Ma'Salama Tammy

This week, I hosted what I think is the last of the farewell parties for a month or two.  There have been several this month.  It is difficult when someone leaves because these are all great ladies.  This lady that I am going to blog about has helped  to make MANY people's stay here easier, especially for my husband and me.


I met her online before my husband came to KSA.   I had been trying to find out information about Yanbu before coming here and found it almost impossible.  I found the normal Wikipedia article telling population, layout, etc, stock pictures, maps, but not much else.  So, I asked a friend, who had just come back with her husband from an expat assignment with ExxonMobil from Singapore if she had any friends on expat assignments in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia.  She didn't have a friend in Yanbu, but she did have one in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia.  Within a day, she had me in touch with that lady, who got me in touch with two ladies in Yanbu, one from each of the two compounds here in Yanbu.   It was amazing!

 I emailed back and forth with Tammy.  She was an encyclopedia of info on life not only in Yanbu but also Saudi Arabia.  She suggested things that I should bring and not bring, etc.  My husband came here about 6 months before me.  When I told her that he was arriving, she had put a meal in the refrigerator and many staples like bread and milk.  Then, since he was alone, she began bringing him food, cookies, fresh bread, etc, which was nice because he does not cook.  I had envisioned that he would just eat popcorn every night.  One day, when he and I were Skyping (me in Houston and he in Yanbu), I heard his doorbell ring.  He got up to answer the door and within a minute came back and showed me a warm loaf of French bread that Tammy had just delivered to him!

When I arrived, I found out that it just wasn't Ken that she was doing this for, it was for lots of people.  Once a week, she made cookies for her husband to bring to work for the guys.  Her home was not only a bakery, it was also a grocery store.  Usually, if there was some item from home that you could not find at the grocery store, like food coloring, or corn syrup,  Tammy had it and would give it to you.  One person needed an ace bandage, Tammy had it.  If you had a headache, or cold, Tammy had the medicine.  She didn't have the biggest villa here, so how she was able to store all of this stuff and easily retrieve it, I don't know.  My husband and I don't have a car or a driver here. She and her husband have taken us to the beach and to several restaurants.  I could go on about this, but the bottom line is that she is one of those people that makes a difference.  

So, I hosted a Farewell party for her.  I had wondered before what the number of cookies and baked items that have left that apartment would be. I decided that the theme HAD to be cookies and baking.  My friend, E, asked Tammy to borrow her cookie cutters because ostensibly she wanted to make cookies.  Instead, E used the cookie cutters to cut out felt shapes and then made a garland of the "cookies" that we hung over the dining area.  So these were Tammy's "cookies"!

When I was in the US, I bought a clay that dries hard and is light and made chocolate chip cookies to use in another garland.

A few weeks ago, I went over to the area where Tammy's apartment is.  I thought that I would stealthily take a picture of the front of it.  But my cleaning lady came by and wanted to chat with me.  As we were chatting, Tammy came out on her balcony and suggested I come up and have some freshly baked cookies.  I thought that I was busted taking the picture but it turned out she didn't see me doing it, just heard my voice.    :)  Anyway, I used that picture to do a quick painting of the outside of her apartment.  I cut out a picture of  Tammy and put her on the balcony and then put stickers of cookies, cakes, pies and cupcakes coming out of her home.  I put a little sign on  the wall of the house saying "Tammy's bakery, grocery and everything you need store".  Then, E cut out felt camels that I put on the wall next to the painting.  I also put cookies in their mouths. 

When I was in the US, I had found cute polka dot plates.  I thought that I had had enough with 18, but the party kept growing and I needed 24, so I added the hot pink plates from the last farewell party.  E had bought pretty red glasses.

Although I haven't found cute paper plates here, I have been going to downtown Yanbu with some ladies who know the area and have found the 5 riyal store (which is about $1.33  ).  It is loaded with all kinds of cheap stuff.  But sometimes you can find cute and crazy things.  They had rolls of brightly colored 2 ft wide crepe paper.  So, I made place mats.  We had polka dot balloons (brought from home).  In the 5 riyal store, E found a cut out paper garland banner that had cupcakes.  E also made Tammy a felt flower necklace, that Tammy is wearing in the pictures.

