I’m a lover, not a fighter. Haha! Who am I kidding? I can be a real scrapper and there are few things I love more than giving a jerk a taste of their own medicine plus some. Saudi Arabia brings out the worst in people, and the longer I’m here the less it takes to bring out my inner fighter.
A little while ago I went with my friend Aladdine to a compound bar. We were outside eating our dinner at a picnic table when a man in his late 50’s walked over to us and asked if he could share our space with him while he finished his pint of beer. We agreed, then braced ourselves for the standard barrage of questions that accompanies any introduction here in Riyadh.
He looked at Aladdine and asked in a thick South African accent, “Are you Saudi?”
“No, I’m half Syrian, half-Lebanese.”
Then he looked at me. “And what about you?”
“I’m American.”
The man snorted, then nastily replied, “That’s your problem.”
I gave him “the American look” then continued my conversation with Aladdine.
The man ignored the obvious by asking, “Am I interrupting something?”
Aladdine showed more politeness than I felt like this guy deserved and answered, “No, not at all.” Those were the last words out of his mouth until the older guy left, opting instead for a front row seat of a verbal smack-down.
Then the guy decided to really make his feelings about Americans known. He said, “I would never work for a Saudi company or an American company. I’ll work for a British company or a German company, but I stay away from American companies.”
“I believe you. You probably can’t handle the work ethic Americans have. We don’t tolerate laziness the way other countries do.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s that Americans take care of their own.”
Hmmm…I’ve never heard or seen that one before. Americans are more performance-based than any other country I’ve seen. If anything, we’re guilty of NOT taking care of our own in the workforce because we’re frequently overly capitalistic. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t that one of the main premises behind Occupy Wall Street?
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I train people for my job and I’ve often seen it in American companies where the person I’ll train gets a promotion ahead of me if they’re American.”
“It’s probably because they do the job better than you.”
“No, it’s not that. I’ve had excellence awards for the past four years.”
“Then it probably has to do with your abrasive personality and your lack of people skills.”
“I don’t have an abrasive personality.”
“Yes you do. You interrupted a total stranger’s conversation only to insult their country. You don’t think that’s rude?”
“You’re taking this all the wrong way, sweetheart. It’s nothing personal.”
“I’m not taking it personally, I just think you lack the social skills that Americans value, so you’ll never get ahead in an American system. I think you’re a total ass hole, and I’m sure I’m not the first American to tell you that.”
“You Americans are all the same!”
“Why are you talking to me then? Isn’t there somewhere else you can sit?”
At that he walked away and mumbled, “Typical American.”
“Thanks!”
Aladdine looked at me and began to laugh. Yeah, he enjoyed the show. He said, “As soon as that man said that being an American was your problem, I knew you would get him. You would let him sit there, say a few things, then you would attack him and make him look like an ass.”
Mission accomplished.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Ana Lazim Shoof Woozen (That's my Arabic for "I Need to See Your Weight")
One thing I’ll never get tired of is watching people get on a scale. The scale on my unit is prominently displayed next to the nurses’ station, inviting everyone from the housekeepers to the members of the royal family to see how their body handles not getting enough exercise.
Saudis bodies come in two main sizes: XXXS and XXXL. They are either stick figures or watermelons. There’s the occasional outlier with a healthy body shape, but for the most part their weights are as extreme as their culture.
Whenever a group of gangly teenage girls walks through the unit, the scale is a more popular pit stop than Starbucks. They make a big production of it, with everyone around promising not to look but peeking anyway and giggling as they compare weights with each other. Although their abayas hide the main outline of their figures, the scale hides nothing. They frequently click their tongues in disgust, hoping one day they will have a normal body weight.
Even better than the giddy girls is a crowd of adult men. As they hoist their portly bodies on the scale, there is no pretense of wishing to hide their weight. The other men in the group hover over the scale monitor, cheering when it shows that their other thobe wearing friends are equally unhealthy.
As amusing as these frequent occurrences are, they’ve become predictable, a rarity in this unpredictable land. What is unpredictable, however, is how individual patients will each react when the nurse enters their rooms at 4:00 AM with the scale to take their daily weight.
