The Trench<\/em>\u00a0that are still in evidence today.<\/p>\nThe novel is set early in the oil boom. A small desert capital, Mooran, finds itself transformed in a few years from mud brick to marble. We look through the eyes of an opportunistic Syrian doctor who by virtue of his medical skills becomes an intimate of the Sultan \u2013 the son of the founding patriarch. The newcomer uses his political acumen and his experience of the wider world that increasingly impinges on Mooran to become the chief advisor to the monarch.<\/p>\n
He gradually inserts family and friends into the court of the affable and easily-influenced Sultan, all the while increasing his wealth by taking a slice of new companies set up to capitalise on Mooran\u2019s growing appetite for the fruits of the new-found oil wealth \u2013 cars, palaces, luxury goods and massive infrastructure projects. He discreetly purchases large tracts of real estate around the capital in the knowledge that land will be at a premium in the rapidly expanding city.<\/p>\n
As time goes on, his associates become powerful in their own right. One of them, a member of a prominent local family whom he engineers into the job of setting up the country\u2019s national security agency, eventually becomes his nemesis. Others turn into silent enemies who work against him, yet he manages to cling to his pre-eminent position as the Sultan\u2019s advisor.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile we meet some of the leading lights in the city\u2019s souk, who act as a baleful chorus as the march of progress threatens and ultimately destroys their livelihood as traders and intermediaries. Not much call for selling sheep and shoeing donkeys when the streets become filled with swishy Cadillacs and the new markets are stocked with imported food. Embittered, they continue to meet at the local coffee house, where they hurl oblique curses at the ruling elite and their scheming advisors.<\/p>\n
In the hothouse of the court, the doctor veers from despair and paranoia to moments of joyous triumph. As he gets older his perception of his own brilliance steadily inflates, and he spends increasing amounts of his time developing a grand theory of life which will amaze the world when he finally gets round to publishing it.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile the women of the palace pursue their own agendas. Their main preoccupation is the Sultan\u2019s insatiable appetite for new wives. By the end of the story, he is rumoured to have married at least thirty women, with deadly consequences for at least one of them. And the doctor\u2019s wife lives a double existence of which her husband is blissfully unaware.<\/p>\n
Munif portrays the court of Mooran as venal and intrigue-ridden \u2013 a rat\u2019s nest of flattery, jealousy and hidden grudges. Ordinary subjects are fed official news glorifying Mooran, the Sultan and the nation\u2019s achievements. The coffee house, however, is rife with rumours and scandalous talk.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard not to associate the story with Saudi Arabia, even if the narrative doesn\u2019t explicitly map on to the history. The founder, his son the Sultan and the austere Crown Prince bring to mind the first three Saudi monarchs \u2013 Abdulaziz, Saud and Faisal. And the coastal city of Harran, where the doctor gained his first foothold in the sultanate, is a dead ringer for Al-Khobar, Dammam and Dhahran, the oil-producing conurbation on the East coast.<\/p>\n
For the malcontents of the souk, the oil wealth is a curse, yet you are left with the impression that it is no less a curse for all the other protagonists. There are no truly contented characters in\u00a0The Trench<\/em>, even if they enjoy brief moments of joy. Nobody, not even the Sultan, is truly in control of his life. All are in thrall to external forces, especially to the Americans, who are portrayed as puppet masters manipulating events in the background.<\/p>\nAs a Saudi national who occupied prominent positions in the Middle East oil industry, Munif was undoubtedly in a position to observe the comings and goings of the elites of his time. I have no idea how close he was to the centres of power in the 50s, but his description of the intrigue and the opaqueness of decision-making within the Arab autocracies \u2013 and not just of the monarchies \u2013 rings true even today.<\/p>\n
In the UK, if David Cameron appoints advisors, they are subject to scrutiny and criticism both in the media and in parliament. Only recently he was accused of appointing his friends and \u201cpeople like him\u201d into key positions at the expense of talented individuals from different backgrounds.<\/p>\n
In many Middle East states, such concerns would be greeted with incredulity. For every official advisor there is a host of shadowy figures who also exert influence through friendships, family ties and mutual dependence. Public criticism of government appointments and individuals in positions of power is frowned upon, to say the least. The lines between friendship and business are frequently blurred. And, as in The Trench, ministries serve as personal fiefdoms \u2013 often jostling for power and influence \u2013 especially when the minister is a member of the ruling family. Relationships and trust mean everything.<\/p>\n
Even today, though many institutions have sprung up that seemingly render decision-making less opaque, in most of the absolute monarchies the process for making the critical policy decisions remains mysterious by Western standards. As a result, the rumour market continues to thrive, and no region revels in conspiracy theories more than the Middle East.<\/p>\n
I can well understand why Munif\u2019s writing upset the Saudis, who would prefer to portray the history of the Kingdom as one of uninterrupted progress. Yet today\u2019s media has greater freedom to criticise than ever before, even though attacks on individuals remain out of bounds. There is an increasing debate over problems that have their origins in earlier decades \u2013 the reliance on foreign labour, failings in the education system and endemic health issues. So has Saudi Arabia \u2013 and its wealthy neighbours for that matter \u2013 come to terms with the cost to society and human values of the oil era? I suspect that the answer is yes.<\/p>\n
But one reason for tensions in the region is that the pre-oil generation have not forgotten the relative simplicity of their younger days, and their children share their nostalgia. There are many who look back rather than forward, and yearn for a society that is fast vanishing. Religious belief apart, this is one of the roots of the conservatism that still characterises Saudi Arabia, and is the cause of much of the tension within its society.<\/p>\n
For all that, it would be nice to think that today\u2019s elite would find it within themselves to forgive Abdulrahman Munif, who died in 2004, for his perceived offence. Because to my mind\u00a0The Trench<\/em>\u00a0is great literature \u2013 no less than the work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who similarly fell foul of the Soviet establishment, only to be rehabilitated late in his life.<\/p>\nThere are not so many Arab writers who have successfully reached international audiences over during past century. Of these, the Egyptian Nobel prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz is probably the best known, but the list is short. Saudi Arabia should be proud of Munif, though I suspect that not enough time has passed for his talent to be recognised and celebrated at all levels within the Kingdom.<\/p>\n
And the non-Arab world needs to hear more authentic Arab voices, even if their messages are not always comforting. Because like it or not, the Middle East is unlikely to decline into geopolitical irrelevance any time soon.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
STEVE ROYSTON: The Trench is the second in a quintet that explores the corruption of society by oil, and of those who extracted it, exploited it and enriched themselves in the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":29513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,10],"tags":[17713,191,406,4819],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29512"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29512"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29515,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29512\/revisions\/29515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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