Of course, we needed to give her a keepsake.  I decided not to frame a picture, so I asked my husband to come up with a limerick about her.  He has an amazing ability to do this.  All week, I had been having people come over to the villa to sign the mat for the picture.  Two days before the party, I asked my husband if he had the limerick ready.  He said, What limerick?  I said "You know, the one for Tammy!"  He had forgotten.  He said "OK, I will do it right now."  and within 5 minutes, he had it.  Here it is:

There once lived a woman in Saudi,

who perfected the art of the cookie.

She’s a legend for sure,

that will forever endure

with those who knew her as Tammy.

                                               The cookies were delicious, it’s true.

And banana bread and pizza rolls too.

You could ask anything,

Soon your doorbell would ring

‘cause her kindness would always show through.

I had brought cookie and pastry stickers from the US and put them all over the white frame.  Everyone signed the blue mat with the white pen.  It was done.  I thought that I had taken a picture of it, but apparently not!

A Japanese lady, I, (whom Tammy had babysat her dog many times while out of the country) made the centerpiece.  It was an oval plate filled with sand colored sugar.  She had made 4 camel cookies.  These weren't your normal cookies.  They were two-piece cookies that you put together like a puzzle.  So there was a piece for the front legs, a piece for the back legs and then a piece for the body.  Of course they were decorated.  But one of the camels had a cutout of Tammy riding the camel holding the reins to the camel.  This lady was such a perfectionist.  When one of the camels had toppled over and gotten "sand" on its feet, she took out a little brush to carefully brush off the sand.  It was amazing!

This was a potluck lunch and everyone brought wonderful food!  There was a sweet potato and potato medley, chicken fried rice, greek moussaka, sweet and sour meatballs, stuffed eggs, pasta salad, an Iranian dish, a vegetable dish, several salads, a hummus, mini savory tarts.  A French lady brought a freshly squeezed and mixed fruit drink from a new store in Yanbu.  For dessert, there was a pavlova.  (Also, the Italian lady who did the pavlova was sweet enough to do an individual pavlova for a lady who did not like cream, which was in the big pavlova.  Incredible!), a peach pie, beautiful strawberry puree topped cupcakes, cute ginger bread cookies that are made with cookie cutters that make the cookies look like someone took a bite of them-they are missing arms or legs or heads.  Cute, cute cute! This group of ladies really step up.  I wish that I had taken more food pictures, but after everyone arrives, it becomes very busy and I missed it.

Below is the Scottish lady with her personal pavlova.  :)

Here is L, serving the juice from the new juice place that she found:

Here is a cute little french girl, who could not wait to try one of the camels in the centerpiece:

Here are some random pictures:

And I think this may be the only picture that I am in:

Anyway, it can become very depressing here, meeting wonderful people and then after a short period of time telling them goodbye.  But it is just a fact of life here.  I think that the only thing to do is to is to learn from these interesting ladies and take that away with you. 

Keeping Busy

One of the features about living here in a small city in Saudi Arabia is the lack of activities or options for things to do.  Not only can women NOT drive, but there are many places where women can't go. Also, there are no movie theaters, live theater, music concerts, normal activities for most Western women.  Not all restaurants allow women and if they do, it is in a specially segregated area or "family room".  So, on the compound, we make our own social activities.  Otherwise, you would go crazy.

Since I returned back here the first week of March from my trip to the US , I have hosted a goodbye party, a St Patrick's day lunch, co-hosted a joint birthday party for 3 ladies whose birthdays were in March, co-ordinated a goodbye lunch at a local restaurant for 2 ladies leaving next week, will go with a group to a local restaurant this week, will host a goodbye party for a lady who was extremely helpful to me before I arrived here and afterward, and a Tapas dinner for my husband's fellow workers and us.  This is a very social life.  I thought that I had had a very social life in the US!

Last week,  we had the St Patrick's Day celebration, which was basically about decorating everything green, eating, and enjoying each others' company.  It was a potluck where everyone brought a dish.  I asked everyone to bring Irish or at least green food.  We had potato soup,  shepherd's pie, cottage pie, colcannon, mashed potatoes, Irish stew, smoked salmon, an Iranian rice dish, hot dogs, empanadas, etc, etc for the main dishes.  For dessert, we had lucky shamrock cookies, Irish apple cake, Irish apple pie, a trifle and an amazing cake from a local bakery and green lemonade and ginger drinks.

