Analphbetenismus

Today was the first time that I flew into Saudi Arabia: Dammam. In entering the Kingdom beforehand, I always flew into Bahrain, and then took the causeway to Khobar. In flying from Doha, Qatar to Dammam, KSA, it is only a 35-minute flight: enough time to get passengers seated, buckled, take off, serve a hotpocket-like sandwich with a small plastic container of orange juice, immediately collect the trash from said food items, then land. Inserted into this rushed routine for today, all passengers needed to fill out a landing slip of paper for immigration, so as to speed up the immigration processing process.

In contrast to the high percentage of Filipino travelers on my outbound flight to Doha, the majority of passengers on my inbound flight to Dammam comprised labor workers from either Pakistan or India. When I started to fill out my landing slip, I offered an extra pen to the gentleman in my row, but he politely turned it down. Just as I finished filling out my slip, though, the gentleman in the seat across the aisle in the same row gestured to me that the gentleman sitting next to him needed to use my pen, so I lent it. 3 minutes later, I mistakenly interpreted the "across the aisle" guy's next gesture as that of wanting to return the pen. Instead, he was asking me to help him fill out the landing slip, as he was a new laborer from India and couldn't read or write in Arabic of English enough to fill out the form.

Through pantomimes (I motioned to my left hand to indicate a ring to ask whether he was married or single), "foreigner speak," and taking his passport from him, I was able to help him fill out all but two questions. For occupation, he knew enough English to state that he was a "steel fixer," but we hit an impasse when I tried to ask who his employer sponsor was.

Just as I was putting away my pen, the guy sitting in the window seat of my row gestured to me that he needed me to help him do the same. In his case, though, he was from Pakistan and had been working in KSA for nearly five years, so he knew enough Arabic to communicate, but couldn't read or write in Arabic enough to understand the slip.

Things I learned from this exchange:

1. Qatar flight attendants can be pretty pushy about not writing on tray tables once descent is called
2. Location and availability of passport-related information within a passport is not universal (India was pretty straight forward, but for the Pakistani passport, I had to really dig for the information)
3. First, second, third, and fourth "first names" are difficult to differentiate when the father's name is unknown (e.g., Are you Mohammed Abdullah Answar or Mohammed Answar and your father is Abdullah? -- kind of like a Bobby v. Bobby Jo differentiation, but not quite...).
4. It would be helpful for Urdo and Hindi translators to be on hand at immigration to help these folks. Who knows -- if I make a mistake, they could be stuck in the line for hours because immigration won't fill out the form for them...

To the two gentlemen that I "helped" on the plane today, I pray that you were able to get through the immigration line without much difficulty.