IT WAS ONE of those wonderful mornings at the end of summer when the intense heat has waned and the pristine blue of the sky arches uncluttered into space. Standing near the clock tower across the street from the open square in front of Riyadh's main mosque, I was watching the scene on the street, drinking in my surroundings. It was just before the noon prayer call. Men on their way to the mosque streamed in front of me. I gazed at the passing parade of worshipers as they hurried along, some fingering their plastic prayer beads, others crossing and uncrossing the ends of their gutras in absent gestures as they walked. Abruptly, my attention focused on one man in the crowd. Re was dressed like all the rest, in sandals and a white thobe. But beneath the sheer white gutra held in place by the familiar black agal was a moon-shaped face with yellow skin, Mongoloid features, and a thin, scraggly beard hanging from the tip of his chin. In all of his physical characteristics he was Chinese. Only his clothing identified him as a Saudi.

There is in Saudi Arabia a segment of the population, its size undetermined by any official or even vaguely accurate count, that is non- Arab. It is composed primarily of immigrants from Africa, some former slaves, and hajjis who carne to Mecca on the pilgrimage and never left again. The man who caught my attention so forcefully was probably a descendant of Chinese Moslems who have lived in the kingdom for unknown generations and who stay segregated in their own community. While sharing the Saudis' religion and dress, this man, like all non-Arabs, would always remain outside of the Saudi social and political system, which is structured on the ancient tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. Although Saudi Arabia's population is a Heterogeneous mix from the five great geographic areas, the Rijaz, the Assir, the al-Hassa, the north, and the Nejd, a true Saudi is an Arab inextricably bound to an ancient past, with his heritage, and his whole sense of being, tied to the pure Arab's desert culture. As I traveled through the major topographical areas of Saudi Arabia, it became clear that each of the various regions had taken on its own special characteristics in the broader context of Arab culture.

The Western Province, or the Hijaz, runs north and south along the Red Sea and west to the escarpment that rises up to the plateau of Saudi Arabia's interior. Containing the port of Jeddah and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the Hijaz has always been influenced by foreign cultures and is one of only a few limited areas in Saudi Arabia ever subject to foreign domination. As the gateway for the hajj, Jeddah early developed into a commercial center that attracted immigrants from across the peninsula. Along with the pilgrims who remained after the haji, they settled into the ethnic mosaic of the western coastal area. Geographically included in the Hijaz is the Tihama, the coastal low lands southwest of Jeddah. Here descendants of Africans migrating from east Africa have all but taken the Tihama from the Arab population. Everything I saw in the Tihama was distinct - the colorful clothing, the thatch roof dwellings, and the absence of repressive religion. Government policy, backed by a visible military presence, tries unsuccessfully to confine the Africans to the lowland plains and away from the Arab population. But their presence in all parts of Saudi Arabia continues to grow. African women are hawkers on Riyadh's streets, men are personal servants to well-to-do Saudis, and the most infamous person in Riyadh, the public executioner, is an enormous black man. 

In the mountains south of the Rijaz is the Assir, culturally a part of Yemen but annexed to Saudi Arabia by Abdul Aziz. Its topography is startlingly different from the rest of Saudi Arabia. Rugged mountains covered with pine trees rise from the coastal plain. Even in the hottest part of summer, its high altitude keeps the climate delightfully cool, so much so that from early June until mid-October, the royal family moves to the mountain city of Taif, taking the government with them. There they race their horses in the late afternoon, eat the abundant agricultural produce of the area, and hold the native Yemenis at a safe distance. 

Across the peninsula from Taif is the flat, intensely humid Eastern Province, or the al-Hassa. The area was once known for its palm groves and pearling industry, but oil is now its primary output. All of Saudi Arabia's proven petroleum reserves are located in the al-Hassa and the adjacent Rub al-Khali. Because of its economic importance, the al Hassa has a vibrancy absent in other parts of Saudi Arabia. When I carne to the kingdom, the al-Hassa, almost as a symbol of its vibrancy, was aflame with flared gas from hundreds of wells producing seven million barrels of oil a day. I remember riding the train across the flat, gray sands of the coastal plain and seeing the energy of Saudi Arabia freely burning into the skies while the world begged for its oil. Today, in a new statement of the al-Hassa's importance, that gas is collected for use in the petrochemical industry at Jubail. 

Like any coastal area, the al-Hassa has traditionally been exposed to the diverse lifestyles of townsmen, farmers, fishermen, and desert nomads who wander in and out in search of grazing lands. In addition, the Eastern Province, more than any area of Saudi Arabia, has felt the impact of change brought on by the birth of the oil industry in 1938. The oil industry has, in fact, made such inroads into the traditional way of life that in the al-Hassa tribal patterns have crumbled and the past is very difficult to study. 

Arching across the vacant northern frontier of Saudi Arabia, connecting the Hijaz with the al-Hassa, are the provinces of Jawf, Hail, and the Northern Frontier. The north is actually an extension of the Syrian desert, where the sparse grass, steppe vegetation, and numerous wadis provide support for nomadic and semi nomadic people. There is an atmosphere in this high, empty area broken by ranges of low hills that somehow always made me feel terribly alone. Perhaps it is be cause the north is alone. It is the beneficiary of neither ports, produce, petroleum, nor political power. Hail, one of its few sizable towns, remains a stronghold of Arab tradition and serves only as the gateway to the geographical and political center of Saudi Arabia, the Nejd. 

