Adventures of a Laura: Brummagem or Bust

What were you doing twenty four years ago today? It was 1996.

My family and I were about to drive out of our compound, Al Faisalia, and Riyadh for the last time. Dad had been in Saudi since 1979, and the rest of us joined him in the early ‘90s. Momma, Emily, Richard and I were there for 6 years or so with a brief interlude after being evacuated from the Gulf War.

I loved Saudi Arabia. I still miss living there to this day. I actually burst into tears last year when it was announced that tourist visas were happening. David and I started pricing up a trip so that I could go home, if only for two weeks. I miss the smell of the desert and I have done ever since we left. I have never felt settled in Britain because the first 7 years of my life were spent on planes, on holiday, in the desert, in Cyprus, at the Red Sea, or travelling through the Middle East and Europe. Britain is where I was born. We are all Brummies born and bred, just with a bit of Arab mixed in.

So 24 years ago today, we packed up the car, roof rack and trailer, and left the compound, left Riyadh, and headed towards the Red Sea coast. Momma P kept diaries of the journey home and I have since typed it all up. I have also mapped the journey on Google Maps. The diaries are getting so fragile now so I try not to handle them very much. We still have bazillions of photos that have never been sorted properly and I’ve been intending to do this for literal years. Somewhere there's even retro 90s video recorder footage of us at Petra.

Sometimes when I think that my life is going nowhere, I have no concrete plans, and that I should have everything figured out, I just think of my Momma. She was 37 when she had me, and 45 when we left Saudi. I’d hazard a guess and say it was her biggest adventure and leap of faith after first agreeing to go to Saudi in the first place. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t (in my eyes) achieved much or done anything exciting in my life as the big adventure could happen in the next decade, I just have to wait and see.

For the 20^th anniversary of leaving Riyadh I started a Tumblr blog with auto-posts of daily diary entries and interspersed them with photos. This blog was deleted a few years ago as a photo of me as a 7yr old with no top on got flagged for breaching nudity rules, so I just deleted the whole thing. I would love to get the diaries published as a proper book, even if it’s only relevant to our direct family and the few friends we are still in touch with from the compound.

I would absolutely love the chance to go back to Saudi and experience it now. It will have changed so much, and of course I would now have to cover up as I am a woman. When I lived there I didn’t have to cover as I was a child, and could run around topless (and sometimes shorts-less too). Looking at Google Maps of Riyadh, the sprawl is just astounding. When we lived there, our compound was on the very edge of the city boundary, and the compound next door was a building site. The road to our gate was a dirt track, and we used to go out the gate by our house (where the water tankers came in) and race our go karts in the desert.

I could waffle all day about this, but I’d end up bursting into happy tears like I did in the middle of Bilston Market last year. The simple thought that one day I might be able to go back just made be bawl like a baby in public! So I thought I’d just share some pictures of this day 24 years ago, plus some others of life in Saudi. Maybe one day I’ll get the actual book done with more photos and memories from the trip home. Maybe.

Also, yes we do still have the car & trailer.