Laysh Anna Eegee Henna (That’s My Arabic for "Why I Came Here")

Two years ago I finally reached a point in my life where I could join the ranks of traveling nurses. I signed up with an agency and began my first assignment just in time to watch the market dry up. Nursing went from being a guaranteed job in any field to being as few and far between any other job in a desperate economy.

That’s when I knew I needed a change. I explored options outside of both the US and nursing, all of them with an adventurous twist like teaching English in Paris or joining the Peace Corps. Then, I stumbled on nursing in Saudi Arabia. This tax-free job paid well, the 54 days of vacation time sounded amazing, and I wanted something very different from life as I knew it. Of all the options, Saudi Arabia sounded like the best.

I arrived in Riyadh six months ago. So far, my actual nursing job is much easier than anything found in the US, but working here can be equally taxing. Nearly all of the patients speak little to no English, and what would be an overnight stay in the US can last an entire week. The hospital claims to be American, but as far as I can tell, only the equipment and charting system resemble an American hospital. One of the most foreign concepts I encountered was VIP status. Patients who have more money, social status, or hold a royal title get fancy VIP perks: rooms, food, furniture and occasionally even doctors. For someone who is used to all patients being treated as equally as possible, this took some getting used to.

I noticed a gentler approach to what is expected from medical care, both for providers and patients. Lawsuits are extremely uncommon here, and I have yet to see a patient come in with a stack of information on their condition to guide their own medical care like I often saw in the US. By that same token of less being expected from patients, I often laugh as my diabetic patients offer me dates or a chocolate from a large pedestal of sweets. They patiently listen to my broken Arabic, and expect me to patiently wait for them to finish praying before they go for a procedure. The urgency experienced in the US for anything rarely shows up here, which can sometimes be frustrating when you want them to take pills when they're assigned but they want to wait until their next meal. The hospital doesn't seem to mind the lack of urgency, either. They don't have the same rush to turn over a bed, and no one seems to mind if a patient refuses to be discharged over something as simple as a family member being unable to pick them up that day.

The job itself was a bit of a culture shock, but nothing compared to life outside of the hospital! The culture and lifestyle provide plenty of anecdotal benefits, and trying to overcome a language barrier can be challenging. Living under strictly enforced Islamic standards, the dress code can be frustrating at times, particularly for women. Women aren’t allowed to drive here, and going out in public with an unrelated male can buy you a one-way ticket back home. Anything relating to customer service is a lesson in patience, and being obviously stared at by grown men made me uneasy at first.

Life on the hospital compound resembles a university setting: no one has a car, everyone misses their family, computers and cell phones take up a big part of life, and there are always plenty of social activities going on if you want to participate. Like a college campus, housing complexes take up a large portion of the hospital’s real estate. During orientation, I met a whole bunch of people from around the world, then settled into my social niche. All the female staff nurses come under a “single” status, meaning that families aren’t welcome in this environment as most people share a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment with a roommate.

Aside from the adventure of living in another country in a completely different culture, Saudi Arabia is fantastic for exploring a region of the world that’s far, far away from the US. It’s a short plane ride to India, Egypt, Russia and a number of other places that make a traveler’s eyes light up. Having plenty of vacation days sweetens the deal of working over here.

The experiences here leave me with a newfound sympathy and admiration for anyone brave enough to move to another country. I enjoy the adventure and challenge, and I know I’ll never regret the time I’ve spent living here.

Hammam (That's Turkish for Bath)

Roasting in Turkey

I planned a trip to Istanbul hoping for the sophisticated elegance of Europe mixed with the random weirdness of the Middle East. When I told people I was going on vacation there, everyone who had already visited said I needed to get a Turkish bath. I asked what it was exactly, and they all pretty much said the same thing: a large-breasted Turkish woman in her 60’s scrubs your skin off while you lie on hot marble slabs. How could I resist?

Luckily, I found the Cemberlinas Hammam just a few minutes walk from my hostel. About half way through my ten-day vacation, I finally went for it. My two guidebooks suggested that I bring a swimsuit, my own personal scrubbing mitten, a bottle of water and some clean clothes to change into after my bathing experience. With a cellophane grocery bag filled with everything on that short list, I walked over to the hammam.

I slapped down my 55 Turkish Lira (about $40), and the lady handed me a brand new pair of panties, a large cotton dish cloth-looking towel to wrap up in, a brand new scrubbing mitten and a little token saying “Foam Massage.” She then pointed to the section for women only.