The Nejd, lying on a plateau that rises between the two coasts, is the heartland of Saudi Arabia. As the tribal homeland of the royal family, the Nejd is the political center of the kingdom. The al-Saud dynasty began in the vast oasis of Diriyah, an area lush enough to sustain life through the intense summer heat. The numerous springs and extensive date palm groves supported settled agricultural communities whose populations far outnumbered that of the nomads. The townsmen and the nomads of the Nejd are descended from mixed northern and southern Arabian stock. Their remoteness from the non Arab immigrants of the coastal areas resulted in a purity of race matched nowhere else on the peninsula. The haughty Nejdis regard themselves as the aristocrats of the Arab race, the pious and conservative protectors of Arab ideals. People, ideas, lifestyles - everything outside of their own communities traditionally is regarded as impious, impure, and infidel. Until the 1970s, the Nejd to a remarkable extent succeeded in shutting out alien influences. Righteous and secure, they were con tent until the foreigners arrived, drawing a reluctant people into the world. 

Regionalism, reinforced by decades of rule by separate entities or no government at all, created social and cultural gaps between the various regions of the Arabian Peninsula. But none of these divisions is as great as the chasm that exists between the ways of the townspeople and the ways of the desert dwellers. The arrogance of the town Arab is exceeded only by the arrogance of the nomads. Yet I found in the nomads the same purity of spirit and intense independence that has immortalized them throughout the centuries. Their ability to reject all that threatens to entrap them and to endure with equanimity the brutality of the desert is what captured the imagination of Westerners like T. E. Lawrence and Pasha Glubb (Sir John Bagot Glubb). Although often irritated by the town Arab's assumption of superior airs, I found it fascinating to watch the nomad with even more offensive manners challenge any man who dared stand in his way. It was as if he knew that his ideals still hover in the heart of every Saudi. 

The legendarily tough and fiercely independent nomads of the Arabian Peninsula are called Bedouins, a French derivative of an Arabic word meaning "an inhabitant of the desert." For centuries the Bedouins alone dominated the vast, empty wasteland of the Arabian Peninsula. Through civilization after civilization, it was the Bedouin with his superhuman ability to survive who not only controlled but characterized the desert. 

Nowhere in the world was there such a continuity as in the Arabian desert. Here Semitic nomads . . . must have herded their flocks before the Pyramids were built or the Flood wiped out all traces of man in the Euphrates valley. Successive civilizations rose and fell around the desert's edge: . . . Egypt of the Pharaohs; Sumeria, Babylonia, Assyria; the Hebrews, the Phoenicians; Greeks and Romans; the Persians; the Muslim Empire of the Arabs, and finally the Turks. They lasted a few hundred or a thousand years and vanished; new races were evolved and later disappeared; religions rose and fell; men changed, adapting them- selves to a changing world; but in the desert the nomad tribes lived on, the pattern of their lives but little changed over this enormous span of time.* 

The Bedouin lived on almost nothing. What meager cash he did scrape together came from transporting goods across the desert or selling camels to those who did. Camels were the mainstay of the Bedouin. They were transport, commerce, and, when they died, food. Uniquely suited to the desert, a camel could go without water for five days in summer and twenty-five in winter. For its owners, it provided milk for food, dung for fuel, and urine for hair tonic or a bath to keep the flies away from the baby. The Bedouins survived the ravages of nature in tents woven by the women from the odorous hair of family goats. Meat from their sheep was the staple of their diet. To increase their life-sustaining herds, tribe raided tribe under sacred rules that spoke of medieval forms of fidelity and warfare. * * They had nothing except a great sneering pride in who they were. 

And then it all changed within a few short years. The Bedouins became victims of mechanization. After the First World War, the products of technology - cars, airplanes, and radio - undermined the Bedouins' advantage in the desert. No longer could a Bedouin tribe stage a raid against those who sought to control it and then disappear unparsed into the desert. No longer were the Bedouin tribes able to blackmail governments for their good behavior, levy tolls on travelers, or extract tributes from villages. But above all, mechanical transport destroyed the Bedouin economy. No longer was there any demand for their only cash crop, camels. Yet the Bedouins still survive. Continuing to live in tightly knit groups of family and tribe, they drift in and out of Saudi Arabia's towns and cities, an object of public scorn. 

For centuries in hundreds of towns such as al-Hotghat, the mud walled settlement in Wadi Hanifa, the town Arabs were traders whose only contact with the Bedouins was in pursuit of commerce. In the coffee houses, there was endless ridicule of the Bedouin for everything he did, including the way he prayed. Yet the emotional intensity of the desert nomad irrefutably imposed its ideals on the towns. Urbanized Saudis look back on the Bedouin and endow him with almost super human traits that transform him into an idealized giant. But at the same time, Saudis of the city, especially the young and educated, delight in poking fun at the Bedouin, especially in the presence of a Westerner, and claim that they themselves never step foot outside the limits of the city. In the age of petroleum, the Bedouin is both the archetypal hero and comic buffoon of Saudi society. This conflicting set of attitudes, the Bedouin as hero and the Bedouin as fool, is another of the many conflicts within the Saudi psyche. Psychologically, the Bedouin rep resents to the present-day Saudi what the Western cowboy folk hero represents to an American. And like Americans, the Saudis have created from the Bedouin, idealized as a desert warrior, a powerful prototype that influences their value system and their patterns of behavior. No matter how much the various geographic regions of Saudi Arabia may differ or how far a Saudi is removed from the desert, the Bedouin ethos is the bedrock of the culture. 

*Wi1fred Thesiger, Arabian Sands (New York. E. P. Dutton, 1959), pp.77-78. 

