Used Cars Lure Saudis to Bustling Desert Swap Meet

Evening in this strategically located oil boom town brings the final call to prayer at the mosque and then, like a siren’s song across the windblown sand, the irresistible call of the road.

More than 200,000 U.S. and foreign soldiers are hunkered down in the desert only a few hours away, facing Iraqi guns and protecting Saudi Arabia’s oil fields. But here in the capital of the country’s eastern province, young Saudi men have something quite different on their minds: the pursuit and enjoyment of the air-conditioned automobile.

On a sandy field, just off the road leading to the air base where arriving American troops march off transport planes, thousands of Saudis in identical long, white robes gather daily for a giant car swap meet. Hundreds more cruise the waterfront in nearby Dhahran, maneuvering for a place in the crowded parking lots where they spread carpets on the oil-soaked gravel, lean against their cars and sip sweet tea in the moonlight.

“I come as soon as I finish work,” said Takhir, a manager at Saudi Arabian Airlines who lounged on the hood of his sleek, black Park Avenue sedan at the used-car fairgrounds. “It’s for enjoyment.” He has been trying, in a relaxed way, to sell the 1983 car for a year. In the meantime, he has bought and sold 10 other cars at Dammam’s auto exposition--just for the fun of it.

Amid the exhaust fumes of idling cars, the possibility of a shooting war in the Persian Gulf, the demands by Saudi women for the freedom to drive and other burning issues of the day fade beside more traditional concerns.

In this resolutely all-male setting, the rituals of barter and trade, or the timing of an offer of tea or cardamom-laced coffee, take precedence.

And the car, more often than not a big American model or a top-of-the-line Mercedes-Benz, is both the instrument and object of social discourse.

Some men come to sell their cars, driving slowly around the sprawling exhibition grounds to display their wares and evaluate the competition. Some come to buy, shuffling along the cigarette-strewn sand to peer under hoods and shout questions at the drivers cruising by. And some come just for the sociability of it all, strolling arm in arm with their friends and munching from small plastic dishes of chickpeas served out of big kettles.

“Before, we used to use camels. Now we use cars,” said Mohammed Mijnad al Shamry, one of the few dealers who sells cars in bulk, underneath a hangar at the swap meet.

“Our forefathers were proud of their camels because they provided meat and milk as well as transportation,” he said, toying with a string of worry beads as he wrapped up his latest sale over coffee on a carpeted, outdoor platform. “Our former king, Abdul Aziz, unified the whole kingdom by camel. He got rid of the imperialists by camel. And we are ready to go back to the camel if we must.”

Such a calamity is unlikely. Gasoline is still about 56 cents a gallon.

Most middle-class and wealthy Saudi families proudly maintain a stable of automobiles, much as their forefathers kept herds of camels.

Al Shamry’s father was a camel herder, and the son, now 55, still keeps 50 of the animals, along with 120 cars at his dealership and a car for each of his own 12 sons.

“Cars are cheap these days in Saudi Arabia,” he said. “This is the act of God and of King Fahd, the custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. Everything is cheap in this country.”

The sprawling car lot, like a small-town country fair, offers a variety of commodities, attracting more Saudis to one place than just about any other activity. A man in a stained robe offers a pair of hooded falcons for $900 from the back of his Chevrolet pickup truck, where he also displays the stuffed heads of a fox and small leopard. Next to him, a man sells miswak sticks, gnarled, fibrous branches used as natural toothbrushes, from the trunk of his new Toyota Cressida.

The gulf crisis doesn’t intrude. Business is as good as it was before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait triggered a massive buildup of foreign troops in Saudi Arabia, car dealer Al Shamry said. As for the U.S. troops stationed nearby, his only opinion is that “America is a friend for us, not an enemy.”

If the king demanded it, he added, “we are all ready to defend our country.” But for the moment “it doesn’t concern me,” Al Shamry said. “I just deal with my business.”