This morning, we visited the Riyadh suq, an outdoor market with many different displays of sandalwood, buckets of antique jewelry, and enough inlaid daggers to set off ten kinds of alarms at airport security.
The King Faisal Foundation is taking wonderful care of all their winners–and I’m loving our rooms in the Al-Faisaliyah Hotel, whose luxuries range from fresh fruit and flowers (including floating pink rose petals) to ultramodern touchpads at each bedside that let you open or close three levels of curtains.
But even outside this VIP coccoon, I’ve found Saudi Arabia more welcoming than I expected. In Dammam airport, as Frank and I tried to find our way to our next airplane–picking up somebody else’s suitcase by mistake, and leaving one of our own suitcases behind–the many Saudis we spoke with went out of their way to help us. I’m told that hospitality to guests is one of the first social skills a Saudi child learns–I can well believe it. Even our suitcase gaffe was met with great tact.
Living in any country on this divided planet, it’s easy to pick up some caricature ideas of any other country you can mention. This eloquent statement by Saudi foreign minister HRH Prince Saud Al-Faisal addresses a lot of western caricatures of this part of the world.
Another perspective comes from British scholar Carole Hillenbrand, who just won a King Faisal International Prize for her book on the Crusades as seen by Islamic eyes. By the way, Carole would like to make it clear that she is not “fluent” in 11 languages other than English–11 is merely the number of languages she’s studied.
Such modesty is admirable, but…I clearly remember once trying to play a dictionary game in a group that included Carole. We had to give up because none of us could find, in the big dictionary, even one English word Carole didn’t know…