We had 17 ladies attending.  Of those 17, at least 5 people told me that they had never been to a St Patrick's Day celebration.  I suspect that there were several more.  It was very multinational which makes it interesting.  We had:

one lady from The Netherlands
one lady from South Korea
one lady from Italy
one lady from Germany
one lady from Lebanon
one lady from Pakistan
one lady from Venezuela
three ladies from Canada
one lady from Scotland
one lady from England
five ladies from the US

Then, we had a special visitor, a big leprechaun.

                              My next blog is about how difficult it can be to organize a group activity off the compound.

Ma'a Salama to Rosa Caliente

One of the difficult things about living here is telling friends goodbye.  It is a pretty tight knit group of friends here.  You normally see each other almost every day.  They help you solve your problems in figuring things out here.

Yesterday, we had a goodbye party for a very fun and friendly lady from Canada.  She is important to me because she was one of the first people that I met when I arrived and showed how you can make a strange and sometimes uncomfortable situation fun.  She was always happy and upbeat.  Everyday, she would say, "What are we doing today?".

My understanding is that she earned the nickname, Rosa Caliente, while playing Mexican train.  She liked the hot pink train and our Venezuelan friend said that in Spanish, that is rosa caliente.  "Rosa" said "That's me!  Rosa Caliente!".  So, I decided that it would be the theme of her going away party:  Rosa Caliente, everything in hot pink.  One of my suitcases coming back from the US was full of hot pink decorations: hot pink paper plates, forks, crepe paper, balloons, twirly decorations and a long pink feather boa.  Everyone jumped on the idea and contributed lots of fun things.  A friend contributed colorful hanging decorations.  Everyone wore hot pink.  Someone suggested we have Mexican food.  So, everyone did a great job of bringing Mexican food (plus a couple of Asian dishes).  Here are a few of the dishes:

One lady made a beautiful and delicious layered cake:

And because Rosa is the queen of the Vitamix, I asked her to make the Virgin (non-alcoholic) strawberry margaritas.

Rosa has a lot of funny sayings.  I asked everyone to send any sayings that they could remember so that I could compose a list of them.  One friend cut out hot pink poster strips and another one put the sayings on them.  And I put them up on my walls.  Here are a few of them:

This first one, she said while playing hand and foot canasta, as she was retrieving her foot canasta under her leg/butt.

The next one is Rosa's way of saying goodbye in Arabic, which is Ma'a salama.

The next one happened when we were in the car with her driver.  The drivers usually have their name on the dashboard.  In this case, it turns out that his name on the card was abbreviated.  Rosa, being a very sociable and friendly person, began chatting with the driver.  She said to him, "So, your name is Mohd?".  He looked at her in total confusion and a bit of disgust/horror and said "My name is Mohammed!".  It took him a little while to get over this.

Then, the next one happened when we were at the local farmers market.  One of the vendors asked her if she wanted to buy some bananas.  When she said no, he kept persisting.  I said, what is it with this guy wanting you (out of the four of us) to buy the bananas.  She said, "I am a banana magnet."

There were others posted on the walls.  We also posted pictures of her.

A friend not only made Rosa her crown of hot pink roses, but each of us a clip on rose for our hair or blouse and bought a call to prayer alarm clock, so that Rosa would not miss the call to prayer when she returns home.

Someone found a Barbie in a hot pink abaya.

Someone bought her a set of  Arabic man and woman salt and pepper shakers:

When I was in Houston, I had our Venezuelan friend record a video message for Rosa.  Her message really touched Rosa.  Also, I had found a hot pink picture frame, put a picture of her feeding a camel HobNob cookies, because the camel would not eat the carrots she bought.  Everyone signed the mat.

Here is a picture of several of us with Rosa. 

Until our next meeting somewhere in the world....

My whiny rant about travelling issues

Travelling internationally can be somewhat stressful.  It is usually a very long flight with layovers, trying to find your way around strange airports and of course the time change.  But I always find the last leg of the trip -Istanbul to Saudi Arabia the most stressful.

