Driving the Saudis

by Jayne Amelia Larson

  I’ve worked in many industries amid groups of men and women together, and there was generally a lot of camaraderie and goodwill. One summer, to help pay for graduate school, I worked long hours in a busy nightclub in New York City where I was one of the few native-born Americans on the job. There were six bars and several dance floors, and throngs of people packed the club each night. The place was jammed five deep at the bar from sunset until four in the morning when the liquor was finally cut off; my hands and wrists ached from pouring thousands of long island ice teas, sex on the beaches, and white russians. I had coworkers from Jamaica, Guatemala, Ireland, Germany, and many other countries—even a young man from Liberia, who was the only person I’ve ever met from there—but we all worked together as a team regardless of sex or native nationality. We helped each other and we looked out for each other; that was the only way to make the job somewhat bearable—camaraderie in the face of adversity. But that was not the case on the Saudi detail.

  Later that night, I was standing in the back alley outside the hotel with Charles and Sami, who had given me the lovely turquoise compact now in the mermaid’s possession. They knew that I was generally a nice person, or at least tried to be most of the time. As we were going over the details of my unraveling management career, Stu called my cell phone and said that there had been a terrible mistake, and that the jefes needed me to be in charge and wanted to reinstate me. He said that Fausto shouldn’t have dismissed me, and he offered me the job again (still with no additional pay) saying, “You are absolutely vital to the success of this operation.” I had the speakerphone on so that my friends could hear; Charles shook his head at me, and Sami glowered. I told Stu I would think about it. Then another head security jefe called and offered me the promise of more money—he couldn’t guarantee it—but only if I was onboard right away. I demurred again. Then they tried to strong-arm me into accepting their offer with a barrage of phone calls and a blitz of one-on-one “chats”; they even promised a future management position in an upcoming detail for another Saudi family due to arrive in September. The sudden intense pressure was strange; they seemed to have decided out of the blue that I was indispensable.

  Between strikes, Charles advised me not to bend under the relentless attention: “I done be warning you, it can only backfire on you, girl. You gots to look out for herself.” Part of me wanted to relent; the jefes, after all, had said a lot of flattering things about my intelligence and capability. My automatic reflex was to respond by proving these things to be indubitably true, but in spite of the pressure, I also knew that they said what they said just to get me to do what they wanted. I had to remind myself that chauffeuring wasn’t my career, it was an interim and short-term fix. I suspected that they would only demote me again or release me in a day or two anyway. After only twenty-four hours, several chauffeurs had already been fired for no apparent reason: some because they hadn’t answered their cell phones quickly enough, another because one of the security guys didn’t like his face, and another because the client was pissed off that the driver hadn’t instantly known the address of a restaurant even though the client had not actually given the correct name of that restaurant and that is why the driver couldn’t place it. There was a terrific attrition rate, and the casualties were staggering. We were totally expendable.

  I listened to Charles’s counsel, knowing that he had my best interest at heart, and I held firm against the onslaught. I was going to fly under the radar as low and as long I could. “Just takes the money and run, girl,” Charles advised me. As appealing as the higher-ranking job sounded in theory, I decided that I had to look out for herself.

  I thought about that evening later—how I had remained stalwart, in spite of the intense pressure from my superiors, and had taken care of myself myself—and I wished that this had been truer of me throughout my life and reflected in more of my life choices. Some people are really good at looking out for themselves, getting what they want, and making sure life works in their favor. This supreme sense of self-preservation and self-assertion comes naturally to them; it’s instinctive. But I have repeatedly ended up in situations in which I wasn’t properly acknowledged for my efforts and achievements or was passed over for someone less talented or conscientious than I was. It’s not that I exactly allowed it to happen, but it was as if I could see it transpiring out of the corner of my eye and was powerless to intervene.