**The system of chivalry is believed by some to have been carried to Europe from the Arabs during the crusades. 

Just how many Bedouins are left in Saudi Arabia is an open question. A study done in the early 1980s suggested that perhaps 5 percent of the Saudi population remains wholly nomadic. But this figure is grossly misleading. A Bedouin can no longer be defined by a nomadic lifestyle. The demarcation line between the sedentary and the nomadic population is fluid, for the Bedouins themselves can be nomadic, semi- nomadic, or settled. It is the strength of the Bedouin mentality that is important for the classification of a Saudi as Bedouin or a town Arab rather than the way he lives. Under this criterion, the Bedouins constitute a significant part of the Saudi population. 

How well have the Bedouins adjusted to the age of development in Saudi Arabia? There are Bedouins working in the oil fields, in business, and in the bureaucracy, and there are Bedouins still herding camels. There are Bedouins living in the heart of Riyadh and there are Bedouins still living in tents. Most Western academicians claim that the Bedouins have not adapted well to modernization, are trapped between their traditional past and the unknown future, and survive economically on government handouts. On one level all this is true. The Bedouins have been deeply affected by modernization. There is an ongoing struggle to merge the material benefits of modernization with the Bedouins' traditional lifestyle. Although they travel by plane now, the Bedouins still have a nomadic attitude about the amount and kinds of luggage they carry. When a Bedouin gets on an airplane, he checks battered suitcases, cardboard boxes, and his bedroll As compartment luggage, he carries a cloth sack filled with food and his portable cooking stove. 

For those Bedouins who still choose to live in tents, the clutter of development has moved into their camps. Before the oil boom, a nomadic family's Spartan belongings consisted of coffee pots, cooking utensils, some rugs on which to sleep, and a few articles of extra clothing. The Bedouin family now has sewing machines, radios, insulated coolers, aluminum cots, and garishly painted tin trunks imported from Yemen. Abandoned campsites are no longer marked by the blackened stones of the campfire but are littered with punctured tires, empty oil drums, plastic bags, and rusting tin cans. 

But on another level, the Bedouin psyche is less torn by development than that of the town Arabs. The Bedouins are so secure in their perception of themselves that they have an amazing ability to accept the things they choose from development and reject the rest. Every day I saw Bedouins manipulate their environment to suit their desires. A graphic example of this occurred along one of the valleys west of Riyadh. As we crested a rise on the roadless desert, Dan was forced to swerve our Nissan Patrol sharply left to avoid a dump truck creeping up the other side. Below, an army of trucks and heavy earth-moving equipment was loudly chewing at the desert floor between massive steel towers that would carry high power lines to villages throughout the valley. In the midst of all this construction activity, a lone figure stood serenely. It was a Bedouin, his leathery feet stuck in traditional sandals, his ragged gutra dropping down the back of his loose, soiled thobe, his staff clutched in his horny hand. Oblivious to the noise around him, he stood watch over his flock of Nejdi sheep, pulling at the spotty vegetation that had survived the onslaught of progress. 

Of all the Saudis, the Bedouins are the least willing to interact with Westerners. There was seldom any banter between Bedouins and Westerners in the souqs. and Bedouin camps in the desert were armed fortresses closed to outsiders. Yet even if the Bedouins refused to accept foreigners. they did accept the most advanced medical treatment as a matter of course. One of the most interesting aspects of being associated with the tertiary care center for Saudi Arabia was seeing the cross-section of people who came through the hospital. Every day I could observe the Bedouins interacting with modernization on the most personal level. I often saw veiled women, their hands patterned and painted with henna, abaayas covering their loudly striped polyester dresses, squatting outside the door of the x-ray department, waiting for a CT scan. But it was the time I spent in an isolated Bedouin camp to celebrate a tribal member's recovery from a kidney transplant that con firmed in my mind that the Bedouins have emotionally survived the oil boom better than is generally acknowledged. 

It was seven o'clock in the morning when those of us invited to the camp excitedly gathered at the gate of the hospital. All of us realized that this was special, for few Westerners ever had the opportunity to enter a Bedouin camp. Mohammed, our guide, arrived in a new Chevrolet Caprice, which he probably had purchased with a government grant to dig a well or with a bonus from the National Guard, where he served as a part-time soldier. With him in the lead, our little caravan proceeded north out of Riyadh, through Darma, northwest into the province of Gasirn, on through obscure towns and settlements, and out into the high northern desert. After four hours, the Chevrolet abruptly turned off the road, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and bounced across the rough terrain. As we crested a sandy incline, the camp spread out before us. A long, black goat-hair tent open in the front, through which goats were wandering in and out, stood at the center. In front a campfire burned, warming the traditional coffee pot. Scattered across the camp area was a collection of Toyota and Datsun pickups and a square canvas tent. As we pulled to a stop, old and young men, some with ammunition belts strapped across their chests, veiled women, and a multitude of children tumbled out of the tents to greet us. The men of our party were escorted toward the big tent while we women were separated out and taken to the smaller tent. There we were entertained by the camp women and all the children. In the ritual of hospitality, a small handle less cup of pale green coffee spiced with cardamom was thrust in my hand as soon as I was seated on a machine-made Oriental rug imported from Bulgaria. A boy of about four, thick yellow mucous running from his nose, shyly reached into an aluminum tin buzzing with flies and pulled Out a sticky date, which he thrust at me in his dirty hand. I gingerly took the date, passed its sand-coated skin across my lips, and chewed its sweet meat. I was intensely curious about life in the camp. From where I sat I was able to look out through a slit where the sides of the tent joined. Directly in my line of vision was the men's tent. Through its open front, I saw the men sitting in a circle while a young man in his late teens moved from one to the other pouring coffee from an obviously new brass pot of the kind the Saudis imported in great quantities from Pakistan. Leaping out of this montage was a roll of paper towels imported directly from the West, which dangled from the side of the tent on a strand of rope. 

