I was coaxing my exceedingly reluctant husband as we turned off the broad new highway between Riyadh and Jeddah and drove toward Mecca. Immediately billboard-size blue and white signs in both Arabic and English appeared along the road, warning non-Moslems to turn back. As we drew closer to Mecca, I saw a mixed group of religious authorities, dressed in traditional thobes and cloaks, and Saudi policemen, in Western-style uniforms of olive green, lounging in a small wooden building adjacent to the road. When they saw us, they jumped to their feet and dashed out. The religious elders excitedly waved their arms and shouted "Wagifi Wagif"' ("Stop!") while the policemen furiously blew on their shrill whistles. I realized that we had gone too far, but by then it was too late to turn around. We were forced off the road by one of the angry policemen, who was immediately joined by the others. Each yelled and gestured at us with a passion only a Saudi can muster. At last the policeman who appeared to be in charge collected the SR 300 fine (about $I00) and sent us, shaken, back toward Jeddah.

This experience at the portal of Mecca is highly symbolic of the relationship between the believer and the infidel in Saudi Arabia. For throughout Saudi society, the great dividing line between the Saudis and the Westerners is religion. Islam for the Saudis is more than a theology, it is an entire way of life. Religion is the central force of their existence. Religion is life and life religion. Such an intense theology immensely complicates the Saudis' accommodation to modernization.

Islam, always a powerful force, exercises a deeper hold on the people of Saudi Arabia than on the Moslems of perhaps any other country. The religion of Mohammed rose out of the Arabian Peninsula, a product of the desert culture that ruled the peninsula for centuries before the coming of the Prophet. For the people of the peninsula, the sym biotic relationship between Islam and their civilization has ebbed from time to time but has never broken. Islam as practiced in Saudi Arabia remains today as it did at the time of Mohammed, a reflection of Arabia and of the pure Arab.

Islam was born in the seventh century A.D. in Mecca. The religion emerged from a period of conflict within Meccan society that was remarkably similar to the stress now tearing at Saudi Arabia - new wealth versus traditional values. Located halfway down Saudi Arabia's west coast, forty-eight miles inland from the Red Sea, Mecca was a convenient stopping place for the fabled camel caravans that transported goods from India and Central Africa to Egypt and Palestine, where they were fed into the pipeline of trade to the Mediterranean and the crumbling Roman Empire. The merchants of Mecca thrived from this trade. To promote business, they formed joint stock companies and dominated an annual trade fair at Ukaz, near Mecca. In stark contrast to the austere life of the desert people around Mecca, Ukaz brought together hundreds of merchants, actors, gamblers, prostitutes, and poets in a great festival of vice for the sole purpose of promoting business.

Removed from the influences of urban areas like Mecca, the desert Arab still clung to the old values of desert life: honor, bravery, hospitality, and the sacredness of family and tribe. Haunted by a primitive religion, the Bedouin was engulfed by a swarm of spirits, or jinn. Responding sporadically to ill-defined rituals, he worshiped the jinn at a series of places containing sacred stones. The center of this stone worship was in Mecca, controlled, as was trade, by the city's mer chants. But as intimidated as he was by the jinn, the Bedouin's real religion was his belief in the immortality of the tribe and the near spiritual affinity and protection it spread over its members.

By the end of the sixth century, a great gulf had erupted in Meccan society between the ethical system of the Bedouins and the wealth and decadence that gripped Mecca itself, especially its ruling classes. The fair at Ukaz characterized the decline in the values prized by the desert Arab and the ascendancy of the new age of materialism. In pursuit of wealth, the tribal system had broken down into clans, all warring against one another. Life was a cycle of vengeance as an attack on any clan was an attack on all and every act of reprisal was followed by yet another act of revenge. Into this social disruption Abdulqasim Mohammed ibn Abdullah ibn Abd al-Muttalib ibn Hashim was born in A.D. 570 or 571. Orphaned at the age of six, he passed to the care of his grandfather, the respected custodian of the Kaaba, who claimed to be a descendent of Ishmael, the son of Abraham and Hagar.

When Mohammed was about forty and married to a rich widow of Mecca, he began to retreat into the desert for long periods to meditate on the sins of Meccan society. During these meditations, he claimed God was revealing a new religion to him. His revelations were written down by his followers, for he never learned to read or write, and collected into the Koran, the fundamental source of Islamic doctrine. Soon he began to attract followers. Like every successful preacher, Mo hammed gave voice and form to the restiveness of his time. He gathered in the young who were shut out of the councils of power. He denounced the quest for wealth, attracting the poor. He rid the Bedouin of the dreaded jinn. He restored the honor of the family while uniting his followers in the great tribe of believers.

Fired with religious fervor, the followers of Mohammed poured out of the Arabian Peninsula to spread their newfound religion. Before they were depleted, they had established Islam from Persia (Iran) to southern Spain. No longer purely Arab, the world of Islam became pluralistic and polyglot almost overnight. Whole peoples, ancient languages, and traditions that were beyond the scope of anything known in Arabia meshed into the whole. The basic tenets of Mohammed's religion and the cultural dictates of the Arabs became infiltrated by alien ideas.

