It's 10 minutes to midnight on a Thursday in Riyadh, the start of the Saudi weekend, and even though it's the middle of finals, Tahlia Street swarms with kids in Porsches and Ferraris looking for a good time. Throbbing bass beats back the syncopated rhythm of bleating car horns. The aim is not so much to get through the traffic as to draw attention to the young men in the driver's seats. They lounge in their leather thrones, AC on high and a forearm draped nonchalantly over a rolled-down window, luxury watch on display.
Both peacocks and hunters, they have relaxed postures that belie eyes on alert for signs of prey in the passing cars: a foreign driver alone up front, and in the backseat, partially obscured by tinted windows rolled up tight, a woman's vague form. I survey the scene from the backseat of my friend's SUV, confident in the relative anonymity of her darkened windows.
The urgent honking of a nearby car breaks my reverie. A gleaming white Chrysler pulls up alongside. Inside, a young man, the starched and folded peaks of his red-and-white-checked headscarf pulled low in the Stetson-like style popular with hipsters, is waving for my attention.
He swerves erratically as he attempts to steer with his knees, giving me a double thumbs-up and a broad grin. Then he raises a laminated placard stenciled with a phone number. After a few seconds, enough time for me to jot down the digits, he shouts across the lane, " Khalas? You got it? Welcome to the pickup, Saudi-style. Salman must have been disappointed to get a phone call from an American journalist.
Ever the player, he tries to convince me that he "numbered" me, in local parlance, because I was "so beautiful. Over virgin mojitos, Salman describes to me a dating scene like no other. There are no movie theaters in Saudi Arabia, and no bars. Weddings are segregated, as are schools. In Saudi Arabia, where culture and religion conspire to prevent all unregulated contact between men and women, young singles resort to extreme methods in pursuit of romance.
