THE OIL AGE ARRIVES

From the nostalgic perspective of thekhaleeji—the Gulf Arab citizen—the pre-oil days were a kind of dreamtime. Countless generations had lived under the same daily rhythms. Human contacts were few, and they arrived upon plodding camel caravans or aboard wooden sailing dhows. The Bedouins’ intricate social codes and gallant hospitality, perfected and nurtured over centuries, were the outcome of the sparseness of life and the dangers of the environment. The Bedouin way of life was romanticized by Wilfred Thesiger, a wandering Briton who accompanied a group of nomads across the drifting wastes of the Empty Quarter in the