The Istanbul airport is always crowded, day and night.  In the main corridor, there are not enough seats for everyone waiting for their gates to be announced.  And usually the gates in Istanbul are often not announced until less than an hour before the flight.   So, there are people sitting and sometimes lying on the floor, people circling like vultures for empty seats.  If you get a seat, you are hesitant to get up to do anything because you might lose your seat.  I don't have enough miles for the mileage clubs.  I need to just pay to join one.  I have had layovers there of 4-5 hours.  That is do-able, shop for awhile, eat, walk around, etc.  And it IS interesting to people watch there because it is a crossroads between the east and the west and it is interesting to see what people are wearing-veils, hats, dress, shoes, boots, towels if they are male pilgrims.  All very different.  But this flight had a 9 hour layover.  So, I decided to splurge and get a hotel at the airport for 6 hours.  You could choose between 1-3 hours, 3-6 hours, 6-9 hours, etc.  That was very nice.  It was so much better than the constant jostling and noise for 9 hours.  I have learned that I have a preferred personal space bubble around me.  And for this particular flight, that space bubble is usually assaulted.

The first problem is line formation (or lack of) at Istanbul airport.  Everyone likes to crowd around.  They don't understand the beauty of an orderly line-no stress of people cutting in or trying to get around you.  This flight often has pilgrims going to Mecca.  They are often in tour groups, so they like to be together.  But the problem is that they don't get in the line all together.  So, many are coming later joining those in front of you.  Since there is assigned seating, I normally would not care when I board, but I like for my carry on to be above where I sit.  I guess it is a control issue.  If you board too late, it may be behind you.  Inevitably, what happens is that everyone crowds around the boarding gate jostling to go forward.

Anyway, when it is time for boarding, you must first board a bus.  Of course, there are people trying to get around and in front of you.  This time, I got on the bus and had a small  space to spare.  There was an older lady looking for someone and she was pushing her way through the mass of bodies.  Rather than saying Excuse Me in some language or another, she poked me in the back with her bony finger. Yikes! I pity her grandchildren fearing that finger poke.

I got on the plane, stowed my carry on above me and sat down.  Success!  Then, this is what almost always happens on this flight.  Someone thinks someone else is in their seat.  On my outbound flight, the flight was almost completely full and a lady told another lady that she was in her seat.  I have to interpret what was happening because they did not speak English.  The seated woman says no and won't budge.  The stewardess comes over and asks both of them for their boarding passes.  The seated woman can't find hers, she only has a baggage claim.  The standing woman has hers.  The seated woman is told she must move.  She refuses and the two passenger ladies begin to argue.  A steward comes over with the same result-no boarding pass and she won't budge.  Now, two ladies across the aisle seem to be putting their 2 cents in to the discussion and laughing and having a fine time.   The gate agent comes over and says that she must move.  She says no and everyone argues again.  Another 10 minutes goes by and the pilot comes out and asks what is happening.  He is incredulous and asks her for her boarding pass with the same result.  Then he begins asking the laughing ladies for theirs.  It turns out that they are not in the correct seats.  The correct seat holders had just went to the back of the plane and found empty seats.  The agent goes and finds them, brings them up and makes the laughing ladies move.  They are now no longer laughing and very angry.  He says something to the seated  lady who finally gets up and goes to the back of the plane.  Not before fake spitting and it seems cursing the standing lady.  At that, all the surrounding passengers start roaring laughing and clapping.  Everyone is properly seated and after having been delayed for 30 minutes, we finally take off.  Usually, on this flight, there is always someone who can't find their proper seat and does not have their boarding pass.  Many times, they will be wearing a backpack and as they turn around again and again to look for their proper seat, not believing that it is not the one that a person is already in, they bump everybody sitting on the aisle with their backpack.  The investigation takes some time, is finally resolved and we leave late.

One time, when I had a window seat, the stewardess advised the man sitting next to me that he had to put his tray table away because we were getting ready to land and if there was an emergency, I (in my window seat) would be impeded from exiting.  He was laying his head on it.  He waved his hand for her to go away.  She repeated her request, but he said no and waved his hand for her to go away again-dismissing her.  She walked down the aisle fuming and got another stewardess, who in a commanding voice said that he WOULD do it and that they were not his slaves to be dismissed!  They were very angry.  Now, the gentleman, in the aisle seat, who was with the reclining man began entreating him to please sit up and put the tray table away.  Of course, I am assuming this because the discussion was not in English.  And I didn't think it was Arabic.  I don't think it was Turkish, because the stewardess was speaking to him in English.  In disgust, he finally puts the table away, waving his hands around and speaking angrily.  Lots of drama.

Another issue that I have is when the person behind me needs to get up, but uses the back of my seat for support.  So, first my head rest is pulled down, with my head, when they are pulling themselves up and then when they are up and release the seat, it goes boingggg on my head. I have learned at the first signal of the person getting up to lean forward.  

