A few months ago the Saudis mobilized some of their troops and sent them to the Jordanian border. The idea was to provide assistance to fellow King Abdullah of Jordan in the event of a Syrian attack. Since Saudi troops have been dispensed to their neighbors the entire Saudi Arabian military establishment has gone to alert level 1. This is their highest level of alert, realistically probably the equivalent of terror alert level plaid in the states. The officers wandering around the base have been forced to cover their paunches with the desert camouflage version of their uniforms, and so, albeit unintentionally, they even looked like real soldiers…almost.
As a consequence of our increased alert level, the caravan of Raytheon employees that was planning to head out to the camel races were told that company vehicles could not be used to travel that far out of the city without 72 hours notice. My married colleague C, his wife J, and I were the only ones leaving the compound that morning, in C’s SUV, with the intention of watching a bunch of camels run in a circle.
We arrived without fanfare at the racetrack. In fact we arrived without much notice at all, which is bizarre considering that we were the only people milling around. We were absolutely and completely befuddled as to what we should have been doing or where we should be going. There were no signs, no concession stands, no grandstands at the finish line, no tickets…nothing. We simply drove up to a gate and got a card that said “visitor” in Arabic and moved to a dirt parking lot. When we got out of the car we wandered over to a covered building. It had a back wall and a roof, but the other three sides were open to the swirling dust. There were chairs lined up in rows, many filled with National Guard NCO’s (non-commissioned officers, in Hollywood they’re all known as “Sarge!”) and men in thobes. There was an extra large chair that resembled a small throne in the center of the rows, and the whole thing had a decidedly VIP ambiance to it.
So we wandered in the other direction and thought about going back to the car and a coffee shop to wait out the hour before the race started. We saw a row of brand new cars parked in a semi-circle beside the VIP lounge. These were the prize for the winner of today’s race, in addition to some sum of money which we’d heard was about 150,000 dollars. We took a few cursory pictures and ambled in circles in a state of amused confusion. Finally, I tried to make conversation with some of the soldiers who were outside drinking tea and smoking cigarettes. After a few volleys of broken Arabic I was satisfied that we were at the finish line and the race started somewhere that wasn’t where I was standing. You know, “over there.”
The NCO’s finished their tea, threw down their butts, and disappeared into a small shack. C and J came over and I shared with them my wellspring of knowledge gained from the guards. Before long a new NCO emerged from the shack and pointed to the brown school bus that was idling nearby. We didn’t know if he wanted us to wait on the bus, or if the bus would take us to the race, or what was going to happen. Our questions were answered minutes later when that same NCO got on the bus, popped the old fashioned swinging door shut, and sped off across the race track and around the interior of the rails. We three had the bus to ourselves.
After about 10 minutes of empty race track we pulled up to something, and whatever it was, it had a lot of camels. National guardsmen mulled around wielding big, wooden truncheons. I still don’t know if their intended purpose was to punish a misbehaving camel or a misbehaving Saudi. I had suspicions of both. We had been deposited without a word from our very helpful driver, and we stood in the afternoon sun, trying to discern what was going to happen, and where. Saudis in thobes were zooming across the empty racetrack and into the thick of people and beasts. I watched them go and immediately wanted to join. We were still in a completely unknown environment though. We were with J, who was probably the only women within a few square miles, wearing a black abaya over her clothes, and a baseball cap over her hair. I found another soldier and asked if it was ok if we went over to where the camels were. To be more specific, what I said was, “wegotherenoproblem?”
He smiled as all people smile when you try to speak their language and fail, and told us there was no problem. We hopped through the holes in the rails, and headed over to the fenced in area where the jockeys and race camels were stationed before the race. J was making quite a stir, though realistically we all were. There wasn’t another white face around. We took some more pictures of some more camels, and then we were hauled back to the bus by a couple of soldiers, mere minutes after we’d been given permission to wander around. We still don’t know whether they wanted to keep us from mixing with the locals (especially with J there), or if they were about to start the race and wanted everyone back on the buses.
