At the Gate of Mecca — Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

The restaurant had no chairs and no tables. There was a long room with cushions running the length of three walls, and when I sat down the waiter laid a clear plastic sheet on the carpet in front of me, and on the sheet he laid the food. I had no idea what to do with my legs.This week's issue is a walk through Al-Balad — the historic district of Jeddah, the port that processed pilgrims to Mecca for a thousand years before Saudi Arabia opened to general tourism in 2019. Coral-stone houses with carved wooden lattice balconies (rawasheen) painted faded turquoise and sienna. A trainer in his fifties who waved me over and asked, smiling, "Would you let my students practice on you?" Three relay teams of nineteen-year-olds learning English and Hijazi history at the same time. A blonde tourist on the corniche in a tank top, drawing polite second glances at fifty meters from a country whose dress code shifted faster than its public expectations. And the cushion-room dinner — kabsa, kunafa, sugar cane juice, and the kind of cardamom coffee that arrives unannounced everywhere you go.This episode is read by the editor, layered with the field sounds of Old Jeddah: the cushion-room restaurant, a distant adhan over Al-Balad, the wind through the Hijaz residential lanes, the evening bazaar of the souq, and gulls over the Red Sea corniche at sunset.The Farside Pick for Saudi Arabia is the operator we'd send our friends to — a Saudi specialist who works the western coast and the Hijaz. Submit an enquiry through the journal entry below and we'll make the introduction directly.If you enjoy this and want to help us keep going: buymeacoffee.com/farsideRead the full journal: farside.earth/journal/003-saudi-arabia-jeddah.html