John Jones and Olaya Street
Jamil Theyabi Al-Hayat - 29/10/07//
A couple of months ago, a new book on Saudi Arabia and its people was published in the US under the title "If Olaya Street Could Talk: The Heartland of Oil and Islam. Interestingly, the author was able to avoid the distorted exaggerations that have become fashionable in the works of western writers, especially when it comes to the nature of life and people's mentality in Saudi Arabia.
Over the past few years, especially since the September 11 events, a black image of Saudi society has propagated in the western mind, one that is mainly linked to terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, particularly since 15 of the 19 assailants who carried out the "attacks" in Washington and New York were Saudi.
Some western authors intentionally defame the Saudi image without a real knowledge of the emotional and sensitive nature of the Saudi society, just as some Arab and Muslim authors do the same to the image of the west which has been kind to them and embraced them in exile. Some have tried to depict the Saudi people as a bunch of terrorists and retards as did the cartoon film, "American Dad", a Fox production, when it tells the story of an American family (the Stans) that was sent to live in Saudi Arabia as punishment for the dad who ruined a party thrown by his superiors. The film presents a cruel if not misleading impression about Saudi Arabia and the Saudis as it showed the Saudi people as a backward society that is obsessed by sex and that is made up of a mixture of murderers and terrorists.
In contrast, there are honest western authors who seek honesty in their work and these include the American writer John Paul Jones who authored "If Olaya Street Could Talk." In this book, he tries to put an end to the confused and defaming images that haunt the Kingdom and its people in the popular American mind. I exchanged emails with the author of the book over the past two weeks, and in addition to this, he sent me a copy of the book via registered mail despite my prior electronic exposure to its contents, especially the expressive Saudi images and the photos through which he raised logical questions for his fellow Americans who know nothing about the "Heartland of Oil" except for what they have read or seen in the western media.
I felt that John Jones liked the Saudis and expressed enthusiasm for their country, but he did not give up his objectivity when writing about a country in which he had worked for more than two decades. Some of the content of his book can be found at www.tazapress.com. The author has packed a large number of photos of Saudi cities and locations that he has personally visited, and of Saudi personalities that he had met such as the lead actors of the Tash Ma Tash series and writers like himself.
In his book, Jones wonders: "What do we really know about Saudi Arabia? What does the North American general public know about the Kingdom aside from what we absorb through media references? Do we learn anything of substance? Anything positive? Anything but propaganda and crude caricatures of the Other, viewed through the prevailing political and ideological prisms?"
Jones expresses his hope that his book will be "a step in changing American perceptions of Saudi Arabia in particular, and the Arabs in general" assuring that he had no intention of writing about his personal experience in Saudi Arabia, but that this became inevitable to him to put an end to the ideology of hatred against Saudis and Arabs.
"Olaya Street" is not a historical account of the political, economic, cultural or social evolution of Saudi Arabia, but it narrates the author's experience in the Kingdom and the cities that he visited, accompanied with an image of King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh which he personally participated in establishing. In another photograph, he appears accompanied by his wife to bring the Saudi image closer to the western reader. The author criticizes American journalists, among them the New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, whom he accuses of writing on Saudi Arabia based on existing preconceptions and Maureen Dowd who writes about Saudi women without understanding the nature of their daily lives.
Clearly, Saudi the development is visible in various areas and will not be influenced by the opinions of radicals, terrorists, or ideologues. The majority of Saudis seek moderation away from repulsive radicalism and destructive looseness. I think that Jones' book proves that not all Americans work and conspire against us or write against what we do. Rather, it offers room for a human image and to assure that neither is the west a monster nor are we.
|
