The following is a piece that was published in Sept. 2002 in The Hartford Courant. The only online version I could find was in the archives of a Saudi-expat forum. The article is quite interesting as it deals with the situation post 9/11. It mentions only positives because of the purpose for which it was written, and to breakdown negative stereotypes. Saudi Arabia, we should know, is not perfect and like any other country has its share of good and bad. Seeing the country through any one lens is counter productive. It also shows how an apolitical, common person relates so much with real life and real things. He/she will have views that are politically incorrect:

Don't blame Saudi Arabia

By Pit Menousek Pinegar, an American poet and a teacher

I AM an American. I'm glad I was born and raised and educated – at least through the 12th grade – in a small, safe New England town. And I'm equally glad that my children were raised and educated, at least for five years of their lives, in Saudi Arabia. I love the United States, I love Saudi Arabia. It, too, has been my home. If you ask me to think of something I didn't like about being there, I won't be able to think of a thing.

I loved the landscape – barren and dramatic – where every flowering thing was a triumph, the waxy gold-and-purple desert candle, Cistanche phelypaea, a miracle, springing, as if by holy decree, from nothing but coarse sand. I loved the air – hot and dry by day, damp and redolent of oleander and plumeria at night.

I loved the long stretches of virgin Arabian Gulf just southeast of Dhahran. I loved the ring-necked parakeets that clustered on the telephone lines outside my kitchen window.

I loved the fact that children were safe and valued, that I didn't have to teach them not to speak to strangers, not to accept the sweets and pencils, notepads and erasers routinely offered with affection and no dangerous agenda.

I loved the fact that my younger daughter, with severe ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder), was successful in school, was working three years ahead of her grade in some subjects, was a championship swimmer, was happy.

I loved the fact that I could leave my house unlocked, leave my pocketbook in the grocery cart and go two aisles over to get the milk I'd forgotten.

I loved the calls to prayer five times a day, and how everything stopped. A prayer intermission announcement would fill television screens. I loved sitting on the marble steps of an empty shop – closed for prayer – eyes closed, taking in the scents of shawarma (a marinated-meat dish) and fresh pita, coffee from Yemen or an impossible blend of fragrances from a nearby perfumery. I especially loved the last call at night coming from the minaret at the King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals as I walked in the thick, heavy air; both call and air seemed to hold so much.

I loved the Arabian Gulf, so salty that anyone could float; our skin dried white with salt. I loved the sun sinking enormous and fiery into Half Moon Bay and camels trekking home across the desert and parks filled with Arab fathers and their children.

I loved that my children had friends from many places in the world whose skins and politics and religions were different from their own.

I loved the national generosity that prevailed, the Saudi commitment to "sharing the wealth," medical and dental care and education thought to be basic and available to all. When business was booming, the king declared bonuses – an extra month's pay for every worker in the kingdom, two months for Saudis. I loved the infinite patience with which businessmen in gold souks (markets) allowed my 13-year-old daughter to commandeer their time and attention bargaining for gold bullion with her baby-sitting money. Never mind that the price of gold was determined on the international market; they appreciated her spunk, and she always came away with a small ingot a few riyals under the world market price.

I loved the rich smells of the spice markets and fish so fresh, so newly out of the gulf, that their eyes had not yet clouded. I loved the sensuous curves of Ali Baba's cave, the fine rust-red sand of the Rub Al-Khali (the "Empty Quarter" in the south), the uninterrupted blue of the sky. I love the open market in Hofuf, the city in the east; the dusty glow of old brass ghawah (coffee) pots; the heavy dark weave of goat-hair rugs; the potter who sat at his wheel in the same cave where his forebears had turned a wheel for generations.

I loved the green of oases in the middle of dune sand, the unexpectedness of finding a nursery full of lush plants in the middle of nowhere, with nothing else green for kilometers in any direction.

I loved the golf course made of sand-oiled "greens" and "fairways" and sand traps – a bit of a joke.

I loved night in the desert, our campfire a tiny flicker in the vastness. I loved the shamaals – winds from the north – and the ghostly scritch of dry bougainvillea blossoms in backyard whirlwinds.

I loved the soft moan of Namaqua doves, the lethal beauty of jimson weed, the sand roses that emerged in huge clusters or tiny formations from beneath the sand. I loved the shy smiles, marked by creases at their eyes, of the women in veils and abayas, the curiosity of their children, the curiosity of mine. I loved the woman at the medical clinic who laughed heartily and embraced my 3-year-old when she invited herself up under the woman's veil.

I loved that any fumble with Arabic was appreciated, although almost everyone spoke English. I loved that an old man in a red pickup rock, hawking his fish and shrimp. I could go on and on the way anyone can about a place she loves, a place that is woven into the fabric of her soul and psyche.

I think of the way Muslims in general and Saudi Arabs in particular have been treated in America during these past 12 months, and I am ashamed. I've been both ashamed and frightened when Americans speaking in protest of that treatment have been called un-American, anti-American or worse.

It is dangerous in the extreme for a world leader to declare, "Either you are with us or you are against us," as if those were really the only two choices, as if disagreement with a political position were suddenly heretical, as if, in this case, to disagree with policy and politics is to advocate terrorism.

It is just over a year since the tragedies of September 11, 2001. If my friends in Saudi Arabia are right, most Saudis feel both ashamed that 15 of their countrymen participated directly in the events of 9/11 and deeply misunderstood and hurt by the American intolerance – even hate – that seems to condemn their whole country as well as their religious tradition.

I would call upon Americans to examine our easy, fear-based bigotry.

Imagine this: Using the same measures, the rest of the world would have to see us as a nation of morally bankrupt pedophile priests, of Enron and Worldcom executives and of Timothy McVeighs. Ludicrous, you say? No more so than putting the responsibility for terrorism on Islam or Saudi Arabia.

We live in an interdependent world in which the potential for mass destruction is great. Bigotry encourages violence. Holding Saudi Arabia or Islam accountable for acts of terrorism is a dangerous and desperate attempt to give the enemy a name and a face. Terrorism has no face, it has no name, it has no country. We cannot afford to nurture an illusion of safety by naming false enemies. Being frightened is not reason enough to abandon basic human decency.

We may be in as much danger from national narcissism masquerading as patriotism as we are from terrorism, because narcissism considers only itself, promotes the kind of thinking that creates enemies from all who are not us. Saudi men and women and children have been my neighbors.

The world these days is a small place – no more than a day's trip to anywhere – so Saudi Arabs are still my valued and respected neighbors. I'd like them to know that. I'd like my American neighbors to know that, too. – The Hartford Courant

Pit Menousek Pinegar of Plainville, Conn. lived in Saudi Arabia from 1982 to 1986. She is the author of two books of poetry, both published by Andrews Mountain Press, "Nine Years Between Two Poems" (1996) and "The Possibilities of Empty Space" (1997).