Me and Aramco Industrial Security

So there was another incident last week. No, not a baked goods incident, although it did involve the dogs. It also involved Aramco Industrial Security.

That's the name of the security department for all of Aramco. It includes the camp cops who drive around giving tickets (sidearms prominently displayed), the guys who scan your bags and check your IDs at gates into the main admin area, and the unfortunate guys posted out at all of the rigs (sidearms there too).

Last Tuesday, as usual, I took the dogs out at 0600 for their final morning pee. This is their last pee opportunity until Upul comes at 1100. We always walk across the street to a large grassy area. There is also a large grassy area outside of my building but the one across the street is more special because...it is across the street!

Anyway, I happened to look at my watch as we came back into my patio: 0615, I noted, because I was thinking about taking the bus in to work that day instead of driving. I unharnessed the dogs, opened the door, and went in my apartment towards the kitchen. The dogs suddenly veered right. I turned, saying "what are you silly dogs doing?" because they usually follow me everywhere.

I turned to see my dogs jumping on one of the Aramco camp workers, clothed in the standard issue orange overalls and orange safety vest, trying to hide in my front room. He couldn't get all the way into the room because I had a puppy gate propped up in the doorway to keep Mimi from peeing in there.

I freaked out. No, really, I did. Completely and thoroughly lost it.

I ran up to him and yelled "what the fuck are you doing here?" (as if he could speak English...) then I ran to the phone, the land line phone. As soon as I stepped away from the guy, he threw himself out the door (the only door to the apartment).

My hands were shaking so badly I could hardly dial the phone: 110, 110, I repeated, trying to focus. (Someone at work asked me how I knew the number because he didn't...and I looked at him and said, well, that's the first number I memorized when I got here. Seems sort of obvious.) I was pretty much hysterical when IS answered. It was the first time I've never been asked to give my badge number to conduct a transaction. He only asked for me to confirm my address.

In less than two minutes, there were more than a dozen IS guys outside my place.

Here's an interesting twist: I was only three feet from the guy so I got a very good look at him. I recognized him immediately as one of the workers in the Mango area (I live on Mango Circle). I knew I had seen him before. Even in my panic I noticed quite a few details: he had recently had his hair cut (the back of his neck has been cleanly and recently shaved and his hair was neat and trim around the edges), he was wearing leather safety boots (most of the landscapers wear rubber boots), and he was my height (most of the workers are Bangladeshis and Pakistanis who had crappy nutrition when children and who are quite short and small but I looked this guy directly in the eyes).

The IS guys called in all of the supervisors and they rounded up all of the workers they could find in the immediate area. To my horror, they then paraded dozens of these guys in front of my gate for me to look at. I thought I recognized the guy but wasn't sure. I was seriously freaked out and just not thinking clearly. Couldn't be sure.

I went into work later that morning and thought I was okay but that night I didn't sleep at all. I ended up spending the night on the couch, cell phone clutched in my hand, heart thumping at every bump and rustle made by my neighbors. I eventually calmed down but have been obsessively locking both of my doors all the time now (I have a wooden inner door and a full glass outer door similar to a storm door that I had recently had installed. Both of them lock.)

After sending some emails to some friends over the next few days, I found out that a single woman, a teacher in the Aramco Schools, had come downstairs on Monday, the day before my incident, around 0530 to discover a camp worker walking into her apartment. Where does she live? Down the street from me on Mango!

An IS investigator (normal clothes, no obvious sidearm) has been working with the two of us for the past week.

This morning after I got to work this investigator brought in two binders containing more than 400 medical records--with photos--of all of the landscape and sanitation workers in camp. I started paging through the first binder. Thirty, fifty, ninety, one hundred photos. I would pause at one or another but then keep moving on. I wasn't sure I would recognize the guy from a photo! It had now been more than a week. I just wasn't sure...

then I turned to page 126--and I had a panic attack. I couldn't breathe, I broke out into a sweat, my heart was racing, and I almost started crying.

Yes, no question, that was the guy.

I had to fill out a written statement, mostly dictated by the investigator. I could barely hold the pen because my hand was shaking so badly.

I really thought I was over this incident but all it took was a single photo to prove otherwise. I'm very proud of my amazing brain and my very good memory but I'm a little surprised at my physical reaction. Like Spock would say, it's not logical. That night I stayed up on the couch, I kept telling myself, that noise, that's just the neighbor coming home after her shift at the hospital like she does every other week, but my irrational lizard brain kept replaying the video of me turning around to see that guy in my house. When my lizard brain saw that photo, it told me to RUN before my eyes really even processed the image.

The investigator asked the teacher and me to look at a group of guys today after work. They set them up in parking lots near our houses then asked us to casually walk out and take a look.

She and I identified the same guy.

He will be jailed in Khobar, where there is no doubt he will be roughly handled. Then he will be deported.

His motive? Almost certainly petty theft but there is always a small doubt that if uncaught for long enough he would have progressed to violence.

Don't mistake my mention of his treatment by the Saudi police (Aramco IS can't get away with that sort of thing, too many Westerners around) as any sort of gloating or sense of justice served. I state this as a fact.

As a geologist working for the Exploration area, I have considerably more wasta than the teacher and will be using it to get confirmation in writing that this guy is off camp and out of the country.

I always lock my doors now.

And I have some VERY GOOD dogs who knew the second I opened the door that someone was inside. Even if they were jumping up on him because they just knew he was there to visit them!