I walked through the door expecting to see a changing room, but instead I saw a fountain in the middle of a large room. Women wrapped up in terrycloth towels sat on sofas lining the walls. My guidebook said that people wore swimsuits, but as far as I could tell, birthday suits were the fashion. As the only dressed person in the room, I felt a little uncomfortable. An attendant saw my lost look and pointed me to the stairs leading up. I figured the changing rooms were at the top of those stairs, and sure enough, I was right. I slipped off my clothes, ripped the tags off my undies and body scrubber, and then headed downstairs wearing the new panties, some slippers that were in my locker and that dishcloth.

A giant wooden door seemed to get a lot of use. I followed people around me and walked through into a gray marble waiting room. A sign on the door said, “Oil Massage,” but I was too cheap to buy that package. I kept walking to the next door, which opened into the main room. Finally! An enormous, gray marble polygon monopolized the room. Some people laid on the rock, some shuffled into the room marked “Jacuzzi” and others got a scrub down from the employees. Along the edge of the room, small closet-type rooms held sinks with faucets constantly running. I stood on the perimeter watching how the whole thing worked. I felt like an extra on a soft-core porn show that you would find late at night on one of those premium cable channels.

The rock looked like a nice place to start, so I followed those around me and placed my towel on the center of the marble, then laid on top of it. It brought back childhood memories of lying on a towel placed on the warm concrete after a nice run through the sprinkler. My reminiscing came to an abrupt halt by a large breasted Turkish woman in her 60’s who called out to me, indicating that it was my turn to have my skin scrubbed off.

I stepped over and around other half-naked bodies until I made my way over to the edge of the slab where my lady waited. I placed my towel down, then angled myself so the next lady over didn’t have her toes in my hair, and I wasn’t putting my feet on the lady on the other side of me. The masseuse took my token and my scrubber, and then she got to work getting me ready for my big scrub down. A few bowls full of warm water did the trick, and I laid on my stomach while she went to town. She took her job seriously. She thought nothing of adjusting my underwear when it got in the way, but that made me a bit self-conscious. She scrubbed pretty hard, too. There was nothing gentle about this massage, but I loved it! Her English consisted of “lie,” “sit,” “shampoo” and “roll over,” but that’s all we really needed.

When I saw her handiwork, I felt absolutely disgusting! All these balls of dead, gray skin rested corpselike on my arms. She scrubbed down my front, then dumped water over me to wash off the dead Melanie parts. Next came the bubble-wrap! A small bucket of soapy water placed by my side held something that looked like a pillowcase. She took it out, opened it up, wrapped her fist around the opening, then with her other hand she smooshed out a million bubbles onto my back. I’ve never seen so many bubbles! When a blanket of bubbles covered me from head to toe, she rubbed me down yet again, but gentler this time. She rinsed me off and enthusiastically pointed to the faucet as she announced, “Shampoo!”

We went over to a tap, she pointed to the floor, and I sat there for the foamiest shampoo of my life. Any kid would have been in tears from soap in their eyes, but I puckered up my entire face and only breathed after she doused me with the warm water from the ever-running faucet. I thanked the little lady, and then returned to the middle of the hot stone.

That got a little boring after awhile, so I headed over to the Jacuzzi Room. I spent some time in the small hot tub and larger warm tub, and found a token for an oil massage that someone left behind. I left it where it was, thinking that maybe the owner might come claim it, but since no one did by the time I had to leave, it was mine! Wahoo! I wanted one of those. How lucky!

I laid on the hot stone again once more before finishing up with the unexpected massage, and the beautiful woman next to me started talking to me. We chatted about Istanbul, then about traveling in other countries, and moved on to more personal topics. It really was my lucky day because she was a French cardiac nurse who was here with her husband for a week on vacation. I felt all the sophisticated elegance of being in Europe that I hoped for right then and there!

She left, and I went to claim my oil massage. The waiting room replaced the elegant European sophistication with random Middle East weirdness. Something in the poorly ventilated sauna-type room assaulted my lungs and I began coughing. I glanced around to find an employee dying another employee’s hair. Other than the Middle East being full of inappropriate surprises, I found no other explanation for Nice ‘N’ Easy Burnt Auburn singeing the nose hairs of everyone in the room. I tried to ignore the strange situation and sat in the unofficial line for oil massages.

