Welcome to Chez Riyadh; I’ll Be Your Religious Enforcer Tonight

I was still looking over the menu when the commotion began. The waiter sprinted in and shut off the TV that was airing a female pop singer’s video clip. Another waiter hastily put up a wooden partition to screen me from the male diners.

Saudi Arabia’s religious police were on the prowl.

Eating out in Riyadh can be a stressful experience. The restaurants are trendy and serve all manner of local and foreign delicacies. But they are subject to the austere mores of an Islamic kingdom -- no unmarried men and women together, no pop music, not even service with a smile.

Saudis here in the capital take the extremes of the muttawa, or religious police, in stride. But among expatriates, they’re a favorite topic of conversation.

They tell of the inspector who tried to yank the TV wires out of the wall because Lebanese singer Maria was on screen sitting in a bathtub full of milk and Cocoa Puffs singing “Play, Play.”

And the waiter who was made to rinse the gel out of his hair because he was suspected of trying to look good for the ladies. And another whose sin was to serve dishes directly to women. He was marched to the inspector’s car and made to sign a pledge to hand meals to the diners from behind a screen.

Restaurants and cafes are required to close their doors for prayers five times a day, for 30 minutes at a stretch.

Some Saudis are comfortable with the restrictions.

“I have the freedom to eat and enjoy the company of my friends without being harassed by men,” said Haifa Abdul-Aziz, lunching in an enclosed restaurant booth.

Faisal Badrani disagreed. “We should all be together,” he said. “I don’t want this segregation.”

Both are 18 and in high school. Badrani said that when he took his girlfriend out they risked arrest.

“We’re all scared,” he said. “But if the girlfriend loves you enough she’ll go out with you.”

With no nightclubs or cinemas, Riyadh offers little fun other than strolling in malls and eating out. Men are at least allowed to drive, and on weekends they ply the streets, flashing their cellphone numbers on large cards or laptop screens at passing cars, hoping to make contact with female passengers.

Saudi Arabia is perennially torn between conservatives enforcing a puritan strain of Islam and liberals who want the country to ease up. These days even Riyadh is loosening the reins a bit. So many new restaurants are opening that there aren’t enough muttawa to police them.

More unmarried couples go out. More waiters serve women. Once behind their screens, more women discard their abaya, the all-encompassing robe.

Wafa Othman, 38, refused to be shut away while dining recently. “If I had wanted to sit in a tiny enclosure behind a curtain I wouldn’t have come to a restaurant to eat. I would have stayed home,” she said.

At Riyadh restaurants, all-male parties enter through a “singles” door and sit where they please. Mixed groups must use the “family” door and be seated either in a separate room or behind screens. But the men and women have to be married or closely related or they risk running afoul of the religious police, who are empowered to detain them for mixing illegally.

Because women are barred from working as waitresses, the staff is male. Waiters are advised not to smile, lest it be taken as a come-on.

That evening at the restaurant, my waiter was gone more than 15 minutes after screening me off. It turned out he had been led away by an inspector.

He came back looking relieved. He had been let off with a mild warning.