Lastly, there is customs.  I got my luggage and brought it over to the line for the x ray at customs.  When it was my turn, I was trying to lift my 2 fifty pound pieces of luggage onto the conveyor belt, with my laptop case and purse, when this lady behind me spotted a space between my luggage and where it goes into the machine and tried to go around me an put her stuff in the middle of mine.  I like to keep my stuff all together so that I can keep track of it, because if her stuff were to be stopped for inspection the rest of my stuff would be delayed coming out.  I said No, I am not finished.  Please wait.  Another example of people not understanding the beauty of orderly lines!!

Sorry, I just needed to rant to get this out of my system!  :)

Celebrating Chinese New Year in Saudi Arabia!

On Sunday, which is a weekday here, the ladies celebrated Chinese New Year, the Year of the Horse.  As with everything here, planning a party takes several more steps.  And then in the end, you need to be flexible, because you are not going to find everything that you want.  You make do.  And this became quite the group effort.  I had wanted to have red plates, gold napkins, red forks, chopsticks and Chinese New Year decorations, normally not a big goal.  I went to the mall and 2 grocery stores-no red plates or forks.  I did find gold napkins.  It is not trivial getting to the mall/grocery.  You can take the morning bus and spend the whole morning there, or take a cab, or bum a ride with an Exxon wife if you find out they are going shopping.  A friend and I went to a stationary/party/craft store.  Although they had two decorations displayed, they did not have any for sale.  My friend said that she had 14 sets of chopsticks and New Year decorations from when she lived in China.  Another friend, whose husband has a company car, went to a store and found red plates and then to another store and found the cutest red and gold glasses and a golden stuffed dragon.  A third friend, whose husband has a company car,  found circular and rectangular doilies that could be used as placemats.  (As you can probably tell, I have "car envy".  Our company doesn't provide drivers or cars.  :)  I am hesitant to take cabs by myself, just in case the cab driver is not there when I am finished and I am the lone woman amid the men waiting outside the mall.  Not a good thing here.)  Also, I find myself becoming a pack rat and saving everything, "in case I might need it".  For example, the raffia used to hang a decoration on the front door was from a flower arrangement that a friend gave me when I hosted a  birthday party a few months ago.    I am usually a tosser. 

 

This is the year of the Horse, so we had to have a Horse centerpiece.  It just so happens, I bought a statue of a horse in Athens.  One online site that I looked at said that you should have a Tray of Togetherness which included tangerines and 7 other things.  Well, there was no way I would be finding this stuff here.  I thought that I would get by with the tangerines to help hold up the horse in the tray.  Of course, there were no tangerines at the market.  So, I settled for oranges.  It was a Tray of Simplified Togetherness.

I read that you should put the "Fu" symbol on your front door upside down.  That brings good luck when people enter.

 

 

I asked everyone to wear red.  One of the ladies suggested that we all wear red flowers in our hair.  She told me the location on the compound where I could find pretty red flowers.  That morning, I went out early to snip 14 of them.  I had no hairpins, so I borrowed 14 of them.  As each person came in the door, our "multilingual" greeter met each person and put a pretty red flower in their hair.  These were the leftovers:

Then, we sat down for our feast.  Everyone brought the most wonderful dishes.  We had Hundred Corner Shrimp Balls, Spicy Sweet Potato noodles, Sweet and sour chicken, Lion's Head Balls with a sauce, Szechuan noodle salad, fried rice, sushi made to look like little pandas, Kung Pao chicken, BBQ chicken wings, Spicy Shrimp, Prawn spring rolls.  And for desserts Almond cookies, chocolate covered lychees and homemade fortune cookies!!  The lady who made the fortune cookies also came up with the funny fortunes. 

Since they are not legible here, here are a few that are most appropriate for Saudi Arabia:

 

Keep calm and pretend you like it being 125 #&*!ing degrees

You can always find happiness at work on Friday-(Thursday KSA)

When everything's coming your way, it's likely you're in the wrong lane.

Keep calm and keep telling yourself shopping at Panda is just like home.

Keep calm and stop trying to guess what part of the goat this is.

Keep calm and ignore that car passing you on the sidewalk.

