A Meeting of Cultures

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Adapting to the Arab custom of napping at midday, Aramco had a two hour lunch break. Americans working outside the fence close enough to return home for lunch needed to pass through the single gate into our fenced community. In my dormitory was a nurse who had been in Dhahran during the early years. She told of the public executions that were staged just outside the gate at noon, making those passing through a captive audience. Theft was punished by cutting off the hand of the offender. The blood was stanched by thrusting the stump into sand. She told of standing by to substitute sanitary treatment and binding for the sand treatment. Someone convinced the Arab authorities not to use this site for executions, and the gruesome show stopped long before I arrived there, but it was a strong argument against reporting thefts to the Arab police. Our white sheets and underwear hanging on the clotheslines were a strong temptation, and I was warned to watch my laundry. Fortunately the frequent hot wind was as quick as an electric dryer. If we had something stolen and knew the culprit, we could report it to Aramco security, which would result in the barring of the thief from the colony and the consequent loss of his job.

One day, as I stepped outside, I found the air full of locusts. This was the first and only locust swarm I saw in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else. As I walked through the school halls that morning, I kept hearing a popping sound. Our school had a crew of several Arab janitors. Another teacher told me that the Arabs eat locusts. The janitors had filled paper bags with them on their way to work and were storing them in the closets until they could take them home. The popping sound came from insects flying against the sides of the bags. Locusts were considered a delicacy, adding meat to a diet consisting mostly of rice, dates, goat or camel’s milk and cheese. The locusts can be eaten raw, on the spot, after pulling off the wings or roasted later. Also, desert rats of the kangaroo variety and thubs or large lizards about 3 to 4 feet long, were prized if they could be caught. No, I never sampled any of these delicacies. I was, however, invited by the parents of one of my students, along with several other guests, to a roast gazelle dinner after my host had returned from a hunting expedition. I found it tasty. I never saw gazelles or the larger oryx in the wild, but Aramco maintained a small “zoo” where some of the native animals could be seen. The gazelle was a small antelope with straight spiraled horns, close together. The larger oryx also had straight horns so close together that, at a distance, it appeared to be one horn. This animal is believed to be the source of the unicorn myth.
I have read that the gazelle has been hunted to extinction, and the oryx can now be found only in captivity.
In November, after I arrived in August, the old King Saud died and was succeeded by the crown prince, also called Saud. Some time after this, the new king came to visit Dhahran. Arches were put up along King’s Road to prepare for the event and a holiday was planned for that day. We lined up along the road to welcome King Saud as he entered with his large family and retinue, all dressed in their finest. The flowing Arab clothing is dramatic. A fealty ceremony was set up in front of the gate, and we were invited to watch. The king, surrounded by a few men of importance, probably his brother Faisal, whom I would not have recognized, and some of his closest sons, stood on a platform shaded by a canopy. Square head bands over white gutras (scarves) identified men of importance. Each approached in turn and spoke. The king then embraced and kissed the man. There was no bowing or kneeling. Muslims, I believe, bow only to Allah. The king then spoke to those gathered for the ceremony.

One of the stories I was told about the early days in Dhahran was that the American ladies, wanting to have an event for which they could dress up, planned a luncheon. This was handled by the dining hall staff of Arab cooks and waiters managed by a Swiss chef. The ladies all showed up in their best dresses with stockings, heels, hats, and gloves. Try to imagine how heels and hats would have appeared to Arabs accustomed only to women in long black veils. The chef reported that they were laughing so hard, he had trouble keeping them at work. Word of this must have reached the king because he expressed a desire to meet the ladies in Dhahran. A reception was planned. The Arab equivalent of the formal English How do you do is ahalon wa sahalon with the h’s strongly pronounced. I found it an especially hard phrase to pronounce, so practiced it in advance. When the day came, we all dressed up for it. We found a long reception line made up of men also dressed to the hilt in their finest, with jeweled sword belts and hilts, golden daggers, looking very serious, some almost fierce. As we filed by this fine array of handsomely dressed men, no one attempted a conversation. The clear purpose was to satisfy our mutual curiosity about each other, so they looked at us and we looked at them with undisguised interest. When I reached the king, he shook my hand and I said, “Ahalon wa sahalon”. He replied, “How do you do.”

At a later time, the king’s sons decided they wanted to see our American school. We were told there would be about forty of them of all ages from boys to grown men, and they would visit each class. There were thirty children in my classroom. I warned my third graders of the visit, not knowing how such a large group of visitors would affect them. I need not have worried about this. Most of my students had traveled extensively with their parents and were accustomed to adjusting to unusual situations. When the princes arrived, the class was working on an arithmetic exercise. The room quickly filled with curious boys and men who closely examined the children’s work. I must explain that because of the intense glare of the desert sun, nearsightedness is common among the Arabs. Sometimes a grown man, wanting to see what was on the paper in front of a student, actually put his head between the student’s face and his desk. After a while, one of the men, who appeared to lead the group, said they would like to hear the children read, so I asked them to open their readers, and selected one of my best oral readers. As Kenny read, he was interrupted by the prince. “I can read, too,” he told the class. He spoke in English to the class for a while, after which the group moved on, leaving thirty children and their teacher with a once-in-a-lifetime memory.

A postscript to this: It might seem strange for a grown man to announce to children that he could read. First, if he meant he could read the books they were reading, this would mean he not only spoke English but had mastered an alphabet unlike his own. Second, many people in Saudi Arabia did not have the opportunity to learn to read at that time. I believe Arabic is more difficult to learn to read than English or other Romance languages. After I had completed all the spoken Arabic classes offered, I decided to try a class in reading it. Of course, an Arab learning to read would have the advantage of familiarity with Arabic from infancy, but I learned of difficulties not encountered by students of English. The vowels are missing from the written language except in dictionaries and primers. The vowels appear in these books as diacritical marks appear in English dictionaries. Because of the structure of Arabic words, they are listed in the dictionary by roots rather than alphabetically. The ability to read Arabic, therefore, is an accomplishment to be proud of, one of which I cannot boast because I learned only a few basics before ceasing the effort.

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