1999–2001 · Saudi Arabia · Bahrain · Egypt · Alexandria
Saudi Arabia,
Work trips from London in the early 2000s: four trips to Saudi Arabia across the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf coasts, Chop Chop Square as a set-up, siddique and home brew with grape juice next to the yeast, Bahrain as the reward for leaving. Nine trips to Egypt, the Pyramids and Sphinx with the whole family, Annelise scared of the mummies, a Nile cruise while Renato and I went back to the site, and the Alexandria Corniche next to Hosni Mubarak's beach house.
(These posts were written during the Great Shutdown of 2020. Memory isn’t this good — internet searches filled in a lot of holes.)
Had four trips to Saudi in 2000 and 2001 to our two jobsites. Both were remote and on the coast and generally I spent most of my time in the camps. One site was on the Red Sea coast near Mecca (spelled Makkah on the map) and the other was on the Arabian Gulf near Khobar — the blue stars below. Although the core plant processes were the same (electricity production), one plant was basically converting oil to water (with electricity as a byproduct) while the other one was the largest electricity generator in the country. The map below is actually the water pipeline system for the country.
Flying into Jeddah on the Red Sea (cover photo is the King Fahd fountain) was a little more intense as the social rules are a little more orthodox and you drive by the turnoff to Mecca which had huge signs “no non-Muslims” — pretty clear message. It was a six-day workweek and Thursday was the big night in the camp and the drink of choice was siddique which generates a pretty severe hangover/coma, so it is good to pace yourself. I had a couple of one-week trips and on one of them I was coerced into going to Jeddah on Friday (their Sunday) for the day — many people coming out of mosques in the early afternoon and during prayer we would head into restaurants to respect the time. Then, my colleagues said — “oh — it looks like we happened to run into Chop Chop Square” — clearly a set up. But luckily for me (and the locals) no chopping on that day…but you could see where it was done.
King Fahd’s Fountain in Jeddah is the world’s tallest fountain, shooting water 312 metres into the air — taller than the Eiffel Tower. It was built in 1985 and is illuminated at night, making it visible from across the city. “Chop Chop Square” is the colloquial expat name for Deera Square in Riyadh (and similar public squares in Jeddah) where public executions and corporal punishments were historically carried out following Friday prayers under Saudi Arabia’s application of Islamic law. The square in Jeddah near the Grand Mosque was a known location for such events. Saudi Arabia has since shifted executions away from public spaces, though the practice continues. The siddique mentioned is an illicitly distilled spirit — the name means “friend” in Arabic — that circulated in camps and expat compounds as the primary alcohol available in a country where alcohol is officially prohibited.
My visits to the project site on the Arabian Gulf coast were much shorter and split time between the site and our office in Khobar, which meant I was in a compound and not a camp. Because of all the oil companies in the area and all the expats in compounds — a much less orthodox environment. In addition to siddique, many home brews/wines were available and at the store the grape juice, yeast, and sugar were all sold next to each other.
The highlight of all trips to Saudi was — leaving. Unless in a camp or at the site, always felt like you were being watched. Leaving from Khobar was better as you were able to have a night away in Bahrain…not quite Dubai but a lot better than Saudi.
In a country where alcohol is officially prohibited, the expat compound solution was elegant in its simplicity: grape juice, yeast, and sugar sold next to each other at the store, with no apparent awareness — or at least no official acknowledgement — of what they would become. The Khobar area, with its concentration of Aramco and international oil company compounds, was widely understood to operate under a different set of informal rules than the more conservative cities further inland. The overnight in Bahrain — a short causeway crossing — was the standard decompression stop for expats rotating in and out of the Eastern Province.
After I moved to London in 1999, one of the projects in our business unit was near Alexandria with the design office in Cairo and I had 9 trips over 2 years. First trip, right as the project started, entailed having a driver pick me up at the airport with a sign, stay in a nice hotel near the office in Cairo, then after a day or two in the office, a group of people would have a driver to take us to the site about 30 miles west of Alexandria right on the Mediterranean Sea. After 9 trips, I would grab a taxi at the airport to a guest house and then either ride with a co-worker to site or take the train to Alexandria and have someone pick us up. So got more comfortable over time — but this was all pre-9/11.
On one of my trips, the family came and we stayed with a co-worker and visited many of the same sites as Sharon and I had visited in 1994. They had kids the same age and knew all the shortcuts of expats…first stop was the Pyramids and then the Egyptian Museum. The kids all had some shade of blond hair so they stood out. Photo credit to Sharon for her scrapbook from 20 years ago — she even had ticket stubs.
The Great Pyramid of Giza — the one being climbed in these photos — was the tallest man-made structure on earth for over 3,800 years, from its completion around 2560 BCE until the construction of Lincoln Cathedral in 1311 CE. The three main pyramids at Giza were built as tombs for Pharaohs Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure during the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom. The Sphinx, carved from the native limestone of the Giza Plateau, stands 20 metres tall and 73 metres long. Climbing the pyramids, shown here, was a popular but hazardous activity that was officially prohibited by Egyptian authorities — though enforcement was inconsistent during this period. The activity has been more strictly banned in recent years.
My co-worker Renato and I had to head to Alexandria for work and everyone else stayed back — they took a Nile cruise.
After 9 trips, I would grab a taxi at the airport to a guest house and then either ride with a co-worker to site or take the train to Alexandria and have someone pick us up. So got more comfortable over time — but this was all pre-9/11. The contrast between the first trip (driver with a sign, nice hotel, organised convoy to site) and the ninth (solo taxi, guest house, train) is a measure of how quickly a place that seems foreign becomes routine. The note that this was all pre-9/11 is a marker that sits quietly throughout these Middle East posts — the world in which these trips were taken no longer exists.
After I moved to London in 1999, one of the projects in our business unit was near Alexandria with the design office in Cairo and over 2 years I had 9 trips. On one of my last trips to Alexandria I must have taken a camera as I came across a couple of pictures. I do remember that we ended up in a fish market where you picked the fish and they cook it for you. We spent a lot of time on the corniche and you can see my picture above in front of the main attraction in town — the Citadel of Qaitbay from the 15th century and sometimes we drove by the Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi Mosque.
Our jobsite had a great beach location which is great for extracting cooling water and it was next to an Air Force Base which also had Hosni Mubarak's beachfront second home.
Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE and served as the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt for nearly 300 years. At its peak it was one of the greatest cities of the ancient world, home to the Library of Alexandria and the Lighthouse of Alexandria — one of the Seven Wonders. The Citadel of Qaitbay, visible in these photos on the corniche, was built in 1477 CE by Sultan Qaitbay on the exact site where the ancient Lighthouse once stood, using stones from its ruins. The Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi Mosque, driven past on the coastal road, is one of the most important mosques in Alexandria and was built in the 13th century over the tomb of the Andalusian saint Sidi Morsi Abu al-Abbas. The jobsite described — on the Mediterranean coast west of Alexandria — was a desalination and power plant, a common project type for the region where freshwater scarcity makes sea water conversion economically essential.
“The highlight of all trips to Saudi was — leaving.”