Meeting with Meshal: Gambling and Wives

Same place, same time – Meshal and I began talking like we were old friends, it seemed like! Going off our last conversation about smoking hookah, we transitioned into another family-friendly topic: discussing the joys and sorrows of gambling. Gambling is illegal in Saudi Arabia, apparently, and it is considered a vice. The reason gambling came up was that he told me he was heading to Lubbock during spring break to see his cousin because he wasn’t able to go to Las Vegas (seems like a fair trade, right?). Never having been to Vegas (though he’d heard wonderful tales from his brother on the city) he wondered if I had ever gambled, and so I shared with him my experiences with good ol’ Winstar World Casino and Resort, one of my favorite night-out destinations. I described to him the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of shining, blinking, chiming slot machines stretching a mile across with poker tables and black-jack tables and roulette wheels interspersed, how the place unfortunately reeks of smoke (which Meshal is used to since his brothers smoke), and how much fun it is to win $8 from a $0.40 spin on the Cash Wizard machine, one of my personal favorites.

           

Meshal and his brothers started the moving process, going from a cramped apartment to an actual house today, about which he was very excited since it means he will have his own room and won’t have to sleep on the couch in the living room. When I asked him if he was helping he said, “No way, we have a moving company… we Saudis: we are all lazy!”

            Laughing, I asked him if he really thought that, to which he replied, “Oh, I know it. Easier is better.” This launched us into a conversation about free time and college life. I didn’t remember what free time was, but he convinced me it was very real and not a figment of my imagination, since he let me know he had plenty of it to spare. He goes to class from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and after that he has nothing to do, really, unless he needs to prepare for a class the next day. He was curious as to why I had no free time, and I told him about the bustling life of a college student, about joining organizations and clubs, and about the work it takes to go through school. He was told to enjoy the free time while he has it in the IEP, and he plans on doing so before he starts school here!

            Toward the tail end of our meeting we saw Ashlyn and Kristin walk in with their partners, both of whom Meshal knew from his classes. He was explaining to me that Ashlyn’s partner, the woman, was accompanied by her husband – both from Saudi Arabia. He then went into why the husband was there – apparently in Saudi Arabia, wives are thought of as “queens” i.e. they must be driven around by the husband/a male relative, they are not to be left alone by the husband. I found this very interesting since my overall view of the Arab world was that it was a vastly male-predominating society in which women have little to no rights – not even the right to show their faces in public! But from what Meshal told me, there must be a great deal of trust between a Saudi husband and wife and a certain amount of doting upon from the husband. After this explanation he exclaimed that he didn’t want to get married – he would much rather be a bachelor and continue with free time, not worrying about having to follow a woman around everywhere she goes since it is part of the job of a husband! 

Meeting Meshal

So, two weeks ago I was told that my conversation partner Meshal had received my information at the beginning of the semester and was just procrastinating on contacting me. My initial thought was, “Well that’s rude.” But thinking more on it, I could see how a foreign student might be apprehensive about contacting and initiating a meeting with a student whom he or she had had never met, and I was nervous about the meeting as well. Last week I got a fragmented email from Meshal, in which he gave me his phone number for quicker communication. In short, a meeting was arranged for yesterday (Tuesday, February 19^th) to meet for lunch at 1 once he was dismissed from class; we met by the bronze statue of Super Frog…

…and woah, he had huge hair. Literally the biggest ‘fro I’ve ever seen!

We walked to Union Grounds to grab sandwiches, exchanging slightly awkward small talk as we grabbed drinks, and I instructed him on how to fill out the sandwich sheet by circling what he wanted. “What is ‘moonster’ cheese?” he asked. “Oh, Muenster cheese? It’s that one, there, in the glass!” I replied, pointing to the cheese behind the protective glass. “Yeah…I just want normal yellow cheese.” Laughing, I grabbed a water as he grabbed a Coca-Cola.

He graciously paid for my meal, which I was not expecting but was a very nice gesture. We then sat down and began our real conversation.

Meshal hails from the city of Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. He lives right in the city in a house, where he says he can’t sleep from the noise of cars (which he says everybody has in the city…his family has six). Meshal came to TCU because two of his brothers (he has five) came here before him: one who is ten years older and now goes to Texas Wesleyan and one who is a year older and still in the TCU Intensive English Program (IEP). It has been Meshal’s dream to come to America for six long years in which he tried to grasp the basics of the English language and writing and American culture, culminating in his arrival only three or four weeks ago. And as to why he had this dream of coming to America?

“Friends,” he said. “You know, Rachel, Chandler, Ross – the television show? I’m a huge fan! I saw Friends for the first time six years ago and now have seen every episode. I knew from watching Friends that I had to come to America, I had to!”