By mid afternoon, the lamb roasting in an oven made from an oil drum buried in the sand was done. The men lifted the meat up on heavy metal skewers and laid it on a metal tray that was at least two feet in diameter. Dining was reserved for the guests. When we were joined by the Western men, the Bedouin women disappeared. With great ceremony, our hosts set down before us a great steaming tray of lamb and rice. Only the choicest pieces of meat were presented. There were tender neck joints and large chunks of the leg, and lying on top of the wrinkled stomach with its fuzzlike villi was the skull with the brain encased. Loaves of flat Arabic bread were handed around, which we used to scoop up the rice and lamb from the communal plate. It was one of the best meals I have ever eaten. When we finished, the tray was removed and taken to the Bedouin men in the main tent. When they finished, their scraps went to the women. 

The Bedouin women reentered the guest tent carrying piles of quilts and mattresses made from cotton wadding, which they rolled out on the ground so we could rest. With the goats temporarily shooed away, I reclined on a square bolster pillow and talked to the women hidden behind their veils. I asked the wife of the transplant patient how her husband happened to know about the availability of transplant surgery. Obviously puzzled about my lack of knowledge of basic facts, she said, "From his brother. He had a transplant at the Military Hospital last year." Sitting in that tent, looking out on the patient, his brother who had donated the kidney, and the young, bright, highly trained Western surgeon who was comfortably talking with them, I thought that out of the boom decade the Bedouins may have survived the best. Perhaps it is because in the tumultuous days of Saudi Arabia's awakening to the outside world, the Bedouins never doubted their superiority. When the Westerners came with their machines and their different way of life, the Bedouin was able to gather in a share of the new consumer goods purchased with government money. He could choose to send his sons to school and on into the modern economy, or he could choose, without shame, to remain what he had always been - a Bedouin. 

Clustered in family or tribe, the Bedouins refuse to surrender to outside authority. Their support can be bought but their loyalty is anchored in the family. In the past, each desert family was alone, separated from the rest of society by the sparseness of the vegetation needed to support the animals on which their very lives depended. From this isolation in family units there developed over many centuries an intense feeling that an individual had no protection beyond that of the family. Of the various values the Bedouins have bestowed on modern Saudi Arabia, the primacy of the family is among the most important. 

Saudis live in large extended families. It is one of their significant differences from Western culture that, for the Saudis, the concept of individuality is absent. A Saudi sees himself in the context of his family and, to a lesser degree, the tribe. His duty is never to himself but to the group. Within the family, there is a strong sense of patrilineal descent, for a man is considered to be a descendant only of his father and his paternal grandfather but never his mother or maternal grand father. He belongs only to his father's group, which claims his entire, undivided loyalty. This is why the most sought-after marriages are first cousin marriages between children of brothers. By sharing the same grandfather, the all-important group solidarity is ensured. 

There is within the family a rigid hierarchy made up of the male members of the family in descending order of age. The oldest male member decides what is in the best interests of the family and dictates the role each individual is to play in the group's general goal. For the individual, this determines whom he marries, where he lives, whether he pursues an education, and what his occupation is. I never became accustomed to the answer I often got from young Saudis, male and female, to my question "Are you going abroad to study?" The response was, "I do not know. My father has not decided." 

This idea is anathema to Westerners steeped in the intense individualism of Western society. But to a Saudi, the absence of any independent choice is in no way perceived as doing damage to the individual. The docile acceptance of decisions made by the patriarch results from the way the Saudi family perceives itself in relation to the rest of the world. The world outside the family is viewed as an inimical place, where a family must be ready to defend itself even against its neighbor. In the last part of the twentieth century, even educated Saudis harbor a deep fear of the world outside the home. Well-to-do families live in houses clustered together in compounds that are walled off from the rest of the world. Oldest homes and the new apartment houses are built with small windows that seem to shut out everyone but those admitted through the iron gate or locked metal door that stands in front of all Saudi dwellings. So insulated is the family that Saudi social life is markedly different from that of other Middle Easterners. A pattern of socializing among village women is absent. The men do frequent the coffee houses on occasion, but otherwise there is almost no social infrastructure for cultural reinforcement through festivals, dances, or drama. Socializing among Saudis is almost exclusively within the kin ship group. As a result, without the support and approval of his family, a Saudi is lost. With no other alternative, a Saudi willingly pays the price for family support - the strict conformity to the group's demands. 

The Saudis are obsessed with the protection of the family. I, like all Westerners, found it almost impossible to become a friend, in the Western sense of the term, with a Saudi. Acquaintances, no matter how long enduring, never seem to blossom into deep, intimate friendship. An educated Saudi may collect a few foreigners, Arab and Western, as minor diversions but not as true friends. Even with other Saudis, they do not often form close friendships. So much of a person's energy is consumed by the family that there is little left to expend on others. Only on rare occasions is a Westerner ever admitted to a family gathering (as opposed to women's gatherings). The few family functions that I attended were largely those of Saudis whose roots were in the Hijaz or the al-Hassa, or who had studied abroad. For most of the population, outsiders, even Saudis, are seldom invited into any family other than their own. 

