days per week. As a result, Jacqui was mostly confined to our three-room pre-fabricated box with sand and fine dust filtering in from the blistering hot desert through cracks around the windows and doors. It was not the resort-like setting they portrayed in the orientation meetings in Pasadena! While she enjoyed the first month or so with our young son, (she had worked in California, with Joshua in day school) construction camp life was tantamount to prison for her.

At the end of each week, I was usually so exhausted from the long hours struggling with the over-whelming environmental and incompetent management problems on the site, that all I wanted to do was sleep. Jacqui, on the other hand, was more than ready to get out of the house. We were told by other “Ex-Pats” that a contract in Saudi Arabia would either make or break a marriage. I didn’t want to put her through another eighteen months of Hell, so I declined all their offers, and we returned to the US.

My parents had found a nice place on the banks of the Black River, in Reynolds County Missouri. We purchased it and moved in. I was back in my native Missouri Ozarks. Joshua, now five, and I enjoyed fishing and swimming in the river, and I thought I would be able to get a job as an environmental engineer with the nearby lead mines. Unfortunately, the industry was in a slump and the lead mines were not hiring. There was virtually no work for me in the small town of Centerville. I went back to school during the summer and took three courses to qualify for a teaching certificate. Re-certified to teach in Missouri, I taught high school mathematics in Reynolds County for two years.

Even though we enjoyed the quiet life for a few months, existence in a small rural Missouri town was about as exciting as watching paint dry. Jacqui busied herself with community activities. She helped prepare and serve meals at the senior center, volunteered in the local Red Cross and other community activities, while I was teaching math and Josh was in Kindergarten. About half-way through the second year, Jacqui contacted her old boss, a VP in the corporate offices of First America Bancorp in Los Angeles. He said he would be happy to have her back, offered her a raise and a more important job, and she was soon on her way to LA, while Joshua and I stayed behind in Missouri to finish the school year. In May, 1984, I loaded all of our belongings in the largest U-Haul truck I could find, hooked our car on behind, and Joshua and I headed for Los Angeles.

Mount Washington Neighborhood, Los Angeles, California

I found that jobs for me were also scarce in Los Angeles at that time. After several months of part-time work and unemployment, I contacted the Human Resources Department of the Company that had sent me to Yanbu. They would send me back to Saudi Arabia, but only on single status. That was unacceptable, so I contacted a company called Amartech (American-Arabian Technology) that ran one of the subcontracts I had managed in Yanbu. We had met the owner of the company and we hit it off well. He apparently liked what he saw. He contacted me directly by phone and asked me if I would like a staff position in their office in Jeddah. I asked if my family could come too, and he said: “Of course!” Because of our difficult financial condition, Jacqui reluctantly agreed to go back overseas, and after some orientation in the company’s Boston office, I returned to LA to wait for my visa. A few days after the visa came I was on a plane back to Saudi Arabia.

King Abdul Azziz Airport Jeddah Saudi Arabia

As before, there was a waiting period before Jacqui and Josh could come over, but this time, my new employer, in contrast with the first company, did everything they could to help, and they sent me back to LA to accompany my family. I was hired as Amartech’s Staff Hydrogeologist and Director of Business Development. The company had not had new work in some time. The previous Director of Business Development had not been very successful. When I arrived in Jeddah, I went to work immediately, contacting the Director of MEPA, whom I had met while writing the environmental regulations in Yanbu. With ythe help of the Jeddah Amartech staff, I prepared and delivered two proposals for huge Kingdom-wide MEPA jobs.

While at Yanbu, I had tried to learn Arabic, but found it difficult because Arabic is very different than English and other European languages. I had not gone much beyond salutations and a few simple phrases. This time, I decided to learn to read Arabic. Surprisingly, it was not too hard. Even though there are more letters than in English, and there are three forms of each letter, the language is phonetic. After learning the sounds of the letters and some combinations of letters, I could read signs and newspaper headlines. This helped immensely. And speaking even a little Arabic was a great asset and advantage in my new position as Director Business Development.

Whether by skill, or just pure dumb luck, I landed a big MEPA contract. It was the biggest contract Amartech had ever had. The company owner, Marvin, and the Jeddah Office Staff were jubilant. I was a hero! I began to travel extensively to Riyadh, the National Capitol, and to various outposts around the Kingdom where environmental and meteorological sensing and recording stations would be set up, including Yanbu. Suitable properties would have to be located, secured and prepared for installation of the sensing stations. More than one hundred automated stations were to be established all around the perimeters of the country, with a dozen or so in the interior. The stations would all be linked with a data-analysis center in Jeddah. The company leased four floors of a large office building in downtown Jeddah where the necessary banks of computers and data-processing equipment would be installed.

