American Bedu

Yasmin is among one of my dearest friends in Saudi.  Jeddah has been her home for many years.  I always enjoy hearing about her experiences and discoveries in Jeddah.  It is my pleasure that she has shared one day of her life in Jeddah with American Bedu.

Last Valentine’s my plans for an “Un-Valentine’s Day” dinner out with my friends fizzled before I could even make a single reservation. In order to save the day from total oblivion, I welcomed the chance to go to the beach with my friend Laila instead. It was one of those mornings when the water is nearly smooth as glass and just at the temperature to give you 10 minutes of shivering before the water feels like your own skin. It was so clear we could look down and see the white sand below us. I brought a picnic of chicken salad and bread and hadn’t had time to have breakfast. The dip in the sea would give me just the right edge of hunger that makes one feel they deserve their meal.

There are two strings of floats across the lagoon and I always said to myself that “one day” I was going to swim out to the first string. They are maybe 150 yards out and in real nautical terms hardly worth mentioning but for someone who usually splashes around near the surf it seems a distance. Since the water was so clear and we both had noodle floats I just started kicking out across the water. The floats are a little unwieldy but give you a sense of ‘take your time’. As I swam out over the water I passed a group of coral and looked down. I saw surgeon fish and striped zebra fish as well and multiple kinds of coral. I’ve been out before but with a snorkel and goggles. This time it was just me and the noodle. This was the halfway mark and usually I stop a few yards after the coral. I kept going and all of a surprisingly the bottom got much deeper which created the illusion like I was flying over a cliff. In this open water all of a sudden there were blue fish about the length of a hand swimming together as a school. It was thrilling to see them because of their color and unexpected appearance.

I started to wonder if I really and truly wanted to continue the trip to the floats as by now the distance behind me was much further than that ahead of me. Laila didn’t seem to mind too much so I kept working slowly forward. Most anyone who knows anything about the sea knows that sharks have nearly disappeared from our waters but the thought that one might somehow have come to join us for the morning swim was still in my mind. Having Laila there with me was added encouragement.

When I got to the string of yellow floats I saw that the net underneath them was festooned with white objects about the size of my fist and what looked like seaweed. If I had been a little bit braver I would have put my face under the surface to make sure what they were, perhaps some indigenous form of oysters?, but now I think they were stones to weigh down the net. Laila had already turned back by this time but I thought I didn’t come all that distance not to touch the floats so I pushed forward a little bit more to do exactly that. I am one to see something until the end and not stop before.

I then turned to go back to shore and worried a little about getting my feet trapped in the slimy net so I tucked my knees under my abdomen and used my arms to move away from the net. It took quite some time to get back to shore but the water felt wonderful and I had this sense of meeting a challenge I had set for myself. I didn’t look back once for a fin or any other imaginary thing I just enjoyed the movement of my body with slow, rhythmic strokes through the beautiful blue water.

I was in no real hurry to get out of the water but started to feel a chill, probably due to having skipped breakfast, so I came out and rinsed off and served lunch for myself and my friend. As I settled down after the meal it would have been even more delicious to nod off in the chaise lounge under the umbrella but something caught my eye. There was a large mass in the water where there never was coral before. It had to be 8 feet across and seemed to undulate. I walked down to the beach to have a better look. It was changing shape. I looked up to see if there were any fluffy clouds overhead to cast a shadow and was rewarded with an absolutely cloudless sky. I looked again into the water and noticed that it had changed shape to look like a manta ray. Since it was about 15 feet out from shore I really didn’t get a very clear look and I wasn’t overly convinced to wade in and have a closer one. I shouted for Laila to join me in case I was imagining this blue shadow under the water.

We looked again and noticed it was a cloud of small blue fish. I brought some bread and we started throwing some into the water. Up near the surf a bunch of juvenilia shaor started nibbling the bread; they were as thick and as long as a finger. We haven’t seen them for months and I thought they were all gone. Laila threw some soaked bread (which can be thrown further and more accurately we discovered) into the mass of the small blue fish. She then went back into the water and was soon surrounded by them. They swam around her without touching her once in the shape of a crescent and another time a jiggly donut. Meanwhile the silver shaor followed the bread up to the sandy gravel at the water’s edge. I thought they might be stranded in their enthusiasm to eat the bread.

It was a rare and beautiful day and I thought one of the best Un-Valentine’s I had ever had.

Jasmin in Jeddah

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