On April 25, after Crown Prince Abdullah’s meeting with President George W. Bush, a group of Saudi Aramco retirees from Austin, Texas, most of whom had spent decades with the company, had a meeting with him that none of us will soon forget.
When the proposed visit to the Crawford Ranch was announced, some of us thought it would be fun to hire a bus and go to Waco to welcome the crown prince to Texas as a reciprocal gesture for the hospitality we’d received from his people. Nothing political here, just a personal welcome from some Americans with fond memories of their years in Saudi Arabia.
It seemed like a pipe dream at the time, given the tight security and our notable lack of friends in high places, but here we were, lined up on one edge of the red carpet leading to the royal aircraft, our banners of welcome unfurled, our tiny American and Saudi flags flapping in the wind. The crown prince, we were told, was due to arrive from the Crawford Ranch at any moment.
I took that moment to reflect on how it had come about — how one of us had a friend who suggested the idea to the Saudi Embassy, and how weeks later, to our amazement, arrangements were made. Then, at the last moment, the time and the place were changed. Despite the old college try, by the time we got to Waco on the morning of the crown prince’s arrival, the royal entourage was on its way to the Prairie Chapel Ranch.
Never mind, we said, we’ll catch him on the way out. With a few hours to spare, we brushed up on Texas history with a visit to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum and the nearby historic early Texan village before heading to the small, private airport from which the royal party would depart.
A young State Department officer met our bus and led us through security to an outdoor holding pen just off the tarmac. We waited and watched as the scheduled 2:45 p.m. departure came and went with no sign of the royal family.
"They’re still meeting," we were told, or perhaps it was "They’re still eating." We were admitted to a secured building where more time passed. By 4:30 p.m. or so, we began to feel that we too were becoming a part of history. We would do the waiting if they would do the peacemaking. Then word came — the royal party would arrive in 20 minutes!
We scrambled onto the tarmac and all 35 of us lined up, but the downdraft from two escort helicopters landing nearby sent us scampering back to a sheltered area. When the winds subsided, we again lined up, with our oldest retiree, 100-year-old Eula Matthews, in the first position, primed to present the crown prince with a bouquet of white blossoms. I stood next to her.
We turned and watched the black and gold bus roll down the tarmac and park about four meters from where we stood. The door opened and two or three officials stepped down and then the crown prince appeared. I have seen many photos of him, most of them unsmiling, but the man who descended the stairs had such an expression of surprise and delight, that in an instant the whole dynamic changed. Where we had expected a certain formality and reserve, we saw uncommon warmth and friendliness walking toward us and it charged through all of us like a bolt of electricity.
Smiling broadly, the crown prince took Eula’s hand as I recited bits of her history — she would soon be 101, she had been in Jerusalem in 1929 while her husband, Dr. Charles D. Matthews, studied at the American School of Oriental Research, she was in Cairo in 1945 while he was cultural attache at the US Legation, and she had lived in Dhahran from 1949 to 1961, when Dr. Matthews was with Aramco as a specialist in Arabian affairs. Eula then chatted up the crown prince herself, heaping praise on her late husband’s work.
While the media was busy telling the world that no women were allowed on the tarmac, the crown prince was listening to Eula with keen interest, and when she had finished, he leaned over and extended her a special, warm greeting.
The remarks I had prepared on behalf of our group now seemed as superfluous as a speech to friends in our home. I had planned to say how most Americans who went to Saudi Arabia to work had intended to stay for only a few years, but his people had made us feel so welcome, that many of us settled down, and raised our families there. I did manage to thank him for his visit and for his peace proposal before Eula piped up, "I forgot to give you the flowers!" This broke us all up as the crown prince reached over and graciously accepted them before moving to the next person in the line.
And so it went, with each person greeting the crown prince, who appeared to have all the time in the world for us. One woman noted that her parents went to Saudi Arabia in the 1940s, when she was a teenager. She had married and raised her own family there and now her son is there with his family, giving her a four-generation connection to the Kingdom. To a woman wearing a gold chain with her name inscribed in Arabic, the crown prince said, "I like your necklace, Marion."
Many in the line offered the traditional greeting, "As-salamu Alaykum." Each expressed a sentiment and these feelings of friendship bounced right back at us as the crown prince and his nephews, Saud Al-Faisal and Prince Bandar, moved down our line in conversational mode. Before it was over, word was passed that our group was invited to the banquet honoring the crown prince in Houston on the following Saturday. Later, we were told that the oil minister’s jet would pick us up in Austin and fly us to the event. That did happen and for the next 24 hours we were treated like royalty.
But the best part of this true fairy tale is what happened on April 25, when Crown Prince Abdullah, who carries the weight of the Arab and Muslim worlds on his shoulders, and who had just spent five hours in serious talks with President Bush, found time to greet each of us in such a personal way and later sent word that our visit had given him great pleasure.
