Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, part four

The next morning, we left the Kingdom Tower and headed to the streets – or at least, to the newer suburbs around the Kingdom Centre. We were initially escorted by one of the Four Seasons staff, who was there to help us if we were stopped by the mutaween (religious police.) 

Most houses were square, with flat roofs, and the streets were a sea of pastel-coloured stone – pink, tan, yellow, sand, coral. Many homes were imposing, standing behind high, ornate gates; interestingly, though, the cars parked outside were all pretty old. Each neighbourhood has at least one mosque; in some places we saw three or four within a few blocks. We didn’t see a soul on the streets, beyond the three cars that stopped to ask what we were doing.

Speaking of cars, we headed to an overpass to get some modern city shots – and watched the organized chaos on the highway below. Women aren’t allowed to drive here – and the men wear the ghutrah/keffiyeh (head scarf) when they drive, which means they have no peripheral vision. Not ideal for driving. How there aren’t more accidents, I’ll never know - the number of blind lane changes and close calls we saw was unreal.

Contemporary Riyadh is only about 100 years old. Before that, it was a dusty, walled town with homes made of mud and straw-brick, arranged around the ochre Masmak Fortress. Near the fortress is the headquarters of the Mutaween (religious police), the Great Mosque, and Deira Square, a non-descript square in which public executions (normally by beheading) occur on Friday mornings.

The Fortress had closed for the evening, but the nearly souq (market) was still open, so we popped in for a very quick look before the vendors were called to sunset prayer. Many just crossed the road to the mosque in the Masmak complex, and we watched as men poured into the building, took off their shoes, sank to their knees, and brought their heads to the floor in prayer. There are five daily prayers (pre-dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset and evening,) and all shops and businesses close to the public during prayer time.  The call to prayer (the adhan) is the most wonderful, achingly haunting sound, and I will never forget it. Because there are so many mosques, you often hear competing adhan, each muezzin (the person who leads and recites the adhan) seemingly trying to drown the other out.

The streets were deserted during prayer, so we took a look at the ruins around the citadel. It was so sad seeing buildings that had clearly been so beautiful lying in ruins. We were to see quite the opposite the following day, when we went inside the Masmak fortress, a building restored to within an inch of its life.