Employees came out of the massage room periodically and called people more or less in the order that they waited. As it approached my turn, one of the employees came out of the room clearly upset. She yelled and used wild hand motions, then pushed another employee and began yelling at her as the poor lady struggled to keep her balance. After taking three or four strides post-shove, the victim left the room as quickly as possible, getting out of the way of the angry woman. Then, to my horror, the violent lady pointed at me and yelled, “Come!” I guess you get what you pay for, and this massage didn’t cost me a cent.

I skeptically followed her into the dimly lit room, and then followed her signal to lie down on the massage table. I put my face in the donut-shaped cushion, and the lady left the room. After a minute or two, I started feeling a little confused. I wasn’t sure if she was in the next room beating up more people or what, but I soon sat up and asked another worker what was going on. No one knew, but the lady soon returned looking as angry as before.

Tip: never get a massage from an angry Turkish woman. As she smeared nearly half a liter of baby oil on me, she took out some of her obvious aggression. She kneaded my newly scrubbed skin without any hint of delicacy, and I soon looked tenderized and oily enough for even a non-cannibal to think about frying me up.

After she finished, I grabbed a towel and wiped off as much oil as possible. I climbed the stairs to my locker and changed back into my clothes. My fingers rubbed my arms, legs and torso, touching skin as soft as a rose petal. All the soreness that accompanies the role of a tourist disappeared, and my jello legs dragged me out of the fountain room and back to my hostel. For all those people who recommended a Turkish bath, thank you! I laugh to myself every time I think about it.

Madri Arabic (My spelling for “I don’t know Arabic”)

During my first three weeks in Saudi Arabia I knew how to say two words in Arabic: please and thank you. No one here ever says please, but thank you came in handy quite a bit. I thanked the man bagging my groceries, the man driving me to the mall, and I awkwardly thanked the lady who gave me her pink sequined slippers after I told her that I liked them. Those first three weeks I sincerely believed that Saudis spoke English as fluently as Europeans, and I could get away without learning much Arabic here.

That beautiful dream ended in a rude awakening when I began working with patients. On my first day of unit orientation, not one of my patients nor any of their family members knew English. Not only that, but none of them played charades. One patient rang his call bell so I answered, hoping that it was an IV pump dinging or something obvious, but no luck. He garbled something out, noticed my blank stare and lack of movement, then pulled the classic trick of saying the same thing louder and slower, thinking maybe I might have a hearing problem rather than an enormous language barrier. I told my preceptor that she needed to check out the situation. Turns out the guy wanted the remote control that was on the other side of the room. Gees! Two simple gestures could have taken care of his problem. Looks like I had to learn Arabic after all.

I enrolled in the next available Arabic class, then began learning the language the old fashioned way. I spent as much time at work as possible learning Arabic from my coworkers. My scratch paper collection with Arabic words on it grew, and within a month I could get by without a translator most of the time. Not only that, but I didn’t speak to my patients in broken Spanish out of habit nearly as much as I did at first!

Arabic class started off great. The instructor, Khadezia, wore a black head scarf and abaya, but helped us out by not covering her face. It helps to see someone’s lips when you’re learning a new language, so that small gesture was nice. For the next three hours we saw her chapped lips and yellow teeth form all the foreign sounds and did our best to follow along. She taught us all the various ways of saying “th,” “k” and “h,” and she adjusted everyone’s names to suit her pronunciation. On my first day of class I sat next to my friends Jill and Hayley. By the end of the class, their names were Jen and Holly, and I was Mary. Khadezia walked us through the ABC’s of Arabic, and by the third lesson we were sounding out words almost as good as any first grader. It’s kinda tricky, though, since all the writing is in cursive. Dots, curves and occasional vertical lines try their best to make letters look distinct, but all in all it’s one beautiful puzzle that I struggle to understand. By our third lesson, she really thought we knew our stuff. At one point, she went up to the white board and wrote some elegant phrase that sprawled out over half the length of the wall.

I sat there thinking, “Show off!”

She slowly spun herself around and said, “This simple sentence says ‘The boy ate the apple.’”

That’s about the time I knew I would drop out. Missing the next two lessons only helped solidify that decision.

Over the next couple weeks, I realized just how little you really need to know to get your point across. My vocabulary involves nouns, verbs and a few adjectives, no pronouns or prepositions, and I’m doing just fine. If you ask, “want new sheets?” you’re understood as well as if you would say, “I have some new sheets for you.” Lack of vocabulary stimulates my creativity and probably keeps me out of trouble. Awhile back, instead of telling a patient that their doctor sucked, I simply told them that their doctor wasn’t good. That’s nicer, anyway, even though “sucked” was much more appropriate.

