Cities of Salt
Cities of Salt
by Abd al-Rahman Munif
THE LITRARY WORK
The first in a five-part series of novels set in an unnamed kingdom in the Arabian Peninsula in the 1930s; published in Arabic (as Mudun al-mtfh: al-tih) in 1984, in English in 1987.
SYNOPSIS
The discovery and exploitation of oil by an American company results in the destruction of two traditional villages and the creation of a new coastal city fraught with economic, social, and political problems.
Events in History at the Time the Novel Takes Place
Events in History at the Time the Novel Was Written
Abd al-Rahman Munif was born in Amman, Jordan, in 1933 to a Saudi father and an Iraqi mother. Munif grew up in the Jordanian capital and went on to study law in universities in the Iraqi city of Baghdad and the Egyptian city of Cairo. He completed his doctorate in petroleum economics at the University of Belgrade in Yugoslavia, then worked as a petroleum economist in Syria and later for OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries). While in Baghdad, he edited the monthly journal al-Naft wa al-tanmiyah (Oil and Development). Munif began writing fiction in the early 1970s and in 1973 published his first novel, al-Ashjar wa ightiyal marzuq (The Trees and the Assassination of Marzuq), about an Arab intellectual psychologically damaged by political despotism. In 1977 he published Nihayat (1977; Endings, 1988), his first novel about the Bedouin of the Arabian Peninsula. By 1981 Munif, who had moved to France—only five years later would he settle in Damascus, Syria—was devoting himself full time to his writing. He wrote his five-volume series Mudun al-milh (Cities of Salt) between 1984-89, the first three volumes of which have been translated into English as Cities of Salt, The Trench, and Variations on Night and Day. Munif continues to write prolifically. Most recently, he has published the quintet Ard al-sawad (1999; The Fertile Land), about rural Iraq during the nineteenth century. With Libyan writer Ibrahim al-Kuni, Munif is widely regarded as the preeminent Arab writer who has made the desert and its people a major theme of his work. His novels allude to and borrow from Arab classical and popular traditions while experimenting with structure and voice. In Cities oj Salt, Munif experiments with literary elements as he traces the impact of modern technology on desert society.
Events in History at the Time the Novel Takes Place
Saudi Arabia before oil—a fateful alliance
Although set in an imaginary oil kingdom, Cities of Salt is widely regarded as a roman à clef —a fictional account of real events, in this case the oil industry’s impact on the Arabian Peninsula. The novel portrays in particular the impact on the Eastern Province of present-day Saudi Arabia, where the first oil exploration began. Events stretch from the 1930s, when oil was first discovered, to the workers’ strike at Aramco, Saudi Arabia, in 1953.
The discovery and exploitation of oil fundamentally altered pre-existing social, political, and economic structures in Arabia. One often thinks of Arabia before oil as a country of deserts and nomadic tribes. Actually, the part of the Arabian Peninsula that currently comprises Saudi Arabia has been home to many ancient civilizations. For centuries before the discovery of oil, Arabian society was a complex mix of agrarian, pastoral, and mercantile sectors. In addition to pastoral Bedouin raising camels and sheep, the peninsula boasted the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, which since the seventh century c.e. have attracted thousands and later millions of Muslim pilgrims every year from around the world. The annual pilgrimage served as an important source of income not only for residents of these two towns but for the young Saudi state as well. From at least the sixteenth century, the port city of Jiddah served as the most prosperous commercial center on the Red Sea. Fishing and pearling villages dotted the Persian Gulf coast. Large oases, such as al-Hasa in what is now the Eastern Province of the country, supported orchards of dates, which served not only as a staple in the local diet but also as an important export commodity.
The relationship among the cities, agrarian villages, and pastoral nomads was complex. The nomadic tribes have traditionally been characterized as a destabilizing force on the peninsula, charged with limiting the development of trade by their attacks on caravans and with endangering the viability of agrarian villages through raids. Scholars have also noted their role as a fickle military force for the various princes of the peninsula who sought to widen their realms. However, anthropological studies have shown that the relationship between nomadic and settled peoples in Arabia was not purely antagonistic. Villages included settled Bedouin who maintained personal ties with nomadic groups. In addition, productive political and economic interaction between nomads and settled oasis-dwellers made it hard at times to draw a clear distinction between the two.
