A Saudi Tradition Worth Our Respect
Michael Saba

R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Soul singer Aretha Franklin made that word famous in her 1960s hit tune of the same name �Respect.� That word came back to me last week when I visited with a friend about her children�s �lack of respect� to their mother and then again when I heard a singer and songwriter speak about her songs of respect for older people and then showed a lack of the same respect for her own father. In both cases, thoughts about respect for family and the elderly in Saudi Arabia came to me. Family values still play a powerful role in Saudi Arabia and the contrast with much of the United States and the Western world can be very striking.

While visiting with a friend and neighbor recently, the subject of her children and their attitude toward her and her husband was raised. She said, �We have given so much to our children and now that they are young adults, they show no respect to us.� We discussed this issue and raised the question of whether this lack of respect was an individual act or part of a larger American cultural problem. Does American culture really encourage special respect for parents and the elderly or are we losing much of this value to the effects of modernity and a new lifestyle? 

The same day, I listened to a report on National Public Radio about a singer and songwriter who had worked in mental institutions and homes for the elderly. She stated that very little respect is shown for the elderly in those institutions and that she had broken barriers and stereotypes to �get through� to many in the institutions and give them �respect� in the process. 

She continued that she based many of her songs on her experiences in those institutions. However, she also stated that she had her aged father placed in a nursing home because she had too many other responsibilities and couldn�t care for him in her own home.

I recalled a story that I had experienced a few years ago while conducting training for American employees of a large American corporation who were going to work in Saudi Arabia. Training for these corporate employees was conducted across the United States at their home offices. In each venue, I would contact a local university to see if there were any Saudi students in that locale. I would then contact the Saudi students and ask them to come to the training session to help as �cultural advisers� during the training. 

At one venue in an American city in the Northeast, a Saudi student who was studying engineering assisted me. He was about to finish his studies in the US and, he explained to the group, that since he had received a full scholarship from a large Saudi company, he would be required to work for them for a number of years. If he did not fulfill this requirement, he said, he would have to pay back the scholarship money to the company. He explained that although he was from Jeddah, the company required him to work in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. He stated that he had decided to return to the home of his parents in Jeddah after finishing school and, therefore, forgo his job with the Saudi company. He would have to repay the Saudi company for his scholarship.

The American corporate employees were stunned by this decision of the young Saudi. They asked why he had decided this way. They pointed out that he could fly back to Jeddah on the weekends and that there was a relatively short finite period that he would have to work for the Saudi company to fulfill his obligations to them. 

Why, they asked, did he make this decision that required him to repay his scholarship? The young Saudi replied, �If I went to work in the Eastern Province, I couldn�t kiss my father every day.� 

The Americans were shocked with his reply. Many of them had elderly parents and some had parents in homes for the aged. And none of them even lived in the same towns where their parents resided. Upon discussing this issue, the Americans presented many rationales for their lack of living with their parents. They stated that �it was just too difficult� or that �my parents didn�t want to be a burden on me� or �the nursing homes are wonderful environments for elderly people.� None of their arguments made any sense to the Saudi student.

David E. Long has recently written a book entitled, �Culture and Customs of Saudi Arabia.� This extremely well written and important book is not the first on Saudi Arabia by Dr. Long. Long served with the US State Department for some 30 years beginning with assignment as a Foreign Service officer in the 1960s in Jeddah. An astute observer of Saudi culture, Long focuses on the family in his book. He speaks of the extended family in Saudi Arabia and its sense of deep roots. 

Long states that the extended family in Saudi Arabia is the most important institution in the Kingdom and often refers to the people of Saudi Arabia as being like one large extended family. The importance of family in Saudi Arabia cannot be overemphasized, he continues. �The miracle is not how much Saudi society has changed, ..(i)t is how resilient the society has been in the face of change. The family system is still intact and indeed is probably the most stabilizing force in the country. Whatever Saudi Arabia�s political or economic future, it is difficult to visualize without the paramount importance of family ties,� he says in the book.

Family ties are rapidly being swept up by modernity and changing lifestyles in the United States. 

I think of my neighbors� dilemma of receiving no respect from her children and I lament about the songwriter who feels that she has respect for her elders but finds it OK to put her father in a home for the elderly. And I want them both to hear the story of the young Saudi who feels that he must kiss his father every day. And I hope that modernity and changing lifestyles in Saudi Arabia will not change the thought in the wonderful Arab proverb, �To forfeit one�s family, is to forfeit one�s dignity.� 

Reprinted with permission of Arab News

Michael Saba is Executive Director of Friends of Saudi Arabia, a non-profit entity dedicated to establishing goodwill and friendship between the people of Saudi Arabia and people of other countries and cultures.

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