One of the characteristics of this group life is the apparent absence of a need to be alone. A Saudi is constantly surrounded by mobs of children and relatives. There is no privacy. It is as if there is an unspoken fear of being alone. I was forever amazed at the size of the entourage that surrounded patients in the hospital. It was the rare patient who did not have at least one relative staying in the hospital as a sitter, who turned the patient's room into a hospitality suite to entertain the stream of family members who came to visit. The Saudi family is the source of both excessive interference and complete security. For the Saudi, 

every family member interferes in his life to steer or mislead him. He may not make decisions without consulting his near relatives and the senior members of the group. He lives in a compact organization in which everyone knows everyone else's business. His every utterance or deed goes through the censorship exercised by his group. He is constantly subjected to the value judgments that are passed on all his words and actions.* 

Yet in all of its meddling, the family never leaves a member in need. Traditionally, the extended family system has taken care of the problems of the needy, the sick, the handicapped, and the aged. The family cares for the divorced or widowed woman and her orphaned children, as well as maiden aunts, aged uncles, unemployed nephews, and so on. A blood relative left in material or physical need is a personal disgrace to the rest of the family. And unlike in the West, nepotism is a virtue. Intolerable shame would fall on any Saudi who refused to give a job to a relative. 

Beyond the family is the tribe. Today the strength of tribal identification is in a state of flux. Those who by attitude remain Bedouin identify with a tribe in which all members are in some degree kinsmen since they are descended from a common ancestor. But beyond the Bedouins, the strength of tribal loyalties among townsmen and urbanites varies widely. Active tribal affiliations do not exist for much of the population. Yet kinship remains such an important link in the structure of the society that, in the absence of any documentary evidence, it has to be assumed that the tribal mystique, if not the form, still exists for most Saudis. The tribe serves the same function as the family in ensuring group solidarity or striving for status in the community. And it is the foremost vehicle for revenge against those who would slight its honor. The tribe is, in many ways, an elaborate extension of the family unit. 

Traditionally an individual's loyalty to the tribe is first and foremost based on the bonds of common bloodlines. The closer the relationship, the stronger is the loyalty an individual feels for his fellow tribesmen. A man instinctively supports his fellow tribesmen under any form of attack. These ties of loyalty were crucial in the past, since the family and tribe provided an individual his only protection. There was no central authority because organized government with a military force required surplus food, impossible in a subsistence environment. The tribe, therefore, was the most complex political structure that could be supported by the sparse resources available. And within the tribe, group cohesion was the key to survival. Each member's commitment to group solidarity was the supreme value of life. A Saudi continues to support his kinsman in any quarrel with an outsider irrespective of the question of right or wrong. A famous Arab proverb says, "I and my brothers against my cousin; I and my cousin against the stranger." Group revenge in the event a relative has been killed is imperative because his death has caused each family member to suffer in the diminution of his group's strength. The need for relatives to avenge the death of one of their members carries over into village life and complicates the at tempts of government to be the arbiter of justice. Even if a murderer is caught, sentenced to death, and executed by a governmental authority, the responsibility of the victim's kin to avenge his death has not been relieved. To fulfill the Arab proverb "Blood demands blood," the Saudi government permits the relatives of the victim's khamsa (a man's kin group, composed of all male relatives who are removed from him by no more than five male links) to publicly behead the murderer convicted in the courts. 

*Raphael Patai, The Arab Mind (New York: Charles Scribeer's Sons. 1976), p.284. 

There remain hundreds of tribes and sub tribes scattered across Saudi Arabia. Abdul Aziz strove to integrate the kingdom's tribes into a national political structure. His early religious message was in reality a vehicle to knit Saudi Arabia into a single state rather than a collection of independent political entities. Allegiance was fickle. The desert bred into man the need to be free. In all matters of power and politics, Bedouin values were intensely personal. They recognized neither settled administrations nor national borders until tamed by Abdul Aziz through a combination of religion, marriage, bribery, and punishment. But the House of Saud has never controlled the tribes through nationalism or loyalty, only through rewards. Despite the House of Saud's ongoing campaign over the last fifty years to end tribalism in the inter est of nationalism and Islamic solidarity, family and tribe remain a potent force in Saudi society. 

The importance of each individual tribe is derived from the combination of its size, military power, geographic location, form of livelihood, character, orientation of leadership, progeny, and religious out look.* Abdul Aziz used the tribal leaders, or sheikhs, as the major channel of communications and favors between the government and the people During the reign of King Faisal, the tribes provided a form of local government. After the oil boom, tribal membership provided a Saudi citizen with prima facie evidence of his claim to the rights and privileges of Saudi citizenship. Membership in a tribe was valuable, for it gained a Saudi entrance into the local school system, gave him access to government health facilities, assured him, if he chose, the privilege of going abroad to study at government expense, and even warranted the issuance of a passport. The sheikhs still command a privileged place in Saudi Arabia's economic and political order. 

* Among the most important tribes are the Asnatta. from which the al-Sands claim to originate, Harb, Utayhah, aI-Muiaah, Shamar, an'l Mutayr, and the Qantan, the largest in terms of numbers. Important but slightly less significant are the Ruwala, Dawasir, Manasir, Munjaha, Yam, Gharnid, Shahram, al.Jahadilah, Juhaynan, Balt. Huwaytat, Bani Hajir, Bani Khalid. Quraysh, al-Rashid, Aajman, and Awarim.