As is true of most countries of the Middle East, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia did not come into being in its present political form until well into the twentieth century. Before that time, the Arabian Peninsula was characterized by the absence of a unified state. The Hejaz, the mountainous area along the west coast of the peninsula and home to the cities of Mecca, Medina, and Jiddah, was under Ottoman rule. Meanwhile, the eastern and central regions (al-Hasa and al-Najd), although nominally territories of the Ottoman Empire, were in fact governed almost entirely by local rulers. Nonetheless, the roots of present-day Saudi Arabia, which comprises most of the peninsula, reach back to the 1700s.
The birth of the modern state of Saudi Arabia began with an alliance between Muhammad ibn Sa‘ud (1744), a minor ruler of the Najd region of central Arabia, and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a religious reformer from the same region. An Islamic scholar who had studied in Mecca and Medina, Abd al-Wahhab sought to stamp out what he regarded as superstition, ostentation in religious practice, and saint worship in Islam. His uncompromising reaffirmation of the basic tenets of Islam attracted followers who called themselves al-muwahhidun, or the Unitarians. His activities also gave rise to Wahhabism, an austere form of Islam which has been inexorably linked to the royal House of Saud and continues to be practiced in much of the Arabian Peninsula today. In the Najd region, Abd al-Wahhab attracted the attention of Muhammad ibn Sa’ud, at that time a minor prince of the area. Ibn Sa ud and his tribe adopted Abd al-Wahhab’s doctrines and in 1763 set out to conquer their Arabian neighbors. By 1811, a decade after the death of Abd al-Wahhab, the rule of Muhammad ibn Spud’s grandson (Saud ibn Abd al-Aziz) extended over much of the Arabian Peninsula, including parts of present-day Yemen and Oman.
The Ottoman sultan, nominal ruler of the peninsula, sought to crush the Saudis and in 1818 succeeded in driving them back to the deserts of Najd. Less than a decade later, the House of Saud succeeded once more in regaining control over the eastern part of the peninsula, but its power steadily weakened over the course of the nineteenth century, and by 1889 the family was forced to seek refuge in neighboring Kuwait.
The House of Saud rose to prominence for a third time in 1902 when Abd al-Aziz ibn Sa‘ud (often referred to as Ibn Sa‘ud), a fifth-generation descendant of Muhammad ibn Sa‘ud, emerged from exile in Kuwait to reclaim his position as a ruler in the Najd and eventually over the rest of Arabia.
Saudi Arabia before oil—the House of Saud asserts itself
Abd al-Aziz employed a number of shrewd tactics to achieve his goals. A difficulty that had plagued previous rulers, including those he sought to overthrow in his current campaign, was the shifting loyalty of the mobile Bedouin or nomadic population. At the time of Abd al-Aziz’s ascendancy, a serious drought threatened the livelihood of Bedouin in the Najd. Abd al-Aziz managed to secure the continued loyalty of dispossessed Bedouin by settling them in agricultural communities (hujar) and educating them in Wah-habi Islam. These settlements, called ikhwan, or brotherhood settlements, began in 1912. Though not all Bedouin settled in them, they quickly grew to include several thousand elite troops loyal to Abd al-Aziz.
As World War I approached, Abd al-Aziz signed a treaty with Great Britain, which promised British recognition of Abd al-Aziz as the hereditary ruler of the Najd and the eastern parts of the peninsula in return for his supporting the British in World War I. At the same time, the British negotiated with Husayn ibn Ali, Sharif of the Hejaz, a province to the west. In a secret agreement, the British agreed that once World War I ended, they would recognize Husayn as the ruler of an Arab state to the east of Egypt, including Arabia as well as Syria and Iraq, in exchange for Husayn’s support during the war. However, the British reneged on that agreement, granting Husayn suzerainty over the Hejaz only. Conflict between Abd al-Aziz and Husayn over who should rule in the peninsula continued after the end of the war. By 1925 Abd al-Aziz had consolidated control over the realm. In 1932 he named it the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Although Abd al-Aziz’s conflict with Husayn ended in 1925, his control of the peninsula was threatened by other incidents. By the late 1920s, differences began to surface between Abd al-Aziz and the ikhwan, or Wahhabi Bedouin communities, who had been instrumental in bringing him to power. The ikhwan were suspicious of the modern technology imported and used by the Saudi rulers. Also they refused to recognize the sovereignty of nearby non-Wahhabi countries, such as Iraq. In 1928 the ikhwan attacked Iraq against the orders of Abd al-Aziz. Abd al-Aziz responded by crushing his erstwhile supporters. Nonetheless, in later years, members of the ikhwan and in some cases their descendants continued to be rewarded with state subsidies in recognition of their earlier role in establishing the Saudi dynasty in Arabia.