The successful expansion of Islam was accomplished under the first four caliphs, or successors to Mohammed. Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali had all known Mohammed personally and each was successively selected as caliph by the elders of Medina. But in an expanded empire with conflicting rivalries, the ability of the religious authorities in far- off Arabia to choose the leader eventually collapsed. In 661, Muawiyah, the governor of Syria, challenged Ali for the caliphate. When Ali was assassinated, control of the caliphate passed forever from the hands of Mohammed's followers in Medina. Shocked by their loss of power and hostile to the foreigners now in control, the Arabs of the peninsula withdrew from the concerns of empire and retreated into their own traditions. The Persian segment of Ali's supporters reacted to his murder by renouncing the main body of Islam to become Shiites, or followers of Ali. The Islamic nation split. The more orthodox Sunnis claimed to follow the way of the Prophet while the Shiites incorporated martyrdom, saints, and a priesthood into the simplicity of Mohammed's teachings about the unitary relationship between God and man. The failure of the Medina leadership to break with the main body of Islam over the death of Ali was representative of the conflict between the culture of the worldly Persians and that of the parochial Arabs of the peninsula. But it was Sufism, an Islamic sect that preached mysticism, that caused Mohammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab, a mid-eighteenth-century itinerant preacher in north-central Arabia, to cry for a return to the true teachings of Mohammed and the re-Arabization of Islam. Abdul-Wahhab leapt backward across medieval theologians and legalists. His theology banished the thought of the Sufis and thundered with the call to return to the purity of Mohammed's teachings, un tainted by exposure to foreign influences. Mohammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab, in essence, restored Arab cultural values as the standard by which a Moslem was measured.

Early in his wanderings across the Nejd, Abdul-Wahhab came to Dinyab, a village located on a large and fertile wadi* east of Riyadh. There he converted the local ruler Abdul Aziz al-Saud** to his teach ings and joined the sheikh's court. The house that Abdul Aziz gave to Abdul-Wahhab still stands among the ruins of Diriyah. A large house by the standards of an Arab village, it sits on a steep incline opposite the old mosque and dominates the approach to the town, now nearly deserted. I often climbed that hill and wandered among the crumbling walls. In the rear, the pillars of the courtyard extend upward to the sky, its blue unblurred by pollution, its calm undisturbed by material progress. As I sat in the stillness of that courtyard, leaning against the mud wall, the stubble of the straw bonding prickling my back, I some times sensed the presence and the force of Abdul-Wahhab.

*A dry river red.

**This was the first Abdul Aziz. Abdul Aziz II unified Saudi Arabia and founded the present House of Saud.

Although a powerful religious revivalist, Abdul-Wahhab, in the hands of an al-Saud, also became a political force. Abdul Aziz, under un ceasing pressure from neighboring tribes who coveted his territory and his water supply, seized Abdul-Wahhab's religious revival as his own. Fired by a religious renewal that banished all things foreign from Is lam, the tribes of the Nejd under the leadership of Abdul Aziz became the army of Wahhabism. Fed by its triumph in driving the heretical Shiites out of Mecca, the Wahhabis turned toward the east. By the end of the eighteenth century, they had reached the gates of Baghdad. There the mission clashed with the political reality of the Ottoman Empire, whose sultan also claimed the title of Protector of the Holy Places. In 1811, the Ottomans executed Abdul Aziz and sent the Wahhabis back to Diriyah. Subdued but not beaten, the Wahhabis rose up again in the early twentieth century. The second Abdul Aziz, exiled to Kuwait by the al-Rashid family, rivals to the al-Sauds in Diriyah, returned to his ancestral home to unify the Bedouins and the townsmen of the Nejd. Together they destroyed Abdul Aziz's enemies and drove the decadent Sherif Hussein from Mecca. In 1932 Abdul Aziz declared the present state of Saudi Arabia, founded on the religious principles of the Wahhabis. Thus the Rouse of Saud tied itself inexorably to the religious fundamentalists.

Abdul Aziz was able to unite and rule the fiercely independent Bedouins and the more numerous townsmen through an ingenious combination of piety and patronage. In all things, the king was the protector and defender of the faith. Through the philosophy of Wahhabism, he cultivated a unique political system that totally integrated all aspects of life, religious and secular, into one. Today as in the time of Abdul Aziz, the Wahhabi state admits no distinction between the body of religious beliefs and the political system.

Islam lends itself to a system that is both religious and secular. For Mohammed created not just a religion but an entire way of life that is built on three sources. At the core is the Koran, the revealed word of God. * Second is the Sunna, a body of words and deeds of the Prophet remembered and recorded by his followers, which with the Koran is incorporated into a body of law called sharia. The sharia is both the constitution and the legal system of Saudi Arabia, covering social, commercial, domestic, criminal, and political affairs. The third source of Mohammed's wisdom is the hadith, a written record of Mohammed's pronouncements. On these three authorities, both the society and political system of Saudi Arabia function.

