Khalid
DAVID MACWILLIAMS teaches writing and linguistics at Adams State University in Colorado. His essays have appeared in Pilgrimage, Mason’s Road, Apple Valley Review, and elsewhere. He earned a PhD in English from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2001, and in 2011, his MFA in creative nonfiction from Ashland University, Ohio, where early drafts of this essay were workshopped.
AUGUST. SIZZLING HOT. YEARS AGO. The two young Saudis whom in fun I call “my handlers” are showing me around the campus of the Mahad Al Idara, or in English, The Institute of Public Administration, here in Riyadh. We’ve left the cafeteria and are crossing the plaza in the center of campus. The walls of office and classroom buildings around us provide some shade. We’re on a gravel path bordered by bougainvillea, with swaths of delicate petals in red, pink, and purple.
Hassan, energetic and very smart, will start a master’s program in the United States in January; Ahmed, soft-spoken, returned from one in June. Most Saudi colleagues I’ve met at the technical institute have a degree from an American university. At thirty-two, I’m not much older than these two and will be among the younger American instructors here. I’ve taught ESL in Italy and Spain, and this past year, I worked in the ESL program at Vanderbilt. I’ve come to Saudi Arabia with the intention of settling in for a few years, paying off student loans and earning a salary I can live on. I’ve never been in the Middle East; I arrived only days earlier, and I still feel the jet lag and the uncertainty of being immersed in an entirely new culture.
My handlers enjoy playing the role of hosts and cluing me in on the challenges I’ll soon face. They warn me that my students, all young men either fresh out of high school or newly enlisted in the customs security forces, are lazy and prone to cheat. To my left, Hassan is talking rapidly, emphasizing words by clenching his fingers, pointing, and waving his hands. “Don’t believe a word they say.” Hassan wags a finger.
“They’re terrible,” Ahmed sighs.
Hassan adds, “They will try to get away with anything. Anything!”
Their , the long white shirts that reach to their ankles, swish as they walk, and the ends of their , or headdresses, flutter. I’m still not used to the Arabic dress. In these initial days, I keep imagining scenes from movies—Peter O’Toole in, Sean Connery in . I’m overwhelmed by the language, rapid and staccato, by the turbans and , by the frenzied traffic, the palm trees, the heat, the spicy scents of new foods, the prayer call that rings throughout the streets, and, now, this warning.
