The US–Saudi Story, Through the Eyes of an Aramco ‘Brat’

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/01/31/the-us-saudi-story-through-the-eyes-of-an-aramco-brat/

by kwindla • 6 years ago

80 9 6 years ago

Reminds me to recommend a great book about the history of oil, The Prize. It really explains a lot about our current world and how we got here.

vmurthy• 6 years ago

I had the pleasure of reading “The prize” (0) last year. It gives an overall picture of the oil industry and obviously the Saudi-American relationship. Should pair well with this insider view.

(0) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/169354.The_Prize

cs02rm02• 6 years ago

Much of that echoes with me.

I spent a lot of my teenage years in Dhahran as my dad was a UK expat instructor pilot to the Saudi Air Force. Living on compounds with swimming pools, endless sunshine, homebrew and smuggled pork products are features of a few of the childhood memories I cherish, that most around me in the UK don't have.

We crossed paths with Aramco families occasionally as there weren't exactly many other reasons for Westerners to be there. The US influences were striking to me, while things like segregation in restaurants were a little jarring even as a child mostly sitting in the family section, it gave me an exposure to US brands I still don't have in the UK. We get quite a few McDonalds but Dhahran had Fuddruckers, Baskin Robbins, Taco Bell, Wendy's - it was like being Charlie in the Chocolate Factory to me at the time. These were places I had only heard of from movies, something we still had in Saudi despite the lack of cinemas - one of the houses on the compound had bookcases full of pirate VHS tapes where we'd spend ages choosing from just the titles printed on labels.

We left before 9/11. I've no idea what, if any, is left of that life. Odd to read about it here, news coverage of the Kingdom is very one dimensional.

david_draco• 6 years ago

How did the Saudi attack on 9/11/2001 change your view of the country? Similar to the author of the article?

cs02rm02• 6 years ago

I'm not sure it did, immediately.

We'd had the Khobar Towers bombing, my dad was in the first Gulf War and even before that I remember him checking under the car in the UK for devices before we could get in because of the IRA. So I was already aware it was a relatively messed up part of the world, but separately terrorism and plane crashes were perhaps already more part of my worldview than for most people. I felt slightly numb to it compared to those around me at the time if I'm honest.

I think it was probably the wider Western reaction to 9/11 rather than my own, that meant I increasingly viewed Saudi as a more isolated, riskier place. Since then overheard comments about how you never saw anyone in a wheelchair have reverberated over the years with more meaning as an adult hearing about human rights records and becoming a father has moved me further from any personal desire to return.

I always found the people we met genuinely welcoming and kind though, as is so often the case when you meet individuals rather than succumb to broad strokes. On that level I think the relationship went deeper than oil but we've undone a lot of that. When I hear about things like beginning to issue tourist visas or even just getting the Ruiz Joshua fight it leaves me hopeful that in time we'll overcome the divisions that seem apparent despite talk of special relationships.

zhoujianfu• 6 years ago

Me too.. I lived in Riyadh in 84-86 and 89-91 as a 3rd, 4th, 8th, and 9th grader, first on the Saudi British Bank compound, and finally at the end in the Diplomatic Quarter.

I always thought as a kid Saudi Arabia was one of the "good guys", as allies to the U.S., despite their strange customs and obviously stupid rules about women driving and covering up.

Nowadays I wish the U.S. did not ally with any country that is run by a dictator, and/or hasn't separated church from state.

meristem• 6 years ago

It is not just in Saudi. I grew up with a parent working for a very large European company. Lots of people from the home office lived rather 'colonially' when homed in my country.

bradleysmith• 6 years ago

I was born in Dhahran in 1986, left in 2002. My dad worked in Aramco’s drilling department and was not insignificantly involved in introducing PCs to the organization. From his telling it was mostly for selfish motivations to improve inventory, logistics, and accounting workflows to be more manageable for his own teams. He was getting the Aramco library signed up for computer magazines before I was born. He has some interesting stories about the early days of computing, from inside the bowels of this company.

I learned to build PCs from parts I purchased from Philippino merchants at al Shula mall in the mentioned Khobar. I attended LAN parties on the initially mentioned street in the article in Dhahran proper, Prairie View. I taught myself to program on a TI-83 calculator at Dhahran school.

I transitioned into the tech industry pretty quickly out of college after studying poli-sci related curriculum w focus on Middle East, and have worked in O&G related tech for a good part of my career. I’m a product manager for an O&G portfolio product now. I have friends working in Aramco still, many Aramco friends in the town I live, and family in the region in similar arrangements. Happy to answer questions regarding any of the above.

There are quite a few resources available for those curious about the country, company, and history of expatriate workers in the region. “The Prize” mentioned in another few comments is an excellent primer, a lesser know resource I’ve come to like are “Out In The Blue”, by Tom Barger who retired from Aramco as CEO in 69. The book is a collection of letters from himself and other expatriate workers to their families about the establishment of exploration activity in the country. It’s got a bit of “the party line”, rosy-towards-the-Saudis feel but is some excellent and generally unknown primary documentation of the company’s early years. Another book less charitable to Saudi, American, or even my own role in the country’s history is “Cities of Salt” by Abdelrahman Munif. That was a multi part fiction giving a semi-historical recounting of the establishment of a Dhahran-like town in a Saudi-like country from the perspectives of different local people living there already. It is phenomenally authentic, and has a spirit of understanding of the sentiment there that is not common. The work has been banned in kingdom.

otoburb• 6 years ago

This article really resonates with me. I lived in Riyadh during my childhood for a decade and I'm around the same age as the author. I wasn't an Aramco brat as my father was a British english teacher on the civilian airport so we were in a mixed expat-Saudi compound, which didn't have nearly as many amenities or protections afforded to the expat-only compounds.

"Today, Saudi Arabia feels to me like an estranged father. Someone I love and mistrust simultaneously, whose news I follow at a distance, with a keen interest I’ve tried to quell but can’t. I remain restless, dissatisfied with both of my homelands, critical of how they relate to each other and how they treat their people."

Rare is the gift of a writer who expresses more clearly what I could not clearly articulate to myself over the intervening decades.

The US–Saudi Story, Through the Eyes of an Aramco ‘Brat’

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