At 1130pm I received a frantic call from my sister: "Mansur, whatever you do, don’t leave the house. The demonstrators are out on the streets and they are right next to our house."
I could hear the helicopters hovering about in our area, as well as the sirens of the police cars.
For days, people were speculating that there will be widespread demonstrations in the city of Jeddah and Riyadh. The call to protest was called by a Saudi who is living in exile in London. He sent coded messages through his radio broadcast to the dissatisfied youth on the Kingdom to get out and protest against the Saudi Royal family. Tonight was the night.
Ultimately, we realized later that the frantic call my sister made was a false alarm. What actually happened, happened the next day. There were a handful of protestors, two were arrested, the others ran into a mosque, and eventually they were also caught. Two of the protestors fired gunshots from their car outside a mosque. All the images I had of a demonstrations, based on the ones I see in Pakistan and London, did not materialize here in Jeddah. Were the Saudi youths not brave enough? Were the Saudi Royal family so scared they deployed massive numbers of police forces? Were the youths here scared for their life?
Which got me thinking—how the heck can the people voice their grievances against the Royal family? Simply writing about the problems in the papers apparently is not making a huge impact. The government does not allow for public display of protests. The king himself receives only those members of the public he feels he can handle in a day. How can the people here voice their opinions?
Funnily enough, a tape was released by Jazeera television at the same time of these demstrations, claiming that it is Bin Laden on tape praising the attack on the US consulate in Jeddah recently. Right, and what about the Saudis and other non-American staff that were killed? They don’t matter to Osama. Osama is more concerned to kick out anything that has US stamped all over it. A very scary scenario for me indeed is if Osama is successful in over-throwing the Saudi government and establishes his brand of Islam--- suddenly everything American will be thrown out, women will be confined to homes, satellite and internet will be banned and men forced to grow beards! Gosh, we are living in a scary world!
Here is the link to the story of the not-so-purposeful-demonstration:
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=56191&d=17&m=12&y=2004
Till you hear from me again,
Mansur
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