No Way Home

by M S James

  Angelo was a gentle man, always smiling in a careworn manner, willing to help if possible and if he could get away from Nadia, the boss’s wife who had first call on all of the drivers. Poor Angelo (he was always called Poor Angelo) devoted himself to the greater good of his family. Like most Filipinos, he worked in Saudi to earn enough money to put his family, children, brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces through college. The Fillies were entitled to one paid return journey home per year although Angelo, most years, stayed in Saudi and sent the airfare home to his family. Like many of his compatriots, he wore two watches, one set to Saudi time and the other to Philippines time so that he could imagine what his family was doing at any particular instant. I suppose Jake, Anna and I reminded him of his family and he was happy to take us around. However, if Nadia wanted him, she got first dibs. I don’t know at what time he reported for duty in the morning but he was often sitting outside the boss’s house in the car until the early hours to take the occupants visiting or to fetch something they wanted. ‘It is a sacrifice for my family,’ he would say.

  ‘OK, Angelo, we are going to find the Riyadh Madrassa where I have a teaching job.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he replied. I showed him the ‘map’ and off we went to explore. After a lot of slow searching of downtown Riyadh I eventually spotted a sign saying ‘The Riyadh Madrassa’. Bingo! ‘Wait here, Angelo. We’ll go inside to see if it’s the right place. Won’t be long.’

  The gatekeeper let us in and we crossed the yard to enter a sizeable stuccoed villa. Inside was a large room, almost a hall, furnished with an imposing desk in the far corner and a row of chairs around the perimeter. At the desk sat a suitably imposing woman and around the room sat dozens of assorted Middle Eastern women, some with children. I crossed diagonally to the desk, guessing that the occupant was the headmistress. ‘Good morning, I am Kate Thomas. I have been appointed to teach at the Riyadh Madrassa.’ I proffered my letter of appointment, which she read slowly. She was a plump, pasty-faced woman dressed in several layers of clothing and with what looked like a tea cosy on her head. She waved the letter in the direction of the chairs opposite and said, ‘Please wait.’

  We sat and waited. Jake took out his Super Mario toy and quietly amused himself. Anna looked around taking in the scene. Five minutes passed, then ten. From time to time women dressed in much the same way as the head, all topped off with tea cosy toques, brought in glasses of tea for the sitting women or took papers to the head for signing. I was ignored. Eventually I went back to the head.

  ‘I’ve been waiting some time, will someone be dealing with me soon?’

  ‘You wait, please,’ she replied. I went back to my chair and waited.

  ‘Can we go soon?’ asked Anna. Jake pressed on with saving Super Mario from danger. I turned to my neighbour. ‘Have you been waiting long?’

  She smiled wanly. ‘Six days.’

  ‘What! Why?’

  ‘That’s what you do in this country.’

  ‘And these other women?’ I indicated all the others sitting patiently.

  ‘Some have been here for weeks.’ For Christ’s sake, what kind of establishment was this? Back I went to Madam in the corner, still sat at her desk.

  ‘I’m sorry but I really can’t wait any longer. I have my children with me and a driver waiting outside.’ She wafted her hand and shrugged. ‘I will come back tomorrow and by then perhaps you will have decided where in the school I will be teaching.’ I left before the red mist could descend.

  The following day I went back again, still with the children in tow, though armed with plenty of books, pencils and activities for them. The head was still at her desk and wished me good morning. ‘You will be teaching in the English Medium Sector of the school. Your class will have eighteen six-year-old children. Beautiful children. You will begin this Saturday morning at 8am.’

  The wind was taken out of my sails as I grappled with the idea of this sudden entry into the Madrassa life. ‘How long is the school day?’

  ‘Eight until twelve thirty, Saturday to Wednesday. We grant you a two-day weekend.’

  Praise be to Allah, I thought. ‘And what about my children?’

  ‘Your son, he is how old?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Then he must go to the boys’ department.’

  ‘My daughter is three.’

