SAUDI ARABIA: Life in Purgatory

To Americans living in Saudi Arabia, life in the oil-rich desert land of Mohammed is a sort of steamy purgatory. Items:

¶ Foreigners may not build churches for their own use. They may not be married in Arabia. Church services are held surreptitiously in recreation halls. Clergymen come in from Persian Gulf ports disguised as teachers.

¶ No alcoholic beverages may be imported, not even beer and wine. Even the foreign embassies in Jidda are forbidden shipments of liquor.

¶ Aramco (Arabian-American Oil Co.) employees may not keep dogs as pets. This is not a Saudi restriction; it is an Aramco ruling to appease the government of ailing, powerful Ibn Saud (Moslems consider dogs to be unclean).

¶ The words ,”club,” “bridge” and “dance” are forbidden, although these social activities are carried on under other names. Mixed swimming parties on the Jidda beaches are forbidden.

¶ Traffic penalties are so severe that Aramco’s seven U.S. lawyers and a staff of “government relations” men spend most of their time trying to settle them. A 20 m.p.h. speed limit is rigidly enforced even on desert roads.

¶ Anyone desiring to cross 13 miles of water from Dhahran to Bahrein for a weekend must pay a head tax of $40.

¶ Recently some Americans smoking in public have had cigarettes slapped out of their mouths by Arabian police.

¶ TIME and Newsweek are banned, and similar bans are being considered for Sat-evepost and Esquire. Any books brought in —from paperbound whodunits to encyclopedias—are likely to be confiscated.

Americans put up with these strictures because Saudi Arabia is, after all, a holy land, and because Aramco values its royalties and the U.S. its big air base. Sometimes Americans lose their tempers; whether they are right or wrong in any particular ruckus, they are usually shipped home. One American was shot and wounded by a Saudi with the victim’s own gun. The American was reprimanded for having a weapon, and deported; the shooter was admonished and set free.

Late in August three Americans trespassed in the holy city of Mecca, forbidden to infidels. The Americans—Walter Coughlan, Antone Silva and Clyde Jackson—were employees of International Bechtel, a U.S. firm doing construction work in Saudi Arabia. Since they were not newcomers in the country, it seemed clear that they had foolishly driven their car to Mecca out of a sense of adventure, not because they had lost their way or were ignorant of a centuries-old taboo.

How they got past a guarded barrier ten miles out of Mecca, no one knew, but once inside the holy city, they escaped detection for a while in the dense throngs of pilgrims. When they tried to find their way out to Jidda, they were overheard speaking English, and Saudi soldiers pounced. The trespassers were taken to Jidda and thrown into a fly-infested jail. There they still languished last week. They had been fined about $1,200 each and sentenced to six months in the jug.

Bechtel representatives and a U.S. Embassy man have been allowed to see them and bring them food. In Washington, officials were quick to point out that the Saudis had been provoked and were well within their rights.