Abd al-Aziz ruled Saudi Arabia until his death in 1953, at which time he was succeeded by his son, Saud, who ruled until 1964. Cities of Salt bases the character of Crown Prince Khazael, who visits Harran to celebrate the completion of the oil pipeline, on this successor, Saud. Saud’s reign was, in turn, followed by that of his brothers Faysal (1964-75), Khalid (1975-82), and the present king, Fahd (1982-).
Oil and social change in Saudi Arabia
Instability in political leadership was the general rule in the Arabian Peninsula before the rise of the House of Saud in the early twentieth century. Dynasties came and went, toppled by up-and-coming members of the elite who vied for power. In fact, this instability had its advantages, in that it allowed for the overthrow of dictators and served as a check on the absolute power of any one ruler. Were it not for the discovery and exploitation of oil in the 1930s and ’40s, the House of Saud might well have been like the many other dynasties the peninsula has known, rising to power and quickly fading when challenged by another political family. Oil wealth, however, provided Abd al-Aziz and his descendants with an income that enabled them both to placate tribal leaders, who might have otherwise challenged Saudi authority, and to control the general population through the creation of a National Guard and other police forces.
Oil exploration began in the Middle East in the late nineteenth century in Persia. The first concession for oil exploration in the Arabian Peninsula was granted in 1923 to the British. In 1933, that concession was transferred to Standard Oil of California (SOCAL), whose Arabian oil enterprise would eventually evolve into the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) in consortia with other American oil companies. SOCAL discovered oil in commercial quantities in 1938. Cities of Salt presumably begins sometime in the 1930s when American geologists would have been prospecting in the Eastern Province.
Oil was not pumped in Saudi Arabia in significant quantities until the late 1940s, but even before then, SOCAL had a significant impact on the communities of the Eastern Province. In previous centuries, only a handful of Westerners had traveled through this sparsely populated area, so the presence of increasing numbers of Americans was conspicuous. Also, the consumer goods brought to the Eastern Province by the early oil geologists and engineers impressed local leaders and notables, who then sought such goods themselves. Moreover, it was in the 1930s that construction started on the town of Dhahran, whose history closely mirrors that of Munif s fictional coastal town of Harran in the novel.
Aramco began to quickly expand its operations in the Eastern Province after World War II by building new wells and refineries. The construction of Tapline, the Trans-Arabian Pipeline (also chronicled in Cities of Salt), a huge project to move oil across the peninsula to the Mediterranean Sea and thereby increase the efficiency of oil production, was completed in 1950.
In these early years, American engineers and geologists were brought to Arabia by SOCAL and then Aramco to work in the oil fields. These specialists provided the skilled labor, while manual labor was performed by indigenous Arabs, mostly from the Eastern Province. Much of the literature on the oil industry describes these manual laborers as peripatetic nomads for whom work in the oil fields was simply another way to earn a living. But in Cities of Salt, Munif furnishes another perspective, one of Arab Bedouin and village dwellers who saw their world transformed at a bewildering speed and found themselves unwittingly sucked into the oil economy.
THE FOUNDING OF DHAHRAN
Dhahran began in 1935 as a small tent camp of American wildcatters who had come to drill for oil in the Damman Dome. In 1936 six air-conditioned portable cottages were imported and the first group of wives of American oil workers came to live in Dhahran. By 1938, when oil was first struck in commercial quantities, the compound boasted a movie theater and recreation hall, and the next year die community was officially named Dhahran. By 1940, it housed 371 American oil employees, 38 wives, 16 children, and 3,300 Arab and South Asian oil employees. The American population shrank considerably during World War II but grew at a frenetic pace when the war ended and commercial exploitation of Saudi Arabia’s oil began in earnest. Today Dhahran, whose own population is 60,000, has merged with the nearby towns of Damman and al-Khobar to form a metropolitan area of more than one million.
Until the late 1940s, oil revenue was relatively modest, and what wealth there was found itself being channeled into cities such as Riyadh, Jid-dah, Mecca, and Medina. Thus, traditional structures in the Eastern Province were not substantially affected until later. Still, oil production brought far more wealth to Saudi Arabia than it had previously known. By the late 1940s, 65 percent of the Saudi government’s income came from the petroleum industry, a number that rose to 90 percent in the 1960s. Through the 1940s and ’50s, this revenue concentrated wealth and power in the hands of those who were already in positions of authority at the expense of the general population. The government spent oil revenue on luxury projects such as royal palaces and on increased subsidies to tribal leaders, rather than on an infrastructure and public institutions to benefit the populace. These expenditures only aggravated pre-existing economic inequities. Meanwhile, traditional handicrafts diminished, as did the agricultural and pastoral sectors, whose products were replaced with imports. Landowners and merchants profited from these developments, but they also brought significant inflation, which, in effect, lowered the standard of living for wage earners in the oil industry.