  ‘She can go to the kindergarten. The schools are very near to each other.’

  ‘Not here then?’

  ‘No, they are nearby, two streets away. You will see the sign. The kindergarten – a little way.’

  ‘And the boys’ school?’

  She demurred. It was obviously too complicated to explain. ‘You must ask.’ But she offered no suggestion from whom I would get an answer.

  Once outside I woke Angelo. ‘Straight to the office, Angelo, please.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. It is a good school?’

  ‘No, Angelo, it is a lunatic asylum.’

  At AAC Philip looked up from his desk. ‘Hi, how did you get on?’

  ‘Well, I’ve got a job, teaching infants full time. But it is obviously a chaotic set-up and we really can’t send Jake there. It would be an experience for him but I am not sure what, if any, education he would get there. We need to find the British School and see if they can take him.’

  ‘OK.’ He called around the open-plan office. ‘Does anyone know where the British School is?’ Someone suggested that it was three blocks west of the Airport Street supermarket.

  ‘Can I hang on to Angelo for a bit longer?’

  We went on another trawl around a different part of Riyadh, again with endless wall-lined streets with little to distinguish one block from another. Eventually I spotted a sign proclaiming ‘Saudi Arabian International School’. They too had a gateman who let us in. After that, we suddenly found ourselves in a British oasis with children running around, staff clutching bundles of books – the normal hubbub of a normal school.

  ‘Can you direct me to the head’s office, please?’ I asked a passing teacher.

  ‘Come with me, I’ll take you.’

  ‘Has term started long?’

  ‘We started back yesterday. It’s a bit of a muddle at the moment; some children turn up out of the blue and we have to fit them in.’ She smiled at my two. ‘Are you coming to join us?’

  ‘I hope so,’ I replied.

  The head of the junior department of the SAIS was a pleasant Yorkshire woman who listened to my story and readily agreed to take Jake into the school, but said that we would have to pay a term’s fees in advance.

  ‘That’s fine. I will bring the cash with me when I bring Jake in the morning – if that’s OK?’

  It was – and that was a massive problem solved although I didn’t know where we would get the money from.

  I woke Angelo again. ‘Back to the office, Angelo.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Saudi Arabia ran on cash. They didn’t use cheques, and cash cards had only recently been invented but were not used there. People wandered around with huge wads of money, especially on pay day. Everyone knew that everyone else was flush when there was a new moon. The Saudi calendar was lunar and the new moon signalled pay day! This could be hazardous for the unwary; despite the distinct possibility of having a hand removed if caught stealing, there was a huge temptation for the poorly paid guest workers to relieve the better-off of their month’s salary.

  ‘Hi, did you get them in?’ enquired Philip.

  ‘Jake is going to the SAIS but I decided to keep Anna at the Madrassa kindergarten. If it’s awful I’ll send her to join Jake. But we need to get some cash by tomorrow morning. They want a term’s fees in advance.’

  ‘Right-ho. I’ll have a word with Hani; perhaps the company can give me an advance on my salary.’ Hani was AAC’s Lebanese MD. He was a wily character, an engineer by tr
aining but now intent on making the most of Saudi’s massive building programme. The enormous profits that could be earned from erecting prestigious projects would see him, eventually, living in great comfort in Belgravia.

  Having experienced Philip’s calm, efficient professionalism over the previous months, Hani readily found the required sum for the school fees. Another problem solved. It was decided that Philip would drive Jake to school and then drop off Anna and me in the mornings; Angelo would collect us at midday. I was lured into a sense of complacency that all was now sorted.

  The Riyadh Madrassa

  Philip dropped us off at the Madrassa before taking Jake and a large envelope of cash to the SAIS. The street was beaten earth with no pavements. Since a large number of cars had already arrived to deposit mothers and children, the air was thick with dust. The gateman was standing by the open gate and beamed at me. ‘Ahlan! (Welcome!)’ he cried. He was a tall, burly Egyptian wearing the customary white thobe and white skullcap. I asked him for directions to the kindergarten which he pointed out in the next block.

