Tag: 2024-02 Saudi Arabia

It goes by different names, sometimes called the Persian Gulf, but in Saudi Arabia, it is the Arabian Gulf. On the other side is Iran (Persia).

We stayed a couple of nights on the [Arabian] Gulf in Al Jubayl. This is the home of Aramco, Saudi’s energy company. There we visited the Aramco Museum, which turned out to be more interesting than expected.

On our way to Dammam and Al Judah we stopped at this landmark, Judah’s Thumb. It is also known as the Devil’s Thumb, although my sense is it gets its name from the local village, Judah. Referring to it as a thumb seems to be because it “sticks out [of the otherwise flat desert] like…

In one sense, seeing a male entrance is a stark reminder of the degree of change we too have experienced in this country. When I was a child, our school had separate entrances for boys and girls. Nor was it uncommon, at the time, to see taverns with separate entrances for men and women. But…