Day 2, Thursday, 17th November, 2011

Today was a day when I had to try and search for better accommodation, and also figure out how  to manage without the two most valuable assets: cash and language. I had about SR 65 in my pocket and a mediocre vocabulary consisting of 3 words, viz. Salam-wa-alekum, Shukran and Alhamdolillah … but, as it turns out, it was just sufficient to manage conversations with the people inside the Children’s Hospital and most of the places I visited through the day outside. The night supervisor Sayed Faisal had left for the day, and I was without a clue as to where to do my daily ablutions for the day. There was, in one corner of the hospital a sort of toilet, where I finally managed my routine. I went back to the room where I had spent the night, had a breakfast provided by the morning manager, and then went back to him to seek help for accommodation. After some time, they asked me to pack all my bags into a pickup, and the driver and a security person eventually took me to “Soudha Zenobia” a place where they used to host doctors, nurses and anyone else with a MOH posting till they get their final posting venue and accommodations.


Unfortunately, the place was locked shut, and despite all the three of us banging on the door and shouting again and again, no one came to open the door of the edifice.

We returned to the hospital, and I put my bags and so on back in the drivers’ room. I went for the Dhuhr (afternoon) prayer in the mosque within the hospital, and I would also go for the Asr prayers later in the afternoon. Lunch was also sent to me and I took it with thanks and ate up most of it. I sat in the ER (Emergency room-cum-general OPD which is busy throughout the day and for more than half the night) and chatted with the doctors on duty, and also visited the NICU and PICU on the second floor. I had the privilege of using the bathroom on this floor within the doctors’ duty room apartment. I had also stored some of the eatables in the refrigerator here. I visited the local area around the hospital, including the Keralaite store owner Suleman, who owns a general store just opposite the back exit of the hospital. He gave me valuable tips, and guided me about the Kerala-shop owners located near Abbas square just 3-4 hundred meters away. I had used my mobile for calls to home and so on, and so, I recharged the card for another SR 20 from out of the funds given to me by Dr. Aftab (SR 50) and Dr. Zahid (SR 500). Both of them happen to be Pakistani doctors. While Dr. Aftab and I continued to talk on the phone, he and I did not warm much to each other, and I did not meet him as the next two days were off for him. However, Dr. Zahid and I vibed well with each other, and he proved to be a very kind and open-hearted person over the next few days.

Later, I went to Abbas square, and called home from one of the Saudi-owned calling cabin centre. While a call from my cell to India costs SR 2.00 per minute, call from the landline costs only 50 halala (1 SR = 100 halala) per minute!  When I returned from there back to the hospital, Abdul Gani, a Saudi driver was waiting for me with a lot of distress. He explained to me that there were going to be two drivers who would sleep in the drivers’ room, and so, I would have to leave that room and seek accommodation elsewhere. I was panicky, and went to the manager to resolve the issue. He (a certain Mr. Yousaf) started dialling on his phone and went on for nearly 20 minutes before reporting to me that there was no accommodation available for me. I was contemplating about what to do, and to seek permission to sleep in the doctors’ room on the second floor I went back to the manager, but he said he had no right or authority to grant me my wish.

Then there came a saviour in the form of an ER nurse who made calls and informed me that she had spoken to a friend and was told that the Mudeer (Sr. supervisor) of King Abdul Aziz Hospital would arrange the accommodation. She then explained everything to the driver, and after my bags etc. were loaded, we set off to meet the mudeer. The hospital is quite far, but we reached in about 15-20 minutes, and after the driver went in and spoke to the mudeer, I was called in and my request for an accommodation was approved. We went back to the pickup, and I was driven a long distance to a place known as Mukhattat-ul-Visaam.

This place is about 20 km from Abbas square, and maybe 15 km away from the King Abdul Aziz hospital. Asking people on the way, we finally located a 2-storey building that was our final destination. The door was opened by a well-dressed man in his early thirties. He introduced himself as a doctor, and after shaking hands with him, I took my luggage inside and the driver drove away. The entrance passage went in to a floor design that had four doors, two by the sides and two in front. The door to the right front room opened into a hall where there sat a second doctor. I was made to feel welcome by these two doctors. After a little while, I was told that a house manager would come and would assign one of the rooms within the house for me.

Just about this time, I suddenly noticed that my mobile phone was not with me. Panicking again, I started looking around the house and went outside where the pickup had been parked. It wasn’t there! The doctor who had opened the door to us some ½ an hour ago had noted down the cell no. of the driver and he immediately called up the driver, only to be told that he hadn’t found the phone. We tried calling up my number, but it gave a message that the phone was “closed”.   I had just lost my mobile and my SIM card and had no inkling about what to do about this huge loss.

