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Tuesday, 02 February 2010 - 17 Safar 1431 H
Treated as second class by some of our own citizens
By Sameera Aziz
It was hot noon when I was hurrying out of King Fahd Hospital, Jeddah, after
interviewing an old and sick Saudi woman for a feature story. My driver was
standing at the main gate without the car. He told me he could not bring the
car to the main gate to pick me up because another car was parked just behind
my vehicle. I walked to the parking lot and checked out the obstructing
vehicle. A note was stuck on the car's window that contained a mobile number.
"May be there is some emergency," I told my driver. But my driver said the car
was driven by a Saudi teenager who came to pick up his relatives. "He ran
without listening to me. I wanted to tell him that my madam has already called
me to pick her up from the main gate."
"Okay, call him and tell him to let us go and park his car in our parking
space," I said.
My driver called him many times but the teenager did not come to move his car
although he promised to be there within three minutes. Then I myself called
him. "My brother, I am going to be late. Please come and let us go. It's too
hot here and the car's AC is also not working."
"You are lying, it's a new car. I saw it. How come the AC is not working? I
don't like liars... you 'Hindi' are always liars. You are pretending to be an
owner of that vehicle. I know it is your sponsor's car. Do you think that you
Hindi, Ajnabiya (Indian, foreigner) will call me, and I will come to you
running? I know that you are a Shaghala (housemaid). Now just wait there."
His words shocked me. He mistook me as an expatriate because I speak Arabic in
an Indian/Pakistani accent. I am not Saudi by origin - I acquired the
citizenship later on. I was born in Saudi Arabia, but my parents were from
India who migrated to Pakistan and then to the US. With this multicultural
background, I chose to marry and live in Saudi Arabia not for being subjected
to such racist taunts that show a brainless and unethical attitude in this 21st
century's progressive world.
I terminated the call without answering him back. I did not find any security
guard or traffic police to solve the matter. People gathered around me and
started calling him but he answered to every one that the vehicle did not
belong to him. Now, he was the one who was lying. One man tried to convince him
saying, "She does not look like a Hindi, she looks like a Saudi. Come soon!
Perhaps she is a foreign wife of a bigwig.." The man then said the boy had
agreed to come.
"Oh, because you told him that perhaps I am a Saudi, he agreed to come? He
parked the car in a wrong way, he bothered me, and broke the law. It does not
matter whether I am Saudi or not, whether a Shaghala or a Hindi. Wrong is
wrong," I said.
After making me wait for one and a half hours, he finally came. He was
surprised to see me. "She speaks Arabic with a Hindi accent. This is her
mistake. Why did she not tell me that she is a Saudi?," he tried to justify his
point. Ignoring his justifications, I told him to stand beside his car because
"I want to take your pictures." "Why?" he asked in surprise. "Because I want
to show these pictures to other people and tell them how a racist and a
brainless guy looks like" I started taking his pictures while he fled away with
his vehicle.
A famous American journalist and social reformer William Lloyd Garrison said:
"Little boldness is needed to assail the opinions and practices of notoriously
wicked men; but to rebuke great and good men for their conduct, and to impeach
their discernment, is the highest effort of moral courage."
My driver tried to calm me down. "Madam, you should not be angry. You came here
for one story but you got two instead."
"Well, I am not angry," I replied. "I am actually sad." I was sad because I
know that there is a fraction of people in my country, Saudi Arabia, that spoil
everyone's image. The notion such people give others is that all Saudis treat
expatriates in a way that is harsh, narrow-minded and discriminative. The world
has changed now. People are more conscious about their rights and attitudes.
Having lived in Western and Eastern countries, and being brought up in a
multi-cultural family, I can judge the differences very well.
As a journalist, my real concern has been to tell the world that my Saudi
Arabia is a country of good people. We hate violent attitudes and are trying
hard to overcome our weaknesses. According to Dale E. Turner: "It is the
highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends
for them."
Bear in mind that I would not say that all my countrymen are bigots and racist,
but certainly, we need to work in order to correct many mindsets, which is home
to such so-called sense of superiority. We must teach our children from the
grass-roots level that it is our responsibility to respect those who honor us
by choosing our country to live in. I've read somewhere that racism isn't born,
it's taught. So we must find out from where our people are being taught this
dangerous disease of misbehavior, which is a serious threat to society as one
continues to create the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.
In fact, we should be the most understanding people, as besides hosting many
expatriate residents, we host millions of foreign pilgrims every year. Then why
is it that we hear complaints of our bad attitude towards expatriates?
I agree that we have been negatively portrayed after 9/11, but we should accept
the truth that like any other society in the world we too have people among us
who need to learn how to respect others. Each individual, regardless of his
nationality, deserves respect. Treating people with respect makes our world a
better place. And it is easy as well. All we have to do is treat people the way
we like them to treat us. - SG
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