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liralen's review
2.0
I'm eternally curious about travel experiences, but this wasn't my favourite—it's never a good sign, for me, when there's not a single recurring local (non-expat) character. The Fletchers were hired to teach English at universities in Riyadh, and they soon came to understand how different life could be in Saudi Arabia.
But I don't know how much this says about Saudi culture or lives. There are some mentions of mistreatment of domestic workers (more on that in a moment), but most of the 'adventures' come down to the Fletchers looking for different food, or ways to make alcohol or party with other expats, or being driven back and forth to campus and being annoyed if the drivers leave late. Not really the sorts of through-threads that interest me.
Alex Fletcher wrote the bulk of the book, with occasional emails included from Liz (I'm sorry not to have heard more from her, by the way, because I expect that the experience of Saudi Arabia as an expat woman would be very different from the experience of an expat man), so I'm going to go forward with talking about (Alex) Fletcher as the author. Okay. With that out of the way...
I was going to go on a tear about hyperbole, but I'll skip that and go back to the question of human rights and the treatment of women. I always looked at his newest conquest with sadness, trying to make her run for the hills using telepathy, says Fletcher of an expat acquaintance who had bragged about beating his ex-wife. I wish I could have done more, but it wasn't my place. (145) Guys...this attitude is so terribly sad to me. Yes. Yes, if you know somebody has a history of being abusive and of being proud of it, it is your place to say something to other people who might be at risk, and to make it clear to the abuser that you don't condone their behaviour. The best example I can give is rape jokes: one thing abusers do, consciously or not, is see how much they can 'get away with' around people other than the person/people they're abusing. So let's say that Person A makes a joke about women being sluts, or a rape joke. Person B laughs, or changes the subject, or otherwise doesn't push back. Now Person A knows that B isn't going to call him out on his misogyny (or, likely, anything else)...and if, say, Person C happens to be listening, she now feels less safe talking to B if ever someone treats her badly or she needs help.
Fletcher isn't talking about rape jokes here (well—not in that part of the book), but he is sending a clear message: it was more important to him not to rock the boat with a relative stranger who was known to abuse women than it was to try to give women information that might have kept them from becoming victims themselves, or helped them to get out of an abusive situation. Now—this is a memoir, and Fletcher can't change what he did or didn't do or say, and there's no fault in that. But I really, really want to see more growth and understanding than 'it wasn't my place', because right now the readership is Person C and Fletcher is Person B.
(Some untagged spoilers in what follows)
The Fletchers left Saudi Arabia after a close call involving an illegal party and escaping through the streets wearing swimsuits, without Liz's abaya—a transgression that could have landed them in jail. Their escape came down partly to luck and partly to the help of a police officer who hailed them a taxi—getting them safely off the streets and away from the morality police. This is how Fletcher sums it up: Perhaps the divine intervened, or the police officer's indifference prevailed. So, thank you, Jesus, Allah, and the subpar Saudi work ethic (177). But...isn't there another way to read this? Because 'indifference' to me would look more like 'do nothing and let the morality police do what they will'. I guess it feels like Fletcher couldn't see past his perception of Saudis to think that the police officer just...might have been trying to help.
A friend of theirs was arrested at the same event, and this is the one note I'm going to make about hyperbole: Amy was in prison less than twenty-four hours, but the experience had forever changed her life. (179) There's dialogue from Amy to that effect, too; she pledges to go to the Philippines embassy to try to help some of the women she met in jail who had less 'valuable' passports and were thus at higher risk. But the thing is: there's no way of knowing, in the book, if Amy's life was 'changed forever' or if it just became a sad story that she later told about her time in Saudi Arabia. I suspect that her going to the embassy (let's assume that she did that much) had very little effect in the short or the long term, and while her eyes might have been opened, I could have used quite a bit more follow-up before claiming that her life was 'forever changed'.
I'll leave off with my favourite typo (I really need to keep a list): ...cars of men would stop and preposition her... (141)
I guess in the Internet age, that could just be a pretentious way of saying @ someone...?
But I don't know how much this says about Saudi culture or lives. There are some mentions of mistreatment of domestic workers (more on that in a moment), but most of the 'adventures' come down to the Fletchers looking for different food, or ways to make alcohol or party with other expats, or being driven back and forth to campus and being annoyed if the drivers leave late. Not really the sorts of through-threads that interest me.
Alex Fletcher wrote the bulk of the book, with occasional emails included from Liz (I'm sorry not to have heard more from her, by the way, because I expect that the experience of Saudi Arabia as an expat woman would be very different from the experience of an expat man), so I'm going to go forward with talking about (Alex) Fletcher as the author. Okay. With that out of the way...
I was going to go on a tear about hyperbole, but I'll skip that and go back to the question of human rights and the treatment of women. I always looked at his newest conquest with sadness, trying to make her run for the hills using telepathy, says Fletcher of an expat acquaintance who had bragged about beating his ex-wife. I wish I could have done more, but it wasn't my place. (145) Guys...this attitude is so terribly sad to me. Yes. Yes, if you know somebody has a history of being abusive and of being proud of it, it is your place to say something to other people who might be at risk, and to make it clear to the abuser that you don't condone their behaviour. The best example I can give is rape jokes: one thing abusers do, consciously or not, is see how much they can 'get away with' around people other than the person/people they're abusing. So let's say that Person A makes a joke about women being sluts, or a rape joke. Person B laughs, or changes the subject, or otherwise doesn't push back. Now Person A knows that B isn't going to call him out on his misogyny (or, likely, anything else)...and if, say, Person C happens to be listening, she now feels less safe talking to B if ever someone treats her badly or she needs help.
Fletcher isn't talking about rape jokes here (well—not in that part of the book), but he is sending a clear message: it was more important to him not to rock the boat with a relative stranger who was known to abuse women than it was to try to give women information that might have kept them from becoming victims themselves, or helped them to get out of an abusive situation. Now—this is a memoir, and Fletcher can't change what he did or didn't do or say, and there's no fault in that. But I really, really want to see more growth and understanding than 'it wasn't my place', because right now the readership is Person C and Fletcher is Person B.
(Some untagged spoilers in what follows)
The Fletchers left Saudi Arabia after a close call involving an illegal party and escaping through the streets wearing swimsuits, without Liz's abaya—a transgression that could have landed them in jail. Their escape came down partly to luck and partly to the help of a police officer who hailed them a taxi—getting them safely off the streets and away from the morality police. This is how Fletcher sums it up: Perhaps the divine intervened, or the police officer's indifference prevailed. So, thank you, Jesus, Allah, and the subpar Saudi work ethic (177). But...isn't there another way to read this? Because 'indifference' to me would look more like 'do nothing and let the morality police do what they will'. I guess it feels like Fletcher couldn't see past his perception of Saudis to think that the police officer just...might have been trying to help.
A friend of theirs was arrested at the same event, and this is the one note I'm going to make about hyperbole: Amy was in prison less than twenty-four hours, but the experience had forever changed her life. (179) There's dialogue from Amy to that effect, too; she pledges to go to the Philippines embassy to try to help some of the women she met in jail who had less 'valuable' passports and were thus at higher risk. But the thing is: there's no way of knowing, in the book, if Amy's life was 'changed forever' or if it just became a sad story that she later told about her time in Saudi Arabia. I suspect that her going to the embassy (let's assume that she did that much) had very little effect in the short or the long term, and while her eyes might have been opened, I could have used quite a bit more follow-up before claiming that her life was 'forever changed'.
I'll leave off with my favourite typo (I really need to keep a list): ...cars of men would stop and preposition her... (141)
I guess in the Internet age, that could just be a pretentious way of saying @ someone...?
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