By Natasha Burge
I stumble out of the car, my eyes a ruin of strobing lights that fizzle and pop every time I blink. At the last intersection we’d been stopped behind an SUV flashing its hazard lights, a habit among drivers in Saudi Arabia as soon as a few raindrops begin to fall, and I have to wait for my eyes to clear before the dark streets of the Al Khobar souq take shape. Overhead, the night sky is thick with clouds.
We begin to walk. Dress Land, Bombay Fashion, Madina Restaurant, Fresh Fish Center, Golden Juice, the signs beckon in Arabic, Urdu, and Hindi. In the midst of the crowd, I spot a father walking with his three little girls, each in a saffron yellow shalwar kameez. Two boys on a bike, one pedaling, the other standing on the struts, weave in and out of traffic, hollering at everyone they see. We enter a leather goods shop where rows of hand-tooled sandals sweep up the walls to the ceiling and a cobbler sits cross-legged in the corner, surrounded by his tools and stray bits of leather. He introduces himself and dashes across the street to a cafe, returning with three paper cups of steaming chai.
While we sip the tea, he works a stiff thread through the sole of a shoe and tells us that he left his home in Peshawar 25 years ago and has been working in Khobar ever since. When he arrived, he says, the buildings were shorter and there wasn’t as much traffic. He laughs and tells us that sometimes he forgets it is the same city that he remembers from his youth. As we talk, men filter in and out of the store, bringing belts and wallets in need of repair. We make our purchase and step back into the night.
In 1938 oil was discovered in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia and Khobar began its meteoric evolution from a sleepy fishing hamlet into a hub of commerce and industry. My family has lived in the Eastern Province for 60 years; flip through family photo albums and the succession of images shift from black-and-white to color as Khobar transforms from a dusty town with a single paved road into a sprawling metropolis with chockablock highways. But behind the banal bloat of international chain stores and fast food restaurants, the shadowy alleys of Khobar’s souq remain dense with strangeness. These disheveled lanes are the sight of my most potent childhood memories and for weeks something has been tugging at me to make a pilgrimage along the ley lines of my youth.
Most of the people we pass are Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi, who meander slowly down the streets in small groups of men or families, enjoying the winter evening. It rained earlier and the excitement of this rare delight still shivers through the air. Children slip in and out of doorways, sandals slapping sharp rhythms against the sidewalk. A truck roars past and my abaya catches in its wake, flaring around my knees, and I spin in a circle, pushing it back down. On one corner, a group of men take up half the sidewalk playing a game of karom, flicking the pieces with snapping fingers. We pass a shop plastered in fliers advertising shampoo and nuts, where blonde dolls with sun-bleached faces fill the windows.
Iain Sinclair has said that the solitary walker is followed by a ghostly contingent of other walkers who murmur in his ear, trying to tempt him down one path or another. For me, these whispering stalkers aren’t strangers but family members; these aren’t just the streets of my childhood, they are the streets of my parent’s childhood, as well. We are Americans who call Saudi Arabia ‘home’.
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