Night watchmen are territorial with extra human power on business and residential premises detecting the occurrence of any offense even when laying their heads on hard beds at the end of the day. And a night guard's job is always endangered with potential perils from Mother Nature, thieves, and even stray animals. In Saudi Arabia, guarding a property at night is more than just maintaining one's ground; it is an experience of horror at the post that a Hollywood producer may consider for a Halloween horror movie with sound effects from Arabia. For 10 years, Ali Al-Qasimi, 24 and a plant seller from a neighboring Arab country, has been protecting his fenceless garden for 10 years offering the illusion of complete closure. “We do not have another place to keep our plants in and I spend dreadful nights here near the hour of dawn,” he said. A wildlife adventurer with good stamina, Qasimi spends four days and nights with his plants and herd of sheep in the outskirts of Jeddah. Dispelling the loneliness of the scene “my ride is my donkey and the little oasis is my source of water, and sometimes I feel among familiar surroundings, yet unable to determine my exact place and part in the scheme of things in the wildlife,” he said. He sometimes feels the sudden attack coming from all sides. The assault of Mother Nature is as harsh as the current tough reality of Qasimi. “Once a sandstorm destroyed my life in the wilderness killing two of my herd of sheep and blowing away all my personal belongings,” he said. Qasimi's adventure of night watch is shared by many of his fellow night guards. From securing a fenceless garden to protecting heavy duty machines, a contrast draws a line of little wall for Matooq Al-Bishi, 41. Charged with securing heavy duty machines in a land plot illegally occupied by the owner of those machines, Bishi takes home from the shades of a little tree around him or the ‘acoustic shadows' that would speak to his loneliness. Marching in column, with a dimly gleaming stick, he said “In the beginning, it was a tent, but it was worn out,” he said. Bishi was promised a new one, but it has never come. During the day, he sits under the tree watching the big dead bodies in front of him. And at night, he sleeps peacefully into the obscurity around him with never a sound of voice, nor hoof, nor wheel. But the dangers still haunt the cemetery of the dead machines around him, disturbing Bishi's sleep. “I woke up on dogs barking around me,” he said. They attacked me from every side and one bit my leg,” he said. “I jumped up to one of the machines and started a fire that drove the stray dogs away,” he said. In a call for self-protection from late night unpleasant surprises, Bishi asked the owner to build him a place to crash in. “He did, but it was bricks stacked on each other, called ‘a room' aggravating the horror story every night,” he said. “I don't fear darkness and its guests,” he said. “I used to travel with my father on camels at night in the middle of nowhere, sometimes with no gleam of hope to reach our destination in safety,” he said. As dead heavy duty machines are given security service so are new constructions sites, especially amid late wave of thefts of construction materials and copper cables in the Makkah region. Ali Al-Rimi, 51, guards a construction site of a residential building in Jeddah. For a month from his start, he took the floor as his favorite bed to crash. “Maybe the owner felt a little something for me and asked me to raise the bed a little higher by stacking a few bricks, just to call it ‘a high bed' with a long paper on top of it to be the ‘sheet',” he said. As winter has crawled into the city, Rimi has fallen prey to the cold weather and mosquitoes sweeping through the brick holes. “I am not new to the perils of sleeping outdoors at night,” he said. Rimi worked as a night guard at a shop on the Lith desert road, 180 km southwest of Jeddah. “Can you imagine to be woken up by a black scorpion next to you, staring at you, but never touching you,” he said. “Ever since I never missed a sleep prayer,” he said. A fellow guard of Rimi shared his experience of encountering snakes and scorpions on duty. “They are on duty at night, just like us,” Muhammad Ghaleb, 45, said in a jest. “But my bed was more tempting for a snake to share it with me,” he said. “It was a wet wood board on a rainy night.” “I only felt the soft skin when my hand accidentally touched the sleeping danger next to me,” he said. “I jumped from my wooden bed to see the scene of my life: a snake in my bed,” he said. “It was still sleeping peacefully until I started a fire that drove it away,” he said. “Never sleep on a wet wooden board outdoors,” he said. The road to Wadi Muraikh is as scary as the valley itself where Ismail Shuni, 34, guards a picnic camp. “The camp is owned by a group of young people who come here to spend the weekend from time to time,” he said. He has worked for four years at the camp. “It is a haunted place on the weekdays with looming dangers,” he said. Three months ago, Shuni was attacked by four thieves at around 11 P.M. who stole the TV set, the propane cylinder after he managed to run away from their grip. “I could have been killed in the middle of nowhere,” he said. “But the camp owners were able to identify the thieves and retrieve the stolen items,” he said. On every side in the outskirts of Jeddah lie cultivated fields showing no sign of human livelihood at night except for the few brave men to protect them from hungry animals and crop thieves. Faleh Al-Mazmoomi, 44, guards his farm that he started to grow after the seasonal rain that hit the Kingdom in the last quarter of 2008. “I built a small hut of wood and paper to protect me from the cold weather to spend the night protecting the farm from stray camels,” he said. “I do not fear night animals and reptiles,” he said. “I have survived the bites of snakes and scorpions. I have immunity against them,” he said. Another farm guard says he has found comfort in his cell phone chatting the gloomy night away with his family and friends. “It is a weapon to kill my lonely night at this remote farm,” Attiya Al-Sifri said. “My sons are only one call away when I need them,” he said.