Over the next month or so I might get back to learning Arabic. Maybe six months from now I’ll know how to gracefully connect verbs with nouns. Until then, I’ll pull the sour grapes routine and think people who speak Arabic intelligently are just showing off.

Yakel Akel (my Arabic for “To Eat Food”)

When I return home, I’ll think about this place and miss the food. In the past three months I’ve stuffed my face full of dates, coffee from cardamom, unusual fruit juices, olives, honey, pastries with pistachios, creamy dairy products, hummus and its look-alikes, and all that delicious Arabic bread that nearly yanks your teeth out when you bite it. I’ve even done the near-impossible: polished off an entire gallon of buttermilk by myself in less than two weeks! Yeah. I know. I still can’t believe it, either. It’s just so surprisingly delicious if you dump in raspberry juice.

I’ll miss all those foods, but even more than that, I’ll miss the memories that have nothing to do with typical Middle Eastern foods and everything to do with my experience here. King Faisal Hospital’s social scene almost always involves food, as any good social scene should. The only difference is that unlike most social scenes I’m used to, this one comes with a strong, authentic international taste that I can’t find in most places I’ve called home. My new friends here come from all over the world, and we all share our favorite dishes with each other. Foods that I’ve only eaten in restaurants seem so natural for them to cook, probably because their mothers taught them how to cook it when they were little and they’ve been making it ever since. The lack of exotic pretense erases all the food’s elegance, and replaces it with an extra helping of "cool." The fact that people really eat like that every day adds to the overall experience of living somewhere far, far away. The assortment of layers, flavors and spices in both food and cultures adds to the fun of my adventure.

When I’m the only American in a room eating something distinctly un-American, I sometimes get a little tingly thinking how surreal my life feels. Even little things, like drinking English Breakfast tea with an English woman makes me smile. Admittedly, my ingrained inhibitions can’t always stomach all the international flair, like eating jazzed up beef liver for breakfast or something overly chewy from a mysterious place in a cow’s GI tract, but cooking for myself long enough stamped out all the picky eating habits I enjoyed as a kid. I’ve done a good job of eating everything I see, even if I have a sneaky suspicion that I won’t like it. Those times I don’t mind being wrong, and lucky for me. It would suck if I missed out on a delicious glass or ten of buttermilk mixed with raspberry juice!

Muffin Kelp (My Arabic Spelling for “Dirty Dog”)

You know how small, yappy dogs just make you want to kick them and send them sailing across the room? That’s how I sometimes find people from minor, unimportant countries. Most of the time I ignore them and their constant yapping, but a couple times I’ve had enough and enjoy watching them sail through the air after my foot finds their scrawny little bodies. Lucky for me, there aren’t a lot of the annoying lap dog types of people here. Lucky for them, my mom did her best to raise a sweet daughter who usually doesn’t resemble an attack dog.

At work one day, I met a Canadian who invited me to dinner with some of her friends. I usually like Canadians, and I always like dinner, so I accepted the offer. I hopped in a cab with her and her roommate from New Zealand, and we drove to Saudi Arabia’s version of Chili’s (I know, I was disappointed at the restaurant choice, too). Apparently American restaurants don’t play the gender-segregation game as rigorously as anywhere else in Riyadh, so we joined the Canadian’s boyfriend and two friends from his nerd herd. All the guys were from the States, and the four of us found ourselves under attack within the first fifteen minutes.

The only other person from New Zealand I've met here attacked the US a lot until I told her she was being rude, then made her look like a fool the next time she had anything to say about my country. I blew that girl off for trying too hard to be funny, but apparently she wasn't the outlier I thought she was. Seems like people in New Zealand have limited conversational skills, so they resort to putting down people from a country they don't even know except for what they see in the movies and on our tv programs because they can‘t produce enough of their own entertainment.

When this New Zealander flexed her lingual muscles and said her first anti-American comment, and the Canadian's boyfriend took her down. She said another, and I nailed her. The boyfriend, my new tag-team buddy, looked as annoyed at this yappy New Zealander as me, so we ignored her for awhile and made fun of New Zealand's insignificance in the world. We laughed about New Zealand's stupid holiday where they train sheep to do tricks, and how insecure people from little countries feel the need to take on countries much bigger and better than their own. The fun, cruel conversation with this nameless American guy made up for the ordinary food in an exotic country.

