Imprinted for Life: Americans Who Grew Up in Dhahran

By Patricia F. Roland

In 1972 my family took a car trip following a portion of the Trans-Arabian pipeline south, stopping at Tapline pump stations along the way: Turaif amidst rows of eucalyptus trees; Badanah and Rafha, where a shamal dust storm filled the company's army-style house with sand as we slept; and finally Qaisumah, where a surprising purple bathtub had been installed in the guest house for a visiting Saudi king.

Later, whenever I returned home to Saudi Arabia from schools abroad, I would visualize those isolated outposts in the Great Nafud as the plane flew toward Dhahran through miles of velvety indigo black—illuminated here and there by bedouin fires, sparking red-orange in the night. All of us students returning home on such flights had one thing in common: Our families' lives centered around the gleaming silver oil tanks on white sand peninsulas that curved away into the blue-green expanse of the Persian/Arabian Gulf.

In the 1970s, al-Khobar, Dammam, Dhahran and its airport were isolated settlements connected by long, straight roads running through desert scenery broken by occasional metal billboards featuring such items as a rough depiction of a Rolex watch and Arabic-script ad copy. On one side of the two-lane blacktop road from the airport into Dhahran was the concrete-bleacher soccer stadium. On the other, the 1930s-style petrol station with its zigzag frieze of fluorescent lights and two ancient, free-standing gas pumps.

As we passed the barracks-like rows of offices and warehouses, I anxiously awaited the appearance of the Jebel of Dhahran and the clock tower marking the University of Petroleum and Minerals, whose buildings incorporated traditional arabesque forms into an innovative, modern architectural masterpiece. Past the turquoise and yellow-ochre, three-domed mosque of crumbling concrete was the old Dhahran Camp entrance; the arched white-and-green gate with its painted crossed swords and palm had been built in honor of a royal visit to this town, the headquarters of the Arabian American Oil Company.

At that time, Saudi citizens populated only a fraction of the wooden duplexes, suburban ranch houses and Arizona-style townhouses that constituted the company housing. Now, after Aramco's gradual shift from American to Saudi Arabian ownership that began in the early '70s and was completed in 1988, Saudi employees and their families live in the majority of these dwellings.

When I was growing up, the small but lush green lawns and shady trees contrasted sharply with the scene from the Aramco bus window whenever it pulled into the nearby town of al-Khobar, bringing company employees and their families on a shopping trip. There devout Saudis offered five o'clock prayers, facing toward Mecca on straw mats covering the grassy midstreet island.

In the bustling downtown area, Sudanese youths selling roasted nuts on street corners were the only stationary figures in the eddy of pedestrians in and out of textile shops, pharmacies, kitchenware emporiums, and shops selling imported goods or Middle Eastern handicrafts and antiques. The scents of Arabic coffee, shawarma, thyme and coriander wafted through the air to apartment balconies above.

As a foreigner, you were especially alert to the sudden flurry of excitement through the downtown throng that might signal the approach of the mutawa, a religious policeman, on an ever-vigilant search for violators of what is acceptable personal garb in Saudi society. We'd heard that the mutawa might cut off a young man's long hair with shears or paint red the legs of a woman in too short a skirt. It was wiser practice for foreign women to adopt the traditional ways and wear a long dress, with long sleeves and conservative neckline.

By contrast, life in the company town of Dhahran could not have been more American. At Little League games, Girl Scouts sold sno-cones in the stands. At the Fourth of July picnic, people in red, white and blue Uncle Sam hats munched on watermelon wedges.

A Special Mission

During one vacation at home my brother and I drove to al-Khobar on a special mission. En route we passed a bus decorated with colorful landscapes, painted flowers, poetry and Qur'anic verses, carrying a youthful, enthusiastic Saudi soccer team who cheered and chanted the name of their home town, "Thuq-BAH! Thuq-BAH!" Upon reaching the al-Khobar souk, we went directly to a shop with room for only two customers to stand. The proprietor conducted his business sitting in the doorjamb. He outlined our feet on craft paper, from which he made us personally fitted tire-sole sandals with camel hide straps. These the American students from Saudi Arabia wore proudly in the boarding department of the American Community School in Beirut. Sometimes for special friends we would carry back outlines of their feet to Saudi Arabia and return to school with their personalized rubber tire sandals.

Beyond the towns, an expanse of sabkha marked the Gulf coastline. Nearly deserted during the week, these salt flats were dotted with Arab families picnicking on Thursdays and Fridays—the weekend. Then women in their black 'abayahs would be wading in the azure water and kids would be racing their minibikes.

On some weekends, our family sailed out of the nearby port of Jubail on a dhow, a traditional wooden boat built without nails, a direct descendent of the sea-going wooden ships that linked the ports and cities of the Gulf to the Indian subcontinent to the east and Africa to the west for thousands of years. Schools of porpoises paralleled our course.

