Guest Post by Maggie
Okay, sharing a story here, so either get your popcorn or put on your snooze mask. Once upon a long time ago, I flew around this world as a radar tech on the big plane you see around Air Force bases from time to time that has the black and white frisbee on top of it. I was, to those in the acronym business, an ART (Airborne Radar Tech) on AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System). Hrrrrrahhhh. or whatever it was we did in those meetings.
So, in the 1980s, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia felt threatened by a little dispute going on between his neighbors to the north, aka Iran and Iraq, but which were actually simply arbitrary countries formed out of ancient Persia and Mesopotamia where the Turks, Mongols and Muslims fought for centuries to dominate all that sand, dust and a few nice oases. So, having descended from a Bedouin warrior who’d ridden into Riyadh and killed the current King at the gates of his own palace for the crown, this king was worried that if one or the other of his neighbors’ to the north were successful in eliminating the other leader and uniting Persia on the map, his Kingdom was next.
Because he was sitting on an ocean of oil, he thought the United States might be interested in forming a partnership. He was right. The U.S. started flying surveillance missions in Saudi Arabia in the early 80s, with the very first crews actually housed in cottages on the palace grounds. When I became one of the first female ARTs in AWACS (number 5 here) I actually was assigned to a crew that had two of the original crew members who’d been “guests” of the king that first exciting mission to Arabia.
So, now fast forward to 1986, when I traveled there for the first time. By then, the Iran-Iraq war had been ongoing for almost six years officially and the 3 or 4 week TDY (Temp Duty) to the Al Yamamah (the hotel which the King had requisitioned for the aircrews of the AWACS and refueling support crews necessary to keep the planes in the air for those missions) had become routine to older crewdogs. I was wet behind the ears, of course, and very excited to go to such an exotic place.
I listened carefully to all the briefings I was required to attend. My female crewmate, Debbie, had been there a dozen times or more and snoozed most of the briefings, telling me not to worry, she’d show me the ropes. Well, we climbed onto a crowded cargo plane and with a brief layover in Germany for fuel and the last couple of beers a few could guzzle down, we made it to the air field in Riyadh which also served as the commercial airport. Hot dusty air blasted into the airplane when the doors were opened and I felt sticky and dirty before I ever got onto the crew bus to be taken to the hotel.
Fortunately for me, Debbie was savvy on what was going on and we both snuck off to grab a cigarette behind the maintenance hangar, with her explaining it would take at least a half hour for the bags to be off loaded and put on the truck. She assured me they would be in a big pile at the hotel lobby. They were. We grabbed our bags and keys to our room from the front desk and she led me to the end of the hall, where the servants elevator was waiting, telling me that the other elevators were always too slow on arrival day. She told me to only use the servant elevators in the day or with someone else, because some of the men the Saudis brought in to cook, clean and “serve” them were really creepy and spooky. I would find out just how true that was shortly.
She took me to the hotel’s store and I bought what we called an abayah, the black robe I was to wear over my clothes when out of uniform or in public outside hotel grounds. Several of us went downtown a couple of times, with Deb and I walking amongst the guys on the streets and in the souks where the gold, silver, rugs, and all kinds of fascinating wares were displayed in ancient fashion, with salesmen weighing the precious metals and offering the lovely pieces of jewelry for XXXXX Riyal, “special price just for you.” When the speakers blasted with the call to prayers, the shopkeepers would close their doors and all the men would make their way to the mosque near chop-chop square (Yes, THAT kind of chop chop), leaving all the women and children sitting along the curbs while they said their requisite prayers to Allah.
On the second or third trip there, Deb and I were left alone on the street, when the two crew men we were with decided to go into the mosque and see what happened inside. There had been a Pakistani guy trying to talk to us all night coming up to us saying “America is Goot!” and reaching out to touch Deb’s hair. She did not wear the hair covering sometimes, opting to roll her long blond hair into a knot on back of her head to hide most of it. But, children on buses (we had to sit in the back with the other women and kids) would also try to touch her blond hair and stare at her blue eyes.
I was quite happy to be brown haired, brown eyed those days. However, the guy was obviously not Saudi, wearing the long shirt and pajama like pants of the Pakistani rather than the Saudi garb (she explained that to me and how many of the Pakistanis were brought in to do the manual labor the “true” Saudis would not do… I was still quite the novice), so she felt quite comfortable being rude to his comments about America being good, slapping his hand away and telling me to just move on. Anyway, while sitting on the curb, we saw him looking at us before going into the mosque.
She and I, being more than a little overly audacious, rebellious and perhaps stupid, decided to wander behind the mosque and smoke cigarettes until the prayer call ended. (No women in Saudi are allowed to smoke. Not even Camels… pun intended.) While sitting there, burying our cigarette butts in the sand and chain smoking to pass the time, only the occasional Saudi woman would pass by, looking at us with either amusement or disproving glares. What did we care? They were, after all, only women.
When the back “door” of the mosque creaked open, I hurriedly buried my burning cigarette in the sand, fearful it was one of the Mullahs (Prayer police dudes) carrying one of those sticks they smacked people with to get them to hurry to prayer call. (Deb and I had already been smacked for not covering our hair on an earlier trip downtown.) I pulled my abayah neckline up over my hair and looked at my feet. A moment later, Debbie said “Oh Good Grief! It is THAT guy who’s been following us.” I said “Well, just stare at the ground and maybe he’ll just go away.” She pulled her abayah over her hair like I had done and we both sat there still and stared at the ground until a pair of dirty grimy feet in sandals stopped in front of us. Debbie muttered… “Shit, he’s just standing here. What to do?” I said “Just ignore him and he will go away.”
Surely he wouldn’t do anything brazen with the mosque entrance just yards away and the street full of wives awaiting their husbands’ return? After a few seconds, Deb groaned “Martha, he is NOT just going away.” I looked up to discover that our Pakistani admirer was standing in front of us with his pajama pants down around his knees and his long shirt lifted to his chest, exposing his uncircumcised thing hanging slightly erect about two feet from our heads. When he saw we were both looking, he grinned at us and said “America is GOOT!” We jumped up, Deb shoved him as hard as her 5’2″ frame would allow, causing him to stumble and fall and we ran like maniacs out to the street, looking frantically for our male chaperones in the crowd of men leaving the mosque.
After we found them, they ran behind the mosque to kick some ass (they said… duh, right… in a nation where we were supposed to do as the natives do?) but couldn’t find the guy. After we got back to the hotel, they had to spread the story and Deb and I were chastised for going off alone like that, with new rules for women downtown imposed by those who like to overreact at any opportunity. In all my travels around the world and this country, I find it really ironic that the only place I’ve ever been flashed is in Saudi Arabia, not one hundred yards away from the place where they whack things off for what they consider immoral behavior.
Photo is Deb and I on another adventure, when we got to see the annual Camel Races and the King’s personal band performed then came over to the area where we were sitting. She and I were not required to wear abayas, the U.S. forces invited as “special guests” of the King and once we asked this guy to pose with us, several of the band members dragged out their cameras and wanted pictures of the American Babes (Okay, mostly they wanted their picture with blond petite Debbie, but those who know what a camera ham I am have to know I demanded to be in the pictures too.)
