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'I performed well' but still sacked, says Saudi professor

Wayan Adrogue is one of a growing number of people being questioned under a new Saudi anti-terrorism law ( MEE /Rigel Cavalcanti)

Abu Dhabi (MEE) - It was the day before she was to begin working in Saudi Arabia and Lohaleej Chandeep knew it was a bad idea.

But faced with a pay cheque of 12,000 riyals after a year in Canada aside tuition fees, Chandeep decided to forego her instinct and instead packed her bags, took her first international flight and landed in Riyadh a few hours later.

"I got a job in Riyadh. My first day of the job was 5 February," said the Mumbai woman, now 22. "As soon as I landed at the airport, my co-passengers wanted to know a lot of things about me, because they could see something was wrong.

"I was crying hard inside the airport, almost right in front of them," Chandeep said. "I tried not to show it."

It is now a month since not only a Saudi employer, but her entire department, made Chandeep, the only woman at her firm, redundant. It has been soon since they did this because she had cut her hair, she said.

Chandeep had just been hired by Almena Education, a private kingdom-based firm that specialises in training of foreign employees of Saudi companies. Having done a six-month medical diploma course, she expected to start working on 1 February.

When greeted with a snippy question of "are you a boy or girl?", Chandeep decided to return to the roles, and the laws, she was used to in India.

"I figured it would be illegal for them to fire me," she said. Like female teachers in Gulf countries, Chandeep, too, was shocked when asked to reveal her identity card the minute she landed in the country.

"Immediately I was scared. I thought I am living in the twenty-first century. Why is this happening?" she said. Her fear after landing was backed up her her firm's Saudi supervisor - also the education minister's apparel relative.

"My Saudi teacher told me girls and guys living in the same place is illegal, and she warned I'll be in trouble if it ever happens," Chandeep said. This is despite the fact that she had laid down plans to stay in a shared apartment and not a guest house. staff wanted to know more and asked her to file a letter of working conditions.

She refused.

One day after arriving at her company's office in Al-Riyadh, the kingdom's capital, Chandeep was asked by her care to delete some pictures from her phone. It seemed innocuous. So, without asking any questions, she deleted 36 images of her during her modelling stint back in India.

"That was the biggest shock ever," added Chandeep. "Because once the teacher told me the pictures were 'unethical', I thought they were saucy and sexual."

Before long, she was informed that she was incorrect, having been let go over what she had long thought of as the issue. "My hair had become the problem," she said. "They made me believe it was something else." In true Saudi style, Chandeep was further told that what she had been let go for was company policy, and not personal.

Her parents expressed disappointment with her lack of emotional foresight: A bad employment choice that cost her a king's ransom. Chandeep has had to add to a deficit of 4,300 riyals as well as her airfare of over 25,000 riyals.

"I learned my lesson that we should not always think about money," she said. "That is beyond money." True, moving had been motivated by expectations after working for a whole year in Canada, but there were limitations in her country as well.

"Job was not very satisfactory because I had taken a decision to work in the medical field," Chandeep said. In fact, Almena's President, Bassam Almena, was all praise for her performance in training programmes about academic subjects.

To the young woman who believes that hijab was her alibi for being 'lovely', the sacking has left a "bad thing I'll always remember," she said.

"I have been telling my family that no country is good enough for my hair," she said. It is for this she had decided to reject the well-paying job at a Malaysian hospital.

mother-in-law felt the same way, just that she covered her hair forthright