Love in the streets of Jeddah: How one public display of affection went viral

Social media photo taken by Abdullah Bakhashwain.

JEDDAH: Love knows no limits — it is an adage that was proven in Jeddah this week as an unknown person confessed love for their significant other by writing on the sidewalk of a well-known street in the city.
Some people may choose roses, jewelry or even chocolate, but this loved-up individual decided to write the words “4 ever I love you” in red and white lettering on Tahlia street.
The display of affection was met with a municipal cleaning team, who were dispatched by Jeddah Municipality to clean away the message.
Twitter user Abdullah Bakhashwain, who works in a telecommunications company, shared photos of the love note, prompting the images to go viral with 4,000 retweets.
Some social media users were less than impressed and criticized the message as an act of vandalism.
Others, however, found the move heartwarming and encouraged people to voice their love for their significant others.
Meanwhile, some Twitter users lamented the municipality’s prompt clean-up of the message despite what they claim is a poor track record when it comes to maintaining some of Jeddah’s streets.
“An entire municipality team arrived in a timely manner to remove writing on the sidewalk. I wonder how long it would take if it was an open sewage or a damaged sidewalk,” Twitter user Asem Helmi commented on the original post.
Some even went so far as to joke that they would also scrawl messages on the street in order to catch the authorities’ attention.
“I will do the same thing tomorrow, starting from my neighborhood,” user Majed Alqahtani jokingly tweeted.