Dhahran - In Conclusion

First, I want to thank all of you who are following along. I have to say this blog is also for selfish purposes, so I can have a sort of "digital journal", and relive my time here, as well as comb over all my grammatical errors and typos. Yay! Hopefully you guys don't mind.

All the time I have been here, one question has been on my mind: Would I live in Dhahran again if given the opportunity? I mean, it is a place I have yearned for in the deepest sense.... and I've realized I'm not alone. There is something magical about being an expat and a 3rd culture kid. Dhahran haunts many people who leave.... I always thought something might be wrong with me to miss it so much. I mean, I only spent 8 years here... yes, they were the formative years of my life, but GET REAL! Who yearns for something this much?!

I've had a recurring dream for many years and it's always the same dream, only located in different areas around camp. The dream goes like this: I'm walking around Dhahran. I look around and say, "I dream about this all the time, but now I'm here. I'm really, really here!"

Part of me expects this all to be another dream. I'm very curious to see if those dreams will finally end.

Would I live here again? After much thought, I'd say no. I would not want to live here again for a variety of reasons. The sense of community is not as strong as when I was here before, there are not as many westerners living here, I don't have a family (would be pretty lonely), and I'm now too accustomed to the bounty and liberty of California. It just seems to be very quiet here.... much more so than when I lived here. The bustle of children playing is gone... people seem to be inside with doors closed.

I have come to the conclusion that I am madly in love with two main themes about Saudi Arabia:

1) The Middle Eastern desert. In all my travels, I've seen many deserts.... but none like the one here. Perhaps I'd do well as a Bedouin, but I'm utterly transfixed by the natural landscape here. Its vast emptiness and blinding light clears my head and soothes my soul. Every object that speckles it looks so lonely and like it's fighting its own battle to simply exist in such a harsh environment. I feel this way about everything here from the bone-dry shrubs, to the tires half buried in sand, to the dusty plastic bags clinging to a rusty fence on the side of the road. It's all just so lonely and still. Forgotten... mother nature just tempting them to disappear.

2) Perhaps it's not the place I missed so much, but rather the feeling I had of being a child here. That's been proven by coming back to Dhahran. It was not the "place" I yearned for as much as it was the chapter in my life. In that sense, I can never truly go "home". So, someone asked what it meant when I said being here means something different than I thought it would. I guess I thought I would find my closure in a sense of deep satisfaction... satisfaction that never quite arrived. Like the deep yearning in me would suddenly turn into euphoria upon entering Dhahran's gate.

No, in reality, being here simply means I don't have to wonder anymore.... That I can comfortably live in California and objectively think of Dhahran as it is now.... and be able to maturely separate a location on a map from a "ring" on my tree of physical, spiritual, and emotional growth.

Growing up in Saudi profoundly shaped who I am today..... I will always be grateful for having grown up here and for the experiences I've been blessed enough to have had. Truly, getting to come back to Saudi has been a gift from God. He works in mysterious ways.... some more obvious to me than others. This one is quite obvious.