The Saudi Diary: Columbus columbus

Columbus, Columbus
What Mahatma Gandhi is to India and Shivaji to Maharashtra, King Fahd is to Saudi Arabia. This piece of information we gathered last weekend, in a rather disgraceful manner. Here is what happened.
Like every mortal, all of us have a weakness (and unnatural attraction) towards “Sale”. And so when Carrefour ran a full page advert in the Arab News about a three-day sale, we were hooked. The smart guys had even given the map of the place. So come Thursday, the three of us set out to exploit this godsend opportunity in Jeddah.
It had three stores mentioned, all near King Fahd road. A road we travel everyday while going to office. So we were brimming with confidence that we would find it. Thursday evening (our weekend eve), the cabbie dropped us at a cool looking shopping mall but Carrefour was not to be seen. Here I have to dedicate a few words to the malls. These swanky, brightly (to the point of being garish) lit malls were mostly displaying revealing costumes for the fairer sex (The species does exist in this part of the world, I am told, though I haven’t seen yet). And like you, I was also wondering about the wisdom behind selling those skimpy evening gowns in such a conservative society. Then we hypothesized that females here would probably wear such stuff in an all-female setting (We are yet to come up with an explanation for this). And you would be hard pressed to find any menswear showroom. Wondering why? Well, keep guessing.
After that little digression, coming back to my story, this army of motivated sale-looters was not yet demoralized by a failure. Next day being the full day off, we left the hotel early and went to the other mall on King Fahd road. Now this turned out to a place where middle class Saudis (Saudis whose oil well just dried up on them) frequent. Naturally, Carrefour was not present.
Flustered, we asked the cab driver to look at the map and he said “Olaya Street? That street is in Riyadh”. Riyadh? I mean that was half world across. But hadn’t we seen a King Fahd road on the map of Jeddah. And then it struck us: Like every city in India has an MG Road, like every place worth its name in Maharashtra has a Shivaji Road (and a Shivaji Nagar, and a Shivaji Statue), every city in KSA has at least one King Fahd road. Hail the King! But who will tell us how sale in Riyadh had anything to do with the Jeddah newspaper?