The blistering attack on the Madinah municipal authorities by the head of the Kingdom’s tourism commission, Prince Sultan ibn Salman, for demolishing the city’s Hejaz railway bridge brings into focus the whole issue of the country’s attitude to its antiquities. The country’s history is either crumbling or being bulldozed away at breakneck speed. What has happened to the bridge in Madinah is happening all over the country. Traditional houses and buildings are being abandoned or demolished or concreted over. Go to old Jeddah with its alleyway upon alleyway of world-class but dilapidating buildings; go to Riyadh’s Dira district; go to hundreds of towns and villages across the country, places such as old Yanbu, a treasure trove of old buildings and traditional architecture. In all of them, buildings are being left to rot and decay.
The problem is twofold. First, heritage is under threat from people who either do not realize its importance or, far worse, who simply do not care. Elsewhere in the world, heritage is treasured, old buildings lovingly restored and given a new lease of life as arts, educational and conference centers or even homes and hotels; here, on the other hand, there is the notion, at every level of society, that anything old is rubbish and should be demolished.
That attitude has resulted in the second aspect of the problem. There is no working system for the protection and restoration of the country’s heritage. What is needed is a commission for the care of historic monuments with the power and authority to ensure that they are protected. Such a commission needs to have the powers that similar bodies have in other countries — the power to force owners to restore buildings at risk and the power to refuse permission for their demolition or redevelopment. But there also needs to be carrot as well as stick. There should be generous grants available for the restoration work. Without such protection, the Kingdom’s heritage will continue to crumble.
What is incomprehensible about this is that no one seems able to see the financial rewards from restoration. Saudi Arabia wants to develop a tourist industry in order to provide massive employment opportunities; tourists are not going to come to see the very same architecture and cityscapes they can see at home. An old Jeddah restored, however, humming with shops, restaurants and, most of all, people, would pull them in.
That is the other side of the restoration coin. Places such as old Yanbu and old Jeddah must not be saved simply as empty echoing rooms, dead and desolate. They need to be full of life, of children’s laughter, of human voices. There is no reason why the old houses people have abandoned cannot be brought up to date with all the conveniences of modern-day life but still retaining all their traditional charm and beauty.
This is not something that can wait. A few more years and there will be nothing to restore. The only option will then be some Disneyesque reconstruction — without soul, without character. Where is the heritage in that?
