Arabia's Hidden America

"In those days of random destruction, and trigger-happy militiamen, one never knew what to expect to see on the streets. I was doing my grocery shopping one afternoon when two militia boys rushed past. One had three revolvers stuffed in his belt and the other had two bullet-belts crisscrossing his chest, and two Kalashnikovs slung over his shoulder. Both were carrying bouquets of red roses. It was Mother's Day." (from "Arabia's Hidden America") --- Author Fadia Basrawi, a Saudi Arab,...
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"In those days of random destruction, and trigger-happy militiamen, one never knew what to expect to see on the streets. I was doing my grocery shopping one afternoon when two militia boys rushed past. One had three revolvers stuffed in his belt and the other had two bullet-belts crisscrossing his chest, and two Kalashnikovs slung over his shoulder. Both were carrying bouquets of red roses. It was Mother's Day." (from "Arabia's Hidden America") --- Author Fadia Basrawi, a Saudi Arab, grew up in the strictly circumscribed and tailor-made 'desert Disneyland' of Aramco (the Arabian American Oil Company). This slice of modern suburban middle-class America was located in Dharan, one of the leading cities of Saudi Arabia, a theocratic Muslim kingdom run according to strict Wahabbi Shari'a law. Eventually, Fadia moved to Beirut, the glitzy 'Paris of the Middle East,' to attend high school. In Beirut she fell in love with a passionate and idealistic Lebanese journalist with whom she eloped against her parents' wishes, subsequently getting caught up in Lebanon's fifteen-year civil war while raising a family of five children. Providing a fascinating account of a Saudi woman's painful journey from naive Aramcon girl to life as a resident of a war-torn capital city, this book provides new insight into two very different Middle Eastern worlds about which so little is known by those living outside the region.