Status Updates From Eight Months on Ghazzah Street

“[Frances] read the information sheet the library woman had given her, with its regulations and list of opening times. There was only one indication that life in Saudi had its tiny upsets. ‘PLEASE,’ begged the hand-out, ‘make EVERY effort to return your books if you have to leave the Kingdom hurriedly and unexpectedly.’”

“‘Haven’t they heard of seatbelts?’ Frances inquired.

‘Bit of a dodgy concept,’ Andrew said. ‘Allah has appointed a term to every life.’

‘Who tells you this stuff?’

‘Oh, guys at work.’”

‘But clearly they are not for walking on, she thought. Men drive cars; women stay at home. Pavements are a buffer zone, to prevent the cars from running into the buildings.’ (2/2)

‘Every few yards it was necessary to step down from the eighteen-inch curb and into the gutter; the municipality had planted saplings, etiolated and ill-doing plants inside concrete rectangles, and it did not seem to have occurred to anyone that the saplings would block the pavements, and the pavements are for walking on.’ (1/2)