Funny enough, the New Zealanders I've met so far don't understand that what makes up a country is the people in it. Americans are fighters. We're the German shepherds of the world. Which country has more soldiers in more countries than the US? I don't need to answer that one. Not only that, but the people in my country know how to fight. Many of us try to avoid conflict, but you poke us enough, we'll beat the crap outta you, especially if the odds are in our favor like that. The boyfriend and I ridiculed every stupid thing that escaped her mouth until she finished yapping. For awhile I thought that maybe we went a little too far, then she nearly invited herself on my trip to Turkey. Bummer she had a trip to Oman planned that same time. I would have loved to have the equivalent of a rat terrier ruin my first trip outside of Saudi.

On the car ride home, she told me she was so glad we hung out, and that I have "an interesting sense of humor." Yeah, it's called Making Fun of Jerks. When you're ready for your next beating, come on over and make fun of my country again. It's kinda fun being mean to rude people.

Social Club

I feel like I stepped back thirteen years and am repeating my freshman year of college. It’s awesome!!!

Seriously, this couldn’t be more freshman-like. I’m surrounded with bubbly, funny, laughing girls who know they have a brain in their head and aren‘t afraid to flaunt it. Everyone ventured out of the comforts of their own time zone alone, except for the friends they packed in their laptop. Everyone has their own area of expertise but, like college students playing Musical Majors, some already plan on switching when the opportunity arises. No one has a car, no one brought kids, everyone eats like no parent is in sight, glutes get toned by climbing several flights of stairs to reach apartments, everyone wants an adventure and hopes to get a little money out of it. Like college, everyone hurries to make friends and tries to explore as much as possible.

In a way, this is better than being a freshman. First of all, no one is 18. Huge plus! Insecurities hide under abayas and relative anonymity, and emotional baggage comes with a carry-on limit. Everyone brought their sense of independence and a distinct personality with them. Sometimes the personalities are a bit too large for this country filled with quiet, shadow-like women, but it only adds to the fun.

Going out in public with a group of us impresses the locals. We’re constantly gawked at by everyone, and who can blame them? With all the talking and laughing, we’re definitely not their norm. Saying that we stick out is like saying that summer temperatures of 140 are a little warm. There’s a strong possibility that we’re being blatantly stared at because we don’t cover our faces, and female skin is a rarity here. The funny thing is, even if we wore the entire getup, we still stand out for being six inches taller than the tallest Saudi woman and three inches taller than most Saudi men.

No need to worry, I’m having a great time here in a land famous for capital punishment, covert relationships and hidden debauchery. Like my freshman year of college, I feel an intense metamorphosis coming soon. This place guarantees a year packed full of the same frustrations I’ve cursed Allah for over the past month, but even so, at this point everything is even better than I hoped it would be.

Girls Will Be Girls

Saudi Arabia took the Little Black Dress, put a tent-like spin on it, and made it their own. It’s all the rage here! All the women go crazy for it. Black monopolizes the closets of all adult Saudi females, who go above and beyond to match their gigantic Little Black Dress. Black, black, black. Black shoes poke out from under black robes, black gloves cover brown hands, black scarves hide hair, and black eyes peer through black face shields, unless they’re covered by a black veil. Pure black. The slimming, monochromatic, heat-trapping color of the Saudi female.

Although Riyadh lacks the ever-changing haute couture of most capital cities, fashion is exceptionally important here. Fashion faux pas are treated very seriously here. Where else could you get beat up by the police for committing a crime of fashion? Even still, occasionally a trace of color slips through the blackness, usually on a younger woman. Every now and then the click, click, click of high heels alerts everyone within earshot to look around and sneak a peak at a cute pair of shoes. I love that! More often than not, I get a glimpse of a brightly colored heel belonging to a girl talking on a red cell phone, wearing only an abaya and head scarf. Once I got really lucky, and the lady’s head scarf and abaya had colorful embroidery that matched her purse and shoes! Any prep school teacher would be proud!

Even within the confines of a burka (that black thing some people wrap around their faces so only their eyes show), women doll up as much as they can. Eyeliner, designer glasses, glittery eye shadow, gobs of mascara…these girls don’t escape vanity! Perhaps they primp to claim the individuality that their limited, lifeless wardrobe strips from them. Perhaps they happily don their daily religious garb to escape the ubiquitous question of what to wear. Whatever the answer is, despite all social and religious pressures to hide physical beauty, girls will be girls.