Arabian days.

The world's largest oil producer, a free-enterprise economy, and a U S. ally, Saudi Arabia has everything going for it. But can it modernize and stay true to Islam?

No ONE lies like an eyewitness," says the Russian proverb. First impressions of a closed society like Saudi Arabia must be taken with a pinch of cardamom. Nontheless they are: Riyadh Airport-an ornate marble palace from the Arabian Nights (of which a Saudi economist will later say, "I could have built three airports with the money spent on that"). Riyadh itself, which expanded outward from the old medieval city in a sudden eruption of highways and sky-scrapers-a Southern California landscape populated by Arabs ("an oil-rush town," a city planner says later). Yet the people themselves, almost all wearing traditional Arab dress, make Riyadh extremely "foreign." After a few days, I discovered that many people in the thawb held Phds from American universities. Was this perception of "foreignness" merely a provincial reaction on my part? After a further week T learned that the same Saudis can move at will between the Western world of LBOS and Hollywood and a Saudi one of sexual separatism and Islamic banking, and I realized that Saudi Arabia is indeed a very different society. You have been warned. Now read on.

My first appointments were at Igng Saud University, a high-roofed, airy campus with an indoor fountain in the Islamic style. No doubt my economist friend could have built three universities with the money spent on KSU. But there were no universities in the Kingdom thirty years ago; today there are seven. The social consequences of this are hard to forecast. There will be more educated Saudis which would usually mean a more open, liberal society. But Saudi universities are Islamic institutions with high technical standards, modern equipment, and able professors (some from the West, most from Egypt), but with certain boundaries to scholarship. There is, for instance, no philosophy department at KSU since the Koran removes the need for such speculation. And as more Saudis are educated at home, fewer will experience the liberal atmosphere of the Western campus which has helped make the Saudi elite one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East. So the net effect may be to strengthen a religious conservatism which is already strong.

Lunch was in the charming garden of Abdulaziz AlDukheil, a former deputy economics minister, now a consultant, who had invited along an impressive crosssection of the Saudi establishment. It rained, but too lightly to drive us inside until coffee-almost the ideal omen in a desert kingdom where rain is scarce.

The Saudi establishment, traditionally cautious, has held aloof from the various Mideast wars since 1945. But the mood of the lunch reflected a new political and economic bullishness. The economy is in its second year of recovery after six years of slumping oil prices; the failure of surrounding socialist economies puts the Saudis' free market resilience in a very good light; and the IranIraq cease-fire has restored economic activity in the Gulf. Only the previous month, my host had predicted at a Manila conference that world economic growth following the end of the cold war would produce an oil price fluctuating between $15 and $25 a barrel which would, of course, substantially boost Saudi revenues.

TRADITIONAL, REGIMES are much more confident as Communism collapses than in the heydays of Nasser and Khomeini. So the Saudis are playing a more active role in Mideast diplomacy. King Fahd had only recently brought the Lebanese factions together for negotiations in his summer palace. In the Gulf Saudi leadership is exercised through such institutions as the Gulf Cooperation Council. Dr. Al-Dukheil predicts that the GCC countries may give birth to a Gulf stock market and financial center linking the Middle East with Europe, the U.S., and the Far East in the next decade.

This Arab-Western cooperation was only threatened, I was told by host and guests alike, by continuing Western support for Israeli "intransigence" over the Palestinian issue. This was the first of many such occasions on my trip when I was exposed to the full blast of Arab feeling on the Mideast dispute, a blast no less forceful for being courteously expressed. Treated as almost a representative of the Israeli government (which would horrify Tel Aviv), I gradually became quite skillful at defending the Israeli position even where I differed from it. But on this first occasion I merely pointed out that though U.S. opinion was undoubtedly disturbed by the suppression of the intifada, Congress would always come to the assistance of an Israel under serious strategic threat.

My last appointment that day was with Prince Abdullah bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, very much a "working prince" in charge of the development of the two industrial cities of Jubail and Yanbu which I am due to visit the following week. Fortunately, his tolerance of journalists had not been seriously dented by the television talk-show host who introduced him once as someone whose country is the family business."

Thursday

The Islamic weekend begins on a Thursday, but a few members of the American Businessmen's Group gave up golf to argue the case for a more "even-handed" U.S. policy towards the Middle East: there is great goodwill toward the U.S. among Saudis, many of whom have been educated stateside; moderate Arab states deserve some reward for their moderation; and arms deals vetoed by Congress then go to U.S. competitors which impose fewer strategic limitations to protect Israel. The awful warning in this scenario is the collapse of the F-18 deal leading to the "Sale of the Century" when the British stepped in and sold the rival Tornado to Riyadh. "It was all wrapped up by the Saudis and Margaret Thatcher in an afternoon," said one aggrieved expatriate. "Very simple. They dealt with her as the leader of the British tribe who could make a decision on the spot. But they cannot understand who has the power in Washington between the President, the Congress, the Pentagon, and the State Department." Of course, you don't have to be Saudi to be baffled by the Beltway.

I went onto lunch with two of the group at a traditional Arab restaurant. The food was delicious but came with a small surprise: there was an open eating area for men, and a "family" area of curtained booths for men and women together, and with children. These booths were, as it happens, not unlike the discreet private rooms in which Edwardian swells entertained actresses. But I suppose it's the thought that counts.

