The Nelson Family

In 1994 Roger Schenk and others wrote a book titled, Inside Case-Based Reasoning. Without getting into the details of the book, I want to mention something he called scripts. Scripts are things we have in our heads. Scripts structure information that is relevant in the context of a particular situation and help us to organize new information and events. To demonstrate what scripts are and how we use them, Schenk described a “restaurant script”, where a customer can go to a restaurant, order something, eat it, leave a tip, pay, and leave. When you walk into a restaurant you can draw upon your script to know what to do and when to do it. We have a restaurant script. More specifically, when I say McDonalds, we westerners have a fairly common understanding of the McDonalds experience—we have a McDonalds’ script.

Since I have been here in Saudi Arabia, I have noticed some major differences between my western restaurant script and how Saudi Arabian restaurants function. Our lunch today at McDonalds brought the differences together in one experience.

Men’s Entrances and Family Entrances

Every restaurant discriminates among patrons. Here in Dhahran and Khobar I have seen just two distinctions: Male only (one or more), and female only or family. These distinctions affect the design of the restaurant. There are two separate entrances and two separate seating areas in every restaurant. The distinction is so pervasive, that even at the food court in the mall, where there is one counter to walk up and order at, there are two lines, side-by-side, one for men only and one for families. (In other cities, further west in the country, like Riyadh, there appears to be a third category: Unescorted women. The distinction is used to actually deny patronage to unescorted women. So far, I haven’t seen this in person.)

Each time I have gone out to dinner, the choice has been obvious, either Jen and I have gone out with friends and we use the family entrance, or I have gone out with guys and we use the male only entrance. Today at McDonalds, my script fell short. Jen was off on a trip with friends and Josh, Joseph, Jordan, and I went to lunch. Without Jordan, we would clearly have to use the male only entrance. Did the inclusion of Jordan make the family entrance a viable option? I was left to wonder. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the repercussions of choosing incorrectly would have been significant, but it left me a bit apprehensive. We entered the family entrance and everything was fine.

This picture shows the two separate at a McDonalds. The red signs above the doors signify the type of entrance. This is not the McDonalds that we went to. It is a photo I found on the Internet.

Private Booths

The McDonalds we ate at was two stories tall. You walk in on the bottom floor, order your food, then walk upstairs to eat. While waiting for the food, I asked Josh to head upstairs to find a table. He returned about 30 seconds later. “Dad, I think I will wait for you. I am not sure what to do. There are curtains everywhere. It is like a maze.” Sure enough, when we went upstairs, the entire area was sectioned off into 20 or 30 private booths, each with a privacy curtain. It was like being in the emergency room at the hospital where each patient has a bed and a privacy curtain that can be pulled closed.

We picked a booth, walked in, sat down, pulled the curtain closed, and enjoyed our meal. My guess is that the privacy allows for women to be able to remove their veils, scarves, and/or robes while eating.

Prayer Time

The last major difference is prayer time. If you happen to get into a restaurant before prayer time they will seat you, take your order, and you can eat during prayer. When prayer starts, the employees lock the doors, turn down the lights (if it is evening), and pull down the blinds over the windows. If you arrive during prayer time then you need to wait until prayer is over before you can enter the restaurant. Depending upon the prayer (there are five each day) you can wait from 30 to 45 minutes. Timing becomes an important issue when choosing to head to town for a meal. Today, the midday prayer was at 11:45 am. Unfortunately, the kids were hungry at 11:45. Since I couldn’t get to McDonalds in time, I needed to preoccupy them for another 30 minutes until prayer ended. Since prayer is broadcast, it is pretty easy to tell when prayer has started and ended. So, at 12:15 we drove over to McDs.

After we sat down to eat, Joseph said, “Hey, these chicken nuggets are just like they are back in the States.” Josh said, “Of course they are! This is McDonalds.” At least some parts of the script a standard.

