In the early Spring of 1977, pregnant with my third son, our
family visited Big Bend State Park in Texas.
Riding a horse with my son nestled in my womb was not the most
comfortable activity I've ever undertaken.
To keep him stable and safe in his watery world, I held my body in a state of tension. By the time I dismounted I could barely stand
up with assistance. But as the tension
flowed away and blood rushed to my extremities, the beauty of the world around
me came even more into focus.
Big Bend, Texas
On our return to Houston from this trip we learned that a
job was on offer in Saudi Arabia on the Persian Gulf in a place called
Dhahran. On July 19th with husband and
two sons in tow and one son still finding safe harbor within, we arrived on a
Pan Am flight from Paris to our new home on the Arabian peninsula. As we flew low over the coast of the Gulf the
changing depths of the sea caused the colors of the water to look as if dozens
of different colored paints of green and blue had been poured in by some
gigantic hand. It was otherworldly.
The Persian/Arabian Gulf separates Arabia, the UAE and Oman from Iran
When we walked down the external and unprotected stairs to
the tarmac, the engines were still oscillating and the heated air took my
breath away. Only the engines weren't
on. This was a summer shamal, a
northwesterly wind raging in from Iraq...welcome to Saudi Arabia.
Shamal in Saudi Arabia
Three weeks later on August 9th Andrew Neal Mangham made his
appearance. My learning curve on living in the Middle East, however, had
already begun in earnest. At the very
end of July with temperatures soaring as
high as 120 ° F and humidity above 80%, I gathered my huge belly and went from
North Camp (a collection of trailers a few miles from the main camp) to the
clinic. An old unairconditioned yellow
school bus rattled up with a Pakistani driver. Ignoring the road the driver
took off across the desert. Andrew was
experiencing his first of many wild and wooly rides on the sands of
Arabia. Five minutes into this roller
coaster ride, the bus halted; the engine coughed into stillness; and the driver
dismounted. Laying a rug on the hard pan
desert in the bit of shade created by the bus, the driver commenced his prayers
while I almost fainted inside the oven that the bus quickly became. Lesson One-
Always have water to drink and to soak
into a towel, placed over your head.
Then with windows open and hot air blowing through the wet towel, you
can experience, as close as you'll come in the outdoors of the Eastern Province,
cool air giving you hope of survival.
US/Canada Recycled Buses
Twenty-two nationalities worked and lived on the Arabian
American Oil Company compound. A myriad
tongues peppered trips to the local town, al Khobar. National dress from countries around the
world drew the eye. Although in some
ways not a melting pot, despite the variety of folks, it was still a marvelous
opportunity to see and hear much of the world, to gather impressions from a
word here, a gesture there, a smile, a frown, a walk, interchanges composed of
broken English and broken Arabic or any number of other languages--from places
like South Asia, Southeast Asia, North Africa, Europe. I learned quickly to use my face, my hands
and sometimes props to communicate. It
was always a challenge, often frustrating, but equally often fun and
satisfying. You either learned patience
or you lived in a heightened state of anxiety and irritation. I really worked on the former as the latter
was just too exhausting.
It was in the Kingdom that I learned the importance of the
separation of Church and State. Prior to
living there that notion of separation was merely a concept learned in school
with little to no connection to real world experiences. Islam and daily life could not really be
separated for Muslims living in the Kingdom.
Citizens and Muslim guest workers prayed five times a day sometimes
bringing activity to a halt; Ramadan, the religious month of daytime fasting,
meant the closures of many restaurants during the day, or the partitioning off
of hotel dining rooms so that visiting infidels could eat. Customs, which had the approval of
conservative Islamists but often without authority from the Koran, meant women went
robed and veiled in public, could not drive, could not participate openly in
business practices such as working in a store, could not go anywhere unless
accompanied by a male member of the family.
To have a relationship with a person of the opposite sex was to court
disaster and to sleep with someone without benefit of marriage could well mean
death for both parties. Women were and
are often victims of honor killings. (see Wikipedia article on honor killings.)