When the oil boom hit, Sheikh Hamed Hassan al-Mutlaq combined business interests in gold shops and money-changing establishments in Riyadh with his traditional duties as leader of a tribe located south of Riyadh. Rejecting the rural life in the euphoria of the boom, he moved his wife and five daughters to Riyadh and housed them in one of the few architecturally well-designed houses I was ever in Saudi Arabia. Located in a good but not the most prestigious section of the city, the house was a California contemporary, furnished in an odd combination of Oriental and art deco. The decor also contained the only example of the Saudis' past that I ever saw incorporated in the homes of the upper class. On each side of the wide steps that led up from the cavernous entry hall to the dining room were two magnificent old camel saddles made of dark, highly polished wood, with white sheepskins thrown over them. The sheikh, who was in his sixties and thus could adopt a somewhat relaxed style with foreign women, brushed aside my compliment on his saddles, saying, "The old ways." He was more intent on showing me the reception room in which he conducted tribal business. Leading me to the end of the entry hall, he threw open tall French doors that led into a separate section of the house. Stepping inside, he proudly presented a room that was at least fifty feet long and thirty feet wide. The high ceiling supported a massive crystal chandelier, and the floor was covered with a very large but not very good quality Oriental rug. The walls were completely lined with spindly chairs and overstuffed settees covered in brocade and trimmed with heavy fringe. In front of these were low tables, where the male members of the sheikh's tribe could place their tea and coffee cups and dispose of their date pits. Decorated entirely in red, it was a room worthy of an Oriental potentate. What transpired in this room located in an urban center of approximately a million people was not much different from what had transpired in the sheikh 's mud-walled village house or his tent in the desert. Members of the tribe come to the sheikh to settle disputes. They come to solicit his intercession with the royal family, as they did in Abdul Aziz's time, to get anything from a truck to a multi-million dollar contract with the government. Most of all they come to be together, to reaffirm the ties of blood and tribe, to state their unity against outside forces. 

For most of the population born before World War II, tribal affiliation has remained an important symbol, identifying their membership in Saudi society. But for the younger generation, the ambitious development programs and administrative machinery of Riyadh and the individual governates have drawn the tribal population and its leaders closer into the government's orbit. Growing numbers of Saudis have migrated away from the villages to the urban areas and, in the process, have migrated from the authority of the tribal sheikhs. Although tribalism certainly declined as a result of the enormous resources that accrued to the central government and the building of a bureaucracy, through which the royal family sought to dispense government benefits and services rather than through the tribe, the importance of various tribes remains visible. The House of Saud keeps the leaders of the AhI al-Sheikh, the Alireza and al-Rashid, defined more as extended families than tribes, close to the king. The Manasir, al-Murrab, Shammar, Aanaza, Ruwala, and the Huwaytat are the bedrock of the military and political strength of the National Guard or are influential beyond Saudi Arabia's border into Syria and Iraq. 

Among the reasons that the power of the tribes diminished after Abdul Aziz became king and even more so after 1973 is that tribal law can only work in conditions of anarchy and breaks down in conditions of stability. Left without the need for his tribe's protection, a man can more successfully reject its decisions. One of the great debates of the oil boom is whether tribalism has been permanently replaced, as some claim, by nationalism, or whether, as others claim, the Saudis will revert to their tribal roots if economic conditions no longer permit the House of Saud to deliver what the Saudi perceives as his just measure of the kingdom's wealth. 

As important as the tribes remain, it is the family far more than tribe on which the structural foundation of Saudi Arabia rests. The family is the means by which lineage is maintained, social cohesiveness is reinforced, and the structural integrity of Saudi Arabia from the Bedouins all the way up through the royal family is enhanced. This splintering of society into kinship groups intent on retaining their group cohesiveness has always been the great challenge to any political sys tem that seeks to weld together a kingdom. 

Beyond the structures of family and tribe, the Saudis' Bedouin ancestors have left the modern-day Saudi with much of his value sys tem. Soiled as the Bedouin may be by materialism generated by oil money and development, belittled as he may be by the more sophisticated urban dwellers, it is the Bedouin's idealized values of courage, bravery, hospitality, and honor that underlie all of Saudi society - urban, rural, and nomadic. Courage can best be defined by the ability to endure deprivation, withstand physical pain, or suffer emotional stress without showing signs of suffering. In other words, it is stoicism. Bravery, on the other hand, is a man's willingness to risk his life for the group. Both increase an individual's standing in the eyes of his peers, thereby reflecting the honor and strength of his group. Courage and bravery are regarded as important attributes among the Saudis, who, divided into families and tribes, are characteristically conflict prone. In the past, when the tribal wars raged, there was perpetual tension. A tribe that felt threatened needed, in turn, to threaten. Therefore, fighting and revenge both became highly esteemed values in the society. But the Bedouins for all their famed exploits were less than fearless warriors. Tribal warfare involved little more than hit-and- run raids. There was no shame in attacking a weaker group. Aggression in any form - with empty guns, broken swords, or sticks and stones - was considered manly. Retreat was always in order if the tide of battle turned, for there was no glory in fighting to the last man. Westerners seldom understood this. William Shakespeare, a young captain in the Indian Army sent out by the British in 1910 to make contact with Abdul Aziz, was killed when he stood to defend the al-Saud's cannon while the rest of the Bedouin army beat a hasty retreat. 

The major weapon in the Saudis' intertribal warfare was not arms but language. And language remains the weapon of choice. In reality, fear of violence is one of the striking characteristics of the modern-day Saudi. It takes spending some time in the kingdom to realize this. On the streets I saw hundreds of shouting matches in which the antagonists appeared to be ready to draw arms. At car accidents, the crowds of spectators who gathered quickly turned into participants. Clustered around the wrecked cars, everyone screamed, waved his arms, gesticulated, and yelled ominous threats. But I never saw one Saudi strike another. Just as ancient tribes hurled insults at each other believing that the insult, true or false, caused the recipient grievous harm, the modern Saudi still uses language as a mode of aggression. The government, like its citizens, carries the rhetoric of confrontation to great heights. Saudi Arabia will vocally condemn the state of Israel in the most vehement terms, but in the long history of the Arab-Israeli wars it has sent only its dollars into battle. 

