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SAUDI ARABIAN NIGHTS
Dispatches from the Middle East
#2: Note a bidet
The greatest thing about living in Saudi Arabia is the bidet in my bathroom.
I suspect most otherwise cultured Americans regard bidets with the same caution as I do: a bidet may well be a marvelous contraption, capable of imparting an unparalleled degree of post-bathroom freshness. But I have, I think, an entirely appropriate fear of the consequences of a bidet’s misuse. I can imagine having dinner at a really fancy restaurant, excusing myself to use the bidet-equipped restroom, and coming back to the table soaking wet: “Sorry, I had to give my pet yak a quick bath. Could you please pass the vichyssoise?”
About a year ago, I stayed for a few nights at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The bathroom in my suite had a bidet, a fancy one with solid gold fixtures and expensive-looking mosaic tiles inlayed around the base. I wanted desperately to fiddle with this bidet, to satisfy all my adolescent curiosities about its function. But I worried that if my hygiene experimentation went awry, I’d be spending months washing rich people’s dishes to pay for a busted bathroom fixture. Better to let sleeping bidets lay. However, when I arrived at my little villa on the outskirts of Riyadh and discovered that I had a bidet of my very own to tinker with, I was giddy with the possibilities. This would take some investigating.
Putting my curiosity about the bidet in check, I spent my first few days in Riyadh getting comfortable with my surroundings. My villa is one of several hundred tan stucco buildings scrunched together in a small compound near Riyadh’s Second Industrial City. The compound, called Eskan Village, sits squarely in the middle of the desert with absolutely nothing around it but acre after endless acre of sand. Still, the villa itself is nicer than many apartments I’ve lived in: ornate wooden carvings decorate the front door; marble tiles cover the floor in the foyer as well as the stairs that lead to the sun porch on the roof; and, of course, a fabulous little bidet stands sentinel in the bathroom next to the toilet. I immediately wondered why a place like Eskan Village existed literally in the middle of nowhere.
A few blocks away from my villa is the office of the Saudi cultural liaison. In the course of everyday life here, we Americans don’t have very much contact with the Saudis. Still, the United States has had a significant presence in Saudi Arabia for more than a decade, so some level of cultural exchange exists out of necessity. In any event, I hoped the liaison could answer my questions about the genesis of Eskan Village. If nothing else, I thought I might get a chance to practice my limited Arabic skills, which consist entirely of counting from one to seven.
Sure enough, the gentleman at the liaison office was more than happy to explain, in English thankfully, how my new home in this desert oasis came to be. As we sipped tea, he told me that the Saudi government constructed Eskan Village as an experimental housing project for the Bedouins. For reasons that I do not clearly understand, the Saudi government wanted to bring the nomadic peoples out of the desert and give them a permanent place to live in an effort to “civilize” them. The liaison offer went on to explain how the experiment was a monumental failure. When the Saudi government inspectors returned to Eskan Village to check on the progress of the “civilizing,” they found the Bedouins had turned the villas into barns for their animals (did the animals drink out of the bidets? I wondered). The Bedouins themselves had set up camp in the many courtyards around Eskan Village, living out of their tents as they have for the past thousand years. When the Saudi government inspectors returned the second time, most of the Bedouins had packed up and moved on, as nomads are sometimes prone to do.
Enter the United States government. During the build-up prior to Desert Storm, a huge wave of American military and civilian personnel washed into Saudi Arabia, leaving the U. S. government hungry for Saudi real estate. Always looking for a bargain-basement deal (these are the same people who brought you the Bay of Pigs and the “O”-rings on the Challenger), the U.S. government happily leased the now-vacant Eskan Village from the Saudi government. If it’s good enough for Bedouin farm animals, Uncle Sam must have trumpeted, then it’s good enough for our troops!
In truth, Eskan Village is a comfortable place to live, complete with all the necessities of modern life. Which brings me back to the bidet in my bathroom. After spending a few days getting settled, my curiosity about the bidet got the best of me. Late one night, after I was certain my villa-mates had gone to bed, I donned as much waterproof clothing as I could find and tiptoed into my bathroom. There stood the bidet in all its porcelain glory, it’s various chrome-plated knobs, spouts, and hoses beckoning me. In truth, I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do with this contraption. So with trepidation, I reached down and turned one of the knobs.
Something groaned from deep beneath the floor of the bathroom. And with a deep, throaty gurgle a jet of foul, thick, greenish sludge shot from the bidet’s spout. I ran for cover (Dear Mrs. and Mr. Neuner, the Department of Defense regrets to inform you that your son was tragically maimed in the line of duty by chunks of an exploding bidet). Then the bidet sputtered a few times, and a stream of clean, pure water ran freely from the spout, swirling happily down the drain.
Crisis avoided, I quickly realized that I was probably the first person to operate this bidet in many years. Was I the only person in this place with a sense of adventure regarding bathroom hygiene? Over the course of the next few days, I found the answer to this question was an unequivocal “yes.” No one, not one single American in Eskan Village, uses his or her bidet as it was intended. Of course, good old-fashion American ingenuity has come up with lots of other uses for the ubiquitous bidet. Most people simply place a board over the bidet and use it as a shelf, making a great place to store necessary bathroom reading material (the fact that Mad Magazine can be found in bathrooms with the same frequency as Guns-N-Ammo gives you a small insight into the average mindset around here). The occupants of one villa have a very nice miniature ficus tree growing from their bidet. And, most impressive, the bidet in the villa that serves as Eskan Village’s medical clinic is piled high with a giant mound of condoms, free for the taking. The image looks like something out of a bad Mapplethorpe photograph. Very, very classy.
Still, I’m left to wonder. The Saudis originally built Eskan Village -— bidets and all -— in an effort to “civilize” the Bedouins. Can we then conclude that the bidet, at least in this part of the world, is a necessary element of civilization? And can we further conclude that, since the Americans here refuse to use the bidets, Americans will never be considered fully civilized by Arab standards? Could standardized bathroom hygiene be the key to unlocking the riddle of lasting stability in this region? Indeed, could the widespread use of bidets lead to World Peace? More investigation is necessary. Apparently, I’m the only guy up for the job.
--Jeremy Neuner is on assignment in Saudi Arabia.
LAST WEEK: First impressions from the desert.
By Jeremy Neuner
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