My friend kept urging me to accompany him to an exhibition of Saudi national products. He thinks I have a negative attitude toward the industry. It is an industry that continues to drain the country’s resources, with investors being granted generous soft loans, free land and highly subsidized services. All we get in the end is factories that look Saudi only from the outside. Inside, thousands of Asians are employed in a national project originally intended to be truly Saudi.

I finally accepted the invitation, telling myself I should not resist an offer to accompany a businessman driven in a luxury limo. A list of shocking surprises lay in wait for me while I readied myself for the occasion. The Pandora’s box sprung open the moment I opened the drawer to choose clothes for the occasion. I discovered that the underpants I was about to wear are made in Mongolia, a country that seems to know a lot about the Saudi taste in clothes. Then I found that the undershirt was manufactured in the People’s Republic of China, a country neighboring Mongolia.

Not content with distributing our lands among them, foreign powers have made arrangements to monopolize what we wear. Some are providing the underwear, others the ghutra and iqal (headdress) and still others the thobe; the very symbol of our national dress. As for women’s wear, this has been left to the market powers, and it is here that globalization and free trade are being practiced to satisfy the World Trade Organization.

My other great shock came when I was about to put on the thobe. I discovered that it, too, is made in a foreign country, which in my case happened to be Japan. My shoes were Italian-made while the white ghutra I put on came from Switzerland. What a complicated case of globalization! Imagine wearing all these things and heading for a function known as the national products day.

The story did not end there. Entering through the reception hall at the exhibition center we were greeted by neatly dressed waiters offering Arabian coffee, the symbol of traditional Arab hospitality. When out of curiosity I turned over the cup the tag read “Made in Vietnam.” I couldn’t discover where the coffee jug came from since the waiter hurried away with the dallah before I was able to read the name of the country of origin.

Strolling through the exhibition from one pavilion to another, all I could see was stands manned by foreign workers. I kept asking myself what was national in all this?

Arab News From the Local Press 14 July 2003