the birds at Al-Suwaidi Park and other cultural attractions

I believe, although it was wearing a blinder, a hood, or, in Arabic, a burqa (the same word as the full-body covering for women), even the falcon knew it was being photographed and was posing. The cat certainly knew it was.

The goat refused to be photographed. Behind the cockatoo, centrally placed above, you can see the golden cage it kept slipping in and out of, free, like the birds to run or fly away, or butt the small children with its horns, who, in fact, were more interested in and more comfortable than us with taking the birds from their perches onto their arms. When I say they were more comfortable, familiar with handling birds from the practice of falconry, they were unafraid and, undeterred, did not cry out for parental support, when pecked because of it.

With no more than a fence around it and a small entry fee, the enclosure for the birds and animals which included some cats, who were, like the birds, more concerned with being photogenic than with their natural rivals, was part of a cultural marketplace event, featuring a different culture every week, for Riyadh Season. This week's was Pakistan. You might think this was out of condescension for a largely guest-worker population and in any other culture this would probably be the case, but, again, Saudi hospitality is inclusive and what might look concessionary or hypocritical, what might have looked like that to us before we were in it, does not now we are. The bond of hospitality, a part of it, the debt of gratitude, might be said to hold the society together.

. . . I was thinking something similar while watching Wolf Hall, the picture-perfect adaptation of Hilary Mantel's novels, that fealty among men, for one to say I am yours, no longer exists. It has been replaced with something transactional or it is the transaction itself which the term transactional is used for when it is used for human relations. Derrida has written on this debt, as he has on the host whose hospitality goes out willingly to engage this debt, and its role in society.