The petroleum industry brought other difficult social changes to the region as well, particularly to the Eastern Province. Large segments of what had once been a subsistence agrarian and pastoral economy became transformed into a pool of wage earners in the oil economy. There were concomitant population shifts from villages and oases to the workers’ camps of the new oil towns. At the same time, Aramco began to import foreign workers—not only the trained engineers and administrators but also low-cost manual laborers—who brought with them differing values and codes of behavior. Many of these workers came from other Arab countries and, along with Saudis sent abroad for training, brought with them the pan-Arabist and socialist ideologies on the rise throughout the Arab world at the time. By 1952, Aramco employed 9,187 foreign workers and 14,819 Saudis, but the Saudis were virtually unrepresented in senior and intermediate staff positions. Indigenous Arabs began to feel they were being discriminated against in their own country (Abir, p. 71).
The Aramco strike of 1953
Workers’ dissatisfaction culminated in a general strike in 1953, similar in many ways to the strike that ends Cities of Salt. Although the strike in Cities of Salt is portrayed as a spontaneous reaction to the laying off of workers, that which actually took place at Aramco was probably the manifestation of a number of social and political problems, including Aramco management’s insensitivity to the grievances of its Saudi workforce, uncertainty about the stability of the Saudi regime due to the failing health of the king, and a growing anti-Western sentiment in the region. Calls for a strike began to circulate among workers in early 1953, and in June of that year, a workers’ committee presented a formal demand for wage increases, improved working conditions, and the right to unionize. The government responded by arresting 12 members of the committee, which sparked a strike in which 13,000 out of 15,000 Aramco workers participated. The National Guard was sent to Dhahran to crush the strike. Shortly thereafter, King Abd al-Aziz died and was succeeded by King Saud, who immediately granted the workers a 20 percent pay increase as well as other concessions.
Some leaders of the 1953 strike went on to join political movements whose agendas reflected discontent with the Saudi regime. The government’s response to such political activity was generally repressive. Movement leaders were imprisoned or forced into exile. In 1954, King Saud issued a royal decree banning all strikes and demonstrations. The government sent extra elite military units to the Eastern Province and tightened its control of all media, vigorously hunting down socialists, communists, and Arab nationalists.
The Novel in Focus
Plot summary
Cities of Salt is unusual in that it takes as its main characters two towns: the oasis village of Wadi al-Uyoun and the coastal fishing village of Harran, which is later transformed into a coastal center for the growing petroleum industry. The novel opens with a loving description of Wadi al-Uyoun, a desert oasis, “one of those rare cases of nature expressing its genius and willfulness,” a welcome miracle to caravans crossing the harsh desert (Munif, Cities of Salt, p. 1). But Wadi al-Uyoun is hardly an Eden. Although it supports a subsistence agrarian economy, frequent droughts make life in the oasis difficult. Its inhabitants suffer from malnutrition, and the fragile ecology can support only a limited population. Passing caravans lure away young men, who leave the village to seek their fortunes for years or even decades in other towns and cities.
Wadi al-Uyoun is described as supporting two peoples: the farmers of Wadi al-Uyoun itself, who live off the produce of their land and the goods they can trade with passing caravans, and the Atoum, a Bedouin tribe settled on hills on the outskirts of the oasis. Camel herders, the Atoum, though poor, are disdainful of material possessions and proud of their independence. The patriarch of this second group is Miteb al-Hathal, whereas the de facto headman of Wadi al-Uyoun is Ibn Rashed.
The pace of life in Wadi al-Uyoun is disrupted by the arrival of three Americans, who come in search of oil. Although welcomed, and indeed hosted, by Ibn Rashed, their presence and activities are mysterious to the people of the oasis.
The Bedouin patriarch Miteb al-Hathal is particularly suspicious of this visit. When the Americans return the following year and stay longer, Miteb, Ibn Rashed, and other village leaders visit the emir, the local government authority, to inform him of the situation. Miteb’s concerns are rebuffed, and the others in the delegation agree to support the oil exploration when they are told that it is in their economic interest to do so. Miteb returns to Wadi al-Uyoun, consumed by fever and guilt at his inability to stop the encroaching Americans. His worst fears are realized as bulldozers are brought in to destroy the orchards.
