REFLECTIONS: A Thing to Remember

The grave people of Arabia are marked with the tradition of more than 60 centuries of victory over one of the toughest lands on earth. They are neither progressive nor playful, but of the simple fact that they have been alive a long time they are quietly proud. One of the proudest, and least bound by the past, is the King, Ibn Saud. He lets a few strangers into his oil-bearing domains, and he likes to hear tales of how life is lived beyond the sea. So, when his 14-year-old son, Prince Nawaf Ibn Abdul Aziz, prepared to come to the U.S., the King told him to be sure to look over a school for boys of his own age and report what it was like when he returned to Arabia.

Last week at Long Island’s $2,000,000 Bayside High School, Prince Nawaf, wearing flowing robes and white desert headdress and followed by an interpreter, stepped out of a T.W.A. limousine. Principal George J. Crane pumped his hand and beamed: “If my mother could only see me now, Prince.” As photographers moved in for pictures, the principal suggested: “Smile, Prince, m’boy.”

Prince Nawaf signed copies of the school yearbook for bobby-soxers, shook hands all around. Said 15-year-old Stephane Schafer afterwards: “My parents are Zionists. My mother belongs to Hadassah. But I’m awfully glad I met the Prince.” A high-school journalist asked the interpreter: “Does he like school?” The interpreter replied: “He says, ‘It’s the best thing.’ ”

This answer bore traces of the East’s age-old reservation. Had Prince Nawaf understood more about the U.S. way of life, he might have been more enthusiastic. Principal Crane enlightened him a little. He said: “Within a radius of seven miles from this school there are more golf courses than in any other seven-mile radius in the world. You’ll forget many things but you won’t forget that.”

And it may be that when Bayside (and Mecca, too) are dust, that will be the thing Arabian shepherds will remember as they watch their lean flocks; it is the word a prince brought back from a teacher beyond the sea.