Saudi Arabia is an oil country. You already knew that, of course, but have you thought about what it means? You probably only notice the ups and downs of crude prices when filling up a car with petrol. But for two generations of Saudis, the vicissitudes of the oil market are a force that reorders society.
As late as the start of the 1970s, Saudi Arabia was still a poor desert kingdom, largely populated by disparate tribes and other groups who held the weakest of allegiances to the state. But after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, it joined an oil embargo against those countries that had supported Israel. Oil prices quadrupled and a gold rush began, one that transformed everything it touched.
It was only a small minority of Saudis who were suddenly driving Rolls Royces and Cadillacs on the streets of Riyadh, the capital. Yet the change could not be missed. Mud-brick houses were abandoned for Italian-style villas in the mushrooming suburbs of cities like Jeddah. Perfumeries stocked the latest French scents; shops supplanted the old souqs and flea markets; and young men donned sunglasses, one of the small personal comforts that seems to symbolise consumerism and modernity. The recently built Riyadh Water Tower, a blue-and-gold striped funnel shooting into the sky, became a totem of the new affluence.