  The kindergarten was a large room filled with dark-haired, dark-eyed tots milling about. The exception was Bobby, a blond child, standing in a cot being kissed by his blonde, attentive mother. The only other woman there was dressed in a Pakistani salwar kameez and was encouraging the children to sit at the small tables.

  ‘Hello, I’m Kate Thomas. I am a teacher at the Madrassa and,’ indicating Anna, ‘this is my daughter. The headmistress said she could attend the kindergarten.’

  ‘I am Mariam. I teach in this department. Welcome.’ There was no form-filling, name-taking or other proof required that I was who I purported to be. Anna sat a table and quickly joined in with the activities.

  ‘Hello, I’m Sarah,’ said the blonde woman. She could see that I was disconcerted by the informality of Anna’s reception. ‘Mariam is fine,’ she confided, ‘she comes from London. She’s a qualified infant teacher.’ That was a relief. ‘I teach English in the secondary department. Where are you?’

  ‘I am in the infant department but I haven’t been there yet – this is my first morning.’

  ‘Good luck! But don’t worry about your little girl. My Bobby is happy being here.’ So with that reassurance, I made my way back to the beaming gateman.

  The infant department was a large ramshackle building, the hard, tiled floors and bare walls making the children’s voices echo around the building. Egyptian women with long dresses, enveloping robes and tea cosy toques called to them in Arabic, so all seemed to be confusion. Eventually one of the women said, ‘You are our new English teacher? Follow me.’ We went upstairs to a large, gloomy room furnished with a teacher’s desk, pupils’ desks and a blackboard. There were no books of any description. The ‘windows’ were large window-shaped holes in the wall which opened onto an enclosed area which had more holes in the wall to the outside. This area I later discovered was a Purdah area where the women of the house (when the building had housed a family) would have been allowed to view the outside world.

  ‘Where are the books and teaching equipment?’ I asked.

  ‘You will work from worksheets that you can print in the print room. There is a print man who can help you. Choose which pages you want to copy and tell him.’

  ‘And what do the children write on and with?’

  ‘The children bring their own pencils and colours and writing books.’ I tried to assimilate this appalling state of affairs and smiled bravely.

  ‘I see I have a blackboard.’ I indicated the board which was not unlike the one that I had sat before in my primary school thirty years ago.

  ‘Yes, there is the rubber.’

  ‘Chalk?’

  ‘You must buy your own chalk.’

  Fine.

  ‘When do the children arrive?’

  ‘I will go get them now.’

  My mind was a jumble of trepidation. I had no idea what I was going to do with them for the next few hours. Far too soon, a procession of Arab and Asian women tentatively entered with their wide-eyed children.

  I smiled a welcome. ‘Please come in. Children, put your jackets over there and sit down at a desk.’ One mother came over to me and earnestly asked, ‘Will you love my child?’ When I hesitated, she repeated, ‘Please, I ask you to love my child.’ There was a clash of cultures looming.

  ‘Ah, well,’ I began, ‘we British teachers do not love our pupils. We are very fond of them but I cannot say I will love your child or any of the others.’ She looked distraught. ‘But don’t worry, I will take great care of all of them.’ By this time the children were sitting at desks and their mothers sat on a row of chairs at the back of the room. I walked over to them and said, ‘You can go now.’ One brave soul said, ‘We will stay.’

  ‘No, you can’t. You must go home.’

  The brave one said, ‘I cannot go home. My driver has gone.’ The others nodded.

  ‘I am sorry but you cannot stay here. You must wait downstairs and tomorrow go home with your drivers.’ There was much consternation and muttering but I eventually bundled them out.

