Mike's Memories - How things change

I loved my time in Saudi I was living there for ten years coming home in late 1983. I had many friends amongst the locals and so did Syb but over the period we were there things changed in a slight but noticeable way. The Quran encourages Muslims to venerate teachers and as I was responsible for teaching them so it was easy to gain their respect if you tried. This made it simple to be friends with them and in turn they were proud to be friends with their teacher, this of course was when I first went out in the mid 70s.

By the time I left the younger Saudis had become more self confident without much to support it and somewhere along the line they seemed to have been warned that friendship with expatriates was not to be encouraged. This showed itself in less socialising amongst the men outside work and a more formal atmosphere at work. When we left things had just started to cool down.

I hate to think what it’s like for the expatriate community now when anti lobby in this country is trying to stop the sale of arms to the Saudis. Do they really think that the Saudis will stop buying arms if they don’t get them from us there are very many countries where they can get them. What is more we would lose what little influence we have. Check how many jobs will be lost in this country and over there. Also these lobbies never seem to consider the effect they have on the relationship between  the people of the countries they criticise and the treatment of expatriate working there. I much prefer the Saudi Arabia I knew as described in Syb’s book Inshallah.