Cultural Immersion

While waiting in the Riyadh airport, I became the object of an admirer’s attention. A Saudi man was sitting with a group of about six other men, all were dressed in Western attire. The man was an average looking man, probably in his early 30's. I was in my abaya and hijab. He kept sneaking glances at me and smiling, hoping to catch my eye. This went on for a very long time. He never made any attempts to speak to me – that’s considered a no-no in Saudi culture. He only stared and he wasn’t making any attempts at hiding it. I was waiting for him to approach to pass me his phone number. The phone number exchange is how young Saudi men and women ‘date.’ Aside from arranged marriages and underground societies, there is very little opportunity for Saudis to date. There is no traditional dating like in the US - no hand-holding, no movie dates, no one-on-one dinners out. Although it would have made for a good story for both me and the Saudi man, he didn’t approach me with his number.

On a brief stint on the way from the Riyadh airport, I had the opportunity to grab a bite to eat at McDonald’s – a unique cultural experience in itself. As the first stop for me in Saudi Arabia, it was a bit of a cultural shocker, even being at a Western fast food establishment, a franchise that I’ve visited before in many other countries. The McDonald’s had two doors for an entrance – one for single men, the other for families, which included women, children, and married men with their families. Being a woman, I had to enter through the family door. The McDonald’s was literally split in half. The queues at the counter had a divider, floor to ceiling, so that those one the single men side could not see the family side, and vice versa. On the famly side, the booths had curtains that could be pulled shut so that women could take off their niqabs (the piece of cloth that covers a woman’s face so that only her eyes show) and eat with their families in privacy so that no one would see their faces.

McDonald's with curtained booths

Women and families are only permitted to each in restaurants that have family sections and many restaurants do not. This forces women and their families to eat at home, frequent only family-friendly establishments, or, according to a story I heard, wait outside schwarma restaurants (where meat is carved off a rotisserie), asking men to bring them out food or asking waiters to come out to the street to serve them.

I’m sure some are wondering if the McDonald’s menu was the same as in the US – it was – however, the pace of service was much much slower. This was fairly typical of all restaurant service in the Middle East. It’s just a slower pace. Life functions much slower there. The average day begins at a normal time, but then everything shuts down between 12pm-4pm for early-afternoon prayer time, lunch, and rest. Activities start back up after the mid-afternoon prayer, shops re-open at 4pm, and people are out and about until late at night, often until 11pm-12am, families with children, too. It was difficult getting used to this change of pace, having to schedule around times of rest, as well as having late nights.

Naptime in the souq (market)