Saudi Arabia in 1953

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Saudi Arabia in 1953
It was August, 1953. We left New York in an ARAMCO airplane, a DC4, which landed at Goose Bay before continuing on a 17 hr. flight across the Atlantic. ARAMCO stands for the Arabian American Oil Company. With the exception of a few wives on their way to join their husbands, the passengers, mostly men, were on their way to jobs in Saudi Arabia. I was one of four single women, two of whom were going to secretarial jobs. My seatmate Jeanine, like myself, was going to teach the children of Aramco’s employees. Jeanine was a beauty who could have doubled for Elizabeth Taylor.
The flight seemed interminable in the cabin filled with cigarette smoke that made it difficult to sleep, but sunrise came soon. Finally, we found ourselves looking down over the green rolling hills of Ireland, and soon after, we landed in Amsterdam. After spending the night in Amsterdam, we continued on to Rome, where we stopped for a spaghetti meal at the airport, then on to Beirut for a 3 am breakfast, also at the airport. It was still dark when we took off for Dhahran. I had never seen a desert, and, as the sun came up, kept looking out the window, eager for my first glimpse of the white sand dunes I expected. To my disappointment, solid pale yellow clouds blocked the view. A man stopped by and asked, “What do you think of it?”
“I wish those clouds would clear so I could see the desert,” I replied.
He smiled. “You’re looking at it. Those are not clouds. They are sand dunes.”
Finally, we were circling for a landing. Now, for the first time, as I watched the desolate treeless landscape below, I wondered if signing a two-year contract had been a mistake. Disembarking did not improve my misgivings. We had arrived in a shamall, the Arab word for north wind. This is a hot nearly hurricane force wind loaded with sand, which blows for days at a time, during which the sun looks like the moon. We hurried into a barn-like corrugated steel building to pass through customs. The inspectors were Arabs, wearing loose ankle-length white garments. Their heads were covered with red and white checked gutras (scarves) held there by a headband. Underneath was a skull cap known as a a kaffiya, which helped keep the gutra in place. As we waited to have our luggage inspected we had our first encounter with Arabian flies, a particularly persistent type which does not shoo. I tried in vain to shoo one that had landed on my leg under my skirt. They stick tight, which makes them easy to swat, but ten will come to take the place of the dead one. The men who worked on the desert told us it was often difficult to eat lunch without getting a fly or two in a mouthful of food.
Customs cleared, our luggage was loaded in a car and the four women were driven over paved road past some sick palm trees, evidently an unsuccessful attempt to improve the bleak appearance of the American air base. As we passed by the desert dunes, where small herds of goats nibbled on sparse dry-looking plants, we noticed the air smelled of sulphur. Flames flickered from the oil wells, burning off the excess gas. Though it is common to see camels, there were none in sight that first day. We checked into Dhahran at an arched gate, the only entrance to the Aramco camp, and drove along King’s Road, a wide street, down which I was later to watch King Saud pass, between crowds of employees released from their jobs to welcome him on a visit. Here there were trees, lawns, hibiscus and other colorful flowering plants. Pleasant-looking homes looked much like those in a small town in America.
The community housed about 5000 people and was approximately a mile square. The view outside the wall was of nothing but sand dunes, but inside, it was green, kept that way by constant watering. The whole community was cooled (or heated which was necessary during the brief mild winter) from one central air-conditioner which pumped cool or warm air into all the buildings. The temperature was kept at about 80 to 85, which felt cool, even cold after the 100 plus temperature outside. We were warned not to lie down for a nap without a cover to avoid an AC cold which almost everyone caught soon after arrival. New employees stayed in pre-fab wooden dormitories imported from Sweden, and called “barastis,” an Arabic word for house. Eight women shared a barasti with a central bathroom, four bedrooms, and a fifth that served for trunk storage and sitting room. I shared a room with Jean, one of the women who had come along on the same plane. The other two, including my companion on the plane, went on to Ras Tanura, one of the two other ARAMCO communities, the only one on the shore of the Persian Gulf, where there was a refinery and piers for loading tankers.
All of us needed a rest after the long plane trip. As I napped, the wind howled outside. Air conditioning in US homes was not common in the ‘50s, and it felt cold. The instinct, when I wanted to go outside was to put on a sweater because wind is expected to be cold. It was a strange feeling to step outside into a hot wind. Except in December and January, I customarily carried a sweater to put on when I entered an air-conditioned building, not when I left it. Free transit buses made regular stops so that it would not be necessary to walk, but I seldom used the bus because I enjoyed the respite from the chilly AC.
