Essam Al-Ghalib
Saudi Gazette
JEDDAH – “ Heyyyy. Hı. Do u wanna talk me on msn? I have msn and camera.
I’m bisexual, handsome and masculıne. I’m ın Jeddah for work. I’m a ****ısh national and I lıve in Germany, but now ın Jeddah. Handsomeyoung**@hotmail.com. Add me on MSN messenger or call me 056*****39. My name ıs Emır.”
Emir had posted this message on a dating website banned on Saudi servers. This is how he does his marketing. A male bisexual prostitute operating out of Jeddah, he visits the chat servers and initiates conversations with those in want of ‘loving’.
A reader who had forwarded the Gazette this message alleges that Emir had scammed someone she knew out of a few hundred Riyals.
“Contact this man and pretend you are interested. He is a male prostitute and a scam artist. Gain his confidence and see what happens, but don’t tell him you are a reporter,” wrote the source.
With the public’s interest in mind, and with the full backing and knowledge of Saudi Gazette editors and senior management, a plan was hatched, that in the end found Emir running for his life chased by this journalist, a photographer and a video cameraman, through Al-Shola Center and across Madinah Road.
Only 25 minutes earlier, the nervous but unsuspecting Emir had shown up at a prearranged meeting point and got into my car anticipating an hour of passion for which he thought he would be paid SR1000.
Gaining Emir’s confidence was a drawn out and tasteless process that ended with his request that a part of my anatomy be shown him on the web cam during our Internet conversation. Perhaps in his mind no one from the Police or the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice would agree to do such a thing.
Having gained his confidence, it was now time to chat business.
Emir claimed to be ‘active’ which means that when with a client he acts as the male; if we were to meet, I had to agree to be ‘passive’.
After assuring him that I wanted to be ‘passive’, he went onto to ask whether I had HIV or AIDS.
When told that I did not have any diseases, Emir began telling me about his life as an international male escort.
Emir said that he lived in Germany working for a famous camera manufacturer as a quality inspector. He explained that he travelled all over Europe and the Middle-East checking on operations there.
“To supplement my income, I work as an ‘escort’. I arrived in Jeddah last week and am staying until Wednesday,” he said. Ending the online chat conversation, we agreed to meet the following evening at eight o’clock.
“I arrived in Jeddah last week and am staying until Wednesday,” he said.
Ending the online chat conversation, we agreed to meet the following evening at eight o’clock.
At Saudi Gazette, the following morning, the plan to ambush Emir was put into effect and a thousand riyals was signed out of petty cash.
That evening at 5:30 pm, Emir called my mobile phone. “I’m sorry but I have a problem that if I don’t solve now I cannot meet you tonight,” he said.
Emir explained that he had trouble accessing his bank account and needed to call Germany.
“Can you send me at least SR90 credit on my mobile so that I can call my family? When I meet with you, you will only have to pay me SR900,” he said.
“Why don’t you wait until we get together? You can use my phone or buy a phone card yourself with the thousand I am going to give you,” I told him.
“I can’t. I must call now, or I will not be free to meet you tonight,” he said.
This, I thought, is how Emir most likely scammed others out of hundreds of riyals.
After sending him only ten riyals credit, Emir called back asking for SR90 more. He was told that the only way to get money out of me was to meet with me. He never called back that night or answered my repeated calls.
At that point, I thought this investigation had come to an end and that Emir was nothing more than a scam artist who targeted whoremongers who arguably probably deserved it anyways.
For all intents and purposes, the investigation and story had come to a flaccid anti-climax.
The following afternoon however, I was surprised by an SMS message from Emir.
“Do you want to meet?” it read. “
Not if I have to send you money before”, I SMSed back.
“No need, just meet me in an hour at Bin Dawood Supermarket in Al-Shola Center on Madinah Road,” he said. “I will go home with you.”
Emergency calls to Saudi Gazette, were placed to inform the editors that the investigation was back on track. By the time 60 minutes had passed the Gazette’s team was in place.
The plan was for me to meet Emir alone, but waiting outside would be a photographer and a video-camera man in their own car. When Emir would show up, he would ride with me. I was to get him to talk about his life as an international male prostitute and how he came to be one in Saudi Arabia, all for the benefit of the audio recorder hidden behind his seat.
