Abha

Roadside mosque near Baysh.

Abha sits on the Asir montaine plateau, perhaps 2.5 hours by road, maybe 150 kilometres as the crow flies, due north from Jizan. It’s altitude is 7,300 feet.

Abhas' Town Hall

Guess what! That means that the temperatures there are like Vancouvers’, and it gets actual, regular rain! For an escape from the relentless heat of Jizan, groups of us, usually led by Jacob, would drive up for the day or weekend every once in a while. It’s a great hit with the Saudis, too, especially during the hotter months, from May till September. Some families seem to like to go there during Ramadan, as well.

The drive up is amazing: a 1.5 hour ride west through rock and sand desert (the flat coastal plains), then, turning north, heading into the foothills of the Asir mountains. The foothills are uplifted and eroded slabs of metamorphosed sedimentary rock, stark and metallic looking. No sign of fossils, though I have never been able to look carefully.

The mountains quickly close in and are steep, rocky and inhospitable, with only the occasional bushes growing on them. Isolated houses and small groups of houses cling to the rock and line the narrow valley floor.

The road is recently rebuilt to three lanes, and is reasonably safe, though care must always be taken to keep an eye out for someone blasting down (or up) the passing lane in the middle. Over three years, I had a student killed, and a few others badly injured, on this road, in car accidents.  The grade is, in most places, quite moderate, especially considering the overall altitude gain…

At one point, the top of the valley becomes visible, with little blue and pink boxes on it – this is Abha.

On the final ascent, there are groups of monkeys living around the overpasses and built up highway. Some stop to feed them.

Abha itself sits in a bowl, with a large hill – Green Mountain – roughly in the south center. Compared to other Saudi cities, it is remarkably clean and tidy, though it certainly can’t compare with Japanese, or even Canadian ones, for this. Green mountain has a restaurant at the top, though it boasts the most...ah, capricious service I have yet experienced... service is a funny thing in Saudia. Sometimes it means, well, maybe we'll help you out here, and sometimes....

Green Mountain, where we once sat for 2 hours waiting for dinner... then left.

Khamis Mushait, 40 kilometres to the east, is linked by a road almost continuously built up into shopping malls. There’s a regional airport with a few international flights out of it, and the university is along this strip.

Saudi gaudy moderne - it's Jorry!

Cakes at Jorry.

Mostly when we go here, we head first to our favourite restaurant, Jorry, along the ring road west from the entrance to the city. Nice food, of an internationalist sort, and great views out over the city, as it sits up high on the western ring road. Expensive, by local standards.

The park that surrounds Jorry.

Abha Castle, under renovation.

Abha Castle, from the other side.

View back down the highway, from a cablecar station.

Then we just poke around, shopping at the plant nursery on the east side of the ring road, or driving around downtown, or shopping out towards Khamis. There is a DIY store right beside the HyperPanda mega supermarket (with the world’s biggest shopping cart!!) where one can buy lots of stuff like Nexpresso machines.

 There is now an Obeikan (big book store) on Abha’s east ring road, and possibly an Al Jarir (another big bookstore, where one can buy some English language books, as well as art supplies). Once or twice we’ve gone to the old souk at the centre of town, though I think Jizans’ is better.

This is part of a fountain.

Abha is considered a center of fine art, with a large government sponsored arts centre providing space for painters (!!). The only installation and performance  artist I had come across in Saudia  – AbdulnasserGharem – I thought, had come from here, though he now claims Riyadh as his base of operations. Apparently he supported himself until recently as a policeman. I find this slightly mind-boggling.

The modern arts movement in Saudia, could be seen, I think as originating here, within the last 10 years or so. There is now an organization, Edge of Arabia, in Jeddah, as well. I wanted to visit the arts centre, but my compadres had no interest. So it goes with group travel.

View from the hotel.

We stayed in a local hotel downtown, very cheap at 50 SAR each (about $14) though not without the occasional cockroach… Outside, however, at 8 am, Jacob found a cool shop with a large gas-heated steel plate on which the cook took an egg and fried it onto a piece of flatbread. Rolled up, along with a cup of tea, a delicious breakfast. Total cost, about 3 sar (81 cents). Most of the other customers were laborers.

The roundabout at night - our hotel on the right.

Once or twice, we ate Turkish food at small restaurants round and about; I found it cheap and fresh. The roundabout across from this hotel was a nice spot to watch the festivities of National Day (September 29), when local youth dress themselves and their cars in green and drive around cheering and carousing – in a quite alcohol-free way, of course.
 

We watched this in 2011, I think, and I saw – wonder of wonders – a young woman, head scarf off, driving along in a van in the procession! This is totally illegal; if caught by one of the many policemen parked and watching along the route, she could have been in for some big trouble. I wish her well, however; Saudia will become a much more reasonable place the week after women can drive by themselves (and vote!). Right now a woman can’t go to the supermarket by herself to buy groceries… and I don’t like to think about how Saudi men drive.

The farm and the stand, with Jerry.

On the way back down the mountainside, we often would stop at a plant shop along the side of the highway. The young farmer who ran it, grew the plants in a, perhaps, 2 hectare plot on the river, down below his shop. I could see he was practicing multi-story propagation, probably due mostly to lack of space… nonetheless, a very sophisticated farm! He sold all kinds of things, from Tamarind trees to Basil to exotic flowers. I bought a small fig tree from him, and a highly ornamental lily as well, at different times. Too bad he spoke no English, and my Arabic was so bad…

Little house in the desert.

