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Progress that is almost daring by Saudi standards is being made in education. The school population has quadrupled in ten years to 100,000, and the education budget has gone up tenfold. Saud has donated at least ten of his 24 palaces for schools. At King Saud's Sons' Institute, inside the Naziriyah compound, children of slaves sit next to young princes. Risking the displeasure of the austere Wahabi sect of Islam, which believes that woman's place is in the harem and behind the veil, Tariki has put several thousand girls in school.
Other easing of the harsh Wahabi code can be seen at every hand. Goal posts stand far out in the desert for the benefit of passing nomads who have taken up soccer. Thieves now get their right hands chopped off in the public square only after the third offense. A doctor first administers a local anesthetic, bandages the stump, and then rushes the convict off by ambulance to a hospital, where, like all Saudis, he gets free medical care. The penalty for adultery is still death by stoning, but there has not been an execution in a decade; and the code prescribes that the victim first be rendered unconscious by drugs. Prince Talal is pushing for some sort of docile parliament. But the King has so far turned him down.
On Trial. There is fear that reforms could get out of hand. Saudi students, educated on government scholarships, are returning by the hundreds from Cairo, where many of them picked up an affection for socialism. Some of them go into the army, others into the civil service. Egyptian teachers and technicians in Saudi Arabia total 50,000, and Radio Cairo is the average Saudi's favorite station. As a counterweight, the government has recently been encouraging a native Saudi nationalism. Two months ago, Saud told the U.S. that it would have to get out of its big Dhahran airbase when the lease ran out in 1962. Recently, all non-Saudi taxi drivers lost their licenses, and Bedouins, according to one observer, "were hauled off their camels and into the driver's seat." The experiment left Riyadh littered with smashed cars.
In a country of many tribes and little sense of nationalism, old Ibn Saud tried to unify his nation in the traditional Arab way: by "marrying" the daughter of a chieftain for a night. Thus the 1,000 princes are a cross section of tribes; and politics in Saudi Arabia, where no man has a vote, is largely palace politics.
The conservative princes tend to gather behind Budget-Balancer Feisal. Recently a dozen of them showed their feelings and snubbed the King by refusing to show up at the airport to greet him when he made a ceremonial visit to Jiddah. If the reforms come too swiftly—or if spending gets out of hand—Talal and Tariki could find themselves out and the Feisal crowd back in. The dilemma, according to one Saudi, is that "Feisal 'feels that reforms will topple the throne, while Talal feels that without them the throne will topple." But both are loyal to the King, and depend on him. Says Tariki: "Change and reform are in the air and have the support of the King. Our royal family didn't create Saudi Arabia, but it does hold Saudi Arabia together. This country is like a block of sand, and without the house of Saud, it might fall apart."