On a desert highway outside of Riyadh, I watched twin white Accords fly out of the road shimmer. As the mirage faded, one car emerged. I recall sounds one wouldn’t expect from such an ordinary vehicle, the engine’s plasmic-psalm, the shrieking rubber, the crowd’s yowl at the calculated accuracy of his Honda’s near-miss. The show was brief. It had to be. I was told Nazim would meet us later for the interview after the cops left.
Later on that afternoon, we met at a roadside coffee stand. Here I was in the middle of nowhere talking with the self-proclaimed Young Saudi Prince of Drifting. We were chatting through my translator, Suleyman. I was supposed to be covering the war with Iran, but this phenomenon was more important.
I asked Nazim how it feels to drive like that. He shrugged and laughed, then said something in Arabic to Suleyman. They grinned at one another.
“He said you have to come and see for yourself.”
“Tell him, I’m going to have to think about it.”
Nazim nodded.
“You’re famous on the internet. They say you’re the best drifter in Saudi. What makes one good at drifting?”
Nazim was brief. Suleyman translated.
“He said, risk makes him great and he hates losing. One loss is more intense than the pride in all the victories combined.”
Suleyman was explaining tafheet to me. It’s not the same as regular drifting. In this Saudi phenomenon, one driver doesn’t necessarily win by outracing another competitor. I was reading a magazine about it last night. One tafheet enthusiast states, “The best driver is the one who comes away unscathed from the most dangerous chances.” In Nazim’s case it’s true. His videos have millions of views. He skirts around packed busses, and tail-whips into oncoming traffic. He performs fantastic reversals and powerslides. Still, it seems as though nobody actually wins anything. Suleyman had a mathematician’s manner of describing it.
“A great drifter’s asymptote of risk approaches death’s flatline, but never touches. The fewer mistakes, the better.”
“What does he think? What makes him the best?”
Nazim opened his mouth to brag. Suleyman explained.
“He says, he kisses a whiff of death.”
I laughed. Nazim grinned at me.
“Considering the danger, and the law, what’s the attraction for you?” Suleyman muttered the question to our subject. He looked at me. The sun was glistening off of Nazim’s strange eyes. For a moment, they were so light-brown they reflected dried-red. Nazim’s dark hair plumed up.
“I get very bored.” Nazim spoke in accented English. “It’s boring here all the time and the roads are flat and there’s nothing to do and the benzine is cheap and we have cars and we don’t care about our lives.”
I nodded. I was surprised to have a flurry of words come out of an otherwise distant youth.
“I didn’t know you spoke English.”
“I learn at college.”
“I see.”
“What do you think of my videos?”
“You have a very, if you don’t mind me saying, average automobile.”
“The worst people have the best cars. Skyscraper Arabs. Koenigsegg, Porsche, Lotus, Corvette. They don’t drive anywhere themselves. I drive a shit box. No mods. Just me.”
“People get hurt though. Innocent people.”
He knew what I was talking about. Last week, just before I started reporting in-country, a nineteen year old drifter crashed no more than a mile up the road from here. The kid’s car spun out of control after a mis-timed oversteer. He wrapped his driver’s side around a bus coming head on. The boy was killed instantly. His engine ignited, causing an inferno to spread over to the bus. The passengers who were not maimed, or knocked unconscious, had to kick out windows to escape. Only five out of the forty- seven survived.
Nazim did not want to discuss the aftermath. This was the worst auto catastrophe to strike the nation since tafheet took hold in the late 70s. The day after the crash, the General Directorate of Public Safety issued a decree stating that any person caught drifting, would be sentenced to ten years in prison and face a thousand lashings. This conversation ruined the mood.
The interview did not last much longer. I was fool to suspect the consequences would dissuade Nazim. Three days later, he posted another video, which set a prize target on his back for the Anti- Drifting Task Force. Of course before we parted ways, I asked him he was put off by such severe measures.
The Young Drifting Prince said to me, “If life were not such a blessing, agreeing to it would feel like a devil’s bargain.”
A few days later, I heard he flipped his Honda in a high speed police chase. He did not die right away. I should’ve known it was never about winning anything.
Kenan Meral’s work has also appeared in Expat Press and Fugitives & Futurists. He is the author of the novel Stigma of the Living Flesh.