Coming down the mountain the air would gradually lose its’ cool freshness, becoming hotter, heavier, and more oppressive, till we came at last back to Jizan.

Jizani water truck

           

           

Weddings

Mr. Al Shehri and the groom

I went to three weddings while I was in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Kabini, one of my students, invited me to his house for his cousins wedding party, in Jisan. Another of my students invited me to his own wedding, in Baysh, and Rixat, a fellow teacher, invited me to accompany him to the wedding of one of his students’ friends, in Al Ardha. These last two weddings took place at wedding halls.

The Grand Mufti

Mr. Kabini’s house is in downtown Jizan, a scant 5 blocks from the larger of the teacher’s compounds. Ashanti, Rixat and the Grand Mufti accompanied me.

Ashanti

I had just taken delivery of a suit tailored in the old souk by an Indian tailor, originally from Mumbai. So, not having sprung for a thobe yet, I decided to wear that.

The wedding reception was held in the large outdoor paved area at the front of the house, inside the walls. Practically all Saudi houses that I have seen have walls around them – outside, to the side, some cooks were roasting sheep on large gas barbecue-like cookers. We wandered in, to meet and greet Mr. Kabini, his father and uncles, the lucky cousin and friends. There were perhaps 100 men there. The women, of course, were inside the house, having their own party. I was the only one wearing a suit.

His cousin, Mr. Kabini, an uncle, greeting.

We were shown to our seats, taking off our shoes and sitting on rugs and tarpaulins. Large serving plates, perhaps 30 inches wide, were placed at intervals on the tarps. We drank coke, sprite or water. Naturally there was no alcohol being served, it being forbidden by Wahabist custom and Saudi law alike. On the serving platters were mounds of oiled, spiced basmati rice, topped with roasted sheep meat. Special guests received the head.  We ate with our hands, traditional style.

Afterwards, having washed up with dry laundry soap and water, we were served sweets, tea and coffee, if I recall. Dinner was then cleared away, and the tarps gathered up. Then the Yemeni drum musicians began playing and the dancing started.

The musicians

Some of the dances seemed Saudi - men holding hands and dancing in a line, two or three at a time…but some of the dances seemed quite different, African to me, where the young men would do this kind of chicken dance, wildly. One would dance for a few minutes, replaced by another. Sometimes, their eyes rolled up in their heads, and they seemed on the verge of entering a trance state, the crowd of men and boys surrounding them clapping, swaying and dancing in place. These dancers were, many of them, from Sudan, across the Red Sea. I don’t know if their dances were of African provenance for sure, but they certainly felt it! This went on, with a short break for the musicians, for a couple of hours before we called it quits. I danced some of the Saudi style dances. It was hot, so dancing was like taking a sauna in your clothes.

The second wedding took place, a year or so later, in Baysh, a town about 45 minutes to the northwest. Mr. Essa held his reception at a public wedding house. One of the school’s directors, Jebril Zurbtan, kindly drove Roger and me to Baysh to attend. Thanks!

The wedding building was kind of cool – a large hall with traditional bench/beds (about the size of a single mattress) made of painted wood, with cushions on them. We were shown to our seats, served tea and dates and talked for a while. Then we went into an adjoining, room where plastic sheets and platters of rice and sheep, a kind of more formal khabseh, like at Mr. Kabini’s were laid out. Taking off our shoes, we sat in our places and ate. One new and interesting dish was served in largish red unglazed clay flowerpots! It looked like crumbly brown stuff with sprinklings of bright yellow turmeric across the top. When I asked what it was, I was told ‘dirt’, and ‘earth’.

So of course I had to try it – it was some kind of bread crumb/baked mixture (a bit like turkey stuffing) with pieces of sheep meat in it, and aromatic, bitter turmeric across the top. Eaten with the hand of course. It was good! I was warned, however, not to eat too much of it. If I understood correctly, it was considered an aphrodisiac. Not that I noticed. Later, in class, I was informed that this was a very traditional wedding dish to the region; many of my students knew of it, but had never tried it.

No dancing; the party broke up, very soberly, around 10 pm or so. I didn’t see Mr. Essa for a week.

A few months later Rixat, a fellow teacher, asked if I wanted to attend a wedding in Al Ardh, to the northeast of Jisan. I didn’t know the groom; his friend, Mr. Al Shehri, had invited Rixat. Challenge: a young friend drove us to Abu Arish, where we had to find a taxi to take us to the wedding, further down the road. He helped us. Eventually we pulled up in front of a wedding hall in Al Ardh. I like Al Ardh; it seems to be very spread out; there were no other buildings around the wedding hall. We went inside, greeted, milled. There wasn’t much to say to the groom, as he spoke no English, and my Arabic is not good. After a while we ate, then went outside to dance.

A Yemeni drum troupe (a la Mr. Kabini’s) started drumming - in the dark. There were no lights at all out there!

An older Yemeni man, dressed in a mountain-man sari-like wrap, with his Janbiya, wanted to dance a knife dance with me. It made me a little nervous, as he kept waving it around my head, in the dark, as we bobbed towards and away from each other…but no damage done.

I tried to take some pictures with the iso set to, I think, 6000 or 7200…very grainy, barely recognizable photos. In reality it was dark! After an hour or so, we presented our congratulations and went home.

Rixat, his student, the groom