Far from Home by Vincent Traughber Meis

Author:Vincent Traughber Meis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LGBTQIA+, Age-gap, Athlete, Gender-bending, Illness/disease, In the closet, Interracial, Intercultural, Medical personnel, Political, Psychic ability, Pandemic, Teaching, Travel, UST
Publisher: NineStar Press, LLC
Published: 2021-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

Market Day in Qatif

The bus rattled and swayed along the straight, smooth highway, rushing through the pale wind-swept sands to the oasis ahead. Fertile smells with a hint of dampness drifted in the windows, telling us we were nearing Qatif, site of the biggest market in the area. On either side of the highway, workers with scarves wrapped around their heads and baggy pants rolled up to their knees waded through the rows of tomatoes, okra, radishes, and onions, while clusters of date palms lingered in the distance as if overseeing their work.

I had set out that morning in a state of despair, and on the brink of quitting my job and leaving the Kingdom. It had been a horrendous week and an escape, an adventure, could be the answer to maintain my sanity.

On Monday, two of the students at the Royal Saudi Naval Base where I taught got into a fight, escalating from verbal insults to shoving. I sent one of the other cadets to get an officer as we were instructed to do in case of a disturbance. A moment before the officer walked into the room, the boys slid into their desks with uniforms straightened, backs stiff, and eyes forward, the likes of which I had not seen since the first day when I had been introduced to the class by an officer and one of the coordinators from the company that had hired me for the government contract.

When the thick-jowled officer sauntered into the room with a scowl on his face as if I had interrupted his nap, all the students stood up and snapped to attention next to their desks. He gazed at me as a representative of the infidel culture from which I came and shouted, “What is problem?”

“Two students were fighting, sir.”

Turning to the students, he growled, “Who fighting?” He repeats the question in Arabic.

Silence.

He approached a cadet in the front row and stood nose to nose with him. “Who fighting?”

The student remained firm and loudly answered in rapid Arabic, probably so I wouldn’t know what he said.

The officer turned his furrowed brow toward me. “He say he see no one fighting.”

I stared at him. I was alone. My word against a room full of his countrymen, though he knew better than anyone the deceptions they were capable of. I could count on no one’s support, not even the student I had sent to get the officer, the one who seemed most sympathetic, the one who had flirted with me on numerous occasions in a playful Saudi way.

That afternoon I had a meltdown on the tennis court, yelling, throwing my racket, and eventually storming off the court when my opponent called a ball out I knew was in. It was unlike me. I had become someone else, a demon version of myself and in danger of alienating one of the few friends I had on the base.

That same week, I had foolishly put my trust in Marvin, a gay colleague. I confided in

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