Saudi Arabia

choi

Michael J Totten, Closed Kingdo; Karen Elliott House draws on 30 years of research and reporting in this examination of Saudi society. New York Times, Nov 18, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/1 ... -elliott-house.html
(book review on Karen Elliott House, On Saudi Arabia; Its people, past, religion, fault lines--and future. Alfred A Knopf, 2012)

(a) Excerpt in the window of print: What will Saudi Arabia do when the wells run dry, when oil can no longer pay for its lavish welfare system?

(b) Quote:

"Walk down a residential street [in Saudi Arabia] and in every direction you’ll see not porches and yards but walls 'that block people from outside view but, more important, separate them from one another.'

"The Saudi state is an absolute monarchy, but it has a quirk of its own. Sons of the state’s founder, Abdul Aziz bin Saud, who fathered 44 boys, have been ruling the kingdom since his death in 1953. The throne keeps passing from brother to brother instead of from father to son. But the number of brothers is running out. * * * At some point, possibly soon, someone from the next generation will take charge.
(c) Note:
(i) The review says a Saudi in a forbidding desert "searches for a wadi of shade trees and water."

wadi (n; Arabic; First Known Use 1828):
"the bed or valley of a stream in regions of southwestern Asia and northern Africa that is usually dry except during the rainy season and that often forms an oasis"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wadi
(ii) Wahhibi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabi
(Wahhabism is a conservative branch of Sunni Islam; Wahhabism was instigated by an eighteenth century theologian, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792) from Najd, Saudi Arabia)