  Some people are born with a sense of entitlement that enables them to see and put an immediate stop to anything that undermines or disenfranchises them in any way. I was not. Often people who are extremely good at getting what they want are also incredibly self-serving. But I want to be a good person who also gets what she wants—instead of cutting off my nose to spite my face, which is what I’ve been known to do in the past. Some people even have the ability to see far ahead and position themselves so that they benefit no matter what obstacles or hindrances are thrown in their way. I do not. I don’t think you would assume any of this to be so if we met casually or socially; I’m too good at masking it. I’ve been told that I have a confident and self-assured manner, but the bigger truth is that I wish I were more of a dick. It would be more fun.

  I’m sure this is why I was attracted to the small amount of power that my association with the Saudis afforded me. I walked through the luxury hotel lobbies, acted as if I belonged there, and was treated as if I belonged there by the guests and staff alike. The hotel doormen greeted me by name each day and even gave me chilled Evian, fresh fruit, and the daily international newspapers. They knew I wasn’t a guest at the hotel, but I worked for the Saudis and that was almost as good.

  One evening, early in the job when I still made some attempt to fix my hair and face nicely and was dressed in one of the beautifully tailored Italian suits that my restauranteur sister had given me, I was standing at the top of the lobby stairs encircled by several of the entourage’s hulking security and drivers, to whom I was giving directions, when I felt a gentle tug on my sleeve.

  “Excuse me, are you a movie star?”

  I looked down to see a pretty little pink-cheeked very self-possessed English girl looking expectantly up at me. “No, sorry, I’m not,” I said. Even a small child knew what a cluster of security meant—somebody important was around. I was at the center of the cluster, so that meant to her that I was somebody important.

  “I was so hoping to see one. Please, do you know where I can find a movie star?” she asked.

  “Well, I guess you could try the restaurant around 1:00 P.M. when they’re all having lunch with their agents, or you might get lucky up at the pool at cocktail time,” I told her. I smoothed my hair with one hand and straightened my suit with the other, pleased that somebody had noticed me even if it was only an eight-year-old girl.

  There were other aspects of my employment that were equally gratifying. I noticed that when I was dressed in a dark suit with my hair pulled back, and especially if I was driving or even standing near the black Crown Vic, I was often mistaken for an FBI agent or some other law enforcement official. I liked this newfound sense of power, and I worked it. Sometimes I would hold my finger to one ear as if listening to an ear-bud radio device like the Secret Service use, and I noticed people would make a beeline away from where I was standing but watch me with great interest from a distance. Once in a while, I would dead-eye somebody as I was getting into line at Starbucks and they would pull back and let me ahead of them, indicating that my time was more valuable than theirs. I’d speed through intersections cutting other cars off, then nod tersely, acknowledging that the other drivers were doing the country’s civil servants a good turn. People invariably waved me on politely. It felt as if I was wearing a terrific suit of armor. I didn’t feel corrupt in the least, but of course I was. I considered buying one of those fake police ID billfolds from a Hollywood prop house and placing it in the windshield of my car, but then my sister, a dynamo trial attorney who has a lot of experience with law enforcement, told me this was unwise be
cause I could get arrested for impersonating a police officer.

  7

  How Many Hermès Are Too Many?

  Shopping trips with Princess Zaahira were brutal—first, because she went almost every day, sometimes all day, and second because she bought so much shit. It was endless. If it was indeed true that the family flew in with $20 million, as the kid at the FBO had said, then they must have spent every pretty penny. I know they paid the hotel bill in cash—at least fifty rooms for seven weeks, including the presidential suite that cost $10,000 a night. Room service and whatnot had to be several hundred thousand dollars a day. That’s $5 million minimum for a seven-week stay.

  On the shopping trips, one of the head servants was in charge of the cash; they paid for everything in hundred-dollar bills. None of the royals ever touched the money. Except for one young princess, I never saw them handle any money ever. They strolled and shopped only, and the servants took care of the mundane details of the transactions.

