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EDITOR'S NOTE
This article appeared
in The Daily Star on June 26, 2004 and is reprinted here with
permission of the author.
The
Saudi Arabia
that I
Remember
By John R. Bradley |
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If
it bleeds, it leads. So the infamous journalism cliche has it.
And since there has been a lot of blood spilled in recent weeks
in Saudi Arabia, that
inevitably is what has been screaming from the headlines.
However,
we should pause briefly to put things into perspective,
especially to counter the entirely negative image of the kingdom
that now seems to have been adopted by those who have no direct
experience of it.
The
kingdom is, we are told, a hotbed of religious fanaticism. Many
of its people, we hear, hate foreigners and unconditionally
support Osama bin Laden. There is some truth to that. But there
is another side to the life and people there, which represents
the best Islamic traditions of generosity, kindness and
hospitality. And during the nearly three years I spent living
and traveling throughout Saudi Arabia, from its remotest cities
to its most inaccessible mountainous areas, it was that other
side that was overwhelmingly in evidence.
Recent
particulars come to mind. In Sakaka, a small city in the north
near the Iraqi border, I arrived early for an appointment. The
secretary at the office, after finding out that I did not have a
car to get back to my hotel, handed over the keys to his own.
Minutes later, I was driving through the city's streets,
overwhelmed by an act of instinctive kindness that would perhaps
now be unimaginable in any other part of the world.
In
Riyadh, I could not
find the offices of Al-Watan newspaper, nor could the taxi
driver, so we stopped to ask the way from a Saudi in his 30s who
had parked by the side of the road. He called a friend, who gave
him the number of someone else, who was able to give directions
to where the office was. The Saudi then told me to get in beside
him, and we drove in silence for 15 minutes before he dropped me
off. Then he was on his way again, almost before I had a chance
to say thank you.
In
the mountains of Asir in the southwest of Saudi Arabia, when I took
a wrong turn in my four-wheel drive and ended up on the edge of
a cliff, I was concerned to discover that I had ended up in the
yard of a small brick house, literally in the middle of nowhere.
This also happened to be the region the majority of the Saudi
hijackers involved in the
Sept. 11,
2001
attacks had
come from. Stephen Schwartz, an American writer, has never
visited the kingdom, but in his book Two Faces of Islam, he endorsed a historical description of its people
as "barbarians."
Well,
it may interest Schwartz to know that the "barbarians"
who emerged from the brick hut were two little boys who had
flowers and herbs woven intricately into their hair -- part of
the region's tribes known as "flower men" as a result
of that charming habit. It quickly became evident that they had
never seen a Westerner before; but they were all smiles and
hellos, until their father arrived. He, too, emanated perfume
made from local flowers, and was also sporting a splendid floral
display in his hair. He pointed the way out of the mountain,
which entailed driving for 20 minutes through a stream. But when
a Saudi in such circumstances tells you something, you
implicitly have trust that you are being helped.
And
so, a short while later, I was back on the goat track,
contemplating how you go into the heart of alleged "bandit
country" and encounter the unconditional assistance of boys
and men heavily into flower power.
With
the beheading of American Paul Johnson last week and the violent
acts against foreigners that preceded it, things have changed,
perhaps forever. The bonds of trust that existed between guests
who made the effort to get to know Saudi culture and those local
Saudis who had the time and inclination to welcome the
foreigners into their midst have been undermined, perhaps
irreparably.
I
admit it: If a Saudi offered me a ride in his car today in Riyadh, I would
probably decline. But I would still much prefer to spend an
evening sitting with my Saudi friends on Jeddah's corniche,
smoking a hubbly-bubbly and feeling the gentle wind on our
faces, to sitting in a New York
cafe with
people who spend their days posting messages of hate about Saudi Arabia
and Arabs on
anti-Muslim websites.
One
ray of hope was given by Johnson's courageous family, which
released a statement after news of his death was confirmed,
recalling: "He considered Saudi Arabia
his
home," and "loved the people and the country."
They also knew, a family spokesman added, that "this act of
terrorism was committed by extremists, and does not represent
the Saudi
Arabia
that Paul
often spoke and wrote about to his family."
Many
of those of us who have lived in Saudi Arabia, and feel
lucky to have Saudi friends, feel the same way.
John
R. Bradley (www.johnrbradley.com),
formerly managing editor of Arab News, Jeddah, is author of a
forthcoming book, "
Saudi
Arabia
Exposed: Princes, Paupers & Politics in the
Wahhabi
Kingdom
."
He wrote this commentary for The
Daily Star.
John
R. Bradley was the only permanent, accredited Western
journalist in Saudi Arabia from before the September 11, 2001
attacks on New York and Washington until after Al-Qaeda’s two
Riyadh bombings in May and November last year. He traveled
extensively in Saudi Arabia: from the mountains of Asir in the
southwest to the remote northern city of Sakaka; from the
oil-rich Eastern Province to Najran on the Yemeni border.
He is a former managing editor of the Jeddah-based Arab
News, which The New York Times has called "the
pre-eminent English-language daily in the Middle East;" and
a former senior editor at Al-Ahram
Weekly in Cairo.
He was educated at
University College London,
Dartmouth
College in the United States and
Exeter
College, Oxford; and he has studied Arabic intensively at
language schools in Morocco, Egypt and Yemen. His
travel/cultural guides to Iraq and Saudi Arabia appear in The
Lonely Planet Guide to the Middle East.
Click
here for
more information about the author.
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