Just outside the Grand Mosque compound in Makkah, an Arab couple haggle with two Indonesian salesmen over the price of expensive Cambodian oud. In the neighbouring block, Indian staff take orders for fried chicken and burgers at a busy eatery. On the other side of the holy city, Bangladeshi taxi drivers fight for parking space at a taxi drop-off point.
Scenes like these may appear routine to the tens of thousands of pilgrims who visit Makkah every day. But for an expatriate living in the UAE, these mundane conversations in Saudi cities are hard to ignore. Unlike in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, almost everywhere in the kingdom — markets, airports, hotels and restaurants — people talk only in Arabic.
Conversations in Arabic between expatriates in the kingdom are not a rare sight, a guide told me during a trip last month.
But why? Because expatriates have to frequently interact with Saudi nationals and Arabic skills are an absolute necessity, an HR manager said. No Arabic, no work, he quipped.
During the four-day trip, my own interactions with the Saudis, however, smoothly switched to English after I shrugged my shoulders in a typical Dubai style: “Maafi Arabic.” The only two words, I must embarrassingly admit, I learnt to say in the last 15 years. At Jeddah airport, an officer at passport control did not bother to speak to me in Arabic. He must have assumed that an expatriate living in Dubai would not understand a word, I told myself while boarding the flight.