Islam is a revealed religion, with a Prophet and a complete set of rules. It is neither philosophical nor speculative. It regulates not only religious beliefs and rituals but also every aspect of a believer's daily life, from the number of times he should pray to how he should wash after sexual intercourse. Islam as practiced in Saudi Arabia remains demanding in its rituals, inflexible in its attitudes, and intolerant of those who deviate from the way of the Prophet. The Saudis possess the mentality of true believers, regarding other Moslems as inferior and non-Moslems as infidels. These convictions manifest themselves in the theory of government propagated by the House of Saud. Saudi Arabia is in essence a hybrid theocracy - a monarchy built on and maintained by a strict adherence to the religious rules set down by Mohammed for Arabia fourteen centuries ago. The link between reli gion and the state is seen everywhere. Emblazoned in white across a green field on the flag of Saudi Arabia is the Islamic statement of faith:

"There is no god but God." Government documents begin, "In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful." To the world, the House of Saud continually, through word and deed, pronounces itself the guardian of the Islamic holy places and, within the kingdom, de fends its existence by being the most visible leader of the faith, reigning over the enforcement of its rituals.

Religious law and public morals are enforced by the Committee for the Protection of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. The matawain,** or religious police, were created by Abdul Aziz while his kingdom was still in its infancy. After seizing Mecca from Sherif Hussein in 1924, Abdul Aziz sent matawain missionaries into the Bedouin settlement of the Nejd. Their mission was to coax the Bedouins to give up their nomadic ways and settle in religious communities. Under its religious facade, the mission of the matawain was in reality political: to put the Bedouins under the control of Abdul Aziz.

*Allah of the Moslems, God of the Christians, and Yahweh of the Jews are the same deity.

**Motowai, is the plural of morawoh, an enforcer of religious law. All mofOwoin are part of the Committee for the Protection of virtue and the Prevention of vice.

Most of the original matawain were ignorant zealots. Although the body is still largely staffed by fanatics, a surprising number of foreign educated younger men, perhaps disillusioned with what they see as the decadence of the West, return to Saudi Arabia to join the ranks. The matawuin today have coalesced into a group of vigilantes with an increasingly sophisticated bureaucracy. The government has little control over its membership or its actions. A matawah is not appointed but rather rises up, by virtue of his piety, through the ranks of the local mosque. The Committee for the Protection of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice is a genuine grass-roots organization and an important component of the backbone of the Rouse of Saud's political support - the religious fundamentalists. Therefore, it has tremendous power. Al though mostly free of political control by the House of Saud, the religious organization is largely dependent on government financing since the practice of Wahhabism does not include contributions to the local mosque. But the committee does not approach the government as a suppliant. Highly sophisticated in the budget process, the organization hires its own professional budget consultants, often Western. A friend of mine who sat in on the budgetary meeting for the Third Development Plan told me that the committee's requests for money were masterful presentations to be envied by any bureaucracy. When the erect and imperious committee members entered the hearings with their gold- trimmed black bishts ("cloaks") draped from their shoulders, they seemed to fill the room with their aura. Rather than basing their petition for funds on emotional appeals to the charitable instincts of the budget managers, the committee's consultants unveiled color charts and handed out bound folders showing objectives, justifications for various requests for money, and documentation of the organization's current activities. These elaborate presentations were probably not necessary since no one in the bureaucracy - and especially not the Western consultants to the Ministry of Planning - had the courage to challenge the data or assumptions of the religious leaders. If a request failed to meet planning guidelines, the whole package was pushed into the bureaucratic pipeline for someone else to confront. In the end, the matawain got what they wanted.

Although there is no way of knowing just how much money the matawain garner from government coffers for salaries, mosque construction, purchase of Korans, educational functions, and so on, it is a significant amount. But unlike most other public agencies, there is never any hint of impropriety in how they handle their funds. Corruption goes against the faith and the practice of these men. Intolerant, bigoted, and arrogant they may be, but no one can accuse them of dishonesty.

The sophisticated bureaucratic side of the matawain was something that I never saw on the streets. The self-appointed foot soldiers who patrol the streets are, for the most part, uneducated, often poor, and fanatic defenders of the faith.

The matawain literally keep watch over the public's morals. It sometimes seemed to me there was a matawah on every corner. He needed no identification other than his straggly beard dipped in henna and the camel whip he carried in his grubby hand. At least two were always parked on folding chairs at the entrance to the women's souqs. At prayer time, others walked the streets shoufing "salctah" ("prayer") and rapping on windows ordering shops to close.

