Now driving in Saudi is not for the faint hearted, and the drivers are reckless… Of course this has a bit of what George Carlin said “anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac” I will not exempt myself from that.

So with me, it goes like this, a guy cuts me off, abu shaklak… a guy cuts a red light, abu shaklak… a guy does not stop at a stop sign, abu shaklak… a guy opens the window and throws his rubbish out on the streets, abu shaklak… and so on.

So one day, I was driving with my son in the car, the road was clear and I was approaching a traffic light which was green, it turned yellow just as I was on the zebra, so I kept going, it turned red just as I finished crossing the intersection… all was cool… except that my son looked at me in bewilderment and all wide eyed and said… and I quote “Daddy! Now WE are abushaklak!”

All I could say was… yes we are… yes we are.

I have not been away, but unfortunately some russian hackers injected some bad code into my blogs and redirected people to their website, it took me a looooong time to clean it all up, especially with how busy work and personal life has been lately.

So here’s to a year I will never forget, I just hope there are no more surprises… However, if the Mayans were right, then we have not seen the beginning of it.

While far fetched,  and no release in Arabic of this news at the time of this post, and no names of who from the counsel approved and submitted the claims if women drive in Saudi “there will be no more virgins” and homosexuality will be rampant, I cannot buy it, something must have been lost in translation.

And the guy who says he was at a cafe in a neighboring country and a woman was checking him out, alright Muhannad, even Kanye with his ego is not that sure if a women was checking him out (link to song).

If this is true, then it would not be more far fetched then the WA Liberal MP who claims Australians are unknowingly being converted to Islam by eating Halal meat, in a speech addressed to the Australian Parliament nonetheless… I just wonder how those people make it all the way to the top like that, but then I remember George W. Bush and I get even more frustrated, oh well, it ain’t all good like Shaka khan sang with De La Soul, that’s the truth.

“It is with deep sorrow and grief that the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud mourns the loss of his brother and Crown Prince His Royal Highness Prince Sultan Abdulaziz Al Saud.” (source)

Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz passed away on October 22, 2011 in his mid-eighties, may he rest in peace. His passing is significant on the world scene because of his position as Crown Prince of the country which sits on more than a quarter of the world’s known oil reserves.

The issue of succession is raised again.

In Saudi (and the world), there is this fear, that the next inline would be more controlling or less controlling, more “religious” more “liberal”, more this, that or the other depending on who you talk to and what they would like to see. The rumors and so called “intelligence reports” about King Abdullah that were online back when he was crown prince, were nothing to be optimistic about, yet in reality, his impressive accomplishments are something most of us are proud of (I sure am, here, here and here as an example, and I don’t think I am alone in that).

Prince Sultan left behind him a legacy also, while some do question it, he was still a man that left an impression on the people, mostly due to his infectious smile and his generosity as I read from reports, and many on twitter on the day of his passing.

My memories of Prince Sultan are only that of passing by his palace in Jeddah on my way to school most of my schooling years, always wondering if he was there or not, now I know… he won’t be living there anymore.

Most Pictures are from alriyadh online newspaper, the last one is mine.

The album plays like a documentary, a rapumentary if I have to describe it, because this guy is Public Enemy and Tupac, Michael Moore and Malcolm-x and more at the same time.

It is artful, in the way it stirs your emotions, flows in a way that doesn’t lose you, entertains without being boring and saddens to the point it brought tears to my eyes more than once, and powerful to a degree I have yet to hear something like it.

I do feel so helpless when I hear and see those stories, stories that make my struggle feel irrelevant, I have never been through what people in occupied lands have been through, and I hope the day suffering on earth ends… but basing that on human history, extrapolating anything out of that which isn’t ugly is a stroke of nonsense, if autumn, winter and summer are destroyers, only spring is a builder, and then it’s still three to one.

Kareem Dennis is talented and has a good head on his shoulder, talent enough to take the best rapper out there, and true to himself that he didn’t sellout to this big marketing machine which tries to make you feel like success is money, cars, and women and then try to tell you that greed and misogyny is bad, then sell you some antidepressants to make you numb enough to reprogram you again and again.

