Saudi Diaries — Part 15: Saying Goodbye & The Return — The Final Part

The Flight Home, Looking Back, and the Feeling of “When Can I Go Back?”
The bridge was still beneath us. King Fahd Causeway, stretching its 25 kilometers of concrete and ambition between two countries. The Gulf below us had turned that impossible turquoise again, the one I still didn’t have a word for. The sky was doing something soft and orange at the edges.
We didn’t say much. We didn’t need to.
Somewhere in that silence, I understood something: the trip hadn’t ended in Bahrain. It ended here, on this bridge, driving back toward Saudi soil. Every kilometer we crossed now was a kilometer closer to the end of something extraordinary. I felt it settle into my chest — not quite sadness, not quite joy. Gratitude, mostly. The specific, heavy gratitude of knowing you’ve been given something you didn’t deserve and can never repay.
Then the bridge ended. The passport stamps happened. We were back in the Kingdom.
And just like that, the logistics began.

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The Logistics Nightmare
We got back to our hotel in Dammam, and I assumed — foolishly — that the evening would be quiet. A shower, maybe a shisha, an early night before the long journey home.
Instead, Abdulaziz pulled out his phone and said, “Okay. Let’s figure this out.”
Here was the problem, laid bare: my flight home was from Jeddah. Jeddah was roughly 1,500 kilometers to the west — about the distance we had just spent two days driving. I was not driving it again. Neither was he.
We sat on the edge of the hotel beds, phones out, scrolling through flight times like two generals planning a campaign. Saudia had a flight from Dammam to Jeddah around noon the next day. That would work. I’d fly, then connect onward to Vienna from there.
Abdulaziz had his own complication — he needed to get back to Abha, on the opposite end of the country. His Flynas flight was leaving about an hour after mine.
And then there was the car. The car that had carried us across the Kingdom, through a sandstorm, into the desert, across a border. It could not, unfortunately, drive itself home. Abdulaziz found a logistics company that would ship it back to Abha on a truck. One more problem, solved.
It was exhausting. Booking, comparing, rebooking, checking baggage allowances. But we did it the way we’d done everything else on this trip — together, laughing at the absurdity of it, two tired men negotiating with airline websites at midnight.

The Quiet Competition of Kindness
Somewhere in the chaos, I had a thought. Abdulaziz had given me ten days of his life. His time, his patience, his friends, his country, his food, his car, his home. I wanted to give him something back, even something small.
So quietly, without saying anything, I opened my Flynas app and booked his ticket to Abha. I selected the flight we agreed on a few minutes earlier as the best option, picked a front-window seat, and paid for it. I wanted to surprise him with it — a small thank-you tucked into a 6-character code, the PNR. I sent it to him in a text.
A minute later, I heard him laugh — a short, surprised sound.
“Wait,” he said, looking up from his phone. “I just booked your ticket to Jeddah.”
We stared at each other. Two confirmation emails. Two grown men, sitting in a hotel room, each holding proof that they’d tried to out-give the other.
“You shouldn’t have,” I said, trying to sound stern and failing completely.
He just shrugged. “You shouldn’t have either.”
We both entered the PNR received from the other into our apps, laughing so hard we could barely type. It was funny. It was nice. It was also, I think, a very Saudi moment of both of us — a small, silly war of generosity that neither of us was willing to lose.

The Morning Rush
Morning came too fast, the way it always does on the day you don’t want it to.
We packed in a hurry — the particular chaos of trying to fold ten days of clothes, souvenirs, and dust back into the same suitcase they came out of. I zipped my checked bag and paused, hand still on the zipper.
Please, I thought. Please be under 28 kilograms.
It felt like a strange thing to pray for. But it wasn’t really about the kilograms. I was zipping up memories — the sand from AlUla still somewhere in the seams, the weight of everything I’d eaten, seen, and felt over the last ten days pressed into fabric and plastic. I genuinely didn’t know if it would fit the limit. I genuinely didn’t want to leave anything behind.
Khalid — our Khalid in Dammam — was already ready, waiting to drive us to the airport. Even now, on the very last morning, he was still showing up. That, I was learning, is simply what hospitality looks like here: it doesn’t clock out.
On the way, we dropped the car off at the shipping company. I put my hand on the hood before we walked away — an odd, sentimental gesture for a car, I know. But this wasn’t just a car. It had survived a sandstorm with us. It had carried us to Bahrain and back. It felt strange to just hand it over to a stranger and walk off.
Then, the airport.

