…er, fingerprinted, and lived to blog about it. He he.

I did not expect to come out of it alive. Well, ok, that’s exaggerating it. But how couldn’t I at least dread the procedure when all that media has been highlighting these past few months - abetted by word-of-mouth anecdotes of those who have gone through the procedure – was how it takes hours and hours and hours before one’s fingerprints and photo can be taken and how long the queues can get. Media has been rife with such accounts as how one person began queuing early in the morning, only to finish after dinner. How one incoming passenger arrived at the airport at 8 in the evening, only to come out of the Customs area after midnight. How another went to the Passport office day in and day out for a week with nothing to show for it.

And yet, a colleague of mine, who was quite desperate to get himself fingerprinted since he will be going home soon to Alexandria (Egypt) – and partly as well to the hype that seemed to have sent everyone into panic mode – and so will need an exit/re-entry visa but which cannot be given him until he has gone through the fingerprinting process, went to the airport’s Passport office (because he heard fingerprinting was being done there and that there are no queues to speak of thereat) and completed it without breaking sweat, that is, if you don’t count that he travelled more than 80 kms back-and-forth in the middle of the night.  

It was simple enough a procedure. The Saudi government, ostensibly “to combat forgery and entry of criminals into the country (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia)…imposed mandatory fingerprinting of all expatriate workers….” Expatriate workers must report to the nearest Passport office and go through the supposedly simple process. “The new system… would take three to four minutes per person.”

So why the negative hype? In a word, ignorance.

Nobody seems to truly know how to go about it really. Everything seemed to be based on what someone heard. In short, it was not as easy as going to the nearest Passport office.   

The reality was, at least in my case when I went to the Passport office at Exit 1 (near Diriyah – the so-called old Riyadh – and within the Saudi Oger compound) at around 4 pm today, there were throngs and throngs of us that milled about the facility’s gate, under the heat of the sun, at the mercy of the sandstorm and at the general chaos all around. There were no queues. There were no instructions posted anywhere near or at the facility to guide people on what to do. Guards did not listen to any entreaties perhaps for fear that they may be construed as playing favorites even if talks have been rife that if you have “wasta” (roughly, influence/connection), you just might get fingerprinted in a jiffy, and get past the sweating and dusty throng left at the mercy of the elements and of the powers-that-be. It seemed that all the guards wanted to do was drive us away from the gate by shouting at us or even shoving us.

Some went to the facility by the busloads guided by their own Government Relations (GR) representative/s.  (Offices/companies hereabouts have dedicated people/teams working on visas and other Government-issued documents or to handle so-called Government Relations). But a lot of us went there on our own because we did not have our own GR people.

No one also spoke in English and none of us were real Arabic speakers and so we relied on other expatriates to translate snippets of conversations overheard from guards and from those milling around.

We heard that ”unaccompanied” expatriates will not be allowed into the Passport office that afternoon; only those from companies accompanied by GR representative/s who made prior appointments (we heard the appointments were made months before) will be processed. We could come back early in the morning the next day when the crowds are thinner. We nonetheless opted to stay and wait for manna to fall from heaven because a kind-hearted local who earlier on accompanied us to the facility was working on his own wasta to get us into the office without ado.

Friends, colleagues and superiors who we contacted by phone after we realized that we needed “help” tried their best to help us with their own wasta – to no avail. From where I stood, no one seemed to have been allowed inside because of wasta.

It did not help our flagging spirits that Saudi Oger workers were being dropped off by the compound gate at about the same time and so there were a lot of cars and buses that made for a truly polluted and noisy environment. It was already hot and dirty even without the cars and buses but there was nowhere to take shelter. The only shade available was near the compound gate and even that was off-limits to us if the guards were to be believed. It was not a choice to stay inside our car since we won’t be able to find out what was going on by the gate.

There were two ice cream vans doing brisk business. We at least had somewhere to buy cold bottled water from.

