Category: KSA

HH Saudi Research and Marketing publishes and distributes a number of Arabic newspapers and magazines.

I joined one of these departments with an open mind and it seemed quite suitable as it required IT with Arabic skills.

After the first week things started to get complicated.  They wanted me to sign a new contract without my team leader knowing.  Basically, they wanted me and him to work shifts over the weekend.  I did not mind except that I had to keep the contract a secret.  This was silly because he would find out anyway.

My team leader had a low opinion of the director and the company, but of course he sold the role to me during the interview.  He mentioned how the directors and the managers of the various publications only got their jobs due to some connection with the Saudi prince (perhaps a link between their tribe and the royal family).  He also mentioned that the director of our publication had a low opinion of Egyptians and was a drinker (except when his parents came down to visit, which is also the only time he would visit the mosque).  He said he sometimes felt sorry for our colleagues in Cairo as they did not get credit for the hard work they use to do.

The director was impolite and sometimes rude, especially when I had not learnt everything from my team leader (fast enough in his opinion).  This was impossible as my team leader was often off work, mostly due to an ‘eye infection’.*

Things started to get annoying when one of the new members of the news team appeared to have some sort of sectarian agenda.  She said that she is Assyrian and I replied Syrian wow – I visited Syria, but she re-iterated that she is of ‘the original people’.  She spared no effort in informing me that the Turks had committed genocide against her people, forcing them to speak Turkish and converting them to Islam.  She also often spoke ill of Arabs and Palestinians.

In addition to that she disliked the gypsies in Britain and spoke ill of their culture.

Eventually, I understood that the crux of her issue was that during the Ottoman period, some of the Assyrians supposedly colluded with foreign powers (against the Ottoman Empire).  The Ottoman response was forced relocation to other parts of the empire (far from the borders).  Sometimes this resulted in a very large number of deaths.

Furthermore, in the 1930s, the Iraq army crushed a supposed uprising of separatists in the north of the country, but her hatred of Arabs went beyond the 20th century.

After the Arab conquests (of the 7th century), some people started to Arabize (adopting the language of the new rulers and in some cases conversion).  During the medieval period, this process accelerated.  Sometimes there was pressure or incentives.  Other times, it was freedom of choice.

A similar process occurred during the Roman period.  For example, for the people in the conquered lands, joining the army became a means of social mobility in the new empire.  The dominant languages were Roman and Greek.  And previously, under Alexander, a process of Hellenization took place.

Perhaps for these reasons, in the present day, most peoples of the Middle East speak a dialect of Arabic and are Muslim.  Other religions also exist, particularly various denominations of Christianity as well as other languages (although modern standard Arabic is the official language of most Middle Eastern states).

In addition, there were many Jews spread out across the Middle East.  In the twentieth century, many of them moved to Israel and abroad (Syrian Jews mostly emigrated to the USA), but some have remained, for example in Morocco and Iran.  Recently, in Alexandria, Egypt, a synagogue reopened.

The Assyrian working in HH Saudi also saw Arabisation as a period of persecution, which further explained her hatred of Arabs.  For this reason, she believed the Palestinians deserved what they got.

As listening to her was not bad enough, a newer member of the team was recruited and, after joining the debate, introduced himself as a non-Coptic Egyptian (similar to Omar Sharif?).  He claimed that after the conquests, the Arabs stole the lands of the Egyptians.  In his view, the Palestinians were not the only Middle Eastern people who had suffered in history.  So why should they complain so much?

Their Tunisian colleague contended this by saying that the Arabs established military compounds, such as Fustat (outside of the existing settlements), which literally started as army barracks and slowly, over time, developed into cities and sometimes capitals.

Over the course of 1,500 years the Middle East saw a lot of things and some were blaming a whole race of people or civilization for what one leader or ruler ordered or did not order or some thing that was definitely out of order.  Is it really possible to have surveillance of every citizen, police officer and army soldier (especially in a time of war)?

Due to the director’s lack of manners, I left this job and then realized how retarded and toxic the debates in the office had been.  Truly, that in itself was enough reason to leave the company.  A decision I should have made much sooner.

Since leaving, I heard that a director of another publication in the same company had also left.  However, unlike me, he had been sacked!  Sacked for trying to molest his new secretary.  Apparently, previously, he had done the same thing to somebody in HR and when she resisted, he had her sacked.  I also heard that he had subsequently gone on pilgrimage.  Why?  May be because of remorse?  I hope so.  Or perhaps because he is one of those retards who thinks that by doing some religious ritual he can be cleansed of any sin even if he goes back to the same sin again.

May be this is what happens when promotion is based more on who you know and has little or nothing to do with a meritocracy.

Alas, they will never catch up.

*later he confided in me that it was caused by gonorrhea and not conjunctivitis.