I was then to drop him off somewhere explaining to him along the way that I had changed my mind because I was too nervous about being passive. If all went well and he got out of my car, and into a taxi, the photographers in the other car would follow him to determine if he really was an international male escort staying at a Corniche 5-star hotel as he claimed, or if he was just a local male prostitute and scam artist.
It was 3:30 pm when Emir walked up to me in front of the Bin Dawood Supermarket inside Al-Shola Center. Carrying his laptop and dressed in black pants and a grey shirt, he confidently introduced himself and shook hands as we walked out to the rear parking lot of the mall and into my car.
END OF PART 1
BEGINNING OF PART 2
JEDDAH – Through Saudi Gazette’s investigative efforts - as told in yesterday’s edition - Emir, a 24 year-old male prostitute, was now sat next to me in my car.
On his mind was the SR1000 in my pocket and perhaps the fun he was going to have earning it. He thought we were driving to my home for an hour of ‘passion’ in which he would be ‘active’ and I would be ‘passive’.
Emir had no idea that following behind in another car were a photographer and a video cameraman who were there to capture the encounter with their telephoto lenses and to serve as my backup in the event that he got hostile.
For the first five minutes Emir made some nervous chit chat as we drove north towards Tahlia Street. His knowledge of the route and local landmarks betrayed the story he was telling me.
“I work for a digital camera manufacturer and travel all over Europe and the Middle-East. I live in Germany and am an escort there. As I travel around I make friends here and there and get paid to be with them,” Emir bragged.
Now more relaxed, he got down to talking about the actual deed he planned on performing with me. For the next ten minutes we had a conversation too explicit to detail here.
While Emir wanted to hurry to my home, I had to extricate myself from this situation and get him out of my car without arousing his suspicion that this was a setup and without paying him a single Riyal. Hoping the notion of it would disgust him, I demanded that for SR1000, I would be the active one.
“You are unbalanced,” Emir told me rather matter-of-factedly.
“How about just quick soft sex then?” he asked, apparently in a last ditch effort to salvage the deal.
“No way,” was the response he got.
“My God. Why didn’t you tell me this during the chat? I took a taxi from the Corniche and waited for you for half an hour. We’ve already been driving around for a while and now you tell me you want me to be passive,” Emir balked.
That is when things took a turn for the worse. In an aggressive and menacing manner, Emir turned towards me and said, “You have wasted my time and you have to pay me for it,” he demanded.
Again the response was a stiff, ‘No’.
“You know in my country, you can be killed for this. Someone can take a knife and kill you. I know for a fact that in France, Germany and Turkey they will fight you and end your life. I know that, I know that,” he said.
He then picked up his mobile phone and called someone speaking a language I did not understand. It was clear that he was calling for assistance telling someone where we were.
Looking behind me I could not see the car with the photographers in it anywhere. As Emir got louder and more threatening I decided to call them.
They had lost me somehow but were less than a minute away. Once Emir and I were parked back at Al-Shola Center, he got out of the car and approached me on the driver’s side.
Yanking open my door and moving in closer, he had me cornered.
“Pay me,” he demanded.
Realizing that the situation was quickly getting out of control and fearing that Emir had a knife, I made another call to the photographers. As I shouted in Arabic, “Al-Shola now, Al-Shola now”, I pulled out my press card and held it up to his face.
Just as the photographers were arriving, he took off in a flash running through the center past surprised midday shoppers. In about a minute, he had run through the shopping center, down Madinah Road and across the wooden pedestrian bridge before disappearing somewhere near Al-Mosadia Plaza.
An hour later, an SMS message from Emir arrived. “I liked you but you tricked me, you will see,” it warned.
Calling him, I was surprised that he answered granting me the opportunity to clarify things for him a little.
“You are a male prostitute and scam artist who should be giving thanks to Allah that it was a newspaper that set you up today and not the police or the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you would be in? This story will run in less than a week,” he was told.
To further emphasize the predicament he was in, the photo attached to this story was emailed him.
Later in the evening, an apology arrived by way of SMS.
“I am sorry. Please forgive me. I was in Mecca yesterday praying to Allah to help me change my life. Maybe this is His way of doing it. I am only doing this because my salary is low. Please don’t write anything. I have been crying and praying all day and have learned an important lesson,” it read.
Saudi Gazette felt that no more communication with Emir was necessary and subsequent SMS messages begging for forgiveness were ignored.