Through its political power, the matawain keep foreign books and magazines they find objectionable out of the kingdom. Offensive advertising is controlled by a legion of manual laborers armed with ink pots and brushes, who leaf through imported magazines, painting out pictures of women and ads for alcohol. Photo-developing labs are periodically raided to see that they are not printing pictures that fail to pass the matawain 's rigid Wahhabi standards. Almost any subject is a target - pictures of statues, temples, religious celebrations, beach scenes, party pictures, or a male and female embracing. Westerners seldom send a prize roll of film to the processor. To protect them selves, developers will only print the pictures they know will pass censorship, if a matawah has not already seized the whole roll. For a stiff surcharge, the Falcon lab would develop film for anxious customers during the night for even the matawain went to bed.

All Westerners have a healthy respect for if not downright fear of the matawain. It is they who keep Western women in the publicly prescribed dress, for a Western woman who ventures out in a knee length skirt risks a whipping on her legs with a matawah's camel whip. The matawain forbid women to ride a bicycle or jog. An unmarried man and woman riding in the same car together risk being arrested by the matawain and taken to one of their special jails, where they vill be harangued about their loose morals. In Riyadh, almost every Weterner runs afoul of a matawah at some time. The most unpleasant encounter I ever had was in the souq in the oasis town of al-Khaij.

On a hot Friday morning, my friend Jane Walker and I entered the old covered market. We milled through a collection of Bedouin women squatting on the ground, selling hand-spun yarn of wool and camel hair and crude yogurt bags made from the whole skin of a goat with the neck left open and rawhide cords tied around the ragged ends of the severed legs. I was in a long skirt, a short-sleeve but modest T shirt, and had my hair covered with a scarf. I had a camera, securely snapped shut in its case, slung over my shoulder. Suddenly out of nowhere a matawah swooped down on me like a bird of prey. Screaming insults, he grabbed my arm, dragged me to the back door of the souq, and threw me into the alley with the debris from the market. As I picked myself up, totally dazed, a young Saudi stepped up, pointed at my camera, and said, "Go to your car!" Dutifully, I went to the car, left the camera, and returned to the souq. Back through the yarn, the spices, and the yogurt bags, I reached the spot where I had been previously. To my astonishment, I was attacked again by the same man. Recharged at me through the crowd, screaming a torrent of Arabic. He grabbed me by the fleshy part of my upper arm and pinched hard, leaving a large black bruise. He then swung me around and grabbed the other arm, squeezing my flesh between his coarse fingers. Before I could comprehend what was happening, I was back out in the alley, staring into a pile of severed sheeps' heads, their fixed eyes staring back at me. As the matawah 's verbal harangue continued, I realized that it was not my camera but my short sleeves that had offended this keeper of the public morals.

The matawain are obsessed with controlling the influence of heathen Westerners. To guard the young against deviation from Wahhabism, the government is under continual pressure to keep movie theaters and other recreational activities out of the kingdom and to limit the number of Saudis who are allowed to go abroad to study. There is acute apprehension that even pleasure travel abroad, which the Saudis enthusiastically embraced with the oil boom, will undermine the Islamic tenets. Any place outside the hallowed borders of Saudi Arabia is considered wracked with sin. One religious leader deplored the foreign contamination of the young by saying that Saudis leave the kingdom to "go to dens of iniquity such as Bangkok, Paris, London, and Omaha."

At the root of the matawain's rigidity is their belief that to be a devout Moslem is to be guided by rules. In the face of the onslaught of wealth, materialism, foreign influences, and the ever escalating press of change, the matawain stand in defense of a way of life. They are there to enforce the rules that have measured life in Saudi Arabia since Mohammed.

Islam is built on five pillars of faith: the profession of Allah as the one great God, prayer, fasting, zakat ("charity"), and the pilgrimage to Mecca. All command an important place in the religious and political life of Saudi Arabia.

The rhythm of daily life is set by the five prayer times: sunrise, midday, midafternoon, sundown, and one hour after sundown. By 4:30 A. M. many mornings, I was awakened from a deep sleep by the un mistakable "A llahu Akbar" ("God is great") reverberating from the neighborhood mosque. As I was groaning and turning over in my bed, the devout Moslem was plowing through the street in disheveled gutra and sandaled feet to pray with his brother believers at the nearest mosque. From the first call to the last, the day is punctuated by prayer.

The morning hours are the time when the most business can be accomplished. I loved the humming activity in the souqs during the morning. Noisy trucks laden with fresh vegetables honked their horns as they moved through the crowd of shoppers in the square just off of the Medina road. The money changer on the corner riffled through Saudi riyals, dollar bills, pound notes, and Swiss francs in his small office crowded with customers. Tea boys scurried between other offices carrying trays filled with miniature cups of sweet hot tea. The women, huddled in their own area of the market, haggled over the prices of nuts and spices. Then as midday approached, there was a noticeable lessening of activity. Metal shutters clanged down over store fronts, dust covers were thrown over vegetables, and women left for home as an eerie calm fell over the cityscape just before the call to prayer went out from the mosque. As the centuries-old chant washed over nearby al-Margab Square, men crowded around the long row of water spigots at the mosque to perform their ablutions - the washing of the face, nostrils, ears, hands, and feet before entering the presence of God in prayer.

