Riyadh cultural show wins plaudits

More than 6,000 Saudis and expatriates visited a four-day cultural exhibition, which concluded at Riyadh's King Fahd Cultural Center on Thursday. The event was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Information to mark the 83rd National Day.
Government and nongovernmental organizations displayed their products and contributions toward the country’s national development. Participants included the Ministry of Health, the Saudi Philatelic Society, the Ministry of Education and other entities, which partook in the show in their individual capacity.
The Ministry of Health pavilion highlighted its Home Healthcare Program, which has currently more than 20,000 patients in different parts of the Kingdom. “Under this program, we visit the houses of patients to help them receive medical treatment without having to travel to hospitals and clinics,” a Saudi girl manning the stall said.
Young, enthusiastic Saudi men, women and schoolchildren, clad in green costumes representing the Saudi national flag, operated the exhibition stalls.
The exhibition hall was colorfully decorated with the national flag and portraits of the kings of Saudi Arabia to date.
The pavilion of the Ministry of Culture and Information displayed an enormous collection of books on various topics about the Kingdom that have been published by the ministry in several languages, including Arabic, English, German and French. The books were distributed free of charge to interested readers.
The Ministry of Education’s pavilion displayed a different stall in which children engaged in drawings under supervision.
Currency notes — from the time of King Abdul Aziz with engravings in Arabic and Urdu — were displayed. “A rare SR10 denomination currency note from the King Abdul Aziz era will fetch SR10,000 today,” an official from the Saudi Philatelic Bureau said.
Another important feature of the exhibition was the display of a host of rare and historic pictures of the founder of the Kingdom — King Abdul Aziz. These photos were from the personal collections of Manzoor Ahmed, a Pakistani expatriate, who had been working with the Saudi Press Agency for about 35 years.
Ahmed displayed over 130 rare and historic photos of King Abdul Aziz with his children, with foreign dignitaries like Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Theodore Roosevelt, King Farooq of Egypt and Gov. General Ghulam Mohammad of Pakistan.