  The children watched me carefully to see how this strange woman was going to behave. Shorn of their doting mothers, I had the whip hand, so to speak. I asked them to get their writing books and pencils from their bags; some looked perplexed and others whispered to them what to do. They came up one at a time so that I could write their names on their books and try to fix their unfamiliar names into my brain. It became apparent that some of the children couldn’t speak English. So much for being in the English Sector of the Madrassa. Only eight of the eighteen children could communicate with me. Could it get worse? It could and it did but for the rest of the morning we got through with gifted translation from the English speakers and rousing renditions of assorted songs. They were all familiar with ‘Old MacDonald’ and his farm, which took up a fair amount of time, and they took quickly to ‘She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain’, once I had explained through my translators who ‘she’ was. One American boy, Ahmad, proved to be a stalwart second-in-command over the coming weeks. He was so bright and able that I relied on him to convey my instructions to the others. One charming Egyptian girl had a pronounced Irish accent. Her parents had been doctors in Cork so she found Arabia as foreign as I did.

  ‘Ah, sure, ’tis so,’ she would comment.

  There was a short mid-morning break when the children played in the yard and the teachers stood in huddles watching them. I was the only European teacher. Judging by the tea cosy headgear, most of the staff were Egyptian though one Indian-looking woman turned out to be from Sri Lanka. She was very jolly and introduced me to the others. They smiled politely but were reserved. I asked where the print room was and the Jolly Teacher, Aisha, showed me the way.

  ‘You must choose which pages you want from the master copy and tell Mr Sayyid how many copies to make. If you ask him today they will be ready for the morning.’ Photocopiers hadn’t yet arrived at the Madrassa so Mr Sayyid printed with a Gestetner machine which smelt strongly of a chemical and the prints came out purple. However, it was better than nothing. Churning the prints out was a simple operation but only Mr Sayyid was allowed to operate the machine.

  ‘That is not work for womens,’ he told me. From then on, I visited him daily and put in my order. It was a good place to meet up with the other British ‘womens’ who were in the junior and senior departments. Some were old hands and were well used to the cunning wiles of the Madrassa management. Most of them were also dependent on the regime for providing housing and flights home. ‘Get your request for an exit visa in early for the mid-year break,’ I was advised. ‘They will come up with all sorts of reasons not to give you one.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They think you won’t come back.’

  I was astounded, in my first week, to be told that I had to hand in my passport to the Madrassa for th
e duration. ‘Why?’ I asked with some indignation.

  ‘That is the requirement of the authorities.’

  ‘What happens if I need to go home?’

  ‘You cannot leave Saudi Arabia unless you have an exit visa and we will not give you one unless you have fulfilled your contract.’ Ye gods! I was now a prisoner in this country. When I checked with Philip he concurred. His passport was held by AAC. ‘Apparently some foreign workers had previously left the country without settling their utility bills and one chap actually emptied the company safe and took a suitcase full of riyals with him. So now you have to get everything signed off by your employer before you can get an exit visa.’

  ‘What about visitors and tourists?’ I wondered.

  ‘There aren’t any. All foreigners are here to work or are members of a worker’s family.’

  ‘Or visiting Mecca on pilgrimage?’

  ‘Yes, but I think you have to get a special visa for that.’

  On my way to the print room one day, I spotted a large electric keyboard tucked into one of the rooms. That would be really useful in our singing sessions. I tracked down the mistress-in-charge of the infant department to ask if the keyboard could be taken to my classroom.

  She looked amused and smilingly told me it was only used in special circumstances.

  ‘Like when?’

  ‘When we have important guests. It is not for teachers to use.’ It was always one step forward, two steps back at the Madrassa.

  Later, at home, I asked Philip, ‘Where can I lay my hands on a guitar?’ I explained the keyboard situation; a guitar would do just as well, although my guitar-playing skills were not up to much.

  ‘There may be one over at the Fillies’ villa. Ask Angelo if there is one you can borrow.’

  The following day when Angelo collected us from school I could see a guitar in the back of his car.

  ‘Oh, well done, Angelo! Where did you find it?’

  ‘At the villa, ma’am. Rick, the accountant, left it when he went home.’ It was a well-worn instrument but had its full complement of strings. I tuned it up that evening and practised a few chords. The children would be thrilled to sing with it.