  If you were assigned to drive someone who had decided to join the princess on a shopping expedition, you had to follow in your empty car as they strolled with the princess up and down Rodeo Drive from boutique to boutique. Usually no one ever actually rode in the car, but we had to be there just in case anyone wanted to be driven back to the hotel, which was two blocks away, if they had a call of nature or decided that they’d had enough of the relentless California sunshine. Evidently shopping with millions of dollars can be exhausting, and a two-minute walk after such strenuous activity could be life threatening.

  So we’d be seven, eight, or nine cars in a row crawling up the street, all empty, following a princess and her entourage as they strolled along, stopping in each store along the way even if they had cleaned it out the day before. The shopkeepers were ready, though. They were on it. They must have spent each night restocking, because there were always more purses to purchase.

  Every once in a while, one of the servant girls would hurry over to the line of cars with bags and bags of Jimmy Choo shoes, or armloads of Christian Dior dresses, or Hermès Birkin crocodile handbags in any and all the colors available (those can cost as much as $150,000 apiece). A stylish woman in my yoga class has a black one; she told me with glee that she was on a waiting list for three years to secure it and said it was well worth it. “It’s magnificent,” she said, “and it has all the hardware I wanted!”

  The servants never left the shops carrying any boxes because they were too hard to pack to send home. They even eschewed the magnificent orange Hermès boxes, which can double as installation art. My designer friend, Theodore, has a collection that he uses to decorate a house when he’s staging it for selling. He arranges them artfully in the wardrobe closets as if they were priceless sculptures and keeps an eye on the count as people tour the home because they’re frequently pilfered.

  All the booty would be thrown into the back of a waiting van that would make periodic runs back to the hotel to dump the goods. I watched as every week, hundreds of huge moving crates were filled and then shipped out to Saudi Arabia to be opened and sorted by the servants back at the palaces in the Kingdom. There was absolutely no regard for what something cost, no inquiry whatsoever. If they wanted it, they bought it, then bought more, then bought more, then bought more. It was like a really expensive fairy tale. Lordy! I thought. I wish I could sneak into the store with one of the Saudi ladies for only a nanosecond, just so I could toss one of those Hervé Léger bandage dresses on the pile. Size medium in amethyst or peacock blue, please, and I wouldn’t even register the dress’s serial number (they all have one). I’d just wear it around my apartment and keep it safe.

  After several long afternoons spent watching this impressive display of immense wealth, I started to think that perhaps the Saudi women shopped not just because they liked to have beautiful new things, but also because it made them feel better. If I’m feeling down and go out and buy a special something to give myself a little lift, it often works, especially if I’ve gotten it at a bargain. Ask anybody who has spent hours on eBay or QVC, and he’ll tell you that this happens to him too. But there are a lot of other options for me if I want to brighten my spirits: I might go to the SLAMMO! batting cage in Culver City, or see some friends perform naked in an avant-garde dance piece in a downtown loft, or go to Gold’s Gym to watch the bodybuilders pump iron in their purple leopard-skin tights—that can be immensely entertaining and uplifting, especially when they start grunting.

  But there were very few other things that the Saudi women were allowed to do, and most, if not all, of my pick-me-ups were off-limits to them.

  In Saudi Arabia, many women send a male relative or servant into shops to do the sizing and purchasing of, say, their panties and bras. Traditionally, retail shops are staffed by men. There are very few woman-owned and -operated shops, since it is considered by conservatives to be forbidden by Islam for a woman to work outside the home, where she could be viewed by any passing man. Female sales personnel in a store that sells undergarments and cosmetics and caters to a female clientele are only now becoming more prevalent because of royal decree. In America, where there are so many female-staffed businesses of all kinds, the Saudi women can shop more freely everywhere. So shopping in the United States was perhaps empowering for them as well as comforting. I wondered if perhaps this gave them a thrilling measure of control: they can look at and purchase whatever they like, wherever they like, and buy it from whomever they like. They can choose.

