After my last few posts on my childhood growing up in Saudi Arabia, many readers wanted to know a little bit more about the country that I called home as a child and my time spent in Saudi Arabia.
I thought it might be beneficial before I delve too far into my childhood home in posts to come, if you all knew a little bit more about the kingdom of Saudi Arabia
to understand that part of the world a little better.
I thought it might be beneficial before I delve too far into my childhood home in posts to come, if you all knew a little bit more about the kingdom of Saudi Arabia
to understand that part of the world a little better.
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| via Google Maps |
Saudi is a place that many know the name, but few really know much about it.
It’s a land equal parts mysterious & sheltered,
yet incomparably & irrevocably linked to the West.
Here are a few things about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that you might not have known:
Saudi Arabia is the home of 2 of the holiest Muslim cities in the world: Mecca and Medina.
Mecca is the birthplace of the prophet Mohammed
(in Islam the words “Peace be upon him” would follow the prophet’s name.)
Mecca is also only allowed to be entered by Muslims and is home to the Kaaba, where Muslims travel often for pilgrimage.
Medina (named this by the Prophet himself) is the home of his burial place and is the second holiest city in the Islamic world.
Both are located in Western Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia allows no other religion than Islam.
Now, while as expats on ARAMCO compounds we practiced different faiths, the whole of Saudi Arabia is an Islamic nation. That means that the call to prayer (known in Arabic as adhan) rings out across the country 5 times a day from mosques throughout each city.
When I lived within the kingdom, shops always closed during prayer call, restaurants shut down,
TV was interrupted with the prayer and an image of the great mosque would appear.
The whole world stopped, Muslim men would stop on the corners of streets to stop and kneel down and pray to Allah.
I’ve always found this particular part of Islam pretty powerful and to see public devotion like this is truly a unique experience unknown to us in the West.
Now when I was in Morocco last year (another Muslim country), prayer call still resounded 5 times a day but life didn’t stop, no one paid it any attention in public so I think it totally depends on where you are and how traditional the country is.
The name Saudi Arabia comes from the royal family’s name of Al Saud.
In the 1700’s the Al Saud family grew to become the Saudi Royal family and helped to put Saudi Arabia on the map.
Today the Saudi Royal family is vast and numbers in the hundreds. Because many of the princes take on more than one wife (as allowed in Islam), there are many families within
even the smallest royal circle.
even the smallest royal circle.
Saudi Arabia is a pennisula, with the Persian Gulf on the East, the Red Sea on the West and the Gulf of Aden/Arabia Sea to the South.
A large peninsula, the Persian Gulf on the East was where I grew up. To the South of Saudi are the nations of Yemen, Oman, the UAE and Qatar to the East as well as the island nation of Bahrain.
It’s very hard to enter the country of Saudi Arabia.
While I’ve heard from friends still there, that it’s gotten better, Saudi Arabia is still enormously hard to get into as a tourist. Unless you have a connection there, a direct person you’re visiting or you’re working for ARAMCO, it’s virtually impossible to enter many parts of the kingdom. Visas are very hard to come by and when I lived there, even incredibly difficult to get family inside.
So when we left, we really left. We knew we wouldn’t be able to visit easily again.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s 13th largest state.
A huge landmass, Saudi Arabia is mostly desert but the climate varies greatly throughout the kingdom. While most of the country is dry and very hot, I grew up directly on the Persian Gulf where our humidity levels most often were higher than the temperature (which could reach into the 120’s), never feeling dry like the desert. The geography of the country varies greatly as well, from mountains in the West to huge stretches of desert dunes to ocean beaches.
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| “Sledding” on the sand dunes – wearing long sleeves and long pants because the sand could get very hot to touch. |
tiarenie says
I enjoyed reading this.. Write more, write more!
Casey Martin says
Ok!!! Thanks so much! I’m glad you enjoyed it! 🙂
A Country Girls World says
It was really interesting to read this. All you ever hear are the bad things about Saudi. It is nice to get a different perspective and learn what life is really like there.
Casey Martin says
yea totally. It’s so different than we hear about in the West and I’m glad you enjoyed reading about it! 🙂
Rachel says
An old high school friend of mine lives in Saudi for her husband’s job. I’d love to go sometime. Well, I’d love to travel everywhere, really. 🙂
Casey Martin says
interesting! Do you know where she lives?
Helene says
Wow that’s really interesting! I feel like I knew that but forgot but only allowing one religion is so different. Thanks for sharing!!
Casey Martin says
I know! It’s so different than we’re used to.
Kotryna Bass says
this is really informative post, I didn’t know a lot of these things, I bet it should be so weird if I go there at least for a bit. I is just too different from Europe and what I’m used to.
Casey Martin says
Yea very different from the West.
Haley says
Wow. I really did not realize that Saudi is hard to get into. That must have made it so, so much harder to leave. I love reading things like this written about people with real life experience as well as love for the place they are writing about 🙂
Casey Martin says
I know, not many people realize that. Glad you enjoyed! 🙂
Jay says
I had no idea that you grew up in Saudi, Casey!
While I have never been, Joe did some work in Al Khobar before we moved to Gabon. He doesn’t talk about it with the fondest of feelings and he continually professes that he does not want to move there although I’m sure it’s never completely off the table for us in this business. That being said, I find it interesting to read about it from a child’s perspective. The expat kids I knew in Gabon always spoke so highly of their compound life – I suppose it would be sort of like living in a well manicured neighbourhood with all of your friends and that has to be fun!
Casey Martin says
That’s really interesting… so I take it Joe is in the oil business? I really enjoyed growing up there, and for us, it was just our normal lives, you know? I didn’t know anything else. I think that living in a Saudi city would be really different than what we had… it’s an interesting country to say the least! 🙂
Jay says
Yes, oil business indeed.
I think as a kid you wouldn’t know what you were missing out on and generally oblivious to any hardships. Joe felt that Saudi was a place where Fun was banished (at least publicly.) I think there were far too many rules for him 😉
Casey Martin says
yea totally. Of course our daily life on the compound wasn’t like that… we could do as we pleased and venture out into the Saudi cities when we wanted. Also, different areas of the country are way less strict than the Khobar/Riyadh area… I’ve heard on the West, it’s way less strict.