Where Cultures Meet

I went shopping in Jeddah a few days ago which revealed more ways in which the American and Middle Eastern cultures are different yet the same.  Four guys from my department took the 90km ride to the Red Sea Mall after work.  The Red Seal Mall is  truly a mall just like you would think of one in the U.S..  It's large, modern, is full of people and has a ton of stores (dominated, of course, by women's clothing).  I lifted the following picture from another blog, jedisinjeddah.blogspot.com.  (Four MBA students from Berkley spent three weeks in the KSA on a consulting gig.  It's a pretty entertaining blog.)

I took the next couple of pictures the night we were shopping.  The first one shows a huge 2 1/2 story "shirt" hanging over where the fountain is in the picture above.  I have no idea why it was there but a few days later it was gone.

The fountain below is outside the entrance to the mall.

The Red Sea Mall has Starbucks, The CheeseCake Factory, Radio Shack, Gucci, Sony, KFC, Hardee's Burger, and many other recognizable and not so recognizable stores.  There are many families shopping there plus lots of teenagers (girls in Abayas, of course).  The stores and Malls in Jeddah don't really get busy until later in the evening.  After 9 pm is when they start to get crowded which, by the way, is after last prayer.  There are 6 prayer times during the day beginning at about 5:30 am with the last prayer at about 8pm  The prayer times vary by a few minutes every day and it's important in Islam to pray at the proper time.  I have an app on my iPhone which tells the daily prayer times and uses the iPhone compass to show the direction to kneel (facing Mecca).  It's helpful to know the times because, if you happen to be in a smaller store,  everyone is shoo'd out shortly before prayer time and the doors/gates are closed.  In the larger department stores,  you may be allowed to keep shopping but the gates to the mall close and the registers are shut down.   Just before prayer, everyone heads for the food court or the coffee shops, gets something to eat or drink, and sits down to wait it out.  The lines get long so knowing the prayer times is useful.  The shopkeepers in the food court push serving to the last second, half closing their gates while still serving food and drink.   The "mutaween" or religious police are on hand to make sure they are closed by the time prayer starts.  There are large prayer rooms available for the men (not women) at the mall.   Prayer usually takes about 30 minutes after which everything opens back up and normal mall activities resume.   It's just life as usual here in Saudi Arabia. 

I read a very interesting article in the Gulf News, a UAE paper, which captures a subtlety of public social life  that I sensed but couldn't put my finger on.  The complete article is an opinion piece by Gautam Raja entitled Of American conviviality.  The gist of the piece is that Americans in social settings talk at length and loudly about what other cultures consider too personal or, in some cases, too obvious to bother with.  It's an interesting commentary worth reading to get an insight into how we are sometimes perceived.  Having read Raja's article I now realize that, even in a busy place like the Red Sea Mall, it's much quieter than a similar venue would be at home.  It's not earth-shattering but it is interesting and is one more difference to file away.