Going Home...

Saihat House

Birch House

It’s been a year since I’ve felt the Saudi sun shining down on my face.

A year since I last rode bikes through the streets of Aramco with Bobbie, singing the song, Rain drops keep fallin’ on my head! at the top of our lungs, scaring all the workers waiting for the buses to come take them home.

A year since I sat on the sand dunes talking with my sisters, went dirt biking/quading with my bro in the jebels,

walked to the racquetball courts with my dad (and sometimes mom), put on my beautiful abaya and headed to the souqs and malls, crammed all 5 of us guys in the front seat of our Desert-Storm era blue suburban (Car-ie), or took Kamiah out to the 2 foot patch of sand a quarter mile from our house.

When I was in boarding school, I would wait all week to go home… to get away from the British dorm parents, the Bahrain School, which was commonly mistaken for a prison (I’m completely serious. It was so secured and foreboding/horrible looking, people thought it was a prison), from my isolated life as a white Christian Dormie.

I would sit on the crowded, loud Saudi-Bahraini transit bus and think about the gates to Dhahran. The pretty rock/waterfall facade as you drive in, the white mosque on the left hand side. And the gates with Welcome to Saudi Aramco above them. And then, as years went on, they got a digital display that would encourage safe driving, and my personal favorite Aramco saying, Water is Life, Save It (That has become my very favorite phrase for life. Every time I get a drink from a drinking fountain, I think it. And when I miss home. And when I go swimming. And when I see someone waste water. And when I see some stupid slogan saying something to the effect of conserve water. Nothing is as clever to me now, after having grown up in Aramco).

And the Security guards, standing there ready to raise the gates to my personal paradise, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. In their brown security jackets. Some cross and others just as jolly as Ole’ St. Nick. And I always do the gun check. Not all security have guns. As I’ve always heard it, and I can’t verify it, but everyone knows it, Security only get guns if they pass this mental test. If they have a gun – they passed. If not, they are not mentally stable. So naturally, I do the gun check.

The big green tanks with the camo-mesh-netting and the 16 year old boy sitting on the seat texting have even warmed their way into my heart. The front gates just don’t seem as complete without them now.

Yes, the front gates to Aramco have a special place in my heart. I can’t wait to go home. To drive up, be waved on through, and continue through the familiar streets to my house.

Park next to my Saihat house, where I spent most my time as a kid. We played every game imaginable. Night games were our favorite. This view is accross the street from Ghada's house. With the top left window brown from her fathers' smoking.

Closer view of the park

The phonebooth in front of our Saihat house. We used it like a second phone line. Seriously. At any point of time while living there, one of the Johnson's could be seen standing there having a casual conversation. My house is right behind the phone booth, and to the right.

Saihat Phonebooth. Saved our family. This was, of course, back before we all had cell phones.

Khalas