Chapter 48\ Getting trapped in Jeddah during the Pilgrimage Season

Hani Al Khatib asked me for a favor before I left for Beirut. He wanted me to buy Playboy magazine every month and mail it to him. His instructions were to put it in a sleeve of thick white paper, then place it in a brown manila envelope, whose two end corners I should cut, allowing enough room for the Saudi censors to peep through and see that the contents of the envelope were respectful of the country’s moral and political restrictions. Then I was to seal the envelope and address it to any name that came to my mind and post it to GTC’s Jeddah address. Hani explained that all mail was brought to his desk, and he assigned where it should be delivered, so I need not worry that my envelope would end up in the wrong hands.

I soon found myself packing to return to Jeddah. So, I bought the recent issue of Playboy and placed it within a green suspender file, inserting it in reverse within the many files I was taking in the pilot flight bag I had recently bought from Le Sellier in Strand Building. As had become customary, Harvey Morse arrived from New York and after a 24-hour layover in Beirut, we left together on the MEA evening flight to Jeddah. Both of us were happy with the results of the past few months, hence our chat focused on the new orders we were hoping to collect. On arrival at Jeddah airport, I remembered the magazine I was trying to smuggle through Saudi customs and the embarrassment that I might face in the presence of this American client.

In the customs hall, the passengers of a British Airways flight had just arrived and were placing their suitcases on the inspectors’ tables. I picked up my suitcase, which had been off-loaded before that of Harvey Morse, and mingled amongst the British Airways passengers. The inspector failed to notice that I was an Arab and pointed to my briefcase – rather than the heavy suitcase – asking me, in broken English, to open it. When I did, he picked up the file that was reversely stacked, and as if he had been tipped off about its contents, he pulled out the wrapped Playboy, opened the center spread and began screaming as he tapped on the photo of the nude playgirl. His screams were loaded with criticism towards the breed of young people who had been coming to work in Saudi Arabia, bringing all their vice into his blessed country. The officer next to him on the inspection belt rushed to look and curtly asked him to take it to their commanding officer’s room. Both turned and walked away in a hurry, and in that split second, I grabbed my two cases and dashed out to the first taxi I found at the head of the taxi rank. I totally forgot about Harvey Morse as we drove at top speed – influenced by my generous tip and forceful instructions – towards the hotel. I checked-in in record time and dashed to my room, not even waiting for the bell captain to carry my luggage. Once in the room, I locked the door and waited for the knock on the door, praying that it would not be the Saudi police coming to drag me to jail. The 30 minutes that followed were the longest I have ever experienced. Then there was a polite door knock accompanied by the familiar voice of Harvey Morse, enquiring if I had suffered from any sudden health ailment. Luckily, the client was looking for his suitcase on MEA’s luggage belt and did not see anything that had happened to me.

During my Saudi trips, I bumped into another university colleague named Rafic Saadeh a couple of times. Rafic and I had taken the same classes across the four years at AUB. He also was a regular at our morning coffee breaks at the Milk Bar. So, I was extremely happy to learn that Rafic had joined the advertising business, too, and was employed by SYCO Promotec, the advertising agency handling the Juffali account in Saudi Arabia. Juffali was the agent of Mercedes, Michelin, IBM, Siemens, Carrier, and many other brands. The main contact at Juffali was another university colleague of ours, so it was easy to come to an arrangement whereby I called on Rafic’s client and he called on mine, and by doing so we reduced the frequency of travel for the two of us. Rafic was introduced to my clients as a business colleague, and every time he came to see them, he carried all the material they were expecting and took notes of their requirements, which I followed up on by issuing contact reports with my signature. The same happened at the Juffali end, but there the client was aware that I was not a SYCO Promotec employee. Both Rafic and I were going steady with girlfriends at the time, so these trips that were done by proxy were a convenient way of keeping our girlfriends happy.

I had a trip planned for a meeting with the Abdel Latif Jameel people during the pilgrimage period. Shaker Naboulsi and I felt that the time had come to launch a campaign that would become the talk of the whole Kingdom, as we wanted to challenge the status quo – the perpetual repeating of safe advertising and the boring tone of all the ads that continued to run in the Saudi media. We thought the pilgrimage season (Hajj) to be the ideal opportunity for achieving such an objective. Abdel Latif Jameel and the other car dealers had always considered Hajj as the season to sell vans, since these were used to transport overseas pilgrims from the Jeddah Hajj Terminal to Mecca. So, my trip was to present a bold campaign – which we had prepared in Beirut – that featured Al-Kaabah Al-Musharrafah (The Holy Kaabah), the building at the center of Islam’s most important mosque, Al-Masjid Al-Haram (The Sacred Mosque), in Mecca. This is the most sacred site in Islam and is considered by Muslims as Beit Allah (House of God). No Islamic holy site had ever been featured in any advertisement before, so neither Shaker nor I had any clue about the possible consequences. Even Youssef Jameel, whose approval we sought before taking this route, expressed great concern as the religious leaders had always been in full control of such matters.

On top of the Kaabah photo we placed the headline, “Toyota your safe route to Mecca”, and under the photo we featured the Toyota HI Ace van next to a couple of lines of body copy, with a special focus on its safety features.