For anyone who remembers those long-ago days, when a place called Wadi al-Uyoun used to exist, and a man named Miteb al-Hathal, and a brook, and trees, and a community of people used to exist, the three things that still break his heart in recalling those days are the tractors[,] which attacked the orchards like ravenous wolves, tearing up the trees and throwing them to the earth one after another, and leveled all the orchards between the brook and the fields….
(Cities oj Salt, p. 106)
During the destruction of Wadi al-Uyoun, Miteb al-Hathal leaves his family and the oasis for the desert, whence his forefathers had emerged decades before.
The town of Wadi al-Uyoun is completely destroyed to make way for the industrial complex that will be built in its place, and the people of the village find themselves evicted from their homes. One of Miteb’s sons, Shaalan, remains in the oasis to work as a laborer for the oil company, but the rest of his family is forced to move. On the road, Miteb’s wife, Wadha, is struck by a fever that leaves her mute.
At this point, the focus of the novel switches to another of Miteb’s sons, Fawaz. Though still a boy, Fawaz feels the need to leave his family in the town of al-Hadra, where they are staying with relatives, in search of jobs. He and his cousin, Suweyleh, are denied work on the oil rigs of Wadi al-Uyoun, but Ibn Rashed, who now works for the American oil company recruiting laborers, directs them to Harran, a sleepy fishing village on the Persian Gulf that is to become the headquarters for the Americans’ oil operations. In Harran, Fawaz and Suweyleh, like other workers, are required to sell their camels, symbols of independence and familial and cultural ties to the life they have left behind, and take up residence in work camps. Like Wadi al-Uyoun, the village of Harran is destroyed, and in its place, three communities are built: a comparatively luxurious American compound, outfitted with air-conditioned buildings and swimming pools but off-limits to Arabs; a new Arab Harran, built quickly from the construction scraps of the American compound; and a workers’ camp, first of tents, then of sheet-metal barracks.
The remainder of the novel describes the painful development, from these inauspicious beginnings, of the very human town of Harran. Through a series of interwoven vignettes and characters, the narrative describes how Ibn Rashed supplies the company with additional workers from other regions, as well as specialized merchants (a butcher, baker, grocer, and so on) to serve the growing town. The economic activity in Harran attracts entrepreneurs and specialists from as far away as Syria and Egypt. A road is paved to connect Harran to the inland trading town of Ujra in the interior. Also regular bus service comes to Harran. A cafe opens and serves as the first secular public meeting place for Harrani residents. A school, as well as medical and dental clinics, appears. As the town develops, the value of the real estate there increases. And a business class savvy enough to profit from these developments emerges.
The transformation of Harran is accompanied by both physical and psychological violence. In an incident that eventually causes the downfall of Ibn Rashed, a worker is killed in an industrial accident. The accident pits the American oil company and its rules of legal liability against the Arabian custom of payment in blood money—that is, avoiding a blood feud by paying a sum to compensate for the death of a family member. A feud ending in death arises between al-Mufaddi, an irascible character and traditional healer, and Subhi al-Mahmalji, a Western-trained doctor who sets up a clinic in Harran and eventually comes to serve as the emir’s physician. At several other points in the novel smoldering tensions threaten to erupt into uncontrolled violence. These tensions are palpable, for example, when new workers arrive and receive better accommodations than older workers during the construction of the pipeline and when Crown Prince Khazael visits Harran.
Next to Arab Harran, American Harran stands as a constant reminder of the economic and cultural divide that separates the two communities. A fantastic ship brings beautiful women to entertain the Americans while Arab Harran watches. Barred from entering the compound, the Arabs grieve for the ties of intimacy they gave up when they left their homes to pursue economic opportunities in the oil industry. Interactions between the Americans and Arabs seem only to underscore the differences between them. On one occasion, the Americans cause an uproar among the Arab workers by conducting a sociological survey. The Arabs are bewildered and outraged by the personal questions they are asked (about their wives, female relatives, and religious practices). When the Americans are invited to a wedding in Arab Harran, they are delighted and take numerous photos but describe the music as uncouth.
Told from the point of view of the Arab community, the novel portrays the Americans as utterly alien masters of Harran’s destiny, while for most of the novel the Arabs are generally childlike in their incomplete understanding of what is taking place around them and their inability to control the political and economic developments that shape their lives. Even at its best, the relationship between the Americans and Arabs is marred by the cultural and economic distance that separates them. When the Arabs and Americans celebrate the completion of the pipeline, the Arabs are amazed: “the Americans were so friendly that the Arabs wondered if these were the same people they knew” (Cities of Salt, p. 519). However, once the party is over, the workers are made to feel their social inferiority with a curt order to report to the administration authorities in the morning.