The 28-Kilogram Miracle
At the terminal, we said our goodbye to Khalid first — a quick, warm hug, a thank-you that felt too small for everything he’d done.
Then it was check-in. I hoisted my bag onto the scale and held my breath.
The number flickered. Settled. 28.0 kilograms. Exactly. I actually laughed out loud. Not a single gram to spare, not a single gram over. The prayer had worked, or maybe the trip itself simply refused to end on a note of chaos.
The agent printed my boarding pass and slid it across the counter, and I almost didn't notice what was written on it. Almost.
"Wait." I picked it up and looked again. "Business class."
Abdulaziz was already trying very hard to look like a man who had no idea what I was talking about.
"Abdulaziz."
"What?" he said, far too innocently. "You had a big bag. I wanted to make sure there were no problems."
"This isn't about the bag."
He finally smiled, the smile of a man caught red-handed and not even slightly sorry about it. He'd upgraded me without a word, sometime in the chaos of the night before — one more quiet act stacked on top of a hundred others, timed perfectly so I wouldn't find out until there was no chance for another round of ticket-swapping. Twenty-eight kilograms of luggage, and I wasn't going to worry about a single gram of it now. I'd have room to breathe, a proper seat, one last dose of comfort he'd arranged without asking, exactly the way he'd been taking care of me since the moment I landed.
I didn't even try to argue. I just shook my head, laughing, and just being stunned.
Abdulaziz, standing next to me with nothing but a small backpack, just shook his head. "You worry about weight. I’ve got nothing to check in."
"You travel light," I said.
"I try to," he said, "through everything." Both of us, at this moment, forgetting that his large suitcase and a whole car full of stuff are ready to be shipped to Abha. So much about traveling light…
We passed security with about an hour to spare. Found a coffee shop near the gate. Sat down with our drinks. And then there was nothing left to do but wait.

The Last Hour
We talked about nothing, really. Small things. The kind of conversation two people have when they’re both avoiding the real one.
There was a weight in the air neither of us named. We laughed more than usual. We let silences sit a beat too long. We were saying goodbye the whole time, just never out loud.
Then the announcement came. My flight. Boarding.
I stood up. He stood up. And for a second, we just looked at each other — ten days condensed into a single moment neither of us knew how to fill with words.
So we didn’t use many. Just a long hug, the kind that says everything a sentence can’t.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Thank you,” he said back, at the exact same time.
“I hope to see you again soon.”
“Insha’Allah, very soon.”
I turned and walked toward the gate. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. If I had looked back, I don’t think I would have gotten on that plane.

Looking Through the Window
The flight to Jeddah was amazing — a bit over 2 hours . I pressed my forehead against the window and watched the desert scroll beneath me, the same land we had driven across just days before.
From up here, it looked different. Smaller. Softer. Like something painted rather than lived in.
I thought about all of it, in no particular order. Al-Balad’s narrow alleys. The Corniche at sunrise. An ice cream that tasted like nostalgia. A coffee cup with my name written on it. The sandstorm that swallowed the highway. AlUla’s rock faces glowing at dusk. Twenty kilograms of dates I never asked for and will never forget. A twelve-hour drive that felt like two. A breakfast box handed to me by a friend. Rain in the desert. The causeway to Bahrain.
It felt like a lifetime compressed into ten days. It felt like a dream I was still inside of.

The Jeddah Chaos
I landed in Jeddah with one job: collect my bag, cross to the other terminal, catch my connection.
I went to baggage claim. I watched the belt. I looked at the display board, misread it completely, and — for reasons I still cannot fully explain — walked straight out of the baggage claim area without my suitcase.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking. I was still somewhere back at that gate in Dammam, still mid-goodbye.
It took a full minute of walking before it hit me. My bag. My entire bag — the 28 kilograms, the house keys, everything — was still circling on a carousel I could no longer get back into. The doors only opened one way.
Panic is a strange, cold thing. It rose up my throat fast.
I found an airport agent and, in a rush of half-formed sentences, explained what I’d done. He didn’t laugh at me, though he probably wanted to. He made a call. Security got involved. A few tense minutes later, I was escorted back through a side door, and there it was — my suitcase, patiently going in circles, waiting for the idiot who’d abandoned it.
I grabbed it and thanked every single person in sight, probably too many times. I have never left a bag behind in my life. I don’t plan to again. But that day, I understood — I wasn’t just tired. I was still with my head in the clouds, thinking about a goodbye I hadn’t finished processing.
​

