Every Man in This Village Is a Liar_ An Education in War - Megan K. Stack [64]
The Oasis attack drove oil prices to a record high of $42 a barrel. Back then, a $50 barrel of oil was unimaginable. It took another four years of regional chaos to drive the price to $100, and then higher still.
“Every society secretes its evil.” That’s what the Saudi president of Aramco told me. His office had inlaid marble floors, and pieces of sky flickered through windows and were refracted in glass columns. “We have our share, you have your share. This is our share.”
As we pulled into Valerie’s driveway, her husband was headed out the front door, hauling a Labrador by the collar. “We’re out riding around,” he told Valerie. “Okay,” she sang. The living room was sunny and cool. Four of her friends nestled in leather sofas, sipping Diet Pepsi on the rocks and glowing in vibrant floral cottons, the plumage of the suburbs.
“I made iced tea.” Valerie slid a platter of homemade chocolate chip cookies and cranberry cake onto a low-slung coffee table and collapsed into a sofa. Awkward quiet ensued. We all looked at each other, wondering who should start. Then Valerie lifted her chin.
“The other day should never have happened,” she cried indignantly. “They knew it was coming. They knew it was inevitable for these guys to get away with it.”
She meant the massacre at Oasis. Where was the security, she demanded. “For that matter,” she added in rising tones, “where is our security?
“I go to the pool, and those guys are sitting there smoking cigarettes and drinking tea,” Valerie said. “They’re not going to stop me if I blaze in there with a gun.”
Give the Saudis a break, interrupted Cora Lee, a forty-four-year-old accountant. Security was getting much better and, after all, you couldn’t expect them to have anticipated this sort of carnage. “They really haven’t had a need to invest in security until now.”
The other women groaned as if they’d heard that old excuse a thousand times. “Since 2001 they should have had it covered.” Valerie’s blue eyes flashed. “You don’t have to be the head of the country to figure that out. It’s common sense.”
Tracy Thompson nodded vigorously. A substitute teacher and the wife of an Aramco worker, Tracy wore a Miami Dolphins visor and capri pants.
“Even if they catch these two guys, so what?” Her voice sounded rough. “There’s another two hundred. It’s frustrating, too, because we know there could be a sympathizer living next door.”
“We know they’re on camp,” Valerie chimed in.
“We know they’re on camp,” Tracy echoed, nodding as if she were giving an “Amen.”
“But are there really people like that living here?” Cora frowned.
“Those Palestinian-American kids walk from school with our kids and they’re telling them that America is evil, America is the enemy.” Tracy looked at Cora as if she were hopelessly naive. “It’s here, and you just don’t know it. And they have American passports. Immigration laws, that’s another thing. Why do we give visas to pregnant women from these countries?” She addressed that one to me. I kept my mouth shut.
“You know it’s there,” agreed Amy, a preschool manager.
Until recently, these women were living what they called “the good life.” They were middle-class wives and mothers who’d caught the elusive American dream here in Saudi Arabia, and they were determined to cling to it. They’d found a corner of the planet where salaries were high, streets safe, and neighbors friendly. Within Aramco’s gates the sun shines day after day and there is no unemployment or homelessness, there are no uninsured. Ensconced in a sort of corporate resort and military base rolled into one, utterly removed from the severe desert kingdom that they called home in only the most theoretical sense, they enjoyed the romantic mystique of expatriate life without