The novel describes Harran’s political and economic developments in considerable detail. Shortly after the construction of the transformed Harran, Emir Khaled comes to rule, presumably sent by a centralized government with which the ordinary citizens of Harran have no dealings. Savvy characters like Ibn Rashed set out immediately to curry favor with Emir Khaled, whereas workers and city residents wait and judge from the sidelines. Emir Khaled emerges as a completely ineffective, self-absorbed ruler, preoccupied with hunting, building his personal residence, and playing with the technological toys he is given (radio, telephone, automobile, telescope, and more). His interest in the workers and residents is awakened only when political unrest forces him to act.
Cities of Salt also details the transformation of the subsistence economies of Wadi al-Uyoun and Old Harran into the stratified, capitalist society of New Harran. In Wadi al-Uyoun before its destruction, it was possible for the Atoum, the poorest residents of the oasis, to be proud of their independence from material needs. In New Harran, however, a consumer society develops in which the emir and his cronies ostentatiously flaunt their wealth, a growing middle class provides a widening array of goods and services, and a working class is increasingly dependent on its wages for bare survival. While some men manage to expand their businesses and become quite wealthy in this new Harran, others are forced to sell their lands to pay medical bills for illnesses that in the past were treated by a traditional healer.
The people of Harran experience a gradual political awakening. For much of the novel, the workers seem to have little if any control over their lives. They feel they have no choice but to live where Ibn Rashed or the company tells them to live, or to perform the jobs assigned to them—the backbreaking labor that the Americans refuse to do. But gradually they learn to assert control. Early in the novel, after the visit of the fantastic, female-laden ship, three workers decide they no longer wish to work in Harran. They steal back the camels they had sold to Ibn Rashed and flee the camp, never to be found again. In time, the other workers begin to question the differences between themselves and the Americans. During the construction of the pipeline, outside the compound and in a desert environment familiar to the Arabs but strange and hostile to the Americans, the workers play practical jokes on the foreigners, teasing them with lizards and snakes. A mysterious fire has the Americans on edge but energizes the Arabs, who wonder if this might have been an act of defiance by one of their own.
The culmination of this awakening occurs at the end of the novel. For unknown reasons, several workers are laid off, sparking a general strike, in which workers and residents of Arab Harran unite in their demands that the workers be reinstated and that there be an investigation into the mysterious death of al-Mufaddi, a local healer who has had a longstanding conflict with the emir’s bodyguard. The strike is forcibly ended by the emir’s guards, but the emir accedes to the strikers’ demands before having to leave Harran, presumably because he has been stricken with mental illness.
At the end of the novel, in marked contrast to the bewilderment that characterized the Arabs’ response to changes in Harran at the beginning, the workers and residents are able to discuss the causes of violence and distress in their society. One senses that the people of Harran will no longer serve as passive and naive pawns of either the government or the oil company.
Tradition, modernity, and the character of Miteb al-Hathal
Because Cities of Salt takes two towns, rather than people, as its main focus, the novel moves episodically from character to character. One exception to this rule is the character of Miteb al-Hathal, the Bedouin patriarch of Wadi al-Uyoun, who upon the destruction of the oasis disappears into the desert with his camel, waterskin, and rifle. His disappearance is far from final, however. At key points during the novel, Miteb reappears. He resurfaces first as a vision to his sons, on the outskirts of the transformed Wadi al-Uyoun, where his eldest boy works, and on the road out of Wadi al-Uyoun, when the second eldest is denied work by Ibn Rashed. Miteb reappears too in Harran during times of unrest, most notably during fires that break out when the oil pipeline is constructed and during the strike that ends the novel.
That Miteb should appear at times of great stress is not surprising, for he embodies a past that has been violently destroyed by the petroleum industry. The author himself describes the character as “the symbol of the great heroism of the past and also the hope for the future” (Middle East Times). Indeed, Miteb embodies both Wadi al-Uyoun, the archetypical traditional Arabian community, and the ethos of the ideal Arabian man. He is a tribal leader by virtue of his age, experience, and aptitude, a proud Bedouin who eschews worldly comforts in favor of independence, but who is nonetheless deeply attached to Wadi al-Uyoun. He is generous to a fault and a virtuous Muslim. When faced with the destruction of Wadi al-Uyoun, he chooses not to serve the emir and the Americans but rather to return to his roots in the desert. Miteb, then, is the classic Arabian hero celebrated in poetry and folklore since pre-Islamic times. His reappearance at times of crisis and stress represents the continuation of that ancient Arabian ethos in the souls of those who see him. In a literary work dominated by the melancholy tone appropriate to the violent transformation that is the subject of the novel, the reappearance of Miteb al-Hathal at critical junctures is a sign of optimism on the part of the author. As Munif himself observed, “Miteb had children and his children will have children, meaning that hope is always there” (Middle East Times).