The stillness of midday remains through the afternoon while the population, well fed, lies down to sleep. Somewhere between three and four in the afternoon, depending on the time of year, the muezzin calls the third prayer of the day. Sleep ceases, prayers are said either at home or at the mosque, and the men leave once again for their shops and offices. 'What commerce or business has not been accomplished in the morning possibly can be done before the fourth and longest period of prayer, the sunset prayer when everything else once again ceases. Facing Mecca, the men, led by the oldest or most respected in the group, surrender to the will of God. Perhaps because of the time of day, this is the most dramatic of the prayer times. One of the most profound moments I experienced in Saudi Arabia was during one evening at sunset. As I walked across the hospital grounds into a stiff west wind, I came upon a group at prayer. Mecca is west from Riyadh, causing the worshipers to face into the setting sun, its orange light heightened and diffused by the millions of dust particles in the air. The men were kneeling, their heads bowed to the ground. A lone woman stood apart, erect, her head held high, the wind whipping her veil and abaaya as she prayed. They were performing the same ritual that has been performed in Saudi Arabia for the last millennium and a half. An hour later, these same people, dispersed to other places, would fall down again in the direction of Mecca to end their day of ritual with the final prayers.

The scene of men kneeling in prayer is an integral part of everyday life in Saudi Arabia. I walked around groups of men at prayer in the airports. The horse races on Monday afternoons in the winter never began until the jockeys, the stable boys, and the assembled royalty observed the afternoon prayers. But it was at the great annual camel race that I saw man best overcome his surroundings in order to bow down before God. As I milled through the big camp especially set up for the race on the plain outside of Riyadh, I was buffeted by hundreds of people leading cantankerous camels to and from the track. Coffee pots were boiling on a hundred fires, while small Toyota pickups filled with feed for the camels careened through the grounds. And then the call for mid afternoon prayers went out. Men hurriedly staked their camels and gathered together. With silent consent, one man stepped forward to be the leader. Quickly the others lined up in rows behind him with no distinction drawn by wealth or social class. In the midst of incredible activity, they faced Mecca, knelt, and touched their fore heads to the crusty earth in submission.

The non-Moslem necessarily became involved in prayer times because by Saudi law everything must close during the prayers. It was never enough for a merchant to refuse to admit anyone into his place of business during prayer time; everyone who was in the store was forced out on the sidewalk. As we sat there, the shades with which most places of business were equipped were drawn and the lights doused until the prayer period ended thirty to forty-five minutes later.

To avoid these interruptions, all errands and shopping must be done between about 8:00 and 11:30A.M., 4:00 and 6:00 P.M., 6:30 and 7:30 P.M., or after the last prayer call. To help the faithful meet their religious obligations and the shoppers to prepare themselves, the daily newspapers publish the times of the prayers. Every day is different, as is every city in the country, according to the precise time of sunrise and sunset The hour between the fourth and fifth prayers has been dubbed the "prayer window" by the expatriates. The end of the work day is a prime time to shop. As soon as the sunset prayers ended, I would dash out to the supermarket, race through, grabbing bread and milk, and then charge through the check-out stand before I was caught in the final prayer call.

Actually the muezzin no longer calls the prayers. As with so much else in Saudi Arabia, prayer call has been mechanized. In the old days, the muezzin would laboriously climb the steps of the mosque five times a day, every day, to call out the faithful. I once heard a muezzin call the prayers in rural Egypt. No amount of electronic equipment can draw up emotions in the same way as the low, penetrating sound that comes from deep in the throat of a muezzin standing alone on a minaret. But what the prayer call in Saudi Arabia may lack in emotion, it makes up for in volume. The blast from the loudspeakers is so deafening that Westerners often choose where to live by whether it is downwind or upwind from the mosque. On Fridays, some mosques broadcast the entire service over their loudspeakers. The thundering fundamentalist Protestant of the United States Bible Belt could never match the emotion and volume of an iman (the spiritual leader of the community) on a good Friday.

The Moslem does not view prayer as a petition for the favors of God. Nor is it communication with God. Rather, prayer is a ritual that recognizes the power of God, while communal prayer, wherever it is performed, affirms the brotherhood of believers. Prayer is the celebration of the unity of a great tribe held together by its submission to Allah and its obedience to his teachings. Prayer affirms the equality of believers, a concept especially strong within the Wahhabi sect. In con forming to the dictates of Abdul-Wahhab, all Saudi men dress alike as a statement of this equality in the eyes of God. The king's thobe may be made of silk and the shopkeeper's of cotton, but their simple, un adorned garments make them brothers before God. It is this statement of unity and equality that makes prayer not only a ritual but a deep emotional experience for a Saudi. During Ramadan, the month of fasting and another of the five pillars of Islam, a Moslem's prayers take on added meaning.

