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Two years ago, at Royal "suggestion," the company even agreed to move its main offices from New York to the desert, with the result that Aramco is no longer an American company with branches abroad; it is an American company with a branch in the U.S. To join Aramco today on a career basis means accepting a desert life, for an employee cannot hope to rotate from a job in a distant field to one in the home office; the home office is here. The turnover among American employees runs fairly high. Most join up in hopes of making a cushion: freedom from U.S. income tax, cost-of-living differentials and salaries about 25% above stateside rates for equivalent jobs are the lures. A surprising number intend to stay for a couple of contracts (two years each), save up enough to buy a motel back home. But the limited consolations of loneliness are a deterrent to savings accounts: some pretty rugged poker and crap games spring up in the bachelor camps. For men with families—there are now 3,400 wives and children with Aramco and its associated U.S. contractors—the air-conditioned houses, the tennis courts and swimming pools have made life increasingly livable.
Meanwhile, a huge bite of the company revenue goes to support a royal regime that is itself a fantastic blend of East and West, ancient and modern. The money pours in like a flash flood in a dry wadi but it flows out even faster. This year's government budget estimates a deficit of close to $60 million. Little of the huge sums that are spent trickle past the palace gates into the hands of ordinary Saudis.
Royal Spending. Nobody knows for certain the size of Saudi Arabia's royal family. The late King Ibn Saud had either 32, 37 or 40 princely sons. Young Prince Abdullah, an amiable lad, told me that the present King Saud likes to pretend sensitivity about the number of his own progeny. "Sometimes he says to us older boys, 'You are fine lads, but you are enough'; so then we laugh at him and say. 'The house is full of youngsters, and they're all yours.' Then he says, acting angry, 'Oh, no, there can't be that many; I'm not that old.' "
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 has to get out and lug.