Page 254 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

‘Araby the Blest* 251

needs and sustain them in their ease without their being required to under­
stand, let alone to adapt to, any of the philosophical attitudes and cultural
values which brought this technology into being.
There is little desire among the thousands of Saudi Arab students in the
secondary schools or universities for technical or vocational training, still less
for careers as veterinarians or agriculturists. Of the 2,900 students at Riyad
University in 1970 only ninety were studying agriculture, and there is no
reason to believe that the proportion is any greater today. The only professional
occupations that Saudis consider suitable to their station are medicine and
engineering: perhaps a quarter of Saudis who have been educated abroad have
qualified in these fields. Too many of these, however, tend to end up within a
short time in administrative posts in the bureaucracy, so that the benefit to the
country of their training is minimal. As for the rest, whether they have
attended universities at home or abroad, the subjects they elect to study are
mostly the social sciences, which are of scant use in a country at Saudi Arabia’s
stage of development. Like their fellows in the secondary schools, Saudi
university students value education primarily as a means of obtaining govern­
ment employment. They have little urge to engage in productive work requir­
ing technical skills. The life of the bureaucratic flaneur is their ideal. Although
the ‘drop-out’ rate at the Saudi universities and the secondary schools alike is
high, failure does not close the doors of the bureaucracy to those whose

ambition it is to secure remunerative employment as government clerks,
functionaries and administrators, and thereby lead a life of dignified indolence.
The aversion to sustained exertion is by no means confined to the mul­
titudinous ranks of Saudi officialdom. The true Saudi cultivator of the soil,
however mean his condition, shuns the more menial tasks, which in the past
were performed by slaves - of whom there were anything from 500,000 to
750,000 in the country - and which are performed today by emancipated slaves
or poverty-stricken Yemenis. The Bedouin will not soil his hands with work he
considers beneath him. He is not greatly interested in improving the health and
care of his flocks and herds, but would rather wander off to the towns or
oilfields in search of diversion or temporary employment. Almost the only
non-traditional pursuit he considers worthy of his station in life is driving cars
or trucks. Servicing them is another matter, best left to lesser beings. In due
course, when he feels he has had his fill of the sophisticated delights of Riyad or
Dhahran, he returns to his tribal dirah. Most of the hard manual work involved
in the welter of construction going on in Saudi Arabia is done by imported
labourers, mostly Yemenis, of whom there are anything from 250,000 to
75°>ooo in the country, according to the available estimates. There are also
about 100,000 Pakistanis, many of them Baluchis, employed as labourers and
skilled tradesmen, and some 200,000 Egyptians, most of them working as
teachers or clerks. Other northern Arabs are not present in large numbers since
the regime regards them, and especially the Palestinians, with suspicion.