Riyadh March 6-7

On March 6 I arrived in Riyadh at 6:30 pm on my flight from Amman; I think I was the only Westerner on the Saudi airlines flight. This was my second trip to Saudi Arabia, after last year’s excavation. I was met by people from the Ministry of Culture who whisked me through formalities and took me to the very nice Holiday Inn hotel. After checking in, I soon went to the Riyadh Book Fair, where each evening there is a culture program with panels of guest speakers. I met various Ministry of Culture people who had made the arrangements for me to come, including Abdulaziz Alsebail, the Saudi deputy minister of culture. After the book fair closed at 10:00, I had dinner and long conversation at the hotel with other guest speakers of the book fair. Almost all of the other book fair guest speakers were Arabs; one other Westerner was Phillipe Aigrain, an authority on intellectual property.

The next day, Saturday March 7, I hung out at the hotel until we left for the afternoon activities. The dozen or so guests of the Riyadh Book Fair were all invited to attend an awards ceremony for best translations to or from Arabic at the King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Public Library. As with many public buildings in Riyadh, the library is a remarkably posh and ornate building. After the ceremony, Phillipe Aigrain and I were ushered into a dining room, where we enjoyed an elaborate banquet spread. But only when we had finished eating, did our minders realize that we were supposed to be with the rest of the group attending a reception in another room. So we went to the reception for a while, before the main event of the afternoon got underway – a royal audience and luncheon banquet with King Abdullah.

We were taken to a large audience hall in the royal palace compound, which was the most opulent building I have ever seen, with an extraordinary colored glass and gold encrusted ceiling. I regret not having better pictures to show (photos are courtesy of Phillipe Aigrain).

The ceiling of the audience hall

We hung out for about an hour until King Abdullah arrived with his entourage of incense-swinging attendants and assorted courtiers. There were several hundred people in attendance, including participants in a national heritage and folk culture festival. We listened to a sycophantic speech and poetry recitation and then King Abdullah said a few words of welcome. Then we all lined up to shake the king’s hand, before we went to the adjoining dinning hall.

King Abdullah in the hand-shaking line

The banquet was the most elaborate meal I have ever had, although I was full from the previous lavish spread of a couple of hours earlier. There were some 350 people at the luncheon, twenty to a table, and all men except for two women – Najat al-Milad, a guest speaker for the book fair from Tunisia and the other the wife of another one of the book fair guest speakers. The guests were served by swarms of servants. A connoisseur of such royal banquets told me that this banquet was a bit off the peak – it seems that the main meat course was not as good as it could have been; also I must say that the servants were a tad slow getting the soup served. The meal entailed prodigious wastage of food; I observed similar wastage at the various other banquets I attended this trip. The banquet did not take all that long. All in all the banquet was the most interesting new cultural experience of the trip.

The banquet invitation

The banquet menu

Phillipe Aigrain, Najat al-Milad, and Abdulaziz Alsebail, the Saudi deputy minister of culture, at the banquet.

Later that evening I went with two other book fair participants to the King Fahd cultural center, for the opening session of a French-Saudi conference on intercultural dialogue, which consisted of forgettable speeches. The cultural center was yet another exceptionally ornate building. That evening back at the hotel I felt no need for dinner, after the two banquets that afternoon.