February 24, 2002
A Traveler to Saudi Arabia
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — I was riding the elevator the other day in my hotel when a Saudi gentleman got in on the floor below me. He was wearing a traditional Saudi robe and red headdress, and I was in a suit and tie. He looked me up and down for a second, before asking, "American?" Yes, I nodded. Then, reaching out his huge hand to me and smiling warmly, he said, "Saudi." It was a kind gesture, meant to say, "We still like you — we hope you still like us."
Over eight days of discussions here I've had many memorable encounters, not all so friendly. One thing I learned was that this is a deceptively insular place. For centuries the desert kept outsiders at bay, and then, with the coming of oil wealth, the Saudis had the luxury of only letting the world in on their own terms, and those who were let in often told the Saudis only what they wanted to hear.
After Sept. 11, though, and the disclosure that 15 of the hijackers were Saudis, the world kicked down Saudi Arabia's door and arrived without a visa. Suddenly, Saudis got a raw taste of what many outsiders, who did not need to be polite to them, thought of their country — that it had become the source of the money, Islamist ideology and people who were now threatening us.
This shocked many Saudis and, though they received me hospitably, they hammered me with their pain. I heard it from a female doctor who spoke of the shame she now felt when the foreign border police looked twice at her once-respected Saudi passport and of how much she wanted me to understand that Saudis were "a moderate people." I heard it from a senior official who asked me at the end of an interview: "What is to become of us?" — the thousands of U.S.-educated Saudis who enjoy America, send their kids there, vacation there and now feel severed from an essential part of their identity.
And I heard it most passionately from a female Saudi professor. (Don't be fooled by the veils; it was the women here who got most in my face.) She almost brought me to tears at the Okaz newspaper when she spoke from the heart of how important Islam was for her identity and the deep hurt she felt from seeing her faith denigrated and misunderstood by outsiders.
But they also heard my pain — my pain at the fact that 15 Saudis came over to my country and helped kill 3,000 Americans, and that to this day Saudi Arabia has never really explained who the hijackers were and what motivated them. At best, I was told they were "deviants." But there are two kinds of deviants — deviants who believe what everyone else around them believes and the only difference is that they act on it, and deviants who believe in things no one around them does. If they were deviants, I asked, why did a U.S. hospital worker here tell me he was appalled to see Saudi doctors and nurses around him celebrating on 9/11?
I was told this was not the true feeling here. I was told the hijackers were actually educated in America. I was told they were sent by Mossad or the C.I.A. I was told in one session that the Jews control the U.S. government and that was the real problem, a statement that prompted me to walk out. I was told the hijackers were responding to Arab anger over blind U.S. support for Israel's brutality to Palestinians. If that was the case, I asked, why did Osama bin Laden say that what motivated him was a desire to drive the U.S. out of Arabia and topple the corrupt Saudi ruling family? I got no good answers.
I would have concluded that the cultural gap between us was unbridgeable, had I not also met a few U.S.-educated Saudis who, when alone with me, confided what I think is the truth. One put it like this: "The tribal mentality here is very strong, and in the desert, when the tribe is attacked, you'd better stick together or you're dead. People know there are problems with our [Islamic] education system, and part of them is glad you're raising it. But they feel under attack, so they won't talk frankly to you [or want to be seen as making] changes because you demand them. The real problem is not the books, but the preachers who use their Friday sermons to tell [young] people that America wants to destroy Islam.
"Before 9/11 the government thought they were just talking, so let them talk. Now they're dealing with it. These people need to be controlled. But always it has to be in secret — never tell the outsiders you have a problem. No, I say — let's fix the problem and tell people we've fixed it, and they should fix theirs. Until we get over this tribal outlook, we will never develop."
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