Princess Sultana's Daughters

had
been relieved by sudden and enormous wealth. To get to the heart of
the matter, I had to go back in time.
    Many people, Muslims and Christians alike,
despise Saudis for their unearned wealth. Yet, few bother to
understand the wretched poverty endured by all Saudi Arabians until
the mid 1970s. I highly resent this hasty analysis of our current
situation.
    Many years passed after the actual discovery
of oil under the sand of the desert before our people benefited
from the riches guaranteed by the oil production that had been
organized by American companies. In the beginning, King Abdul Aziz,
my grandfather and the founder of Saudi Arabia, trusted the smooth-
talking men who made false promises, not understanding that the
deals they struck put millions into the pockets of the Americans
and paltry sums into the coffers of Saudi Arabia. Only when the
American oil companies were forced to be fair did they behave in a
principled manner.
    Thus, due to the disproportionate method of
dividing the proceeds from the oil wealth, it took many years for
the bedouin tents of the desert to be replaced by luxurious villas
and palaces. Meanwhile, the people of Saudi Arabia suffered
greatly. Infant mortality in Saudi Arabia was among the highest in
the world, for there was no money, doctors, or hospitals to treat
the sick. The Saudi diet consisted of dates, camel milk, and goat
and camel meat.
    I can remember seeing the desperate look in
the eyes of one of the wealthiest men in the kingdom as he shared
the horrifying tale of his early years. A brilliant and highly
respected man of business, he spent the first fifteen years of his
life going from door to door in the mud-hut village of Riyadh, in
an attempt to sell small bags of goat’s milk. He was the man of the
family at age seven, for his father had died of a slight infection
received when he cut himself with his sword while slaughtering a
camel for the Haj feast. The infection had turned to gangrene, and
his father had left the living with screams of great pain rending
the air.
    As was the custom of the day, the young boy’s
mother was wed to a surviving brother of his father, a man who had
many children of his own. The young boy felt responsible for his
five younger siblings. Four of the five children were buried by his
own hand, their deaths the result of poor nutrition and lack of
medical facilities. His brutish climb to prosperity was a tale of
Dickensian horror.
    After a youth spent amid dire poverty, it was
quite natural that the first Saudi generation to know the power of
wealth would pamper their offspring, showering them with all that
their money could purchase. While Kareem and I grew to adulthood
without knowing need, we understood the vital force of our parents’
poverty, which had made a lasting impact during our youth. However,
the children born from our generation never knew deprivation, even
secondhand, and so did not realize what it really meant to be
poor.
    Civilization followed a natural course, for
concentrated wealth balanced insecurely upon a lost heritage may at
any moment be dismissed as of no value. It was only a matter of
time until the shaky foundations began to tumble.
    The conventions and traditions accepted by
past generations were questioned by my generation. The generation
that followed mine often, wholly without restraint, followed their
animal instincts. This primitive rejection of social order brought
forth a natural backlash of religious fanaticism and disdain for
extravagant fortunes.
    Now, those who are most fanatical are the
offspring of my generation. Having never known life without great
wealth, and spared any knowledge of the consequences of wrenching
poverty, our children and the children of our acquaintances are
scornful of our economic ease and are searching for a purpose
greater than the accumulation of additional riches.
    My child Amani became a leader of a group of
women who strive to be even more militant than the men who lead the
faithful to overturn the throne claimed by the Al Sa’ud clan.
    While Amani sought to save the souls of those
she knows as relatives, or claims as friends, she brought forth a
confession from her cousin Faten, the child of my brother, Ali,
that none of us could ever have imagined.
    No man has been haughtier with women than
Ali. As a child, he treated his ten sisters with contempt. As a
young man living in America, he bedded and casually discarded
hundreds of Western women. As a husband, he treated his