I think this my first real cultural post. Although the camp is very diverse culturally, it is still very western. In some ways it doesn’t feel like you are in Saudi Arabia. Over the last couple weeks I have gone into Khobar a few times with Todd for various things. A couple of times, Jen and I went with Todd and Heather into Khobar. However, tonight we (the family) went alone into Khobar. We jumped on the Aramco bus for a 20 minute drive over to the Mall of Dhahran. It is a very large mall, especially by Logan standards

There are three important things to know when you go into public in Khobar. First, nearly all women wear at least an abaya, regardless of nationality—I would say 99%. An abaya is just the dress. It goes to the floor and to the wrists. When we were in the mall tonight, there were thousands of people. I only saw only three or four women that were not wearing an abaya. This is what Jen wears. Next, most of the women wear the scarf (hijab). I would guess 85% of the women wear a hijab and this seems to break along lines of nationality. It is usually the Western’ish, white women (USA, Canda, European, Australian) that don’t wear the hijab. Next, about 60% of the women where the niqab. This is the face covering—not necessarily a complete veil, but just the eyes showing. Lastly, I would guess that about 10% of the women where a veil. It is a very different kind of experience. It has been interesting to see how the kids have become accustomed to this. People love to approach Jordan and that includes women in abayas and niqabs. It doesn’t seem to phase her. They wave at her or talk to her and she waves back. It is neat to see.

The second thing to keep in mind is that there are five prayers a day for Muslims. The times for the prayers vary depending upon sunrise and sunset, in other words, the time of the year. The challenge is that when it is prayer time, the stores close. They close up shop. They lock the doors and kick everyone out. Then, the prayer is broadcast, in this case, throughout the mall. (As a side note: If you are outside, and close to a mosque, the prayer is broadcast into the neighborhood. If you are in a part of town where there are three or four mosques, each one broadcasts their own prayer. It can create quite a cacophony.) When they close up shop, you have no choice but to simply wait until prayer time is over and the shops open up again. When we arrived at the mall tonight, it was prayer time. The prayer was being broadcast, all the stores were closed and people were just hanging out waiting. We walked around for about 15 minutes until the prayer ended. When it ended, the doors opened, the metal gates went up, and people went back to their shopping.

By the time we walked around the mall and found food—I was surprised how big it really was—it was almost prayer time again. I ran over to McDonalds to get food for Joseph and me. I was really curious to know how McDonalds tasted in Saudi Arabia. After getting our food I went back to the table in the food court and then ran with Josh to get Subway for Jen and Josh. While I was placing our order, the other food places around us started pulling down their metal gates. I knew we were cutting it close and sure enough, just as we paid for our food and started to leave, the metal gate rolled down and Subway closed. A couple of minutes later the prayer began.

The third thing to keep in mind is that taking pictures in public in Saudi Arabia is seriously frowned upon. I found this blog that addresses why photography is a concern. I would love to have been able to get pictures of McDonalds, KFC, Subway, Hardees, the women in their abayas, hijabs, and niqabs, but it ain’t gonna happen. The best I could do was to take a video so that I could capture the audio of the prayer that started just after we bought our dinner. I simply set the camera on the table, turned it on, and moved it around so that you could see each of us at the table. The boys didn’t even know I was recording. I think you will get a sense of how loud the prayer is broadcast.

One of the really interesting cultural things is how they represent women in the stores. They have female mannequins. But, very few have heads. In the states I wouldn’t even think twice about a mannequin without a head. They are probably everywhere. What really jumped out at me was when I saw a store with female mannequins with heads and the heads were covered with bags—you know, bags from the store that you take merchandise out of the store in. It was very odd. Then I noticed that photos of women had the faces blurred so you couldn’t see any detail. And, for some reason, they also had the hands blurred. It was strange. But, what made it even more surreal was the fact that the women’s clothing that was being sold throughout the mall was the same kind of stuff you would see in the states. They were selling formal gowns—low cut, strapless, backless, and even short in the length. They were selling some tops that could have passed as lingerie.

Jen and I were wondering where they would ever wear something like this. Just to be clear, this wasn’t the kind of stuff that they would wear under the abaya. It was such a strange contrast to what we were seeing the women all around us wearing. It couldn’t have been more opposite. Again, I have learned that Muslim women will wear very nice clothes around the house and when they get together with other women. But, this wasn’t that kind of clothes. There were “black-tie” formals. There were go-out-dancing-till-four-am dresses. It was really weird. I wonder if that is an aspect of Saudi culture that I will one day understand.

More than anything, I want to emphasize how easy it is for us to get off camp, to get into Khobar, to shop, eat, and socialize. We found the Toys R Us. We found the Ikea. We found the Applebees. We have friends that can drive us into Khobar and we can jump on the bus and head into town. It is great. We are settling in.