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
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