Not long after we were back on the bus we saw camels beginning to rise, and almost immediately after, begin galloping out of sight. Our driver reappeared, popped the door closed, and heaved the bus after them. We saw the entire race, all ten minutes of it, from a few feet away on the inside of the track. Literally the view only granted the camera crews at the Belmont or Kentucky Derby back home. There was no opening gun, no starting bell that we could here, just the dust rising as everything began moving west. The bus chugged along, passing the back of the pack, riders walking back to the start without their camels, other riders trying to keep their camels under control as they spun in circles, and others who had just gotten a bad start.
The bus slowly made it to the center of the pack. Dozens of camels and their riders moved between the rails. Beyond them hundreds of Toyota pickup trucks drove along on the other side of the racetrack, following the camels, shouting, cheering and jeering. Those who had camels racing had plenty on the line, the cash and cars were a significant prize. It was almost impossible to gauge the speed of the race while we were in our bus, but the animals appeared to simply trot through the race. After about seven or eight minutes we’d caught up to the front of the pack. There were five camera crews in scaffolding above the finish line to capture the winner. From what I remember of horse racing the distance between first and second place is often miniscule. This race, spread out over 10 km (six miles) didn’t seem to have anything resembling a photo finish. It seems like more of an endurance contest for the animals, and the winner often won by a matter of 3 to 5 camel lengths.
When all the camels had passed the finish line, the bus roared back to the beginning again. We broke down and had J. ask the driver what was going on. She was the only Arabic speaker in the group. We watched the first race, and there were going to be four more. When I got out of the bus again a soldier warned me not to go across the track to where the camels were anymore. I was trailed by three Saudis as I re-boarded, and though the entire bus was unoccupied, and we were sitting in the first two rows, the men sat behind J and C and started talking among themselves.
One of the soldiers came on the bus and called them out not long after they’d entered. There were only two buses. One was full of Saudi men, the other contained only we three. C recorded the entire second race, which started soon after the Saudis left our bus. It took about ten minutes for the winner to cross six miles on his camel. They were moving pretty damn fast. After the second race had finished we were ecstatic that everything had worked out so well. I was sure that I’d simply be standing around somewhere under the beating summer sun and watched the beginning or end of one of the races, but we had our own private bus, and we could watch the whole race from start to finish. A few dozen Saudis stood along the outer edge of the track for the last few hundred meters of the race. Otherwise they kept driving, honking and cursing. Some grabbed scarves and beat them on the top of the hood as they yelled at the camels. Many of the Bedouin were standing in the back of the pick-ups in the middle of the dust storm the trucks created. The trucks weaved in and out and sped up and slowed down just as deftly and efficiently outside of the race track as the jockeys and animals inside of it. It was really two races, and it was hard to tell which was more confusing than the other.
After the second race the bus once again zoomed back to the starting gate, which was a giant, fenced in square more reminiscent of a holding pen than anything else. This time nobody bothered to get off the bus, but an elderly, congenial Saudi gentleman joined us, sitting in the front seat of the bus. He spoke a smattering of English, and C and I made almost one full toddler in Arabic. The dynamic of our conversation was one of those “only in Saudi” ordeals. The only Arabic speaker among us, C’s wife, would translate something when we asked, but the Saudi would never speak anything to her directly. To speak to another man’s wife without the husband’s permission would have been wildly disrespectful. When our new friend left I mentioned to J. that C. is no doubt enjoying the fact that his wife is his personal property, and she frowned. “But,” I said, “it’s better this way, because as soon as you move back to the states or Europe, your husband will not become resentful when he becomes your property…forever.”
The Saudi was the proud owner of three camels, each of which had sold for almost a hundred thousand dollars. He was bemoaning the lost art of travelling by camel, a journey between Riyadh and Jeddah by camel, while a week long affair, was according to him, the only way to fly. He was, as many of the Arabs I’ve met are, extremely gesticulatory. His hands weaved in and out, fingers pointed, fists clenched, and when he was excited it felt as if he was weaving a spell with his hands to ward off our total ignorance of his language. Though much preferred to the last company of locals that barged onto the bus, he too, was ejected by our driver, who half-closed the door behind him to discourage further intrusion onto the white people bus.