This album is what rap is all about, relating the story of the oppressed, in a message that will should shake something  inside the listener, and if it cannot make the listener do something for the betterment of this world, it would at least open his/her eyes to the injustices that are not covered in mass media… and knowledge after all, is power.

Power to the people who realize they are the 99%.

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Music

After a quick survey and visits to kindergartens (involving me staying in the car outside because I cannot enter, all female staff and all) we settled on a Montessori style school, he is in preschool now, and while Saudi has a new optional age for entering first grade at five and a half, provided he can read and write in Arabic a little bit, we couldn’t and didn’t want to do that, both my parents have spent their lives teaching, and they were against him entering school at such an early age.

We hope it is good, he just completed his first week, but there are things we didn’t like… and do not like in all of them.

First thing, no music, that to me is unnatural, the policy is no music, because to them, it is forbidden in Islam… which brings me to the second thing… religious training, say what you say about this, but here is my reasoning.

In Islam, a child is asked to optionally pray five times a day when he/she turns seven. Prayer is a pillar of Islam, and prayer becomes mandatory at ten, so why should a child before the age of 7 go through that. He is already asking us questions about death (before he entered the school) and they are uncomfortable, mainly because he saw pictures of my grandparents and asked where they were and how they died and what happens to them now and such… and if they comeback.

And no, I am not the only one having these concerns, a while ago a YouTube video of a Saudi kindergarten caused some rage because they taught kids how to perform an Islamic burial and funeral, things that many kids witness anyway, but should not learn.

There is the option of letting him go to an international school. It is very expensive for us to go with that option, so at the moment it is not an option at all.

His first experience with school is from our time in Australia, where addressing his caretakers was done on a first name basis, he used to call women who had grand kids older than he was, by their first names, now he does not understand why he has to call them “Abla (teacher)” and not their first names.

We also do not like that they sell junk food (they all do, even when I was a kid, and I loved it, but I am a parent now so chocolates and gummy candy should be consumed only when we let him… of course his grandparent do not care about our reasoning so I guess the imaginary control we have is useless).

At the end, we hope his “schooling does not interfere with his education”.

Could it be, that we just don’t believe in the process?

Maybe we don’t believe in democracy?

Maybe we don’t believe that Municipal councils would change anything (but do we think twitter and Facebook do)?

Or maybe the king’s decree to allow women in Saudi to vote and run for municipal elections and shoora council (not now but in the next elections), made men just not want to have anything to do with it as a sign of protest, but that still doesn’t explain the low number that registered a few months ago.

I didn’t vote.

I can only talk for myself, I didn’t vote because I registered in Jeddah, then moved to Yanbu, and I knew of no way to change where I was registered to vote.

I also had no idea who was running for what and what their agenda was, politics is full of hot air, and promises filled with dreamy words are hard to believe especially without precedence of political or social activity in the country, everything is ran by the government.

The previous municipal council electees did nothing to help with anything, it is tough to follow that, none of them are known to have shown up to help Jeddah rain victims as a simple example.

So why didn’t we vote… The simple… Very simple answer is… No one knew about them, and those who knew didn’t care.

“first, please god, let it be a mistake, the pilot’s heart failed, the
plane’s engine died.
then please god, let it be a nightmare, wake me now.
please god, after the second plane, please, don’t let it be anyone
who looks like my brothers.

i do not know how bad a life has to break in order to kill.
i have never been so hungry that i willed hunger
i have never been so angry as to want to control a gun over a pen.
not really.
even as a woman, as a Palestinian, as a broken human being.
never this broken.

more than ever, i believe there is no difference.
the most privileged nation, most americans do not know the difference
between indians, Afghanis, Syrians, muslims, Sikhs, Hindus.
more than ever, there is no difference.

….

I am looking for peace. i am looking for mercy. I am looking for
evidence of compassion. any evidence of life. I am looking for
life.