Like courage and bravery, the legendary generosity of Arab hospitality ultimately serves the one great goal of Bedouin life, the strengthening of the group. To extend hospitality increases a man's standing among his peers and reflects favorably on his family, bolstering its standing in the community. The function of hospitality is to add to the reputation of the giver, not necessarily to benefit the recipient. To in crease his status, a Saudi will bear crippling expense in the name of hospitality. In the late 1940's there was a revered Bedouin who wandered the Eastern Province in rags because he had killed all his camels to feed his guests. 

Hospitality is an elaborate ritual, presided over and controlled by the host. Like all rituals, it follows exacting rules. Although the Saudis who invited me into their homes were warm and generous people, as a guest I often felt possessed by my host. On entering the house, I was obliged to drink at least one but never more than three cups of coffee, followed by one but never more than three cups of tea. And the table of my Saudi host was always filled with more food than could be consumed in a week. The host, rather than eating with his guests, actually stands opposite them and watches their every move as they eat. I once attended a lavish dinner party at a sheikh's house. The dining table seated thirty-two people and was shaped like a horseshoe. The sheikh stood in the middle, watching every bite that went into our mouths. As soon as one thing was eaten, something else was put in its place. It is an offense, a slight show of disrespect, to stop eating before the host allows dinner to cease. 

The ritual of hospitality is a crucial part of a Saudi's hierarchy of values and extends to whoever is in his care. One night while I was waiting for a plane at the Riyadh airport, an Indian walked into the international departure lounge handcuffed to his Saudi guard. Fascinated, I watched as the prisoner was politely seated and his handcuffs carefully removed. Sitting comfortably, he was left alone while his guard went to get tea. When he returned with the steaming cups, the Saudi solicitously served his prisoner his tea and then waited until he had finished before he drank his own cup. The ceremony completed, the handcuffs were put back on and the man marched to his plane to be deported back to India. 

A successful show of courage, bravery, and hospitality is necessary for any Saudi who means to protect his honor. The concept of honor, or preserving "face," is the most compelling characteristic of the Saudi psyche and the most difficult aspect of the Saudi personality for the Westerner to fathom. In Western culture, there is no psychological imperative that approaches a Saudi's concern about how others see him. Preservation of honor is paramount in the behavior of the whole society. Everything that a Saudi does is to protect his image. As a result, life is ruled by the tyranny of saving face. 

Honor is a mystical concept that takes many forms. For instance, a man's honor demands that he have pure Arab blood. A man's virility, confirmed by the number of sons he fathers, is an important part of his honor. Hospitality and generosity bestow honor. A man is honored or dishonored by the type of work he does. 

One's honor determines one's image. The key to saving face is the assiduous avoidance of shame. Shame is not to be confused with guilt. Shame destroys self-respect, but guilt, primarily because it is a matter between a person and his conscience, does not. While the burden of guilt is interior, the burden of shame is exterior, in other words, "What will people say?" In Saudi culture, shame, because it is exterior, is a much heavier burden to bear than guilt. 

This oppressive fear of shame accounts for the difference between the Saudis' puritan behavior within the kingdom and their often outrageous behavior abroad. The reports of lavish sexual orgies indulged in by Saudis in London, Miami, Los Angeles, Paris, and even places like Denver is part of the folklore of the oil boom. The Western press turned out a stream of these stories each set in a different hotel and in a different city. The basic scenario was that a prince or wealthy merchant came to town, rented the entire floor of a hotel, set up an elaborate bar, expropriated room service, hired a bevy of call girls, and partied nonstop for a week, departing only after having spent thou sands of dollars and leaving the hotel in shambles. Conversely, the strict code of deportment followed by this same Saudi at home is primarily calculated to impress those around him. A Saudi obeys social requirements not so much because he has a deep-seated belief in them but because to gain self-respect he must conform outwardly to the ethics of society. A Saudi's behavior is controlled not by the interior forces of right and wrong but by who is going to see it. To complicate his burden, honor is not individual; it is the collective property of the family. If one member of the family brings disgrace, it descends to everyone. Therefore, a male adult makes sure that his own behavior is impeccable in the sense of preserving outward appearances. 

Few Westerners, I think, can truly appreciate what a terrible burden a Saudi places on himself. The old Bedouin proverb sums it up: "Even if I have to see the worm of hunger emerge from my mouth, I shall not debase myself." Like the proud Bedouin who commanded his family to tie his camel foodless to his grave so that it might soon follow him to the other world and save him from the social disgrace of going on foot to paradise, the Saudi builds all sorts of defenses around himself to make sure that he too will not be disgraced. 

A Saudi's refusal to be humbled extends to the most mundane events of daily life. If two trucks, each driven by a Saudi, meet on a narrow street, neither will back up until a policeman armed with a night stick arrives to force one to give ground. Or if a Saudi who is sitting in his car blocks someone trying to get out of a parking space, he will not yield one inch until he is forced into a verbal battle by the driver of the other car and the assembled pedestrians. And the government, in the name of Saudi honor, engages in all sorts of games to ensure that the people and the country will not be humiliated. Its most effective game, of course, is to keep the foreign press out of the kingdom. 

The relationship between the Saudis and their Western work force is greatly complicated by the Saudis' need to preserve face. Most Westerners find that the never-ending tension that ensues from the Saudis' careful protection of their honor creates difficult and often impossible working situations. To survive in Saudi Arabia, a Westerner has always to be alert to situations that might embarrass his Saudi employer. The Westerners who are most successful in dealing with the Saudis are those who are able to balance a tricky combination of flattery, subservience, and authority. 

