Voices Are Powerful Weapons
- Pipeline
- Opinions And Editorials
Author: Diane Jackson
Released 21 June 2004
Sunset at Half Moon Bay - 2004
Photograph by Aramco ExPats
I would like to take a moment of your time to express my thoughts on the recent happenings in Saudi Arabia.
My husband and I spent a total of eighteen years in the Kingdom raising four children and living in places as diverse as Yanbu, downtown Riyadh, a hill outside the Holy City of Medina and Dhahran. We were at the opening reception for the Holiday Inn in Yanbu; we often visited the area of Riyadh that was the site of the recent shoot-out. I have ridden in the back of public transport buses; walked the maze of streets in the market areas of Riyadh; played with our children on the sharms of the Red Sea and listened in awe to the beauty of the Maghrab call to prayer floating up over the hills of Medina.
My husband has shared tea and fruit with bedu shepherds on the top of hills in the Hejaz; camped in the Asir with our sons; shared desert feasts with the off-duty security guards out on the east-west pipeline.
As a family, we have been privileged to be honored guests of many Saudi friends, in their homes, on their farms and in their tents in the desert. This is the side of Saudi that never makes it to the uniformed media who, instead, prefer to listen to the voices of so-called ‘experts’ many of whom have never set foot in the Kingdom. We, as Expats, need to do more to spread the word of the true Saudi Arabia, for we have lived it and our voices are powerful weapons in the cause of peace. It is only through understanding that peace will come and, insha’allah, that will be soon.