Last week’s weight story weighed in at the best scale story so far. My patient was a cranky old man who was not quite 100% with it mentally. His son kept him company that night and listened to his incessant complaining. By the time I entered the room to take his 4:00 AM vitals and weight, the son had reached the end of his patience for his father. I told the patient that I needed to take his weight and he quickly refused. I didn’t push it. He’s old, he’s tired, he’s not feeling well, and even more importantly I would have to do a whole lot of assisting to get the old guy up to the scale. I let him know it was no problem, and began to leave the room.
Then the son stepped in. His lack of sleep combined with obvious frustration with his father kicked him into full gear. He told the father that we were going to take his weight whether he liked it or not. At this point he scooped the father up like he was crossing a bride over the threshold. Unlike the blushing bride, the father began yelling and squirming, somehow managing to shift the waist of his pants to below his scrawny rump. The son struggled to take the four steps to the scale, then dumped the father onto the scale. The pants dropped to the dad’s ankles, the dad yelled the entire time, and the son looked like he couldn’t wait to have one of his family members replace him at the bedside. After the weight was recorded, the son tried to lift the father up by the waist to put him back in bed. Nope! Nothing would be that easy! The father yelled, “Laaaaaaaaa!” (Arabic for “Noooooo!”) and held on to the scale handle as the son lifted the lower half of his body up. The dad acted the role of the world’s most awkward, immodest Superman while I pried his arthritic fingers off the handles and the son yelled at his dad to stop doing everything that crazy dads do that piss their kids off.
I somehow managed to suppress a laugh throughout this ordeal, then left the room as quickly as I could once I saw that the dad made it safely back to bed. With scale in tow, I left the room and saw one of my coworkers gape-mouthed and wide-eyed. She asked me what happened, and all I could do was laugh and point at the scale. No further explanation needed.
Saudis bodies come in two main sizes: XXXS and XXXL. They are either stick figures or watermelons. There’s the occasional outlier with a healthy body shape, but for the most part their weights are as extreme as their culture.
Whenever a group of gangly teenage girls walks through the unit, the scale is a more popular pit stop than Starbucks. They make a big production of it, with everyone around promising not to look but peeking anyway and giggling as they compare weights with each other. Although their abayas hide the main outline of their figures, the scale hides nothing. They frequently click their tongues in disgust, hoping one day they will have a normal body weight.
Even better than the giddy girls is a crowd of adult men. As they hoist their portly bodies on the scale, there is no pretense of wishing to hide their weight. The other men in the group hover over the scale monitor, cheering when it shows that their other thobe wearing friends are equally unhealthy.
As amusing as these frequent occurrences are, they’ve become predictable, a rarity in this unpredictable land. What is unpredictable, however, is how individual patients will each react when the nurse enters their rooms at 4:00 AM with the scale to take their daily weight.
Last week’s weight story weighed in at the best scale story so far. My patient was a cranky old man who was not quite 100% with it mentally. His son kept him company that night and listened to his incessant complaining. By the time I entered the room to take his 4:00 AM vitals and weight, the son had reached the end of his patience for his father. I told the patient that I needed to take his weight and he quickly refused. I didn’t push it. He’s old, he’s tired, he’s not feeling well, and even more importantly I would have to do a whole lot of assisting to get the old guy up to the scale. I let him know it was no problem, and began to leave the room.
Then the son stepped in. His lack of sleep combined with obvious frustration with his father kicked him into full gear. He told the father that we were going to take his weight whether he liked it or not. At this point he scooped the father up like he was crossing a bride over the threshold. Unlike the blushing bride, the father began yelling and squirming, somehow managing to shift the waist of his pants to below his scrawny rump. The son struggled to take the four steps to the scale, then dumped the father onto the scale. The pants dropped to the dad’s ankles, the dad yelled the entire time, and the son looked like he couldn’t wait to have one of his family members replace him at the bedside. After the weight was recorded, the son tried to lift the father up by the waist to put him back in bed. Nope! Nothing would be that easy! The father yelled, “Laaaaaaaaa!” (Arabic for “Noooooo!”) and held on to the scale handle as the son lifted the lower half of his body up. The dad acted the role of the world’s most awkward, immodest Superman while I pried his arthritic fingers off the handles and the son yelled at his dad to stop doing everything that crazy dads do that piss their kids off.
I somehow managed to suppress a laugh throughout this ordeal, then left the room as quickly as I could once I saw that the dad made it safely back to bed. With scale in tow, I left the room and saw one of my coworkers gape-mouthed and wide-eyed. She asked me what happened, and all I could do was laugh and point at the scale. No further explanation needed.
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