19 hours ago
3
In the 1980s, the British construction industry was hit hard by recession. At the same time, Saudi Arabia had the opposite problem; lots of money and a desire to build infrastructure, but not enough skilled workers. As a result, thousands of British labourers found it was the only place where they could earn a wage. My dad – freshly out of work with a young family to support – was one of them. We travelled out to see him twice, once to Riyadh and once to Jeddah.
Objectively, the Riyadh trip was better. Dad lived on a worker’s compound, and there was a pool and a restaurant and loads of room to run around. Jeddah, less so – but that’s where this photo was taken. Dad shared a tiny flat on the city’s noisy Palestine Street with one of his colleagues. I caught mumps basically upon landing and (according to the diary I kept at the time) experienced excessive diarrhoea for the duration of the visit. My dad bought me and my brother novelty karate-style pyjamas on arrival, which my brother used as an excuse to beat me up as often as possible. But I was six years old, and I still had the time of my life.
Looking back, I was clearly shielded from the politics and the uglier elements of the country, so my main takeaways were simply of scale and noise. Every building in Jeddah was bigger and shinier than any building I had ever seen before. The roads were dotted with vast works of modern art that I could scarcely wrap my mind around. There was a giant fountain (the biggest in the world) that changed colour at night. And even above the din of everything, the call to prayer boomed out across the city throughout the day. The holiday I had before this was to Abergavenny; this felt like visiting another planet.
And then there was the Middle East Shopping Centre, which I demanded to return to again and again. It was incredible. The lifts had glass walls. The supermarket sold tutti frutti ice cream, and the checkout guy let me beep through our shopping. I looked it up online recently and and it was a notch or two below Lakeside, but that hasn’t dented the sense of wonder I felt.
More than anything, though, this is my favourite family photo because it reminds me of a time when my whole family was together. My mum, who had essentially raised me alone for the previous couple of years, finally got to share the load a bit. My dad was giddy about showing us around. We swam in the Red Sea. We went to the desert and he let me steer his car. We got to play on his Atari 2600. I don’t even remember it as a holiday – more a chance for us to operate as a small and content unit for a while.