To begin with, a Saudi employer, loving exaggerated flattery, usually will regard intellectual honesty in the form of criticism as a personal insult. Although no one likes bad news, when a Westerner presents a business problem to his Saudi partner, he must first flatter the Saudi's business acumen before he delivers the unpleasant facts. And when these facts are laid out, they must be presented in such a way as to reflect on the incompetence of anyone but the Saudi. For there is a strong cultural inclination for a Saudi to place the blame for his mistakes and failures on others. Transferring responsibility to others makes it easier to justify a potentially embarrassing situation. Cost what it may, one must defend one's public image. Teachers who were brought in to instruct the Saudis in English found that most, like students everywhere, wanted to succeed without the necessary toil. The difference is that when a Saudi fails he never accepts the responsibility but blames it on "bad luck," the unfairness of the teacher, the difficulty of the material, and, in the end, the will of Allah. Teachers told me that students take great pains to hide their failures from their family and friends. Although this is a universal truth, it is the intensity of the need to hide shortcomings and failures in order to preserve appearances and save self-respect that sets the Saudis apart. 

Subservience to the Saudi employer is an unavoidable consequence of the fact that the Saudi controls the money with which the Westerner's expertise is purchased. A Westerner who wants to retain his self-respect as well as his job can politely engage in the ceremonies demanded by the Saudi's ego and still maintain his freedom by setting limits on the conditions under which he will provide his services. Maintaining a fine line between subservience and integrity, a Westerner has to be sufficiently humble but firm enough to win the Saudi's esteem. A Saudi respects a Westerner's authority if it is meted out in such a way as not to humiliate him. But a Saudi who senses that a Westerner is in a weakened position often delights in "getting him" if for no other reason than to prove his own superiority. The jail population always includes a number of foreigners who have failed to grasp the importance of keeping their employers' egos satisfied. 

The need to preserve each Saudi's honor may be the single biggest obstacle to the development of a modern economy. Pride hampers routine functions, a condition that Westerners find exasperating. In any joint project, the Saudi's goal is to maintain his honor, while the Westerner's goal is to complete a task. These differing objectives create conditions for endless conflict. A Saudi dentist, one of the people trained during the boom, could not sit at his desk to write up his patient charts because his desk chair was on the other side of the room and he refused to engage in the labor needed to move it. When he was asked why, he replied, "What if one of my patients saw me?" In despair, one young Westerner told me that he had just lost a multi million Riyal contract that he had spent six months negotiating. Neither party would humble himself to go to the other's office or a neutral place to sign the papers. One of the most angry Westerners I ever encountered was an SRI consultant who was working on an important aspect of the petroleum industry for the Third Development Plan. He had spent weeks juggling figures supplied by the Ministry of Petroleum and Minerals. No matter how many times the data was verified or manipulated, it made no sense. After a stormy confrontation, the Saudi who had given him the information reluctantly confessed that the numbers were wrong, but since they had been signed and certified by the deputy minister they could not be changed without causing the minister intolerable loss of face. 

It is, perhaps more than anything else, the decision-making process involving the Saudis and their Western advisers that results in so much disorganization in Saudi Arabia. Saudis are so obsessed with their pride that most postpone making a decision because of a terrible fear that it might be wrong. This characteristic of the Saudi psyche paralyzes decision-making and raises a serious question about the Saudis' ultimate ability to manage an economy that they have structured in the mode of the West. Decisions are delayed until options have disappeared. When a decision is finally forced, a Saudi tends to act on the impulse of the moment. There is little discrimination or sense of proportion in the action taken, or little consideration of the consequences. In my world at the Ministry of Planning, projects would be in limbo for weeks, waiting for decisions to come down from Saudi officials. And then suddenly work that should have taken a month at a reasonable pace had to be completed within a week. Time after time I saw decisions made in government and in business that had predictable consequences. As an example, a government decree might be issued denying Westerners the right to bring their teenage children into the king dom. When recruitment then began to dry up, there would be utter surprise among the decision-makers, who would grudgingly rescind the ruling. This mentality is one of the major reasons why life in Saudi Arabia has such a roller coaster quality about it. 

Although the Westerners endlessly lament their relations with the Saudis, the Saudis suffer far greater psychological stress from their preoccupation with their honor than do the Westerners. The glorious oil boom was in reality immensely threatening to the Saudis. With inadequate education and skills, a tiny elite was called on in 1973 to manage the largest infusion of wealth and the most rapid change thrust on any country in modern history. Within a few years, this core of managers was supplemented by a new foreign-educated middle class that entered business or fleshed out the bureaucracy. With few exceptions, those who came home to assume high-level jobs still lacked the experience or sophistication to function efficiently in a world dominated by Western-style institutions and mechanisms. They had no choice but to recognize their inadequacies publicly and hire the expertise Saudi Arabia needed. A Saudi possessing any education rapidly moved from being solely a member of family and tribe, proud in his sense of who and what he was, to being a cog in a new economic system dependent on foreigners. In the Saudi psyche, the Westerner rose up as a person whose superior technological skills threatened to shame him. As a defense against humiliation, most Westerners were kept in a position of servitude. For his part, the Westerner looked on the Saudi not as a person struggling with his past and his future at the same time but as an arrogant taskmaster, intellectually and culturally inferior to his Western work force. As haughty as the Saudis are, there is blatant arrogance on the part of the Westerner who sees the Saudi as unable and unwilling to manage his own country and deserving of the high prices that the Westerner charges to do his work for him.