In addition to travelling within Saudi Arabia, I travelled to other Arab countries on occasion to look for business opportunities. Whenever I flew within the Kingdom or into the Arab Emirates, my boss insisted that I fly first class. When I had to rent a car, I had to rent the top of the line. “A successful company representative has to look successful.” Marvin said, and I didn’t argue. I always rented a Mercedes, unless I needed to rent a four-wheel-drive vehicle for off-road driving in the more remote areas. During this time, I covered virtually every mile of the Frankincense Trail in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the Arab Emirates, without knowing it! I began to understand the importance of frankincense in the history of Arabia.  I saw frankincense resins in many souks, and I saw ancient frankincense trees growing in the rocky deserts of Southern Arabia, Yemen and Oman.

When, in the course of carrying out the duties of my new job, I returned to Yanbu, I was pleased to see the mangroves full of green leaves, happily waving in the sea breezes in the Madinat Al-Sinayah Port Area, still standing, more than five years after the first barrel of oil came out of the Trans-Arabia Pipeline. The Saudi National who had taken over the position I had occupied greeted me as the “environmental engineer who saved the mangroves!” I was a hero again!

I drove out to the edge of the Madinat alone. The pre-Islamic village site I had saved from the bulldozer was fenced off with a sign designating it as an important archaeological site to be preserved for posterity as part of an Arabian Heritage Park. A warm sense of belonging came over me as I stood there. I had made a difference! I felt an unusual kinship to the bones buried there, as if they were ancestors of mine. I felt a strange bond linking me to these hearty desert people who had eked out a living here thousands of years ago. “Salaam,” I said aloud. “Peace.”

As I drove up to the sharm and Umm Lujj, I remembered the adventures with Giorgio and Doug. I could drive to Al-Hijr now and see the Nabatean dwellings and tombs carved into the native stone there, but I still couldn’t reach Petra.

When Jacqui and Joshua arrived, it was very different from the first time. The new King Abdul-Azziz Airport had been finished, and we lived in a villa, one of five, surrounding a pool, in a gated community called Arabian Homes, managed by a British firm. On weekends we could swim and lounge around the pool. There were attendants, pool boys, with pitchers of sparkling apple juice and orange juice. We enrolled Josh in a British-Dutch school and when I wasn’t there, Jacqui could call for a limousine to go shopping at up-scale department stores like Prin Temps. Our neighbors around the pool were, from right to left, Italian, British, French and American. It was a very nice way to live for a while.

Arabian Homes Compound Jeddah

AROUND THE WORLD

MEMORIES, 4^th Installment

Going to the other side of the world is an interesting experience, and I think readers might be interested in what it was like for me. So, I’m taking a pause in the story to go back to my notes about my first trip from the United States to Saudi Arabia.

(Reminder: To read previous posts in this series scroll down or type "Memories" in the search box.)

MY FIRST TRIP
©Edward R. Close 2018

AROUND THE WORLD

The flight from SFO in San Francisco arched up over the northern US into Canada, following the “Great Circle” or Polar Route, over Nova Scotia, across the Arctic Ocean, over Greenland and Iceland, Scotland, the Shetland Islands, across the English Channel, down into Frankfurt, in the heart of Germany. As the flight started, it was a clear night, and I could see the reflection of the moon in the rivers and lakes below as we flew over northern Minnesota and Canada.

The sun came up over the Arctic, skimming along the northern horizon, long enough for me to see that Greenland and Iceland were mis-named. Greenland was covered with ice and snow, while Iceland was green! After a short time, the sun went down, and I marveled that a whole day had passed in a few hours! Of course, during the twelve-hour flight, nine hours were “lost” due to the progressive crossing of time zones. My head began to spin as I tried to calculate what day and time it was over the English Channel. It would be about midnight the day after I left California when I landed in Jeddah. There was an eleven-hour time difference between Los Angeles and Jeddah. It would almost noon in LA.

