How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph.Page)
Quote #7
The Red Sea lay beyond, inert, the whole thing doomed. The Saudis were sucking it dry to drink. In the seventies they'd drained a few billion gallons to desalinize and feed their wayward wheat industry—the whole project now abandoned. Now they were drinking that sea. (XV.41.106)
There's a sense of environmental catastrophe looming over this narrative, and it's often paralyzing for Alan. Yet he can't stop himself from dreaming about how to capitalize on the ocean before him. While Alan's horrified about the potential of environmental collapse, he also wishes he had the money to capitalize on the wide open coastline along the Red Sea.
Quote #8
"All the married women," Yousef explained, "have a second phone. It's a big business in Saudi Arabia."
The whole country seemed to operate on two levels, the official and the actual. (XVI.128-129.124)
That about sums up Alan's whole experience in Saudi Arabia. He wants to do the right thing and not be an ugly American…but he can't quite get a handle on the place. Turns out, this ambiguity is hard-wired in the culture.
Quote #9
Alan understood nothing in this country. He had not seen even one rule observed consistently. He had, moments before, been among an army of impoverished Malaysian laborers seeming to be squatting in an unfinished building and now he was two floors up and in the most sophisticated dwelling possible. (XXV.95.227)
Perhaps Alan has never been so alive to things like wealth inequality before he made this trip to Saudi Arabia. But now that he's displaced himself, he's really beginning to see the inconsistencies and baffling unfairnesses in the world around him. We don't blame him for the whiplash he's feeling—it's just strange that he's never observed it, say, in his own country.