In contrast to Miteb, his descendants and other compatriots struggle to live in the modern society that has come to their corner of the world. Gradually they evolve into modern citizens—who replace close ties to family and community with mobility and a new type of independence. The workers of Harran, for example, create a new community for themselves based not on blood ties but on their shared experience as employees of the company. But their break with tradition does not occur without violence. For many of them, the violence is manifested in psychosomatic illness. Miteb sickens with a fever after the Americans visit Wadi al-Uyoun. His wife, Wadha, is stricken with an illness that leaves her mute when she is forced to quit the oasis. Similarly, a worker whose brother dies in an industrial accident is struck dumb by the incident. Ibn Rashed suffers from a mental illness when his own actions as well as the machinations of other ambitious Harranis leave him isolated from the community. Even the emir, divorced from his people and completely caught up in his technological devices and dependency on the Americans, suffers a mental breakdown.
Literary context
Munif has been widely recognized in the Arab world as a politically committed novelist who regularly treats the issues of freedom and human rights in his works. As he sees it, the novel is an opportunity to write an alternative historiography—what some critics have called a counter to the master narrative of historical events put forth by the Saudi state (Siddiq, p. 651). Munif s works are especially important in that he is the first major Arab novelist to emerge from the Arabian Peninsula and hence the first to take oil development and its effect on indigenous desert communities as the central theme of a fictional work. Although no other writer has dealt as exhaustively with this theme, the oil industry and its sociopolitical effect on the Arabian Peninsula have inspired other writers as well. Egyptian writer Ibrahim Abd al-Majid, for instance, has written about the communities of foreign workers in Saudi Arabia in his novel The Other Place (1999).
Events in History at the Time the Novel Was Written
Saudi Arabia 50 years later
Cities of Salt was published in 1985, approximately 50 years after the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia. By then oil had brought tremendous prosperity to the region but had also become the source of considerable anxiety and social unrest. The industry attracted so many foreign workers that by the early 1980s noncitizen residents numbered approximately 5 million, a very large percentage in a country whose citizen population was approximately 8 million. Western influence in the country, from
THE REMAINING VOLUMES IN ABD AL-RAHMAN’S QUINTET
The five novels (three of which have been translated into English) that comprise Cities of Salt share characters and themes but are not ordered chronologically. The first novel, Cities of Salt: The Wilderness, is only tangentially related to the other novels in the series, which chronicle the rise to power of the Hudayyibi family. In this first novel, Crown Prince Khazael, who is a major character in the later works, visits Harran to celebrate the completion of the oil pipeline. The second novel, al-Ukhdud (The Trench), recounts the rule of Khazael after he succeeds to the throne. The novel details the founding of a modern state and the creation of transportation, communication, and military infrastructure, ending with Khazael’s dethroning while he is abroad The third novel, Taqasim al-lyl wa-al-nahar (Variations on Night and Day, 1993), is actually a prequel to The Trench. It takes us back to the time of Khazael’s father, Khuraybit, who with a small band of men regains the throne that had been seized from his family previously and proceeds to extend his rule throughout the Arabian Peninsula. Novel Four, al-Munbatt (The Isolated One), returns to the life of Khazael, this time in exile in Germany, and ends with his death. Novel Five, Badiyat al-zulumat (The Desert of Darkness), focuses on two different historical periods. First, the novel recounts the upbringing of Khuraybit’s sons, Khazael and Fanar, ending with Khazael’s ascension to the throne. Next, the novel describes the dethronement of Khazael and the assassination of Fanar. Though set in a fictional Arabian kingdom, the series of novels parallels closely the history of Saudi Arabia and together are generally understood to be a biting commentary on the Saudi regime.
both the influx of foreigners and the Western education of many Saudis, led to a yearning for traditional Arabian culture. Meanwhile, Saudi princes argued about oil-related matters, from Saudi Arabia’s role in OPEC, to the quantity of oil to pump, to how the oil revenues ought to be spent. These debates were sharpened by a significant reduction in oil revenues at this time. (Revenues dropped from a high of $109 billion in 1981 to $17 billion in 1987). By the mid 1980s Saudi Arabia had fallen into a recession and its inhabitants had begun to suffer unemployment. Support for the regime continued to be strong among the lower classes, especially in the Najd and Hejaz, but the new middle class, consisting largely of technocrats, was less content. This group had done well financially under the Saudis, but it had no voice in the government and remained completely dependent on the regime and its whims for continued prosperity.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province suffered from the recession with the rest of the country. There was unrest in the oil fields and oil towns of the province in late 1979 and early 1980, sparked in part by the 1979 revolution in Iran, whose residents, like the Eastern Saudis, are largely Shi‘ite Muslims. The Saudi government reacted by increasing both security in the area and investment in the infrastructure of the long-neglected region. Thus, nearly three decades after the general strike that ends Cities of Salt, the Eastern Province continued to challenge the Saudi regime.
