The reason for this passport confiscation is of course control and power. When my father was dying in 2011 I told my boss I was going to the UK to see him. I didn't ask him, I told him, and I'd already bought a ticket and had a multi-entry visa permanently on stand-by in my passport with which I defied the government by keeping with me. Once the guy in the office asked why I had kept my passport for so long and so I told him to look at whose name was in that document and whose photo does it show. No way on earth would the Asian labourers be able to do the same. I remember a story surfacing of an African shepherd who had not gone home for 18 years. Neither had he been paid during that time. His passport in his employers dirty hands.
That evening my boss used an adjunct to call me and tell me that I can't go to see my dying father because I had work. I told the adjunct to tell my boss that I quit. He phoned back 30 minutes later to issue me a grovelling apology and the next morning at work before I flew that evening my boss said, "You're father is my father."
"No, he fucking isn't," I thought and gave him a lengthy cold stare.
Then he asked the key question, "Do you have your passport?"
"Yep," I replied, fully aware that if it was still with the Passport Department who so kindly look after it for us, then he wouldn't have let them give me a visa and I'd have been stuck in Saudi. About a month or so later the boss went off to some distant cousin's funeral for a week and a half.
Not only does the employer take our passports for 'safekeeping' but my employer stuck a fucking great government sticker on it as if to usurp the nationality on the front. I spent a good hour the other night peeling the fucker off. This photo is the easy-to-peel stage ...
I pray I never again see a KSA stamp in my little red travel book.