Gum
I went downtown yesterday to run a couple of errands and two things happened. The most romantic and least interesting one was that while crossing Olaya Street to get to Jarir Bookstore, I stepped across a median that had been covered in sod. Since Riyadh is in the middle of one of the largest deserts on earth, it doesn’t have much natural vegetation. The Saudi government, though, puts a lot of effort into beautifying the city by planting palm trees, scrub bushes, and even grass on government-controlled land—including the many medians dividing the city’s streets and highways.
When I was walking to the median, the only thing going through my mind was the importance of avoiding the hundreds of drivers that were passing through the four lanes on either side. By now I have learned that Saudis (a) don’t care whether or not they hit you and (b) are such terrible drivers that they couldn’t avoid hitting you if they wanted to. So when I cross even a one-lane road I dart my head rapidly from side to side like a rabbit avoiding a predator.
But the grass that covered the median was the first grass I had walked on since I left America two months ago. Each step I took gave slightly as first the blades of grass bent, and then the black soil beneath compressed under my weight. I was struck by how strange it felt, and then by how strange it was that it felt so strange. I paused briefly before plunging across the other half of the street.
The more interesting thing that happened is that when I arrived later at a supermarket checkout lane, my bill came to 175.50 riyals. The riyal is the primary unit of currency in Saudi Arabia, and although it is technically divisible into 100 halala, in practice the lowest denomination that one ever really sees is a one-riyal note.* I have made hundreds of transactions since I arrived here in August, and only twice have I actually been given a 25 or 50 halala coin in change. Since a riyal is worth about twenty-five American cents, the vast majority of businesses do not even bother to put coins in the register. Instead, they simply price their goods to end in a whole number.
Grocers and supermarkets, though, don’t really have full control over their pricing. Agreements with individual brands and distributors, along with basic market economics, mean that some items are still priced at fractions of a riyal. They don’t want to put time and effort into distributing heavy coins to all of their cash registers, but they are also uncomfortable about what to do when a customer’s purchase comes exactly between one riyal and the next. If they always round up, the customer will get mad and complain. If they always round down, they will lose a lot of money over the course of the year. So they needed to find a way to make everyone happy and still avoid transporting thousands of pounds of coins across the Kingdom.
Enter chewing gum. In Saudi Arabia, small packets containing five strips of chewing gum universally cost 50 halala and are present in every checkout line. So if your grocery bill comes to exactly x riyals and 50 halala, the checkout guy gives you a stack of x paper riyals and a packet of chewing gum. Maybe you like to chew gum, and maybe you don’t. He doesn’t ask you. This is just how it works.
Note: The photo above shows the packet of chewing gum I was given in this transaction, along with the two 25 halala coins and one 50 halala coin I received in my previous fractional grocery transactions. All of these groupings are considered functionally equivalent by grocers, but only the gum tastes like cardamom.
* The Arabic word riyal is a cognate of the English word royal, and ultimately derives from a set of Spanish, French, Catalan, and Occitan names for currencies struck under the authority of a king (roy, roi, rex, etc.) in medieval Europe. The Arabic halala is a feminine form of the word halal, meaning either a crescent moon or any other crescent-shaped object.