This launched us into a conversation about Friends and culture and family (since my sister has also seen every episode of that show). After realizing from Friends he wanted to come to America, he said he knew he needed to start contacting English-speaking people to practice his speaking, so he picked up online video games and Skype in which he could communicate via headset and camera, respectively. World of Warcraft was his favorite game, admitting he was pretty close to being addicted at one point even! However, this communication with Americans and other English-speakers helped him to practice his foreign language and allowed him to have  a decent sense of the language. Moving on to family I learned that in addition to his having five brothers (he is the second youngest) he has a sister who is the oldest of all the siblings. I learned little about his parents except that his father is a retired military general of some sort who now owns multiple businesses from a car repair garage to a hookah lounge that Meshal said is as large as TCU’s football stadium! Smoking hookah is apparently a big deal in Riyadh/Saudi Arabia, and much cheaper there than here in America, he made sure to tell me. He lives with his two older brothers in the Texas Wesleyan brother’s apartment, but he is planning on getting an apartment and car of his own soon once he takes a test to graduate the IEP program and actually start school. This would be possible because Saudi students have all of their college paid for on their country’s dime, plus receiving a stipend! No matter what school he attends, his country will pay for all of it through a scholarship, which he is planning to receive once he finishes the IEP. I don’t think it will take him too long to accomplish this, however, because he speaks English pretty well already (although he maintains that writing it is much more difficult for him).

Overall, our first meeting was funny and definitely thought provoking; I don’t think I’ve ever really sat down with someone from his culture like that and heard about Middle-Eastern culture from a primary source. He did make a funny play on words when referencing himself and his brothers coming to TCU, saying “we are invading America!” He realized how that would have sounded out of context, and we both started laughing as he assured me it was a joke and that a large number of people in Saudi Arabia truly wish they could come here and have a respect for our culture, including many in his family. I’m looking forward to our next meeting to see what all I can learn next!

Boo!

As a college fraternity is wont to do, my fraternity (Sigma Phi Epsilon) co-hosted with two other Greek organizations a giant mixer with a big artist last night. There were over a thousand students in the grimy, strip-club by day/rent-out party facility by night venue, generating a feeling of being in a mostly dark steam room surrounded by all your favorite people you've never met before. It was quite the experience, really. Lights and fog and bass and music and sweat and bass and bass and a whole lot of bass. Seriously, I had trouble hearing last night from the ringing in my ears from the excessive bass. 

This blog post is not about the concert.

Bass-induced hearing loss isn't funny, and this blog is supposed to be centered around a funny experience. My amusing experience is at least relevant to the mixer which occurred late into the night, however, so the introduction is warranted in my opinion... 

But I digress!

Before this massive blast of a party, I had the privilege of spending the hours beforehand at my fraternity big's house with him, his housemates and their dates, other assorted people that I've never met nor seen at his house before, and my girlfriend. This is pretty much a tradition before all of our mixers at this point in my TCU career, and it is oftentimes even more entertaining than being thrown up on by someone belligerently drunk or getting touched in close proximity by ridiculously sweaty hands/arms, which are both common occurrences at large Greek events, unfortunately. We were all in the dining room and living room in the center of the house, most people having assorted beverages like apple juice and Coca-Cola, etc., listening to music and talking; girls were taking pictures of themselves with other girls, and themselves with guys, and other girls, and girls with guys, so on and so forth. The theme of the mixer was American themed, so there were two girls dressed up as elephants (I suppose in reference to the Republican Party?), lots of red, white, and blue combo shirts and pants, a muscular guy wearing jorts with the american flag painted on his entire front torso (which definitely elicited a laugh), and people wearing camouflage, oddly enough. I guess only Americans hunt or something. In short, everyone was having a jolly time with their apple juice and friends all around, getting ready for the Yung Joc concert.

NOW the scene has been set that leads to a scene that caused me to belly-laugh.

Amidst the enjoyable, social chaos I realized I had misplaced my phone, so the search began. Luckily, it didn't take long to find – it was in Nathan’s (my big) room where we were chatting earlier. Being a pretty private guy, his door is usually locked, but keys were in the knob so I was able to waltz in. Courteously, I shut the door behind me and promptly found my phone directly in front of the door on some boxes. The way his room is set up the door opens and a few feet away from the door sill is a wall, so the majority of his room is just to the left of the entry. I mention this because as I stood with my back to the door, the door swung open.

Nathan pushed the door open and rushed into the room, not even realizing that I was behind the door. Oh, yes, he had no clue. His floors are hardwood and I was wearing boots, but so was he, so as I walked toward him (he later claimed he thought my footsteps were his own) he was facing away from me, struggling to open a new bag of cups for apple juice. I placed my hand on his shoulder and muttered, “Hiya there, fella!” and in a cinema-esque move, he screamed an expletive and the bag exploded, all twenty of the cups flying about the room. Oh, he was livid, soon screaming, “You know heart problems run in my family, you could’ve killed me!”

I was laughing hysterically at this point, amazed that he truly had no clue whatsoever I was in the room. Childish? Yes. Worth it? Definitely yes.