Ragadan Forest Park, Al Bahah, Saudi Arabia. November 2017
[From FB Post: November 28, 2017]
Friday Is Family Day in Ragadan Forest Park - no photos or "single" males please.
Every Friday after the Friday prayer is the unofficial "family day" in Saudi Arabia. Restaurants, parks -- basically anything public -- are transformed into a "family only" zone. Unaccompanied males are not permitted. So wherever you are is a sea of veils and abayas (a black, female neck to toe body covering) with lots of kids running around.
Al Baha City sits on the edge of the Hejaz Escarpment and used to have a thick green forest along the edge. That forest is now mostly gone and what is left is dying. It is now a series of roads and parking areas to accommodate the crowds of "family day".
Photography when "families" are about is frowned upon (well, let's say nearly "forbidden"). Not that there would be a lot to take photos of anyway? So here are my very few photos of a "forest park" which is no longer a forest on family day which include no families. It is just the view looking down the dry and dusty escarpment. On the other side of the camera is a sea of people for my eyes only, not yours.
Sometimes photos don't really tell the story at all.
(note: we kind of just pushed our way in and ignored the gatekeeper -- I was really nervous for the whole, short visit) The above was written after another road trip with brothers AQ and SQ. This time we headed north along the Escarpment toward Thy Ain, an ancient citadel guarding a route into the interior of the Arabian Peninsula.
Southern Route 15 connects Najran, on the border with Yemen, and Mecca. In Saudi Arabia all roads really do lead to Mecca - no matter where one travels in the country, a sign post points the direction of the holy city. Route 15 follows the old mountain caravan route from Yemen, to Najran, Abha and then to Mecca. From there, the road presses onward to Medina, Khybar, Tayma, Tabuk {See: Tabuk}, Amman, Damascus, Homs, and finally Aleppo. The route is more ancient than the Via Appia {See: Via Latina} in Rome. The section of the highway between Abha and Al Bahah is particularly dramatic as the road often follows the cliff edge itself. Many of my students hailed from the villages we passed along the way such as Billasmar, Tanomah, and Sabt Alayah - a town named for its market day {See: Ahad Refidah}.
Driving along the escarpment is not only beautiful, but also dangerous. When the warm air creeps up from the plains below and hits the wall of cold Hejaz Mountain air, fog ensues and visibility drops to near zero. Accidents abound on that road - I felt grateful for a sunny day for the drive. Luckily, we were driving on Friday morning when traffic was at low ebb. The road itself, an engineering marvel, cuts through the mountaintops, connecting all the little towns on the path northward. Small overlook parks dot the route providing panoramic snippets of the jagged mountains that cascade down to the Red Sea.
Things have been changing rapidly in Saudi Arabia since the passing of King Abdullah and the ascent of King Salman and his son, Mohammed, the crown prince and de facto ruler. The old, strict policy of no mixing of sexes is slowly falling by the wayside, but will this affect "Family Fridays"? In a country with large families and conservative traditions, a need for times and places for "families only" may persist. Even if I suffered because of it - denied entry on Fridays as a single male (a Saudi friend said, "the day we singles are all lepers"), I think public and private venues will still need to have restricted times when groups of young Saudi men are banned. Too much energy, too much testosterone, too little focus - those guys are all disasters waiting to happen. I taught them - I know.
Whether the drying out of the cloud forests of the Escarpment is the end product of a longer process or due to more recent man-made climate change is unknown. The truth is that the Hejaz Mountains used to be greener historically, used to have much more rain, and used to actually be forested. Ragadan Forest Park had many trees in the past, yet now holds just a few scrub trees spread out over the cliff edge. Sad and sobering, how long will countries like Saudi Arabia be viable with large populations if they depend only on energy-intensive desalination plants? In my travels I have seen cities that were abandoned when the water ran out (I must write about Fatepur Sikri, India). What is the fate of a such places as Riyadh and Dubai if the taps run dry?