David A Andelman's Blogs
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Primacy of Faith
The sprawling, marble-lined, four-level Al-Faisaliah mall in the heart of the Saudi capital is a ghost-town shortly after 6 o’clock on a recent Wednesday evening. The discreet sign on the locked front door of Harvey Nichols, the local branch of the luxury English department store, reads, “We will reopen after prayers.” Gates are drawn closed on a host of high-end boutiques, even the fast-food stalls in the food court—Subway, Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s. The only signs of life are flocks of women, concealed in flowing black rayon from the tops of their heads to the bottoms of their Manolo Blahniks, that can be seen peeping from beneath their abayas when they walk. In most cases, only their eyes twinkle through the slits as they twitter and flit from group to group. They are awaiting the return of their...
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Paranoia, or We’re Surrounded!
The fear is widespread, unspoken, and tinged with an indomitable measure of hope. It revolves around the succession of leadership in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—a nation that has managed, thus far, to avoid the bloody revolutions of so many other Middle Eastern countries ruled by despots who have held their people in varying degrees of servitude. “Today we have an enlightened monarch,” says one young Saudi filmmaker. “But the next in line is nothing like his older brother.” He refers, of course, to the current ruler, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques—the 90-year-old 10th son of this nation’s founder, King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud. Abdullah, still the first generation after Ibn Saud, is by most accounts an enlightened ruler. But such a reputation is in no sense shared with...
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Moving Down
Feras got married last year and now, within the next year he, his wife, and the new child they hope soon to be on the way, will be in the market for their first house. They are not alone. Millions of Saudis will soon be nearing the age of family creation and home ownership. The problem is that many, if not most, of them won’t be able to afford it. Saudi Arabia is well into the core of its baby boom. While the United States’ baby boomers are nearing retirement, here in Saudi Arabia, three decades after the start of the American boom, they are just beginning to come of age in their own right. But the problems of the Saudi middle class are perhaps the most profound facing the aging regime of the princes who rule this, the wealthiest of the...
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The More Things Change…
It takes five or six passes before the four lights blinked green for the four fingers of my right hand, then the four fingers of my left, then my two thumbs. Smile for the camera. A flash. And I am into Saudi Arabia. Printed and mugged at Riyadh Airport—only the first of many changes since my last visit here six years ago, this innovation no doubt tit-for-tat reciprocity for the similar treatment Saudis are encountering on their arrival in America. The road in from Riyadh’s airport, itself beginning to look just a trifle down-at-the heels, is flashy and new—eight lanes, straight as a drag strip. And the only reason it hasn’t become a challenge for young swells here in this land of 40-cents-a-gallon gas, are the flash lights at unseen control points, drivers slamming on their brakes...
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