We landed in Frankfort and I marveled at the cleanliness and orderliness of the German airport. Police with small arms were evident around every corner. An enclosed pedestrian bridge crossed the autobahn from the airport to the Sheraton Hotel. I looked forward to the opportunity to practice my German. I had learned some German as a child, because two of my grandparents were of German descent, and German would be one of the languages I would choose to fulfill the PhD language requirements. A polite and efficient bellman accompanied me to my room and complemented me on my pronunciation of words of die Deutsche Sprache. After a short night, I flew on to Athens, and then to Jeddah, on the Red Sea in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

My heart ached, leaving Jacqui and our young son Joshua in Pasadena. It was the first time we had been apart for any length of time. The Company promised they could follow in about thirty days, after my arrival in Yanbu and completion of the appropriate paperwork. But, as the plane descended into the Arabian night, I felt the enormity of the thousands of miles separating us. When I stepped out of the airbus in Jeddah, I sensed a world so different that I thought: “Could this even be on the same planet?” The smells, a mixture of hot desert air, strange spices, and sewage, was like nothing I had ever smelled before. The Arabesque curves of multi-colored neon lights dazzled me as my eyes searched for any hint of signs in English. There were none.

It took hours to get through customs. They searched every nook and corner of my luggage for the forbidden: alcohol, pork products, and “pornography” (anything showing the female form). The customs official scowled at my passport and muttered “Amreeky”.

“You drink alcohol.” the inspector stated, as he rummaged through my socks and underwear.

“No.”

“You got girly pictures?” he asked as he dribbled ashes from the cigarette dangling from his lower lip into my suitcase.

“No.”

He finished rummaging and let me close my suitcase. Before he waved me on, he said:

“You not drink alcohol, no girly pictures, no smoke, no cuss at me, I think you not Amreeky!” He grinned, revealing uneven, brown stained teeth.

Saleem, the Saudi representative of the Company, greeted me as I exited customs and hustled me through the crowd of taxi drivers to a waiting car. By the time I reached my hotel room in downtown Jeddah, it was 2:30 am. Saleem had informed me that I had to be on the bus to Yanbu at 7:30 sharp. It would not wait for me! I looked around the hotel room. There was a raised arrow on the corner of the desk, pointing toward Mecca, and a prayer rug was folded nearby with a copy of the Koran lying on top of it. The Koran was beautifully decorated with sweeping Arabic characters. I hadn’t learned to read Arabic yet, but I found a copy of the Koran in English in the desk drawer. Since I couldn’t sleep, I began to read the Koran.

On the bus ride the next morning, I began to get a look at the Arabian Peninsula. We travelled along in a desolate desert land parallel to the Red Sea, north from Jeddah (Variously spelled Jeddah, Jidda or Jiddah, in English: the first vowel does not appear in the Arabic spelling of the word.) The rugged igneous Hejazi peaks flanked the coastal plain on the east. My training and interest in geology and hydrology made me curious about their origin and weathering. I hoped to get a chance to see them up close while in Yanbu, perhaps on weekends.

About noon we stopped at a cross road village called Badr, about 250 kilometers north of Jeddah. There were a few mud and rock buildings, some stunted palm trees and a clump of acacia shrubs. Villagers in grey robes and checkered head scarves stared at the bus blankly. While the driver filled the tank with diesel fuel, I went inside and purchased a package of cheese and crackers and a bottle of water with some of the Saudi currency (riyals) I had purchased in Jeddah. A few minutes later, we were on our way again. On the outskirts of Badr, Bedouins herded a small flock of black goats.

About an hour later, the bus pulled off the road and entered a gate with impressive Arabic lettering arching above it. I learned later that it read: “Madinat Yanbu Al-Sinayah” (Yanbu Industrial City). The Saudi symbols of crossed swords and palm trees flanked it on either side. There was just a gate, no fence. I had studied the plans for the industrial city before I left Pasadena, but what I saw here was what looked like a group of boxcars sitting in a wide wadi (dry wash) between the Hejazi Mountains and the Red Sea. I stepped down from the bus and the Somali bus driver said: “Company man comes soon”, closed the doors and drove away.

I set my suitcase down on the sand and looked at the box car radiating heat in front of me. It was silent, as if abandoned here in the desert. I looked around. I was completely alone. The only movement was a dust devil, whirling like a fat rope dancing in the mid-day heat waves between me and the black mountains to the east. I looked down at the dust settling on the black polished surface of my shoes.

“What have I gotten myself into?” I wondered.