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With all this money in the country, corruption is inevitable, despite government efforts to crack down. Even a few of the many royal princes are not immune, although the assistance they provide to five-percenters is quite often innocent. Among Saudi influence peddlers there is a common phrase: "Remember the prince." After closing a deal with a foreign firm, the agent may tell his client, "You must remember the prince. Let's offer him $300,000." The two will then sit in a hotel lobby until a prince passes through.
As the prince waits for the elevator, the agent will hop over to him, pump his hand and, whisper, "I have my foreign partner sitting in the lobby." The prince will look across the lobby at the partner, smile politely and go up in the elevator. The agent will tell his client, "It's a deal. The prince will accept the $300,000." As often as not the agent pockets the money himself.
A much more serious social effect has been created by education and travel among the country's young people. Says a Saudi businessman: "We are in a state of schism, with a wide generation gap separating the traditionalists from the innovators."
A young American-educated Saudi says, "In the past, there was so little education in this country that youngsters learned everything they knew by rote, all handed down by word of mouth from their fathers. The environment did not permit us to take a critical view of our culture. But now, with university education, travel, television, the influx of foreigners, we are in a position to appraise our society and to demand changes if we see the need."
There are now 30,870 Saudis in universities, 20,000 of them abroad (and of those, half are in the U.S.). When a young Saudi returns from college in California or Texas, his re-entry is apt to be traumatic. He must doff his T shirt and jeans and don the traditional garments. He will be expected to submit to the traditional mores of family life, where his every move and thought are examined by his elders, and he must defer to those elders too, whether they deserve it or not. He must give up the company of women except those in his immediate family or the woman he eventually marries. He will not be allowed to go to public movies, nightclubs, discothèques. He will not be allowed to participate in political activity.
Despite these restrictions, the level of restlessness among young Saudis appears to be well below the boiling point. "I hear a lot of complaining," says a Westerner who has lived in Jidda for many years, "but I never hear the word revolution."
One strong indication that the Saudi social fabric remains intact is the fact that, unlike students from many other Middle Eastern countries, practically all Saudis who study abroad return home.
In public, Western-educated Saudis carefully observe the country's rigid mores. In the privacy of their homes, they live much more permissively. They drink openly with friends (Scotch is bootlegged for about $40 a bottle), and women are inclined to favor Western dress. They watch video cassettes or feature films ordered from a part of Riyadh that is nick named "Hollywood" because of its clandestine network of film distributors.