There is a bromide invoked repeatedly whenever power in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is transferred from a king to another, namely that there are crises or tensions, or that things are boiling under the surface of apparent calm. Some of such misguided comments reflect nothing more than the ignorance of those who write them. To be sure, these write about a system of government in a country that is thousands of kilometers away, and men whom they have never sat with or spoken to, while they rely on information from embassies, intelligence services and dubious or unknown sources. Others, or the majority, however, write down their wishes. Such commentators want to see problems happen, or they perceive problems where none exist, and build upon them predictions and expectations that are soon forgotten. When Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz, the Saudi Crown Prince, passed away, I wrote about him based on what I personally heard from him throughout many meetings. When his brother Nayef bin Abdulaziz succeeded him, I also wrote about the latter from the standpoint of a personal relationship that lasted around 4 decades, and the same goes for what I wrote about him after he passed away, a few days ago. Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz succeeded Prince Nayef as the Crown Prince, while retaining the post of defense minister, like his brother Prince Sultan before him. So if I write about the new Saudi Crown Prince, I would be doing so based on a direct personal knowledge that spans half a century or so, from Beirut to Riyadh, and from Jeddah to London, Paris, New York, Marbella, and elsewhere. In the early sixties, I was a university student, and was an editor at Reuters and the Daily Star in Beirut, working there three days a week, before I became the newspaper's editor in chief. Back in those days, Princes Fahd bin Abdulaziz and Sultan and Salman used to come to Lebanon in the summer, spending a few weeks between the mountain and Beirut. I remember Prince Salman from those days as a tall young man with thick hair. The Prince used to visit the then-publisher and editor of Al-Hayat Kamel Mroueh, and would sit by his side as Mroueh worked on his famous editorial “Have Your Say and Go", before leaving Al-Hayat's offices together around nine o'clock. I used to go to Kamel's office to ask him whether he had any local, private or important news stories for translation and publication in English in the Daily Star. I once went back over these old memories with Prince Salman, after we became close when I was the editor of Arab News in Jeddah, and then Al-Sharq Al-Awsat in London. If Salman bin Abdulaziz had not been born a Saudi Prince, he would have been now the head of a major Arab publishing house. For press is his primary passion; in the family yacht, I once saw a small ‘cabin' housing enough material from news agencies, think tanks and other sources of information to publish a daily newspaper. I know that Prince Salman has an encyclopedic knowledge of Arab history, especially modern Arab history, and for this reason, I would always ask him when in doubt. I remember that he once asked me for a study on the history of Arab Christians, and I conveyed his desire to my tutor Professor Nicolas Ziadeh. Ziadeh then published a book on the subject after that, and mentioned in its foreword that the study was undertaken after I conveyed the Prince of Riyadh's desire in this respect to him. I dare say that Prince Salman spent half of a century training for the day he may become the Crown Prince. I know no one like him who combines knowledge, experience and practice, along with an amazing sense of patience with people. One day, as I sat with him in his salon at the governorship of Riyadh, an old and nearly blind man sat pleading with him to get a driving license, with the prince humoring him and promising him to provide him with a driver to help him whenever he needed. I say to those who delve into matters they know nothing about, especially Western writers, that each time power was transferred from a Saudi king to another, the transition happened in a matter of hours, while the appointment of a crown prince never took more than a day. The only delay I am aware of happened when Prince Mohammed bin Abdulaziz declined the appointment to the post of crown prince under King Faisal, and nominated his bother Khaled bin Abdulaziz instead, the king thereafter. The day will come when the children's children will inherit the throne, and even then, those with vivid imaginations will continue to look for problems that they can write about or warn of. But it will be proven again after that they were wrong, just like their predecessors were wrong. [email protected]
