A Land off limits // Shloime Zionce Visits Saudi Arabia; Part 2

Time continued to pass as the afternoon prayers dragged on for what was beginning to feel like an eternity. The locals didn’t seem to mind being stuck in the supermarket, but I was slowly losing my mind. Because there is no eruv in Riyadh and I was carrying many valuables around with me, including my passport, if I didn’t get out soon I would have no choice but to stay there for the weekend. I approached a Filipino couple and asked them if they had any idea when the supermarket would reopen. “Oh, ten or 20 minutes,” the woman replied. This was not good news. With every minute that passed I was coming closer to spending Shabbos in the comfort of a Saudi Arabian supermarket. I decided to stand in line behind this couple and we ended up chatting while we waited. He worked for a technology company and she was a nurse, and they’d already been in the kingdom for three years and were enjoying themselves. They asked me where I was from and a few other polite questions.

Before long an announcement was made informing the customers that the store would now be reopened. The cashiers all magically reappeared and the supermarket was up and running again as if nothing had transpired. Thankfully, the line was moving quickly and within minutes it was my turn to check out. While the cashier rang up my items, I rummaged through my wallet looking for a credit card that didn’t charge foreign transaction fees. The cashier looked at me with amusement and muttered something in Arabic. All of the other people standing in line laughed, but I had no idea what the joke was. Finally someone behind me explained that the cashier had said that I had too many credit cards. I smiled. When the cashier realized that I was a foreigner, he apologized for his comment in broken English. I told him not to worry about it. He then asked me, “You don’t speak Arabic?” “Maybe one day,” I said, “inshall-h.” His eyes lit up as I uttered the last word. “So you do speak Arabic!” he exclaimed. I waved goodbye and rushed out of the store and into a waiting Uber, headed for my hotel. Miraculously, I made it back to the hotel in time, and was even able to accomplish everything that needed to be done before candle lighting. I have learned my lesson, and from now on I will try to never go shopping on a Friday afternoon in Saudi Arabia. Maybe I’ll even try not to do it in my home country either.

A Shabbos in Riyadh
As I took three steps back to start the Shemoneh Esrei of Minchah, I could hear the muezzin calling the people of Riyadh to prayer. It’s interesting to note that Jews living in Arab lands have traditionally relied on the Muslim call to prayer to know when the shkiah and other zmanim took place. The Ben Ish Chai writes in Shanah Rishonah, Parshas Vayakhel that shkiah in Baghdad is between seven and ten minutes prior to the maghrib (the fourth daily call to prayer), while tzeis hakochavim is exactly 20 minutes after the maghrib.

After I finished Minchah I began to feel pangs of sadness. Here I was, alone in a hotel room in Riyadh, spending Shabbos without my family. Never before in my life had I spent a Shabbos alone. I was sitting and pondering my situation when a thought entered my mind that completely changed my perspective. Rebbe Nachman writes in Sichos Haran 85 that if a person needs to travel somewhere, he shouldn’t push it off. Rather, he should travel there immediately, because there is probably some mitzvah or good deed that he is destined to accomplish in that place. This made me realize that I was in fact exactly where I was destined to be: all alone in my hotel room in Riyadh. There was a very good chance that I was the only Jew currently in Saudi Arabia, and even if there was another Jew in the country, I was probably the only one keeping Shabbos. This made me feel that I had a tremendous purpose, because it was now my sole responsibility to welcome the Shabbos Queen and the two malachim to Saudi Arabia. When you daven in a shul filled with hundreds of people, you can sometimes feel as if your contribution to the davening or singing gets lost in the crowd, but when you’re the only one present, you know your efforts make a difference. Armed with this new outlook, I began to sing Kabbalas Shabbos, and when I reached “Lecha Dodi” my joy knew no bounds. I danced around the room for a long while, ecstatic at the thought of being the only keeper of Shabbos in this faraway kingdom. After Maariv I sang “Shalom Aleichem” and “Eishes Chayil” followed by Kiddush. During my seudah, which consisted of fish, instant soup and salami, all schlepped from Israel, I made sure to sing every Shabbos song I could think of.

My meal lasted into the wee hours of the morning, and when it was over I felt like I’d truly fulfilled shmiras Shabbos for the whole country. My alarm woke me on Shabbos morning, approximately 30 minutes before the first sof zman krias Shema, and I davened once again with song and dance. I won’t say that I wasn’t lonely, but with the help of my Tehillim, The Garden of Emunah and a copy of Ami Magazine (all of which passed through Saudi customs), I kept myself occupied. Shabbos was over before I knew it, and the memory of that special Shabbos in Riyadh is something that I will cherish forever.

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