Ramadan is observed in the ninth month of the Hijrah calendar. * By tradition, this is the month in which the first Koranic verses were revealed to Mohammed. Its significance is further heightened by the fact that it was during Ramadan that Mohammed's armies consolidated their first important military successes in the Battle of Badr in 624. Throughout Ramadan, a Moslem fasts from the early morning hours when it be- comes light enough to tell a white thread from a black thread, until it is too dark to distinguish between the two. Ramadan is the holiest time of the year, when a Moslem struggles through self-sacrifice to master his worldly concerns, encourage compassion, and foster within the Islamic community a collective sense of conforming to God's commands.

For the devout, Ramadan can be a rigorous exercise in self-discipline. During the daylight hours, which in the latitude of Riyadh or Jeddah can last up to sixteen hours, an observant Moslem abstains from food, drink, and sex. An elaborate set of rules defines what constitutes the breaking of the fast, which in turn requires additional penance. According to Moslem scholars, actions that invalidate the fast are eating, drinking, smoking, or having sexual intercourse during daylight hours. Also included are "deliberately causing oneself to vomit; beginning of menstruation or post-childbirth bleeding even at the last moment before sunset; ejaculation for reasons other than sexual inter course (e.g., kissing or hugging one's wife). ** So faithful to the restrictions are some of the old, ultra-religious men that they will not break their fast even to swallow their own saliva or to take vital medication.

* The Hijrah calendar is a lunar calendar in which one year is approximately twelve days shorter than that of the Gregorian calendar. See Chapter 9 for its present application in Saudi Arabia.

**Saudi Gazette. June 23, 1984.

Ramadan radically alters the pace of daily life. No one knows exactly when Ramadan will begin since it depends on the visual sighting of the new moon, but Moslem and Westerner alike view its approach with nervous anticipation. (Westerners often define their time in Saudi Arabia by the number of Ramadans they have experienced). The week before the expected new moon, the Supreme Judicial Council publishes public notices calling on any citizen who sights the new moon "to approach the nearest court to testify to witnessing the event." If the court agrees, the spotter is rewarded with a generous cash award. Every year for several days before the projected start of Ramadan, I awakened at sunrise to listen for the sound of the cannon that announced the beginning of the fast. The Ramadan cannon, a relic that I suspected was left over from Lawrence of Arabia's raids on the Turks during the First World War, was hauled out of storage every year and installed in front of a dirty square canvas tent on an empty field fronting Intercontinental Road. It was faithfully tended by two men, who, for some unexplained reason, always fired the weapon straight at the passing traffic. Every morning at first light, the cannon was fired to mark the beginning of the day's fasting. It was fired again at sunset to mark the end of the fast and signal that the ijtar, the meal breaking the fast, could begin. Families would then gather around laden tables to eat and celebrate through most of the night. A second large meal, the saool, was served at about 3:oo A.M., in preparation for sunrise. Then almost everyone went to bed and stayed there through much of the day, for during Ramadan day and night are reversed.

At midmorning of one typical Ramadan day, I wandered the streets of downtown Riyadh. Unlike the bustle of ordinary mornings, a death like stillness hung over Tamari Street. Shops were padlocked. The few dealers in the gold souqs who had opened their shops dozed behind their counters. The black African women who usually clustered on the street selling soft drinks were gone. Across the square from where Tamari Street meets the clock tower, the seldom seen poor of Saudi Arabia gathered near the main mosque, waiting for their measure of charity from their more prosperous Moslem brothers. The obligation to pay zakat, or alms tax, another pillar of faith, is often tied to Ramadan. Although the Koran does not specify the amount or when it should be paid, many Saudis distribute money and also food during Ramadan. In order to make the poor available to the pious, the tough restrictions imposed on beggars by the Bureau of Beggar Control are lifted for the month. As I walked by the mosque, I saw men sitting on the broken pavement of the sidewalk, leaning against the stone wall of the low, square building, their crutches clutched in their hands. Others, in ragged clothes, slept on thin blankets spread out on the sidewalk or under the thin foliage of the nearby trees. A few women with dirty, tattered children gathered around them sat in the shade on the opposite side of the building. This quiet would last until the end of the final prayer call, when the deserted streets would again come alive. Like nocturnal animals, people would emerge from their homes to make merry or simply to restock their depleted pantry shelves for the follow ing night's feasting.