It was almost dark when the crowd scampered to form a line. We jostled like anyone and everyone else. It turned out that the three-star general in command of the facility (he wore his stars on his shoulders), decided to let all of us  ”unaccompanied” expatriates, in anyway. (My colleague told me later on that it was a “miracle” that the three-star general changed his mind; we would have to go through the uncertain waiting at the next opportunity had we been unprocessed today.)

There were commotions in the line since a few were trying to jump the queue reasoning out that they have been waiting for so long, seemingly unmindful that almost everyone was in the same boat.  One had the temerity to argue with the three-star general (he was insisting that one guy – who turned out to be his brother, if the buzz along the line can be trusted – be first in the line since he has been waiting/milling by the gate for hours – as if none of us were suffering the same fate) and he was promptly collared and brought inside the office despite the futile intervention by some well-meaning bystanders to, you know, keep the peace and not let any misunderstanding deteriorate into anything worse.

It was telling that while in line and walking toward the office door from the facility’s gate, some even tried to get ahead by running the few meters toward the door thereby disrupting the line. But a lot of us have become vigilant and did not let it pass. But I noticed that the brother who caused a guy to be collared by the three-star general, was able to squeeze himself between two guys further down the queue, without anyone raising a fuss.

Even while already seated (still in line) inside the office, some still tried to make a go for it by once again jumping the line but the guards mercifully would have none of it too. This same brother/guy who was the cause of another being collared by the three-star general, attempted to jump the line by sitting in the space not his but he was spotted by a guard. He was a marked man after that. The guards and the officers manning the fingerprint/photo tables were almost one in punishing him by leaving him to be attended to last.

(This brings me to a usual experience at the airport on arrival. Anyone who jumps from queue to queue or indeed, who calls attention to himself by not staying put in his line before the Immigration counters, is told to go back to the end of the line. It seems that he-who-wants-to-be-first-is-last is eerrily alive hereabouts.)

Before we were ushered into the office, the guards asked who among us had numbers. At least half a dozen (from among a hundred of us lined up) put up little yellow pieces of paper. Where the hell did they get those PostIt note cubes? The lucky ones were ushered in first.

From the seated line inside the office, I was called to sit infront of one of the officers (in uniform but in slippers/ sandals) taking the fingerprints and photographs. Another one was called from the line to sit on another chair beside mine. We were to be processed simultaneously by the officer who was busy minding his mobile phone call all along. As he was more attentive to his call than to us, he merely gestured to us what we needed to do – leave our iqama (residence permit) near his computer keyboard, show our four right fingers with which he sprayed some liquid on, push down those fingers into the glass plate infront of  us, remove our fingers while the computer was capturing the image, wipe the glass plate clean – there were tissue papers/paper napkins aplenty, do the same for the left four fingers, then the right and the left thumbs – this time together, do it again if the image seemed to be blurry or wipe the glass plate clean again, and then look at the camera for the photograph. He gestured for me to pose again after a few seconds while he continued to speak on his mobile phone. I decided I was done and thanked him. I supposed he did not hear me, nor maybe, he was not used to being thanked for his thankless job for he did not bother to reply. Perhaps, he really could not be bothered with his phone call?

I stayed in line for only a few minutes, and got fingerprinted and photographed in indeed, less than four, that I now wonder what the fuss was all about?

Seriously now. I’m quite sure that those who thought of elevating this data-gathering from expatriates into the biometrics level have thought of scenarios such as the one I went through. I truly wonder where they got it wrong. Or maybe, they just don’t give a damn just as long as information is gathered.

The scenario will be repeated again tomorrow, and possibly, in the next weeks/months to come, until such time that all eligible male expatriates, have been documented.  To think that we have yet to factor the women into the equation, er, the scenario.

What I know is that the guy who was collared by the three-star general, along with his brother, were still inside the Passport office long after my companions and I were through with the process by 8 pm.