On our scuba-diving expeditions we swam alongside yellow-striped butterfly fish and blue parrot fish. Energetic clownfish darted amongst sea anemones and untouched coral. On Jana island we picked our way gingerly over the rocks, keeping an eye out for scorpions, and followed the scalloped patterns in the sand that delineated a sea turtle's path.

Other weekends we visited the Dammam souks. There was a stall draped with Arab gutra headdresses in unusual green, blue, and brown, as well as the traditional red-and-white or black-and-white combinations. Just beyond the headdress shop, a portico opened onto a courtyard filled with tables of bedouin antiques—coffee pots, brass lamps, and heavy wooden mortars and pestles. Alongside them were tin pails and funnels, plastic sandals, and Chinese enamel bowls bearing designs of fruit and flowers. These eclectic objects composed a cheerful, sun-drenched still life. Stacks of peppers, melons, and squashes under canvas awnings lent further touches of color.

In the cool air of the covered souk, merchants unrolled oriental carpets from all over the Middle East before customers partaking of the customary Arabic coffee offered by the shopkeepers as an essential ingredient of Middle Eastern hospitality. We found "tapestries," thin rugs machine-made in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, depicting the Last Supper, bedouins camped in the Bekaa, and the inevitable dogs playing poker. At the end of the shadowy corridor, a flash of sunlight reflected off a window filled with glittering racks of gold bangles.

A trip to Hofuf began on the infamous stretch of highway where Arab men purportedly searched for a forbidden glimpse of potential wives by looking at them through the back windows of limousines. First we passed the landmark great Jebel. Soon the palms of al-Hasa oasis appeared, marking the outskirts of Hofuf. Potters worked in the depths of cool caves that were interspersed among towering rock formations.

In Hofuf, large cafés overlooked the main street, along which outdoor markets reminiscent of Acapulco shops displayed antique metalwork trays and incense burners. An old man sold embroidered sandals from a great jumbled pile on the sidewalk. The streets housing gate-makers' shops were graced with carved wooden harem windows marking the private dwellings above.

Metal double doors of shops were propped open to reveal burlap sacks and oil cans full of spices—curry and cumin—bulgur, lentils, sesame and sunflower seeds. In a byway, women had settled in rows, selling heavy antique bedouin bracelets and necklaces set with amber and carnelian. Babes in arms cried out, and small shoeless children and goats ran up and down the lane.

A Modern Contrast

By contrast with these colorful and slightly chaotic traditional streets, back in Dhahran scores of bright young Saudi Arabs listened in orderly classrooms to lectures by engineers as part of their on-the-job training in the high-level technical and management skills needed to run all of Aramco's operations. Their studies included electronics, engineering, industrial principles, and computer science. Many others received government-subsidized educations abroad or in newly opened Saudi universities with this goal in mind.

By the early 1980s, serious change was underway. Where yesterday a soft drink plant and the Arabian Gulf composed a backdrop for al-Khobar, suddenly there appeared a flag-festooned, modern structure with signs in Arabic and English reading "Grand Opening!" What were previously the outskirts of town now housed a large, chrome and white, fluorescent-lit Safeway grocery store on the order of a stateside supermarket, offering fresh fruit and milk, imported cheeses and even Caspian caviar. As more and more buildings were erected in and around al-Khobar and the neighboring towns of Dhahran and Damman, they all began to merge into one vast metropolis.

Deluxe international hotels were constructed on the highway just outside of camp, their interiors full of arabesque arches, marble floors, carved wooden screens, potted palms, brass trays and samovars. Diners in the restaurant might momentarily lose track of whether they were in a Hilton hotel in Katmandu, Tehran or Los Angeles, rather than in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

Whenever I returned from school abroad, I was proud that my group of friends felt a kinship with the Saudi Arabs, had Saudi friends, spoke Arabic with the Saudi people we encountered, and even affected some aspects of native dress. Whatever the effects of our linguistic exertions on our ever-courteous Saudi hosts, our intentions were good. We did want to fit in, and we aspired to understand the religion, lifestyle, and language of that unique country in which we had had the good fortune to grow up, and then return to from distant schools.

As our parents eventually retired and our families left Saudi Arabia, our direct bonds to the country were broken. To this day, however, I feel a wave of nostalgia when I see written or artistic references to that country.

Meetings with old friends from Dhahran now provide all-too-rare opportunities to reminisce with those who share emotions impossible to explain to others. We were born and raised as Americans, and now many of us are raising American families of our own. But deep inside we are different. Like the salmon imprinted with the particular waters in which they spend their earliest days, wherever we roam we remain imprinted with the sights, sounds, and feel of a distant, unique land and the warmth and hospitality of its people. We may never return physically to Saudi Arabia, but each of us carries inside ourselves intensely personal memories of a second homeland that was once our home.

Patricia Roland is a writer and artist working on manuscripts about Lebanon and Saudi Arabia from 1964 to 1981.