Dejected, I went into my room once the manager turned up and opened one of them for me and waved his hands with a flourish, as if to say that he was being very generous in assigning this room to me.

Undoubtedly, the room was well-furnished and a large one at that, almost 350 sq. ft. in size. The kitchen looked a bit dirty, but had a fridge, a gas range with a conventional oven, a microwave oven and a smattering of some utensils and rations. In fact, the ministry sends a week of rations, even more than needed, on every Monday. This includes a large can of whole milk powder, two bottles of coffee powder, boxes of tea-bags, large quantities of raw, frozen chicken, fish and lamb meat, huge quantities of rice, 50-60 ½ liter bottles of water, cooking oil, salt and a dry masala powder for the house. As I had not had any dinner today, I ate one of the chicken rolls and a few pieces of the egg-mehsub I had brought from India. I sat with the doctors for some time before turning in for the night. Thus ended a very eventful second day on Saudi Arabian soil.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Day 1: Wednesday, 16th November 2011 - Part B

If my readers have got the impression that after reaching T'aif, everything else went smoothly and I was in bed within a few hours, I am sorry to disappoint you. The problems started as soon as de-planed and reached the airport lounge. The local time was about 11.15 p.m. and the airport looked quite deserted barring the people who had come in the same plane as I and who were mostly locals. There was a nice signboard at the airport that said: Dear Sir/Madam, If you are a worker for the Ministry of Health, we welcome you to T'aif. Kindly contact the Airport Health Post for arranging your transport on 02 .... etc (the tel. no.). I was thrilled to see this notice and immediately dialled the no, but there was no reply. This happened again and again, and I gave up trying. I asked around for the said health post, but never found out where it was or whether it was open or staffed. I then came out of the airport, and approached the taxi stand. The first thing that came to my mind was to go to the Muderiyah Sahat (Health directorate), but I learned that this would be closed not only at this time, but also for the next TWO DAYS! The next thought was to go to the Children's Hospital in the city and see the local manager of the hospital and ask HIM to give me temporary digs for the night.


With this aim in mind, I re-approached the taxi drivers who started haggling with me about the price of the journey from the airport to the Children's Hospital (known as Mustasfa Al -Atfal). His demand was 80 SR, and I bargained with him for 60, which he finally agreed after I showed him that I had nothing more than 75 SR with me. This also required intervention from a Pakistani man who was minding the airport parking lot.


We set off by midnight and reached the destination within 20-25 minutes, I unloaded all my luggage at the entrance and went in to the emergency OPD where there was a Pakistani doctor, one Dr. Aftab, on duty. I introduced myself, and after his advice, I managed to bring all my luggage inside into the wide corridor outside the OPD. Inside, there was an additional Egyptian doctor inside whom I also met.


Dr. Aftab took me to see the manager of the hospital (the muraghib), a Syed Faisal (Sayed or Syed here means "Mr" and carries no caste connotation. He greeted me cordially and listened while I told him the circumstances that had brought me to his domain for the night. Presently, he began to call up various hospitals to see if a room could be found. After almost one hour, he could not get me any accommodation. Dr. Aftab suggested that I sleep in the resident doctors' sleeping rooms, but the mugharib denied me permission for the same, claiming that he had no powers to allow me to go upstairs on the second floor.


Eventually, he accommodated me in a room with a working AC and lights, two sparse beds and a ramshackle cupboard ... but no wash basin or toilet. This was the room in which ambulance drivers rested between trips. I felt bad but I had no choice, so I accepted his offer and, with the help of the local ward-boys, I shifted my luggage into that room. The manager offered me tea, and was nice to me, all things considered.


And so, the day ended and I went off to sleep.

First post: Day 1, Wednesday, 16th November, 2011 - Part A

My family and I parted at the entrance of the Indira Gandhi International airport at New Delhi after much emotional discussion. Nishrin, Hannah and I were all crying, with Inas also moved almost to tears. A lot of indignation was expressed: Hannah was very vocal in criticism, while Inas was, as usual, down to a few harsh words. There were some personal issues that could have been resolved there and then and I would not go as planned, but in the end, reality prevailed and I decided to go. I said my goodbyes, hugged everyone for the last time, and walked in with my luggage.