During this time I attended a gathering of people in a Palestinian's private home. There were a large number of such people, mostly from the professional class, who immigrated from Palestine and the ongoing conflict with Israel. I asked an innocent question about how they felt about life in Saudi Arabia. The question was greeted with silence. The silence extended. Finally a woman said Palestinians do not discuss such topics with others even in the privacy of their own homes. There was I learned in time a constant fear that their safe haven in KSA might end if it was learned they had said anything negative about life there. Innocent abroad that I was, I was dumbfounded taking for granted the right to speak my mind on any topic. The Right of Free Speech on that evening took on meaning that no textbook had ever afforded it.
Because men and women in KSA could not and most often still cannot interact
except with family members, chaperones or after marriage, the sexes do not know how to
relate to one another. It was and is a
toxic brew that leads throughout the world of Islam to the abuse of women. I tried to excuse the situation with an old
notion promulgated in some class in college, that if a society thrives,
prospers, then what goes on in that society has a certain validity despite some
negatives; for in the end the species propagated. I eventually called bullshit on this
argument.
The place of religion in Saudi Arabia had a profound effect on me. I became disenchanted with all religions
seeking any that were not birthed in violence or used violence to spread. Never found one. I was more than willing to throw the baby out
with the bathwater.
In the final few weeks of our time in Saudi Arabia in 1981, we
learned that a pre teen girl had been raped by an uncle, impregnating her. She was killed for bringing dishonor to the
family. That was the straw for me. There are those who will argue that this is
not in accordance with Islam.
Perhaps. I'm no scholar of the
Koran. But the so called honor killing
is a custom grown in the fertile soil of Islam and the religion must, in my
opinion, bear some, if not most, of the blame for such barbarity.
All of the foregoing said, there are glimmers of change
throughout the Arab world. Enlightened
young people, fathers and mothers who want something different for their sons
and daughters are beginning to speak out, to question the assumptions of
elders or those who are the more conservative members of the community. To do so is often to risk all:
one's reputation, career, family, even one's life. It is exceedingly slow this change. Incrementalism (not found in the dictionary
but recently used by President Obama) is like the speed of light compared to
the glacial changes within Islam. But
still my ten years in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are filled with
memories of beautiful people who tried to hold with grace and calm the tensions
between their religion and the changing world around them. They continue to fill me with hope.
And I shall always remember one student of mine, Mohammed Sultan, who held up five fingers of his hand and said in halting English--"Note they are all different, these fingers, as are we Miss Gail."
But back to the 'making of a liberal'. I have no statistics or studies to reference,
but I believe it is fair to say that liberals are more comfortable with the
separation of Church and State. It was and is the most conservative and
authoritarian viewpoints that hold sway in much of the world ruled by
Islam. Individuals, men and women, court
prison or death if they defy the tenets of their religion or break with the
customs evolved over the centuries under the tent of Islam. Their world never saw the
Magna Carta, the Enlightenment, the American Constitution, the Declaration of Human Rights. In America, despite all our problems, we feel
confident that we can promote change without inviting separation from our
heads. We may not succeed, but we have a
plan within which we can act without fear--our Constitution.
SIDEBAR July 27, 2025 It is an enormous irony that I wrote such hopeful words in the paragraph above and below. In the nine years from that posting to this editing, our democracy is under attack from within and it hangs by a thread. Fear and outrage stalk the nation.
It has
been said that the history of our nation can be read as one long struggle to
extend the liberties set forth in the Declaration and the Constitution to
EVERYONE in America. From the beginning
it is fair to say that it is people of liberal/progressive thought who have extended
rights to poor people, black people, female people, gay people, minors, the
Other. And the work is far from finished. But we have a set of instructions, a document
that is only a little over 200 years old that guides us. It is and should be a living document, words
that take on new meaning, in new times, reflecting the evolution of our
humanity without undermining the foundation:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
My sojourn in Saudi Arabia forty years ago and my time in the UAE at the opening of this century helped define me. So yes I am a Liberal and --finally say to the world --proud
of it. As Molly Ivins once said,
"Fish gotta swim; hearts gotta bleed." And there are still way too many days when my heart bleeds for those to whom social contracts have not extended the rights and liberties that are their due.