The other ad in our campaign featured Al-Masjid An-Nabawi Al Sharif (The Prophet’s Mosque) located at the heart of Al Madina Al Munawwarah (The Radiant City). This mosque is the burial place of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and accordingly is considered the second holiest site in Islam after Mecca. The two ads were seen by all the seniors at Abdel Latif Jameel, who showed a great deal of criticism and hesitation. Shaker had labeled these people as the dinosaurs of the company and warned me about getting into disagreements with them. Youssef Jameel was the ultimate judge, as he gave us the go ahead to send the printing blocks to all the newspapers. The first call came from Al Nadwa newspaper’s advertising department. As planned, the call was instantly passed to Youssef, who calmly tried to reason with the caller who carried on about their decision not to publish. At that stage, Youssef boldly responded, saying that if they did not run the campaign, they would never receive any ads from Abdel Latif Jameel in future.

After office hours, Shaker insisted that I accompany him to his house, as his wife had prepared a mousakkhan dinner for us. At the end of the evening, when I got up to leave, the Naboulsi insisted that I should stay longer, as it was too early to go to sleep after a heavy meal. I stayed, later realizing that Shaker needed company, as he was expecting a call from the authorities ordering them to collect the campaign material from the media and to forget about ever running such ads. At an early hour the next day, Shaker woke me up at the hotel with a request to go down to the lobby lounge and look at the newspapers and confirm to him that they had run the campaign. This I did gladly, as I was equally excited about creating advertising history in the Kingdom, particularly since the ads ran in the most conservative dailies.

My joy in breaking the good news to Shaker was marred when the front-desk manager, who was waiting for my appearance in the lobby, told me that I had overstayed for one night beyond my booking and I had to check out since the hotel was fully booked and the waves of pilgrims had started arriving. I called my friend Anis Kabbani – at MEA – to check if I could travel out that day, since I had failed to take my confirmed flight back the previous day. Anis, being the country manager for MEA in the Kingdom, had to call to check and then called me back to say that all their flights were fully booked for the entire week.  People had booked well in advance to avoid staying in Jeddah during the Hajj rush. I packed and checked out in a hurry, leaving my suitcase in storage with the concierge. Then I rushed to Abdel Latif Jameel hoping that they would be able to help. To my great surprise, the entire morning passed sitting next to Shaker Naboulsi’s male secretary while he called every single hotel in Jeddah, only to be told that they had no vacancies. I started panicking, then we finally confirmed a room at a one-star hotel down at the souk called the Taj Hotel. After checking in, I rushed to the bazaar and bought two bath towels. One I spread on top of the bedsheet, on which I slept with no cover, as the weather was still warm. The next I used after my shower, during which I did not touch any of the smog-covered white ceramic walls that had turned dark grey due to poor cleaning. On arrival at the office of Abbar, where I thought of getting better assistance, I received a call from the telephone operator of our Beirut agency, who told me in a worried voice that they had been searching for me amongst all our Jeddah clients, since they were concerned about my delay and because my colleague Salim Sednaoui needed me urgently.

When she passed the call to Salim, he spoke in his usual low and slow tone to explain that his client, Bill Smallman of Gillette, had been kicked out of his hotel in Jeddah, where he was currently staying, and had failed to find an alternative hotel. Erwin Guerrovich had told Salim to locate me and ask me to help Smallman, whom I had met when he visited us in Beirut the previous year. I explained to Salim that I was suffering the same way, so they should not offer any promises, leaving Smallman to find a hotel with the help of the Gillette agent in the Kingdom. I only gave him the name, address, and phone number of the Taj Hotel so he could pass it on to Smallman. My repeated calls to Anis Kabbani and Abbar’s travel agency failed to secure a seat on any flight to Beirut that day. I returned to my hotel and forced myself to go to sleep out of desperation. I woke up at 5am, showered and went downstairs, only to find Bill Smallman waiting for me in the shabby lobby. Bill explained that his agent had found him an even more primitive hotel compared with my Taj. But as the toilets and showers there were shared by all the guests on the same floor, he came by to use the facilities in my room. I gave him the key and went around the souk looking to buy a couple of additional bath towels. Not surprisingly, the Taj did not have a laundry service.

After he had showered, I accompanied Bill Smallman to the Kandara Palace Hotel, as he too had finished what he had come to do in Jeddah and was waiting for the first opportunity to fly out. The Kandara Palace was by far the best hotel in Jeddah and was located very close to the airport. We had breakfast and then I accompanied Bill in a hotel taxi to the airport, as he was very concerned that his booking with British Airways could have been cancelled the same way he had been kicked out of his hotel. He felt the need for an Arabic speaker next to him as he checked in, and I wanted our client to feel that we had come to his rescue when he needed us. The check-in counter was chaotic, but we pushed our way through the crowd, most of whom were on the PIA flight to Karachi, which was being serviced at the same counter, and finally Smallman left in peace.

As I was walking out of the departure hall, I met Riad Najjar, the cousin of my closest friend Rafic Najjar, who was dressed in MEA ground staff uniform. Having not seen Riad for ages, he insisted that I should join him for a cup of coffee at his office. We walked up the stairs to the mezzanine floor, where all the airline offices were located, and as we walked into MEA’s office I instantly realized that Riad Najjar was the boss here. When I told Riad about my ordeal, he asked me to run to the Taj Hotel and get my luggage, making sure to return in time for the extra flight that was leaving for Beirut in two hours. Riad made sure that I sat comfortably on that flight, armed with the thought that: “Next time I face a problem in any of the Gulf states, I should seek support from the humble junior operators and not from my peers – the seniors.”