The Aquarium
I finally made it to the arrivals hall, rattled and a little embarrassed, and there — in the middle of the terminal, of all places — was a giant fish tank. The Jeddah Airport aquarium.
I bought a drink and sat down in front of it. Just watched the fish drift back and forth, unbothered by any of it.
I had hours to spare. I breathed. Really breathed, for what felt like the first time since the gate at Dammam Airport. My bag was beside me. My flight wasn’t for a few more hours. Everything, against all odds, was okay.
I walked towards the exit and taxi stands and saw a small Booth selling tickets for a shuttle bus that ran between terminals — cheaper and easier than a taxi. Small win. I’d take it.

The Text
I boarded the shuttle. It pulled away from the curb.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
Abdulaziz: Landed in Abha.
We texted back and forth for a few minutes — nothing important, just the small check-ins of two people who’d already said goodbye but weren’t quite ready to let the conversation end. He was in Abha, waiting to be picked up from the airport by his brother. I was in Jeddah, sitting on a bus with another flight in front of me. By tomorrow, I’d be back in Vienna.
The distance between us was growing by the hour. But something told me it wouldn’t matter. Some connections don’t need proximity to stay intact.

Chocolates and Magnets
I checked in for my flight to Vienna with time to spare, and did what every traveler does in the last hour of a trip: I wandered into duty-free and bought things I didn’t need.
Chocolates. Fridge magnets. A little tin of dates, because apparently twenty kilograms hadn’t been enough. Small, mundane objects that would sit in a cupboard back home and mean absolutely nothing to anyone who hadn’t been here.
But to me, each one felt like a piece of evidence. Proof that this had happened. That I could carry a fragment of it home in a plastic bag.
​

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The Doors Closing
Boarding was called. I found my seat by the window, because of course I did — I hadn’t looked away from a window in ten days, and I wasn’t about to start now.
The doors closed. The plane began to taxi.
And then it happened — that specific vibration under the wheels, the small lurch, the moment the ground simply lets go. The plane lifted off the runway, and just like that, the trip was over.
I watched Jeddah shrink beneath me. The coastline. The Red Sea catching the last of the light. The whole Kingdom folding itself smaller and smaller until it fit inside a window the size of a dinner plate.
Everything hit me at once — sadness for leaving, joy for everything I’d been given, gratitude so large it didn’t fit inside my chest properly. My throat tightened. I didn’t fight it.
I want to come back, I thought. I will come back. I have to come back.
This wasn’t goodbye. It was never going to be goodbye. It was just: see you soon.

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Final Reflection
Fifteen chapters ago, I landed in this country, nervous. Careful. Unsure of what I’d find, half-braced for discomfort, half-hoping to be surprised.
I am leaving as someone who fell in love — with the food, with the desert, with the impossible warmth of strangers who became friends within hours of meeting them. With a friend who tried to give me everything and then quietly tried to give me more.
This trip rearranged something in me. It showed me a side of the world I didn’t know existed, hiding in plain sight behind headlines and assumptions I hadn’t even realized I was carrying. It taught me that generosity isn’t a gesture here — it’s a language, spoken fluently, spoken constantly, spoken without needing translation.
It taught me that home isn’t always a place. Sometimes it’s a feeling you find four and a half thousand kilometers from anywhere you’ve ever lived.
I looked out the window as the clouds swallowed the Kingdom. I smiled. I knew I would be back. Saudi Arabia had given me the greatest gift of all — a reason to return. And I will. I will keep my promise to Abdulaziz, to Khalid, to the dates, to the desert, to the ancient rocks and the modern towers. I will come back. Because a piece of my heart is still there, waiting for me to return and collect it.
I settled into my seat. The plane hummed. The clouds passed beneath me. I closed my eyes and smiled.
It was there, on that plane, that I truly understood the true meaning of الحنين — that ache of longing for a place, a people, a feeling you can't quite hold onto but can't let go of either. The word itself I learned a few years later, but the feeling, I felt it right there.​
Saudi Arabia, I thought. I will see you soon. I will see you very, very soon.

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— End of Series --