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SAUDI ARABIAN NIGHTS
Dispatches from the Middle East
Part One
My journey to the other side of the planet began, as it probably ought, by fighting with an old lady for the last seat on my Southwest flight from San Diego to Baltimore. I don’t understand Southwest Airlines. No-frills air travel sounds like a great idea to me. But why can’t Southwest make a small capital investment in a computer system that allows them to issue seat assignments, rather than letting passengers duke it out themselves? I can’t imagine what it takes to get an exit-row seat on Southwest, but the battle-scared ruffians I saw sitting in the exit rows, glorifying in their extra legroom, made me opt for fighting with the old lady for seat 19C. This was going to be a long trip.
Of course, the overly chipper, barely legal flight attendant rushed right over to smooth things out. She convinced another passenger, by offering the passenger her extra kidney, to take a later flight, then kindly escorted my elderly friend to the now-vacant seat. As the old lady scuttled away, she kept mumbling that things haven’t been the same in this country since the Eisenhower administration. Too true.
The flight from San Diego to Baltimore was no cause for concern, except for the fact that the plane actually landed in Baltimore. I usually enjoy visiting Baltimore. Growing up in Washington, D.C., we used to head to Baltimore every now and then to catch a glimpse of a real working-class city, one where honest, gritty people actually produce something tangible, rather than the partisan spite and rhetoric that are D.C.’s most famous exports. But upon arriving, I found that a terminal case of Ravens fever had gripped the city. I understand that a certain amount of civic pride gets bound up in following one’s local sports teams. But I knew that once I got to the other side of the planet, I probably wouldn’t be able to find out who won the silly Super Bowl, let alone actually watch it. So I couldn’t invest much emotional energy in all this Ravens hoopla. Yet I couldn’t escape it, constantly confronted on the streets by rabid Ravens fans who have painted themselves purple from head to toe, despite the fact that the Big Game was still days away. I was sure some of these fans would be dead by Super Sunday, their pores clogged by some trace mineral oxide in the body paint. The result of these deaths, probably, will be a huge Congressional inquiry into how the importation of cheap body paint (a violation of NAFTA, I’m sure) is killing off our citizens by the thousands. After living through the torture of the Ashcroft confirmation fiasco, I can’t stand any more Congressional hi-jinks. So I was glad to be leaving the country for a few months.
After a day in Baltimore, I got on another plane, this one a military charter, and kept heading east. After brief stops in Frankfurt, Germany, and Adana, Turkey, our plane finally made it to the other side of the planet. When the flight attendants open the doors, a young Air Force Officer was there to meet us. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen!” This guy was a bit too spry for my taste, considering it was two o’clock in the morning and I’d been traveling for 48 straight hours. “I’d like to be the first to welcome you to Prince Sultan Air Base in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia!”
Hmmmmmm. I checked my ticket one more time. Yep, Saudi Arabia was definitely supposed to be my destination. Originally, I figured it was just a misprint. Perhaps my being sent here was yet another terrible mistake committed by the military-industrial complex. But if the military industrial complex could kill Kennedy, I’m sure they could arrange to have me exiled to Saudi Arabia for the next 90 days. All the easier to pull the wool over my eyes, since I’m a helicopter pilot in the Navy and possess skills that are actually useful to U.S. interests here. Clever, those guys.
Polite American soldiers carrying machine guns greeted me as I walked from the plane to the in-processing station. Most of these soldiers were women, and I feel compelled to report that there’s nothing quite so sexy as women with heavy weaponry. These women were not your typical toothy, besmocked gate agents who usually help deplaning passengers find their connecting flights. There were no more connecting flights for this little camper, that much was becoming painfully clear. Still, I was happy for the soldiers with machine guns. This neck of the woods has a reputation (maybe ill-deserved) for being a rough part of town.
My first task was to clear Saudi customs. I had been warned about this. The Saudi’s generally have a strict, traditional Islamic culture. They don’t take kindly to American military personnel bringing anything that could be considered pornographic, seditious, or politically sensitive into their country. Not wanting to risk it, I had already ditched my copy of the February “Atlantic Monthly”, the one with a drawing of Bill Clinton on the cover. You can’t be too careful.
Satisfied that my goal was not to undermine his country’s way of life, the Saudi customs agent cleared me through. A young Air Force enlisted man offered to drive me to a place called Eskan Village, which would be my new home for the next 90 days. As my Air Force friend started up the truck, he went through a quick description of the trip, gave me a run-down of the various checkpoints that we would have to drive through, and offered me a bulletproof vest to wear “just in case.” I noticed that the truck’s “service engine soon” light was glowing on the dashboard, and I began to wonder if we weren’t going to break down in the middle of the Saudi desert, only to be set upon by a band of fanatical terrorists. I found myself wishing that I were back in Baltimore amidst the rabid, purple-painted Ravens fans.
Then I realized how the typical American penchant for distrusting all things Arab was tainting my thinking. I’d heard that the Saudis, while understandably leery of the American military presence in their country, are typically good and gracious hosts. Who can blame them for understanding the vicissitudes of their environment, or, better yet, for wanting to protect that environment from overbearing American influences?
That war and violence--sometimes initiated, sponsored, or sanctioned by the United States--have been a part of this region’s recent history is an inescapable fact. Indeed, my purpose here is to be a small cog in a machine that’s designed, depending on your point of view, to keep the peace, to exacerbate war, or, at the very least, to keep prices low at the gas pump so you can afford that extra bag of Fritos from the Quik-E-Mart.
But geopolitics or global economics are only part of the story. There are deeper social and cultural forces at work here. Perhaps that realization isn’t fraught with an overdose of insight. But for the next 90 days, I get to be both a “military insider” and a “cultural observer.” The former forces me to be an “instrument of foreign policy” in the most immediate sense of the term. But the latter allows me a chance--a chance that the average, ill-informed, fat American CNN-addict doesn’t get--to learn in very intimate ways how U.S. foreign policy molds and informs public opinion in this part of the world.
Perhaps what I learn will also suffer from a lack of any earth-shattering insight. But I’ve got 89 days (and counting) to figure it all out.
--Lieutenant Neuner is a helicopter pilot in the United States Navy
By Jeremy Neuner
020601