Word: jeddah
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Pleasures & Palaces. In the sheikdoms and kingdoms of the Arab world, in palaces and refugee camps, he updated the Arabian Nights into Alsop's Fables. In the new palace at Jeddah ("the house that Aramco built"), guarded by blackamoors with gilded scimitars, King Saud of Saudi Arabia entertained 400 dinner guests at once, headed by little Imam Ahmed of Yemen, "who waggles his big, richly turbaned head like a teetotum in a sort of passion of politeness." While the guests drank orange pop, "a court bard, descended straight from the poetic line that sang before Agamemnon at Mycenae . . . recites...
Reasonably dispassionate guessers figure the royal household plus retainers and courtiers in the neighborhood of 10,000 persons. Whenever the King's own household makes one of its periodic moves from Riyadh to Jeddah or Medina, its central figures are airlifted by the Saudi Arabian government airline, which owns 27 aircraft. A royal move means not only that all scheduled operations are canceled but also that every available aircraft...