Tag Archives: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Visit the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia via Roman à Clef

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Snuggle up for the most informative, least intrusive and safest international travel adventure ever—A roman à clef in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Roman à clef?

A roman à clef (French for “novel with a key”) is a book that tells a real-life story or depicts real people using fictional names, places, and altered events. The “key” is the real-world connection. In my series The Landscape Architect, the key is the geography, the landscape which dominates the story. In addition to the landscape key, I used creative freedom to layer-in Thurberesque character interaction.

Why? …a long story; but here’s the short form.

When I was only an impressionable 17, my father moved us from the US to Belgium. While he was working there, he took us all to London West End on a weekend break. Before he and my mom went to a play, they dropped me off at the Metropole Cinema to watch David Lean’s unforgettable Lawrence of Arabia… and its blazing red Arabian dawn mystical power has ever since driven my life.  That was the beginning of how landscape became the key for all my romans à clef in The Landscape Architect series.

What follows is in the news now—a story about Yenbo Saudi Arabia. Yenbo, Yanbu—don’t trouble yourself with spellings. Transliteration between Arabic and Roman alphabets is always a moving target. The third book in my series, The Landscape Architect, is titled Yenbo Palms. Read it and learn some inside stuff about the Western Region of Saudi Arabia, the Yenbo of Lawrence of Arabia, the Yenbo of Christopher Janus (CJ), the Yenbo of the trans-Arabia oil pipeline in this weekend’s news.

Yenbo Palms QR link to Amazon.

Inspired by Landscape? Try this…

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I write landscape stories. Hijaz landscape on the Red Sea in the Western Region of Saudi Arabia. Water or no water?

Inspired by landscape?

You’ll love my landscape stories… Saudi, Red Sea, Lawrence of Arabia… Just published Yenbo Palms. Try it for free at Amazon via this link: https://tinyurl.com/mnmwktmr

 

Silly Realizations

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Slack jaw…? Silly statistics.

I’m an American.

In 1982, I acquired an International Drivers License as I prepared to go, via Europe, to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. According to the sequential license numbering, I was one of 511,000 International Drivers License holders.

In 2006, 24 years later, I acquired another International Drivers License, as I prepared to go, via Europe, to the United Arab Emirates. According to that same sequential license numbering, this time I was one of 71,000,000 International Drivers License holders.

My conclusion. Airline ticket prices have not grown as fast as inflation. You can ask yourself why. Myself, I had more fun with my primrose and crazy paving post.

Chase the Water

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In the 1980s, on the Red Sea coast side of the Hejaz mountains in Saudi Arabia, I worked for four years and never saw rain.

The 1980s Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Western Region shepherds, the goatherds had, as Bedouins always had, steered their flocks toward the parts of the landscape that had cloud bursts or rainstorms most recently. In the 1980s they used Toyota trucks as their primary mode of transportation.

The 1980s Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Western Region shepherds, the goatherds had, as Bedouins always had, steered their flocks toward the parts of the landscape that had cloud bursts or rainstorms most recently. In the 1980s they used Toyota trucks as their primary mode of transportation.

It was always about chasing the water. Water was unpredictable and transient. Transient forbs and grasses were located differently every year, every season. Life depended on successful reading the landscape.

But this wasn’t the Empty Quarter.

The Empty Quarter was empty, why? Because no one could read the landscape, no one could read the water. No life. Empty.