In Saudi, 900,000 Filipino expats bake under the sun

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA – What’s said in the headline of this piece isn’t news. We all know that the biggest number of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) are laboring in what they call at home "Saudi". What most of the folks back home don’t realize is – how hot it is out here!

I’m convinced more than ever the US President George W. Bush and his American forces won’t attack nearby Baghdad (Iraq) this month – or next month either. This is because it’s still so goddam hot, although this week is supposed to be the cooler season. Last month – i.e., July and August really – temperatures were up to 51 degrees Celsius. If you touched anything metallic which had been scorching in the sun, you’d find the climate making an indelible mark on your fingers.

Nowadays, while it’s 40 degrees Centigrade at noontime or early afternoon, the temperature has begun to drop in the gloaming. After the sun sets, it’s now a mild 24 degrees C.

This is the characteristic of deserts. Blazing hot under the sun, the sands – which cannot retain heat – cool off to below 10 degrees in the dark. Having covered the Middle East and spent much time in the Sahara (which means "desert" in Arabic, therefore it’s redundant to say "Sahara desert"). I no longer wonder about those old French Foreign Legion movies (like Beau Geste, starring Gary Cooper) in which the Legionnaires would march out into the heat of day in thick wool coats with their kepis askew. When the sun set, it was for them "freezing "time.

My favorite city in the Arab world is Cairo (Egypt), where many of our Moro rebel leaders, like Hashim Salamat of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), were educated at their famous religious university there.

I recall that every morning, when we woke up, we’d find our car or jeep Cherokee parked outside covered with desert dust.

The most beautiful city used to be Beirut (Lebanon). When my wife and I sojourned there, before the civil war destroyed that lovely Phoenician city utterly, it was as elegant and chic as Paris, and the most stylishly-attired and gorgeous girls used to promenade down Al-Hamra, peering into the fashionable boutiques which displayed the latest from the French capital’s couturiers. The Casino du Liban rivalled Las Vegas in the extravaganza and glitter of its shows, featuring not merely high-kicking chorines but prancing elephants. All this is gone, gone with the wind – including most of the 82 banks which had made Beirut the financial capital of the Middle East.

All this, I hear, is however being rebuilt by the current President, a billionaire contractor who made his fortune in Saudi Arabia, but this I’ve got to see for myself – on a future trip. In any event, I’ve seen much of this area, having covered Palestine (West Bank and Gaza), Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and, at the end of the1991 Gulf War, visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE), particularly Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, etc.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, has been terra incognita for me. This is my first visit

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Last Wednesday night, we visited the luxurious offices of the powerful Al-Riyadh, one of the Kingdom’s most influential dailies, and its sister English-language daily, the Riyadh Daily where several of our countrymen are editors and columnists.

Our hosts were Dr. Abdulmihsin S. Addawood, Vice Editor-in-Chief of Al-Riyadh, and Mr. Talaat F. Wafa, Editor-in-Chief of the Riyadh Daily, the Saudi capital’s first English-language daily.

The latter’s rivals in the English field are the Arab News, also a broadsheet, and the Saudi Gazette.

What struck me about these three English-language newspapers is that, every day, an entire page, and even two pages, are devoted to a "Philippines" section. In short, you can read the latest news from Manila, right on the dot: including the kidnappings, the "Men in Black" episode, the "Philippine Crisis team" to Iraq headed by retired AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Roy Cimatu preparing to possibly extract 121 Filipinos from Iraq (they don’t want to leave) and even the "one million Filipinos in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" (they’ve no intention of going home), an Indonesian held in Manila warning of "Holy War" in Asia, a "Muslim Official Shot Dead in QC" [meaning Khakis Mikunog, 52, deputy director of the Office of Muslim Affairs (OMA)] shot down with three bullets in the chest Thursday by an unknown assassin, the COA report on "rampant graft at the Custom Bureau", etc.

Are our Pinoys and Pinays here up-to-date on news back home? All they have to do is pick up the three newspapers, or access our PHILSTAR website, which many I’ve met say they do.

All the stories I referred to above came from the (Sept. 22) edition of the Saudi Gazette.

The Riyadh Daily, for its part, well .. wasted an entire page with photographs of our group of editors from the Philippines visiting their offices – and their ultra-modern US $60-million fully-computerized state-of-the-art GOSS press, which soars three stages high, and leaves no computerized room for error in the use of 10 colors.

The Arab News, Friday edition, was also replete with Philippine news. All three dailies carried that charming photo of GMA being bussed by "freed kidnap victim’ Christina Victoria Ledesma at Malacañang, while her relieved dad, Negros Occ. Rep. Julio Ledesma looked on. (No dark Ray-Ban sunglasses in evidence in that picture.)

Among the Pinoy new items featured in the Arab News were "Lawmakers Seek Probe on Overpriced Highway" (the alleged overprice of the 5.1-km "Diosdado Macapagal Avenue" or PDMA, which utilized a one-billion-peso loan from the GSIS), "SC Voids Comelec Deal with Photokina," "Indonesian Held in Manila Tells of Jihad in Asia" (referring to Father Rohman al-Ghozi), "Reds Start Fund Drive for Joma", "Trust Cops, Kidnap Victims Urged" (by Rep. Julio Ledesma), "American Fugitive Nabbed," (i.e., Domingo Ramon Cruz, 55, wanted for child abuse), "MILF Sends Units to Rescue 4 Abducted MSU Teachers," "Noble But Useless, OFWs Say of Proposal to Form Political Party," plus a column entitled, "Manila Moods" by Rasheed Abou-Alsamh.