Ricardo on the radio said in his accent thick as yuca, “I will
feel so much better when the first bombs drop over there. and my
friends feel the same way.”

on my block, a woman was crying in a car parked and stranded in hurt.
I offered comfort, extended a hand she did not see before she said,
“we”re gonna burn them so bad, i swear, so bad.” my hand went to my
head and my head went to the numbers within it of the dead Iraqi
children, the dead in Nicaragua. the dead in Rwanda who had to vie
with fake sport wrestling for america’s attention.

yet when people sent emails saying, this was bound to happen, lets
not forget u.s. transgressions, for half a second i felt resentful.
hold up with that, cause i live here, these are my friends and fam,
and it could have been me in those buildings, and we”re not bad
people, do not support america’s bullying. can i just have a half
second to feel bad?

if i can find through this exhaust people who were left behind to
mourn and to resist mass murder, i might be alright.

thank you to the woman who saw me brinking my cool and blinking back
tears. she opened her arms before she asked “do you want a hug?” a
big white woman, and her embrace was the kind only people with the
warmth of flesh can offer. I wasn’t about to say no to any comfort.
“my brother’s in the navy,” I said. “and we”re arabs”. “wow, you
got double trouble.” word.

one more person ask me if I knew the hijackers.
one more motherfucker ask me what navy my brother is in.
one more person assume no arabs or muslims were killed.one more person
assume they know me, or that I represent a people.
or that a people represent an evil. or that evil is as simple as a
flag and words on a page.

we did not vilify all white men when McVeigh bombed Oklahoma.
america did not give out his family’s addresses or where he went to
church. or blame the bible or pat Robertson.

and when the networks air footage of Palestinians dancing in the
street, there is no apology that hungry children are bribed with
sweets that turn their teeth brown. that correspondents edit images.
that archives are there to facilitate lazy and inaccurate
journalism.

and when we talk about holy books and hooded men and death, why do we
never mention the kkk?

if there are any people on earth who understand how new york is
feeling right now, they are in the west bank and the Gaza strip.”

(The rest of the poem)

This would be our son’s first eid in Saudi among his extended family.

As customs dictate, buying new clothes is mandatory, we bought our little one his first thobe, light blue as he wished, seeing him wearing it made him seem so big, much older that what we see him as in his little jeans and shirts.

His grand parents gave him eidiyahs, money grandparents, parents, and older siblings give to the younger generation… It has been so long since I received any money like that, I don’t even remember what was the last amount I got. Of course he wants to buy toys, more cars is all he can think about… Oh, and an iPad 2… He even wants his own email and a facebook account, at five years old… We had to say no, but then again I said no to a mobile phone number only to see my dad buying him a prepaid sim card, now he has his own number which he uses in my old iPhone, I have a feeling my dad might set him up with an email account.

The joys of eid, or the eid spirit, are mostly felt by kids, with sweets, chocolates and candy of every kind everywhere they go, I am sure it has to do with the happiness they feel.

These are the days we are happy to be home again, but not when we have to drive from one home to the other to visit and give our respect to family members, that part, is nerve wrecking.

I almost got into a fight yesterday, the streets were crowded like never before, and some guy got pissed off because I would let him cut me off at a traffic light, they tried to get me to stop, one of them even threw his slipper at me while driving, all because I wouldn’t let them cut in line at a traffic light I’ve been waiting at for more than 15 minutes, at the next red light, three of them got out of the car and tried to open the door to the car I was driving, this, while my family was with me, and this at a crowded traffic light where there is always a police car parked there… EXCEPT for when I needed them, I didn’t open the door of course, they seemed like the Saudi version of My Name is Earl, and kept making obscene hand gestures and calling me names, all for not letting them break traffic laws, because when you obey traffic laws in Saudi, you piss people like these off. I don’t take things like that personally, it’s like water off a duck’s back to me, and lowering my self to their level… well, I was raised better than that.

But hey, what are holidays without a little road rage from some ignorant imbecile? The balance of the universe would be upset

I took some pictures of the road, mostly while driving, and I plan on sharing more than a few soon. One day, I will park the car and take proper pictures.

I share the highway with big trucks and small cars

But mostly, that is what ends up in my memory, a blur of lights…

And these are the lights of one of the refineries/plants at night, shaky and blurry because it was taken at night while driving 100km/hr, but it turned out pretty cool