Disaster struck within a few minutes of my interacting with one Gurpreet Kaur at the check-in counter of Saudi Arabian Airlines. The first thing was that there were barely 15-20 minutes left for me to reach the final queue, and hence, I would have to hurry to avoid being left out. The next thing was that my luggage weighed a grand total of 77 kg! It was deemed to be 27 kg overweight, and I was told to pay 395 X 27 = 10665 plus 10.3 % extra, for a total of 11763 INR … or leave the entire books carton back. The problem could have been overcome if I had more time and had been able to withdraw cash from an ATM nearby; but, as readers may have already guessed, neither of the two options were available to me. Also, I was travelling without an active mobile phone, as I was planning to buy a local SIM card as soon as I alighted at Riyadh. I could not carry my own instrument either as all the phone nos on it were needed by Nishrin who would be keeping it with her at the parlour, and because most of the numbers were stored on the phone memory and NOT on the SIM card.

Having no way to contact my family, although they were just outside the passenger hall, I had no option but to pay the full amount and then carry the luggage inside as soon as possible. I had no cash to buy Riyals, as almost all the money I had to buy them with was gone. Thus, I would have just 100 SR while boarding the aircraft half an hour later. An employee from the check-in desk accompanied me to the security check to enable me to jump the other queued passengers as my flight was ready to take off. Eventually, I was past the security check and going as fast as possible to the terminal from where the aircraft would take off. Here, there was a lot of crowd already as this was an international flight with nearly 500 passengers. They checked each handbag manually, and also repeated a body search. After this, we were allowed to proceed. By the time I had found my seat in the rear section in the central aisles (56), it was obvious that the aircraft had already passed its time to depart. In the event, instead of starting at half past one, we left ND at 2.45 p.m.

In the next few hours, I faced yet another shock when I realised that on my agent’s ticket, the departure timing was in IST, but the arrival timing to Riyadh (King Fahad Int. Airport) was mentioned in Saudi timings! Thus, what I had thought to be a 2 hr 15 min flight turned out to be a 4 hr 45 minute flight! To be fair, the hosts, charming youth from King Abdulla’s kingdom were quite efficient and a couple of them even smiled from time to time.

The on-board entertainment consisted of several channels, including some movies on the Hindi channel, lots of Hollywood movies edited for content (even bestsellers like the final Harry Potter and latest hits like Super 8 and so on), Hindi songs, children’s channel with Kung Fu Panda and Lion King, games, plane Camera, and Islamic channel with guidance on Hajj and Umrah in Urdu, and also several shorts on Quran and Islam. There were many more. However, the charm was spoilt by the computer hanging up several times and by the flight-related announcements which disrupted the program on view. Flight crew served a meal, lunch, with Indian taste – I had the mutton non-veg meal which was very nice. Tea was served with the meal and on demand too.

We reached Riyadh at 4.45 p.m. Saudi time. The airport was good, but I think the Delhi airport is much better than this one. At several places, the airport looks old and jaded. The real surprise, however, was that as soon as the passengers disembarked, they started running to the next post, which was the immigration area. I got my third shock of the evening when I saw the huge crowd of mostly Asians, including Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese and so on, standing in long winded queues before the 5 or 6 immigration counters.


 Although it was not even 5 p.m., and my connecting flight was more than 4 ½ hours away, I soon realised, after inspecting the situation and the almost creeping queue, that I would definitely miss the connecting flight if I stood with the others in the queue. In addition to the language problem which was insurmountable, there was also the need to be tactical, polite, persistent and show some anxiety to the several people I spoke to. Some were the men who sat at the immigration counters (but they simply brushed me off with a slightly louder than normal and haughty response to “go back”. Others were flight crew and at least one airport manager. Once the airport guys realised that I was not the only one who had a connecting flight; there were at least 15-20 others. They soon organised a separate queue for us, and we were taken in ahead of the hundreds of others awaiting their turn. It was at about 7.15 p.m. that I was let in into the customs area. Another wait occurred there as they asked first to see, and then, to actually take the entire medicine box to some other place to verify that the medicines were indeed the ones that they purported to be.

Once they were satisfied, they returned the box to me and after putting it back into the bag, I proceeded further to the domestic terminal at 8 p.m. On the way, I picked up a STC SIM card for SR 25 and then went in. I reached my departure terminal within 20 minutes of going through the baggage check-in and was able to rest for about 13-15 minutes. During this time, I started my mobile and called home to give the number and tidings of my safe arrival in T'aif. The flight itself was unremarkable. We reached T'aif, partaking of a mini meal with mixed grill chicken and kheema kababs. After having these and a cup of tea the hostess took away the trays and all in the short time available to them (the flight takes just one hour and fifteen minutes).


More in the next post ...