I don’t think any of us will ever know whether we were given that bus because it was assumed we were some kind of VIPs, or if they had no idea what to do with us, or if it’s the same thing they do every year with the foreigners who dribble into this unusual wonderland.
During the third race the dust stirred up by the first two had begun smothering everything. We watched from the middle of the pack as they few camels pulling away simply vanished into the wall of dust, like mounted warriors disappearing into Valhalla. The whole affair echoed in my mind as a kind of clash of worlds. An ancient past-time merged with its modern encumbrances. To keep their weight down, but still fulfill some kind of bizarre safety concerns, many of the riders wore life-vests. At least a thousand miles from the nearest body of water, the orange preservers stick out in the photos, they also wore plastic helmets that I doubt would survive a blow from a volleyball let along a fall off of a camel galloping at 35 miles an hour, many of which were unfitted and comically bounced in every direction, often blocking their vision as they moved through the pack. At times it seemed that many of the jockeys exerted very little control over the animals, as if they were simply unwanted passengers on the journey to the finish line. All of the riders were shoeless, and lacking any kind of uniform, many wore soccer jerseys while they rode. Most of all though, the trucks were the greatest anomaly. The Bedouin love their Datsuns, a versatile Toyota pick-up truck that is ubiquitous across the country. My students refer lovingly to them as “heemar mekada” or tired donkey. They are the most trusted vehicle for the absolutely rugged and unforgiving terrain of the Saudi hinterlands.
The trucks around the outside of the track formed a great white phalanx cloaked in dust, and I guess that they far outnumbered the camels on the track. They did not drive along the race in any kind of lanes. They weaved in and out, accelerated and slammed on their breaks, blared their horns, and drove with that particular Saudi quality of an immortal kamikaze. At many points the excitement of the trucks eclipsed the excitement of the race itself, as the camels had so much more space in which to operate. I imagine the immense clouds of dust they were kicking up bothered the riders much more so than the camels, who have had millions of years to adapt to dust and sandstorms a hundred times less hospitable, but when we returned home that day I could taste the dust on the roof of my mouth and rivulets dark sand ran down my body into the shower drain that night.
After the third and dustiest race was finished, we got off the bus and decided to watch the last race from the finish line. A line of Pakistani porters reclined on the fence in front of us, and before long we saw the glint of sun beading off the trailing Datsuns long before the winning camel came into view. When they finally did the porters sprang into action, and as every rider and camel crossed the finish line the rider would adroitly bound off of his mount to the ground as the porter grabbed the reins and walked the camel clear of the melee. Not long after the last camel had passed we decided to go and beat whatever frenetic traffic the heemar mekadas would create on their way home from the race.
On our way out we were approached by a young Saudi wielding a microphone. This was one of those moments when I am exceptionally glad to be the only foreigner at any kind of event. It is partly an ego trip. Everyone quietly worships their own celebrity, but moreso because it always feels like I’ve spilled over into someone else’s world, like the tectonics of the universe have subducted beneath me, pulling me into an adjacent but separate reality. And so all three of us were interviewed, live, for some kind of Saudi sports channel. Like the countless family photographs I’d entered as Chinese peasants descended into Beijing for the Olympics, my likeness would for a brief moment grace a piece of the world that I’d never see. When the families flocked to the games in 2008, many of them hadn’t seen a foreigner before, and so there I was holding up their babies while the family smiled around me, and so too did I smile on Saudi television, answering the generic questions; “I’m from New York. I’m a teacher. The camel race was wonderful. Saudi is a great place.” Next.
The ritual was repeated with C and J, who was quickly instructed by her husband to hide the crucifix around her neck before appearing before the camera. The cameraman thankfully treated this bland series of interviews with the respect they deserved. For all three interviews he was sending texts on his blackberry.
After the interviews finished we went over to the news truck and watched them on a tiny screen in the midst of a wall of tiny screens and a few minutes later headed back to Jeddah. We’d been through another immensely pleasurable yet bewildering experience that should have provided some illumination to this radically different culture, but like most experiences here, yielded only more questions.
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