Keep calm and put on your @#$!in abaya

 

 

 

Again for the food, you have to be flexible here.  After 3 grocery stores, I could not find water chestnuts for the Hundred Corner Shrimp Balls.  So, I used shredded cabbage.  I could not find panko bread crumbs, but my friend who almost runs a grocery store from her place had exactly the 3 cups that I needed that she had brought from the US.  The lady making the Lion's Head Meatballs got the cornstarch from me.  I got the lychees for another lady.   The lady who did the Panda sushi has a special mold for it and uses the seaweed wrapper to make it look like a panda.  Here is a picture of them (but not with the lady who made them).  I asked her to hold them up so that I could take a good picture.

 

 

Here is a picture of the food spread:

 

I can not believe this, but I did not get a picture of the desserts!  They were so good!  I have decided that I need to appoint a person to be the photographer because I get too busy and I forget to take pictures.  I didn't get a picture of the ladies getting done up with the flowers in their hair, the decorations, the desserts, the ladies reading their Chinese horoscopes.  One lady had printed out the index of the Chinese Zodiac with the corresponding birth years.  We determined who was which animal and then read the corresponding horoscopes.  Very insightful!  :)  

Here are some group pictures:

It was a very fun and delicious celebration!!

Happy New Year everyone!!

Follow up to "Issue of Taking Pictures:

This is a follow up to my last blog, "The issue of taking pictures". 

I have a friend who moved from here to outside of Bahrain.  When she visited a mall in Bahrain, she looked at the advertising posters in the stores and told me that the faces are not blurred, as they are here.  She said that they look like normal advertising posters, as at home.  Since Islam is the state religion in Bahrain,  this seems to provide more evidence that the blurring of faces on advertising posters is not a Muslim practice, but a Saudi cultural one.

Yesterday, I asked a lady from Jordan if I could ask her a question about "privacy" in the Middle East.  I am sure that she thought, "Oh, no!  Not another one of these questions.".  But she smiled sweetly and said, "Of course, I will try to answer."   I explained about my curiosity about the blurring of the models faces or mannequins not having heads in the mall here.  I asked if this is the way it is in Jordan.  She laughed and said that the models faces in advertising posters are NOT blurred in Jordan, that they look just like they do in the West. 

Then, I asked whether you can take pictures in public in Jordan, where strangers might be in your photo.  For example, one of my friends took a picture of the produce area of a grocery and one of the workers came up and asked him to delete it because there was a Saudi woman in that area picking out vegetables. My friends and I took a picture at an open air market making sure not to have any Saudi people in it.  But you could see that it made people uncomfortable. 

 

 

The lady from Jordan said that would not happen in Jordan, unless you went up to the person and were taking a close picture of them.  The lady from Jordan is Muslim.  She said that this is not a Muslim practice but a Saudi cultural one.  As everyone says, Saudi culture is very private.  They live behind high walls.  Most Saudi women are completely covered, except their eyes. 

I ran across a blog about life in Saudi Arabia called American Bedu: http://americanbedu.com/.  The writer is a former CIA intelligence officer with a focus on Southeast Asia and the Middle East.  She met her Saudi husband in Pakistan and they moved to Riyadh where they raised two kids.  So, I believe her opinion has some credibility.  Here is what she said about privacy in Saudi Arabia.

"One will always hear references of the closed and conservative culture of Saudi Arabia. And the culture is the most closed and conservative when it comes to protecting privacy. This can be protecting the privacy of an individual, a couple and/or a family. Saudis value privacy and even the most innocuous or happy moments that one may typically wish to shout out in a western world will not happen in Saudi Arabia. For example, it is customary to keep engagements private. A couple may be engaged for a year before other members of the extended family will realize an agreement to marry was in place. It is customary to keep silent about illness. If a family member has a disease or is ill, a family may choose to keep this information private. The family may eventually acknowledge a family member is ill but will not advise the true cause or diagnosis of the illness. A Saudi family may have a child who is learning disabled or handicapped in some way. Outsiders may never be aware of the existence of this child. This child may be sheltered from view. A Saudi couple who has been living apart ostensibly under the guise that the spouse lives in one city due to the job and she in another city for the children’s school may actually have been divorced for many years but it is not openly acknowledged. These are just some of the examples of which I am aware of how some Saudis will choose to guard their privacy."

So...after "not extensive" research, I conclude that this is not a Muslim trait or a Middle Eastern trait, extreme privacy must be a cultural trait of Saudi Arabia.  Therefore, my next question is whether this is a Bedouin trait because I think it would be interesting to know the "why" of this.  Did extreme privacy help with survival at one time in Saudi Arabia?