  The Saudis were also making money as they were spending money. Each member of the family and the traveling entourage had an assigned vehicle. All of those sedans and SUVs, which were kept idling throughout the day, needed gasoline, and all of those cars lined up behind us, trying to get around the convoy—because naturally we blocked the street for hours every afternoon—also needed gasoline. The Saudis were tying up Beverly Hills, wasting gas, which likely had been imported by the United States from Saudi Arabia, setting the price of as well as driving up the cost of gas because of demand, and then making money on that gas all the way down the line. The economic through line didn’t seem to be calculated, though. It just was brilliant.

  One of the first royal women I was assigned to drive was Fahima, a cousin of Princess Zaahira. She was a well-preserved woman in her fifties, with a strong jaw line, deep-set penetrating eyes, and shoulder-length, perfectly blown-out hair that looked as if it was a helmet. Fahima was always impeccably dressed in chic but conservative clothing with acres of expensive jewelry. Chauffeurs aren’t supposed to ask questions, in fact can be fired for doing so, but she usually tolerated my inquisitiveness with measured graciousness. She was multilingual, worldly, and well traveled, and surprisingly patient with my questions as I chauffeured her around the city, usually to get the British cigarettes she smoked, which are available only in specialty tobacconist shops. She was a heavy smoker, as were many of the other Saudis in this group—even some of the young women chain-smoked—and carried her own Fabergé portable ashtray in her purse. The Saudis regularly depleted much of the supply in Beverly Hills, so we often had to travel to Westwood or Santa Monica for her preferred choice of nicotine fix.

  Fahima didn’t hide the fact that she felt vastly superior to me but also that her sense of noblesse oblige compelled her to be generous with her knowledge. It wasn’t that she ever overtly insulted me; her condescension was subtler and more sophisticated than that, but it was clear that she thought me to be less worthy than herself. She seemed amused by my ignorance and naiveté, as she saw it, and therefore treated me like a child who needed her help. It was in her company that I first felt the pang of being an infidel, a heathen, a nonbeliever. I tried to ignore it.

  “I am sure it is difficult for you to understand the uniqueness of our society, but I am happy to help you to know more about my country and our customs, Janni Amelia, if you insist,” she said. “Please, what is it you would like to ask?”

  “Why do you have to wear the abaya [black cloak]?” I asked. I
really wanted to ask why the Saudi women spent so much money on designer clothes and jewelry and then let themselves be wrapped up in a black blanket, but that didn’t seem politic.

  “Please understand, Janni Amelia, in the Kingdom, a woman must be fully covered, in abaya and hijab [headscarf], and sometimes the niqab [veil], when in the company of any male who is not a son, brother, husband, or father. Of course. Not to do so is tantamount to prostitution. When we are inside our home, with our children and family, we do not have to cover. But we do not walk on the street without the abaya, we do not talk with a man who is not a relative, we do not sit in a Starbucks café with a man who is not a son, brother, husband, or father. Nor do we care to do this! There is always a very comfortable family room in the back for the women and the children, where we are more at ease,” she told me.

  “But why is it up to the woman to cover herself? Why can’t the men just not look? Why is it her problem?”

  “You see, Janni Amelia, women tempt men. We are temptresses. It is our nature; we cannot help it. And if men respond to the temptation—a glimpse of a cheek, or a wrist, or an ankle—then chaos will ensue. So we women cover. It is our duty, or we will provoke chaos, and then society and all mankind will suffer.”

  “Then why don’t you have to cover when you’re not in Saudi Arabia? Doesn’t Allah see you always?” I asked her.

  “Yes, of course, but most Saudi women do not cover when visiting your country because we do not like to capture attention or discrimination, especially since the unfortunate tragedy of September 11. But in the Kingdom, we must cover, or we may be arrested for indecency. This is the law, of course. For the Saudi woman, this is shameful behavior not to do so, but the American woman has no conception of this,” she said. I got a little irked then because it sounded as if she was calling me a floozy.