One of the deepening conflicts between the traditionalists and the more religiously lax Saudis is that Ramadan is becoming less a period of deprivation and more a time of merrymaking in the name of reli gion. Over the years that I spent in Saudi Arabia, I saw Ramadan increasingly become the occasion for lavish entertaining or complete escape from the kingdom. While the devout fasted and prayed, large numbers of the well-to-do left for the pleasure spots of Europe. 'When these escapees were members of the royal family, it created a political problem. Of the three kings since the oil boom, only King Faisal succeeded in keeping most members of the royal family in the kingdom during Ramadan. The absence of even some of the more prominent members of the royal family is distasteful to the people, for Ramadan commands a special reverence for all Moslems. There is the belief among the Saudis that not only the conduct of pious people but the conduct of the general population is affected in a positive way by Ramadan. Attendance at prayers at the mosques increases, the level of charity rises, and, according to the statistics of Riyadh's Crime Department, the already low rate of crime drops. "There was a crime drop in Riyadh during this year's holy fasting month of Ramadan for the Moslems. . . . Only five youngsters went to jail for harassing women in various markets and public parks. Another 112 young people were imprisoned for hot rodding their cars.

A total of 59 persons were caught red handed while eating when they should have been fasting."*

Arrests for eating are common since public observance of the fast is mandatory for non-Moslems as well as Moslems. All restaurants and other eating establishments remain closed during the hours of the fast.

*Arab News, Auguat i6, 1982.

Non-Moslems who eat or drink in the presence of Moslems risk subjection to the camel whips or the jails of the malawain. This means that Westerners away from their homes must either do without food and water or plan ahead. Because of the danger of dehydration, any foray out in public during Ramadan required provisioning. When I went out, I would freeze water in a slender plastic bottle which I then put inside a heavy sock and hid in the bottom of the basket that I used for shopping. The problem then became how to get to the water without being seen. I remember hiding in an alleyway in Baatha with my friend Kathy Bows one hot Ramadan morning to steal a drink of water. While I hugged the corner of an old, decaying building, watching for a matawah, Kathy fished the bottle from the basket, unscrewed the cap, and gulped down a quick drink. We quickly switched places to give me a turn at the cold, reviving liquid.

Essentially very little is accomplished during Ramadan. Under Saudi labor law, Moslems are not required to work more than six hours a day. Government offices do not open until 10:00 A.M. and close at 3:00 P.M. But whether or not anyone is there during that time is another matter: in the middle of one Ramadan day, my superior at the Ministry of Planning found himself totally alone in the ministry building. In addition, during the 1970s, the already short food supplies dwindled even further because few ships were unloaded in the ports. At the end of that first Ramadan I spent in Saudi Arabia, only one bony, freezer- burned chicken was left in the market when the month ended.

Yet the Westerners are caught up in the festive aspects of Ramadan as well. Workloads are light and schedules are thrown to the winds. And like the Saudis, the Westerners more often than not prowl the streets until I :oo A.M. Life goes on in this vein until everyone begins to look for the new moon heralding the beginning of the month of Shawwal and the five-day feast, or Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan. Following the eid, the Ramadan cannon is rolled into storage until next year and life returns to normal until the hajj, the other great religious event of the year.

The hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, occurs two months after Rama dan, by the Hijrah calendar. Every year during the month of Dhul Rijjah, an incredible one and a half to two million Moslems from around the world descend on Saudi Arabia to perform the pilgrimage, a ritual begun by Abraham and affirmed by Mohammed 14oo years ago. During the hajj, the holy city of Mecca becomes an immense caldron of humanity, black, brown, yellow, and white. The entire government of Saudi Arabia closes down for a ten-day period, most non-Moslems attempt to leave the country on vacation, and life stands suspended as the pilgrims perform their rituals. For the Moslem, the hajj is a pro found statement of his devotion to God, a rejection of sin, and a celebration of the brotherhood of all Moslems.

The hajj is also a marvel of logistics and endurance. At the height of the hajj, planes bearing pilgrims wrapped in the ihram, a simple white seamless garment, land at the Jeddah airport at the rate of one per minute. The arrivees are taken from the plane and shuttled into the special hajj terminal, a massive structure that sits just beyond the main terminal at Jeddah, where the all-important hajj visas are checked be- fore the pilgrims can enter Saudi Arabia and undertake religious rites. The pilgrims are accommodated in everything from luxury hotels to tents. During much of the hajj, all two million pilgrims congregate within an area called the Holy Haram, which extends in an elongated shape three miles to the northeast and eighteen miles to the southeast from the mosque at Mecca. The Plain of Arafat, located within the Holy Haram, becomes a sea of white tents. Food, water, medical ser vices, and sanitation facilities have to be provided and the maze of traffic kept under some control. After completing their rituals, the hajjis, or pilgrims, will have been transported, most en masse, on a 120-mile, six-day trip from Jeddah to the holy sites and back again. As in all aspects of Islam, the rituals of the hajj are exactly prescribed. The highlights are the throwing of stones at Mina, which symbolizes the driving out of sin; drinking from the Zamzam well, by tradition the well that saved Hagar and Ishmael from death; prayer on the Plain of Arafat; and, as the culmination, the Eid al-Adha.

The Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, takes place on the tenth day of Dhul-Hijjah, following the prayers at Arafat. As part of the ritual of the hajj, every pilgrim who can afford it sacrifices an animal to share with the poor. Moslems around the world participate in the same ritual, which, as other aspects of Islam, affirms the brotherhood of believers. When we lived at Doctors' Villas #4, I heard a commotion outside my window on the morning of the eid. Looking down I saw the Tabahs, our Palestinian neighbors, hanging a live goat up on a red and white metal swing set in front of their house. When it was tightly secured, Majid deftly slit the throat, letting the bright red blood drain into the dry sand. The children in the compound were fascinated. As they gathered around, Majid severed the goat's tail and handed it to Cohn as the oldest male of the group. The animal hung there for several hours before it was cut down and taken into the house to become the main dish of the eid. In proper Moslem tradition, the Tabahs delivered pieces of it to their Western neighbors, perhaps not the poor but certainly the spiritually less fortunate.

Most of the hajjis who come to Mecca are making their first trip out of their native land. Although kings, presidents, wealthy businessmen, and religious scholars are among the pilgrims, most are simple people who saved all their lives for the chance to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. They pour off of the planes and boats knowing no language but their own and with no experience in international travel. To ease the confusion, groups are organized by language and assigned guides, who stay with the group throughout the hajj to instruct the pilgrims in the proper performance of the religious rituals. In recent years, tour companies operating out of Pakistan, Indonesia, and other countries with large Moslem populations provide their clients total package tours consisting of air fare, accommodations, and religious instruction.

The large number of pilgrims now coming to Saudi Arabia is due to the advent of air travel, which revolutionized the hajj beginning in the 1950s. In past centuries, the trip was made by ship, horse, camel, or on foot. Some who left for Mecca as children returned as adults. Many others who left their homes never returned. The Rijaz railroad from Damascus to Mecca was the first convenience built to ease the rigors of the trip. Unfortunately, before it could be used the First World War intervened and the rail line was destroyed by Arab guerrillas led by T. E. Lawrence, the legendary Lawrence of Arabia. It was never rebuilt. Wreckage of one of the trains is still strewn across the desert in north west Saudi Arabia. Even a few years ago, thousands of pilgrims came by car. Before security concerns forced the government to channel most pilgrims in and out of Saudi Arabia by air, caravans of cars drove from Iraq, Iran, and Syria across the breadth of Saudi Arabia to Mecca.

Vehicles came through Riyadh, their horns blowing and green hajj flags flapping from their antennas, so loaded with people and possessions that their rear bumpers just cleared the road. Every year there was an area outside of Riyadh that was designated as the "hajj camp," where the government provided tents for the pilgrims. Just as their ancestors did, the hajjis brought rugs from their homelands to sell in order to finance their pilgrimage. The Oriental rug enthusiasts among the Western community yearly stampeded the camp in search of treasures The hajjis had learned to merchandise. Rather than bringing the family heirlooms, they loaded their cars with machine-made carpets, which they pawned off on gullible Westerners as examples of their country's or tribe's finest craft. Bargaining was fierce and difficult since Arabic was not always sufficient and none of us knew a word of Afghani or Urdu. Not being particularly fond of Oriental rugs, I usually wandered among the canvas tents, where the women cooked over small gas heaters and the children played or slept on blankets or rugs spread out on the hard ground. In different years, I found both of my hajj camp rugs among the pilgrims' tents. One is a large tribal rug dyed with vegetable dyes, probably from somewhere on the border between Iran and Afghanistan. It is greatly worn and has small, carefully darned holes where the embers from countless campfires have fallen and burned through. The other is a Bedouin weaving from the Hadramaut, the southeastern part of the Arabian Peninsula that borders the Rub al Khali, where rug weaving among the Bedouins is a dying, if not al ready dead, art. The sellers were amazed that I had rejected their new merchandise in favor of these dirty weavings dragged from their tents. Not believing their good fortune, they were anxious to sell. Often when I look at my much-loved rugs, I laugh to think how generously I must have added to those hajjis' funds for Mecca.

Just as the stampede to Mecca gradually accelerates, the hajj season winds down. The cars wander back through Riyadh. Congestion at the airport declines as the pilgrims, many carrying small plastic jerry cans of water from the Zamzam well, bundle themselves and their possessions back on planes for the trip home.

The credit for the security of the pilgrims and the relative ease of the hajj today goes to the House of Saud. Pilgrims were shamefully pillaged and exploited until Abdul Aziz ibn Saud won control of Mecca and personally undertook to guarantee their safety. Every Saudi king since Abdul Aziz, with the exception of Saud, has been identified with some aspect of the haji. Just as King Faisal expanded the Grand Mosque at Mecca and King Khalid presided over its completion, the present king, Fahd, has announced plans for a major renovation and enlargement of the Prophet's mosque at Medina. Within the bureaucracy, the minister of Pilgrimage and Endowments holds the same cabinet rank as the minister of Petroleum or Foreign Affairs. Every year the minis try oversees the spending of more than $50 million for the hajj. And every year the government continues to pour enormous sums into the hajj for everything from mosques to road construction to public telephones to Zamzam water for the pilgrims