An uprising in Mecca that year by 200 armed fundamentalists, some of whom were descendants of the ikhwan warriors originally nurtured by King Abd al-Aziz, was also brutally crushed, and its leaders were publicly beheaded.
Reception
Abd al-Rahman Munif’s writings have been well received in the Arab intellectual world, both because of the saliency of the themes he treats and because of his literary innovations. Cities of Salt has been acclaimed for its voice, which narrates from the standpoint not of a character or narrator but of an entire city or community. However, the implicit criticism of the Saudi regime and its oil policy reflected in his fiction has not gone unnoticed by Arab governments. The five novels that comprise the Cities of Salt series were banned
POPULATION SHIFTS IN SAUDI ARABIA
Because Saudi Arabia has no official population census, most figures relating to population movement and growth are estimates. We do know, however, that the population has increased dramatically. While 1959 population estimates range from 3 to 7 million, those for the early 1980s fall between 6 and 12 million. Since the advent of the petroleum industry, the country has also played host to a large number of foreigner In 1952, 38.2 percent of Aramco employees were non-Saudis. The percentage of all foreign workers in Saudi Arabia in 1980 was 47.4. Because the population of the major cities (Riyadh, Jiddah, Mecca, and Medina) has increased dramatically since the founding of the Saudi state in the early twentieth century, we know that there has been a pronounced shift from rural to urban centers, There are no figures on the numbers of Bedouin and rural Saudis who, like those in Cities of Salt, moved into the oil sector, However, company records show a substantial increase (from 3,000 in 1938 to 19,600 in 1956) in number of employees at Aramco as the century wore on and indicate that most of these employees were indigenous Saudis.
upon publication in several Persian Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, and Munif was stripped of his Saudi citizenship. The English translation of the novel is banned in Egypt, although the Arabic version is not.
Palestinian novelist Jabra Ibrahim Jabra has said of Munif, “I do not know of any other Arab novelist who relishes, and indeed, even suffers from, such a fierce and passionate sensitivity to nature” (Jabra in Allen, p. 266).
—Nadia Yakub
For More Information
Abd al-Ghani. al-Khuruj min al-tarikh: Abd al-Rahman Munif wa Mudun al-milh. Cairo: al-Hay’ah al-Misriyah al-Ammah lil-Kitab, 1993.
Abir, Mordechai. Saudi Arabia in the Oil Era: Regime and Elites; Conflict and Collaboration. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988.
Allen, Roger, ed. Modern Arabic Literature. New York: Ungar, 1987.
Habib, John. Ibn Sa’ud’s Warriors of Islam. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978.
Middle East Times. “Changing the World with His Pen.” 3 December 1999. http://www.metimes.com/issue99-49/cultent/changing_the_world.htm (26 May 2003).
Munif, Abd al-Rahman. Cities of Salt. Trans. Peter Theroux. New York: Random House, 1987.
Netton, Ian Richard, ed. Arabia and the Gulf: From Traditional Society to Modern States: Essays in Honor of M. A. Shaban’s 60th Birthday. London: Croom Helm, 1986.
Niblock, Tim. State, Society and Economy in Saudi Arabia. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982.
Nixon, Rob. “The Hidden Lives of Oil.” The Chronicle of Higher Education 48 (5 April 2002): B7-B9.
Quandt, William. Saudi Arabia in the 1980s: Foreign Policy, Security, and Oil. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institute, 1981.
al-Rasheed, Madawi. Politics in an Arabian Oasis: The Rashidi Tribal Dynasty. London: I. B. Tauris, 1991.
Siddiq, Muhammad. “The Making of a Counter-Narrative: Two Examples from Contemporary Arabic and Hebrew Fiction.” Michigan Quarterly Review 31, no. 4 (fall 1992): 649-62.
Stegner, Wallace. Discovery!: The Search for Arabian Oil. Beirut, Lebanon: Middle East Export Press, 1971.