Dinner that night was at the home of Sheik Suhman Olayan, who started out as a mechanic working for Aramco, was encouraged by the company to set up independently, and now runs his own international conglomerate. Also active in private diplomacy on the Arab-Israeli dispute (the Council on Foreign Relations and all that), he had assembled a distinguished mix of Arab and Western diplomats over a splendid dinner. Sheik Suliman greeted me by asking had I read "Israel's Dilemma," in Foreign Affairs by Amos Perlmutter who, as it happens, is an old friend of mine and an acquaintance of his. "He is a tough Zionist," said the sheik, "but a realist who accepts that there must be compromises on both sides." (Translation: not a supporter of Likud.) Amos's plan appealed to those present because, like solutions advanced by the sheik and others, it rests partly on the idea of a common market uniting Israel, Jordan, and a new Palestinian state on the West Bank. This appealed to the sheik's sense of long-term commercial interest. Once the businessmen on both sides started trading with each other in a large open market, they would quickly establish a binding network of mutually profitable arrangements. The economic success of such a system would make it not only popular in the countries concerned, but also impressive to other Arab states. Within a few years, Israel would be recognized by the Arab League states.

How realistic, in fact, is such a plan? Would Syria or Libya recognize "the Zionist entity"? If not, would Israel take the risk of a Palestinian state becoming another Lebanon? Until the Israeli political crisis is resolved, the prospects for any peace plan are not good. Much Arab hope therefore reposes in the United States Government's applying pressure on Israel to make concessions. Which partly explains the passionate argumentation I met throughout the trip.

Friday

John Thomson, a former commercial counselor at the U.S. Embassy who stayed on in private business (who recently reported for NR on the Cambodian civil war), drove me with his vivacious wife, Tika, and his family into the desert for a picnic. Along the way, we passed long spidery mechanical arms on wheels transcribing vast circles of what had been desert and spraying water onto the crops. Wheat growing is lavishly subsidized by the government. But the law of unintended consequences has intervened. Underground aquifers have been seriously depleted and Saudi Arabia now faces the prospect of a water shortage by the turn of the century.

THE PICNIC turned out to be a sumptuous affair in a carpeted bedouin tent on the farm of Abdullalatif Saleh Al Sheik, whose interests also include a fully computerized animal-feed factory (operated by only two men) and a fish farm which supplies either 1,800 or 18,000 fish to the market daily. (My notes are unclear, but both figures astonish me.) Among the other guests were a West German entrepreneur who, disillusioned at grandiose World Bank projects, establishes small-scale agricultural schemes in the Third World, and a cheerful Australian on holiday who owned up to being Colonel Qaddafi's agricultural adviser ("Nice chap, very easygoing, when you get to know him.")

One of the new breed of Saudi entrepreneur, Sheik Abdullalatif is also a respected member of his clan. During the picnic, he extended hospitality and cardamomscented Arabic coffee to various bedouin tribesmen passing by.

Saudi social and political life rests on this idea of access which reaches via a network of client-patron relationships up to King Fahd himself. Civil servants regularly receive inquiries from the king about decisions that petitioners feel discriminate against them. This right of access undoubtedly keeps the Saudi royal family in touch with popular grievances. But apologists who see this as an efficient substitute for formal democracy forget that a clash of petitions is likely to be decided in private in favor of the more influential patron. Arabic politics thus becomes, as David Pryce-Jones argues in his underground classic The Closed Circle (underground in Saudi Arabia that is, I met one Saudi who had a smuggled copy), a rivalry between different power-holders, each supported by large factions of clients. In Saudi Arabia, this rivalry is restrained and channeled by traditional custom; in radical regimes like Syria and Iraq, it is literally murderous.

Saturday

I began the day at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies which serves as a center of study and documentation for the entire Islamic world. As well as restoring ancient manuscripts, it maintains a well-stocked reference room (Heritage Foundation publications on display) and modern library. What was I interested in? Kemal Ataturk, I replied, an Islamic apostate and irreligious oppressor. Neither the curator nor the computer batted an eyelid, and the latter spat out 61 titles. I chose six and, at the curator's push of a button, the stacks obligingly swung open at the right place and red lights fleshed to indicate the position of the books.

Faisal deserves the attention of Western conservatives. Strongly anti-communist and anti-Nasserist (and, it must be said, anti-Zionist), he ruled from 1964 until his assassination in 1975 and forged an Islamic alliance of conservative regimes against the Arab League then dominated by Egypt. But it was in his strategy for modernizing Saudi Arabia that he showed himself to be a truly imaginative conservative statesman. There are three broad approaches to developing a backward country. Ataturk had taken Turkey on a forced march to modernity, adopting secularism and overriding tradition. Turkey is at long last beginning to prosper, but for many years its people were paralyzed by this collective psychic shock. The second method was tried by the Shah: to ignore tradition and religion and to proceed with industrial modernization as if there were no obstacles in the way. That produced hostility to modernization, popular resistance, and, in due course, an atavistic revolution. Faisal embarked on a strategy of development through tradition: protecting Islam, encouraging Arab customs (including traditional Arab dress), and maintaining family life against "Western values." (Foreign newspapers have large black ink squares blotting out alcohol advertisements or revealing photographs of women.) At the same time he would entice the Saudi people into education and economic progress by demonstrating their benefits.

The deputy minister of commerce, Dr. Abdul Rahman Al Zamil, whom I saw later that day, gave an example. A village had protested against a school for girls in its area. Faisal agreed not to proceed, but stipulated that parents who wanted their girls educated could bus them to the school in a nearby village. The school was a good one. Soon most of the girls were being bussed. The parents then demanded a local school. Faisal consented. Forty thousand women today attend college.

BUT HAS Faisal won the larger battle of attitudes? Are Saudis prepared to do the menial jobs now performed by Filipinos? Can they do the skilled technical jobs now performed by Western expatriates? Will they move into the private sector now that comfortable jobs in the bureaucracy are no longer available? Is there such a thing as an Islamic work ethic? And will Islam bend sufficiently for women to play a wider professional role?

Dinner that evening at John Thomson's home was a marvelously convivial occasion. I wondered just why I was enjoying it so much, apart from the food and conversation, when I realized that it was only the second meal at which women had been present. F]