They’re not in the dark then, out here, about what’s taking place back home in our happy isles.

The Riyadh Daily even publishes a "Tagalog Weekly Edition" about our showbiz doings. I perused its glossy, well-printed, four-page Miyerkules, Sept. 18 issue and found it very much in the loop – but the photos of our movie and TV stars were, uh, so modest I hardly recognized some of our bolder artistes with their clothes on.

I guess we won’t be able to circulate our sister daily tabloid, Ang Pilipino STAR Ngayon in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Too many . . . well, items of feminine pulchritude hanging out owing to a shortage of textiles in our STAR Ngayon pages, I suppose.

In the Kingdom, women dress very very, conservatively. Modesty is observed strictly. A means the Abaya, a black outergarment (like a toga or black shroud) with which the ladies cover themselves from neck to ankle. "Islam stipulates that women should dress modestly and hide their shape from anyone who is not a member of the family," as Kathy Cuddihy warns in her handbook, An A to Z of Places and Things Saudi.

When you go to the trendy malls and shopping streets, you’ll find all the women – Filipinas included — all dressed in those all-enveloping black Abayas, with headcovers or shawls (also black) and many still retaining black veils to cover their mouths. Only their eyes, often, peer out. I’ve never, I must say, seen such attractive eyes, however. I suppose since the eyes are the only things that are on display, the women expend a lot of effort in "beautifying" those haunting orbs.

* * *

It’s strange to surf the Kingdom Center, that soaring skyscraper with a hole punched through its top, which opened only a few months ago.

Its lower floors are a posh five-story mall – you never left behind the Glorietta, Magamall, or Greenbelt (that’s the impression you get when you see it). Here you’ll find Marks & Spenser, Saks Fifth Avenue, Monsoon, MANGO (yep, as in Glorietta), Esprit, Debenhams (England’s favorite department store, the blurb proclaims), Sunglass Exchange, Zara, Starbucks, MacDonald’s , Dunkin’ Donuts, Raskin "31" & Robbins, Lai Tai Chinese restaurant, Cinnamon, Waffles, Japanese fast-food (all run by Pinoys), Samsonite, etc. The upper floors will be occupied by the 5-star deluxe Four Seasons Hotel, which will be opening its doors in November.

Further down the road on Olaya street, past Bang and Olufsen and the "Goodship Lollipop", stands another towering shopping center, tapering at the top like San Francisco’s Bank of America building, the Faisal-Liya featuring England’s pricey Harvey Nichols, Bally, and, yes, "Nine West" (shoes), "Liz Clairborne," "Papermoon," DKNY, SWATCH, London’s ETAM, Longines, Georg Jensen, Morgan, Barrata, SONY World, JC Penny, Reeboks, Salamander. Name any brand from the Western World – they’ve got it. Petrodollars may have gone down in value, but the Saudis remain one of the "consumer targets" of the world’s manufacturers and retailers.

The difference is that the women shoppers are all covered in black abayas. These garments are made of silk or synthetic fabrics. Even Western women have been obliged to wear these abayas – so as not to tempt.

Western-style clothes, whether jeans or elegant gowns, are often worn under the abaya but are not to be revealed except at home or in all-female company. There are even "Women Only" floors in the malls, where women fit clothes or lingerie. The sign at the foot of the escalator leading to such an upper floor clearly states: WOMEN ONLY.

At many cashier’s stalls, there are cashiers labeled "Family Section" where husbands and wives, and their children, can queue up to pay, and another queue leading separately to a "Men’s" cashier for single males to line up to pay.

Last Thursday and Friday (the Muslim weekend, since Friday is the prayer day, their equivalent of our Sunday), thousands of Mutawwas or moral police (religious police) were everywhere, checking to see whether "morals" were being observed, the women properly covered up, the males in their place (modestly apart from the women, unless husband-and-wife), growling and waving their hands warningly about any infraction.

If a woman presumes to drive a car (it’s strictly verboten) she could find herself dragged by angry Mutawwa from the wheel – although, I’m told, they’re now a bit more cautious, checking beforehand whether she’s the wife or daughter of some VIP.

All in all, Saudi Arabia – where the two Holy Cities, Makkah (Mecca) and al-Madinah (Medina), and the Ka’bah, Islam’s central shrine, are located – is thus kept modest and pure.

This is a difficult task, perhaps, since there are 22 million native Saudis (four million in the capital of Riyadh), while there are seven million expatriates, including about 900,000 Filipinos, living and working here.

I’m not about to pose as an instant expert on such matters, though. As the articulate Editor-in-Chief of Riyadh Daily, Talaat Wafa, said to me the other day: "It’s amazing. I met a fellow who came here, spent three weeks, and then wrote a book explaining everything, he claimed, about Saudi Arabia!"

I don’t intend to spend three weeks here, much less write a book. Quick, quick! Let’s get into the terrific air-conditioning of our friendly hotel, the Riyadh Sheraton! It’s an oasis in the desert, I assure you.

One of my friends, a former editor of MANILA Magazine, the late Jim Beirne, used to tell stories about covering the Middle East. One of his tales was entitled: "What Do You Give a Thirsty Camel?" His answer – Jim was a disciple of the malt – was whisky. Poor Jim perished in that Korean Airlines plane which was zapped by the Soviet air force over the Kamchatka Peninsula when he was returning to Manila from visiting his parents in the US.

But now I know the answer to that camel query: "A Coke or a Pepsi, chilled from the fridge!"

After a drink like that, your camel will walk a mile for you.