There were other adjustments to be made. As yet, American women were not required to wear the abaya, the head-to-foot tentlike black veil all Arab women must wear. We were asked not to wear shorts, slacks, sun-back dresses, or short sleeve blouses. High fences hid the tennis courts and Olympic-size pool from Arab eyes, allowing shorts or swimsuits in these areas. We appreciated the privileges we had. While the Arab women must remain out of sight in their homes behind curtains, America women who accompanied their husbands or male friends on a visit to an Arab home, were often permitted to sit down (usually on the floor or ground) with the men and share in the tea that was passed around. The Arab women could be seen peeking through the curtain, and, of course, American women were allowed to enter the harem to visit. Arab women have beautiful Semitic features and lovely dark eyes often enhanced with mascara. What a shame that such beauty must be hidden from all but their family and other women.
On visits, tea or coffee was served in small hour-glass shaped glasses. Often, there were not enough of these to go around, so the guest would drink and return his glass to the host, who would “clean” the glass by dipping some sand from the floor, shaking it out; then fill it and hand it to another guest. One did not insult the host by refusing the first drink offered, but a second was the guest’s choice. A third offering should not be accepted as it is a hint that it is time to leave.
American styles at the time were for calf-length full skirts, which made it possible for us to ride a donkey or a camel. I wore a scarf for practical reasons when I went outside our camp. Modern sanitation facilities were still rare and animals wandered the Arab streets, where the wind blew a lot, so a scarf was needed to keep the blowing dirt out of my hair. Women were not allowed to drive, and this applied to American women as well, but ARAMCO provided free buses to the nearby Arab town of Al Khobar and to the other two communities of Ras Tanura and Abqaiq, the furthest from the gulf. The paved roads were limited to those going to Al Khobar and linking the three ARAMCO settlements. Keeping them clear of “walking” sand dunes was a constant battle, by placing oil on them to hold the sand down against the wind. The buses drove slowly using low gears, and stopped at prayer time so the driver could lay out his prayer rug on the sand for his devotions. The streets of Al Khobar were still unpaved, and with the exception of a small two-story department store, the shops were single-room open to the street, and were not specialized as we are accustomed to in our western world. On my first trip to Al Khobar, I was looking for two extension cords. When I found one, I asked for the second, only to be told that was the only one in stock. Until I learned some Arabic, shopping was complicated unless I was lucky enough to have a companion who knew some Arabic.
It might seem that a small community in the middle of a vast desert would be too confining. For this reason, vacations were generous - two to three months after every two years with a two week vacation in the year between. Referred to as the long vacation and the short vacation, passage was paid to the US for the long and to Beirut for the short, which was to give us respite from the isolation. In fact, after the first shock, I enjoyed life in this community. There were far more choices for leisure time activities than in most American small towns, so boredom was not a problem. Contact with a culture so different from our own was exciting. Arabic lessons were offered free and adjusted to our time needs. They were kept to seven or less students with an Arab teacher, who taught us phrases, parrot style, speaking the phrase to each in turn. The student then repeated it and his pronunciation was corrected. When a few phrases were learned, conversations began.
ARAMCO’s children were taught through the ninth grade in had a year-round school, with approximately a month between each three months of regular school, during which some students could be tutored, including those who had missed some school while on a long vacation. This worked well, and most of our students scored high on achievement tests. Students were sent to Beirut for the last two years of high school. There were 24 children in my fourth grade class. I began as I usually did after a vacation, by asking the children to write a short essay on how they spent their vacations. I was not prepared for the essays these children wrote, especially those just back from the long vacation. One described the pyramids, another the Greek Acropolis. One boy had been to India. At their young age, they had already seen much more of the world than I had.
Because the Muslim holy day is Friday, our weekends were Thursday and Friday. Work and school started on Saturday and ended on Wednesday. During Ramadan, when Muslims must forego both food and water from sunrise to sunset, the work hours are shortened. Arabs are not given a choice of religion. Attendance at the Mosque on Friday is compulsory as are Ramadan and other observances ordered in the Koran. Christians are the only foreigners of a different religion permitted in the country.
The ancient walled town of Hofuf, I was told, is the third oldest continually inhabited city in the world. The first is Damascus, the second Baghdad. I will continue by describing a visit to this city which gave the impression of traveling back in time over 2000 years.

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