The girls’ schools in our district had a contest called “Welcome to Saudi Arabia” its theme being : Saudia Arabia ....yesterday and today. My daughter came home announcing that their school had asked the girls to get some old artifacts and antiques from family and friends. I called my neighbors right away and each started collecting what she could from different sources even though some of them didn’t even have any daughters in the same school!.You see our community was acting on the prophet Muhammad’s teachings:to help one another.

I called a friend of mine ‘Moaza’ who happens to have some remarkable artistic talent ,and I told her about the contest.She was in the process of making a tent made of camel’s hair(typical of the bedouins’ “bayt shaar” as it is called in arabic)for her school.You see she married young and couldn’t finish her education,and now, 28 she is resuming it again.She said that she will lend it to me to exhibit it at my daughter’s school for the time being.

When I brought the tent home ,I was so amazed at the small details : the tiny clothes-chest , the well in front of the tent,the little fire with stones around , the coffepot ,the ‘marka(s)’* ,even the plants here and there , then and there I had the urge of making a miniature Hijazi** drawing-room . I called my friends and we discussed it ,and since it needed a lot of work,and we as usual didn’t have a lot of time(with our housework,arabian cuisine and our children to take care of).We arranged to start working on the project the next week,giving me time to get the walls of the miniature room ready of ‘balsa wood’ and some foam-lined cardboard .

I had to visit a friend of mine who’s daughter was studying ‘Interior Decorating’,to take a look at the models she made for her college , I took the model home to save time on getting my own model to build to scale quickly (40cmW.30cmL.and 20cmH.). The tricky thing here were the windows, for I had to make them out of plastic mesh , spray them brown and add the frame of balsa wood. Now this wasn’t real wood as you know it ‘s foam made so thin and has the vertical grains like wood and since my windows had arches and this was my first introduction to this material it was hard , but I guess it worked out well.The next trick was to get the ‘roshan’*’right , so I had to go to the bookstores searching for photos of the old buildings in Mecca and Jeddah where I can get a pretty good idea of how it should look(I was born and bred in the Eastern coast).To make a long story short , I finished and called the others over to start furnishing the little affair.

We had to make small pillows,adorn them with lace,then we had to find a small carpet, so we cut one of the old praying-carpets and used pieces of it.Then we had to make litttle hand-held fans and their holder,a little shelf and a little lantern (for the latter we used glue-dough,which was also used later for making the tea-pot, tea-tray, samawer *and incense-burner ,also the ‘sharba’, which is an earthen-ware used for drinking water usually put in the ‘roshan’ to keep the water cool).The last details, a picture of AlKaaba for a wall ,and the name of ‘Allah’ for the other . Then I had to paint the walls from the outside,and we were ready for the “meshab” the room used in the middle region for offering coffee for the men!

When I announced the happy news some were really enthusiastic,anyway ,they knew I meant business,again they waited until I finished ‘building’ the room.I had to get some photos to work from and ,some firsthand information from my main helper Fatma who is from Riyadh.Together we discussed what it should look like, and the material we were going to work with.Then after I cut the walls and,in this case I had to make double-walls to make the old-style shelves in the wall,I decided to give it a realistic look by covering two of the walls with mud,and make litttle black triangles for air-vents.The ladies were again called in for making the pillows and miniature tea-pots,coffee-cups and coffee-pots.We also decided to make dates and a date basket and some miniature fans again!!

Then I saw this house from the South-western region, and I asked my friend Moaza (from Najran)if she would help,by then she was really studying hard for her exams,so I decided on just making it from the outside ,and forget about the inside.And make it I did, then I sent it over to her place where her husband used tiny branches to make the door look real . She added small rocks around the house(as the arabic saying goes “addi aleysh likhabbazo la’ou akal nisfou”)meaning : ‘give the bread to the baker even if he eats half of it!!’ (Of course my friend didn’t eat nothing!)

We took our work to school the principal was very impressed,we also took with us old artifacts and antiquities from over 12 neighbors.We also helped in organizing the exhibition.Then my daughter came with this new idea ....she wanted to make a model of a drilling well for her science-class as part of Saudia today...well I GUESS BY NOW YOU KNOW WHAT WE HAD TO DO!!

My daughter’s school won the third position which wasn’t so bad after all,and my friends and I recieved elegant certificates of gratitude from the school.

Widad Al-Shingity.