Alan Philps, Associate Editor
Last Updated: October 29. 2008 10:10PM UAE / October 29. 2008 6:10PM GMT
Prince Saud bin Abdul Mohsen bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, governor of Hail province seen in a scene from the documentary Inside the Saudi Kingdom. Courtesy Million Media
LONDON // Prince Saud bin Abdul Mohsen bin Abdul Aziz al Saud is one of the most powerful men in Saudi Arabia. As governor of Hail province, he is responsible for the destinies of half a million people in a region that is conservative even by the standards of the kingdom.
But these days not all Saudi citizens treat him with the deference due his rank. As Prince Saud relaxes in a tent at his retreat in the Nafoud desert, with servants cooking outside, a local farmer launches into a diatribe about the state of the local health service.
“My son cannot get the medicines he needs,” the farmer complains. The prince explains how much money has gone into building and supplying local hospitals.
“And the staff are not there,” the farmer persists. The prince responds with a weary smile: “Just because your son has some problems you cannot say that the whole system is bad.”
This is a scene from a new British film, Inside the Saudi Kingdom, in which a crew was given unique access to follow the prince for a month in his daily work – at the governor’s court in Hail, at banquets, at the daily majlis (gatherings) for petitioners (separate ones for men and women) – as well as relaxing in the desert with his sons and beloved falcons.
Prince Saud tells the filmmaker, Lionel Mill, that two years ago no one would have dared to speak to him in the manner of the outspoken farmer, at least not on camera. “People now feel more comfortable in speaking out,” the prince says, noting ruefully that his life is now less comfortable.
Fluent in English and at ease with the Bedouin, the prince comes across as a cautious moderniser who believes in engaging with the western media, despite the ruling family’s long-standing distrust.
Films about the House of Saud are made from time to time, but they usually rely on archive footage and formal interviews with key figures. Mill said he believes he got rare access because the prince grew to trust him over a period of years.
“I am sure the decision to do the documentary would have been approved at the highest level. And I am also sure that Prince Saud knew his decision to take part would be open to criticism by other members of the royal family,” Mill said in an interview.
In case the world’s documentary makers try to beat a path to their nearest Saudi Embassy, they should know it took eight years to make the film, attesting to the sensitivity of the Saudi royal family towards intrusive reporters.
There is a long and bitter history to this: a 1980 British documentary titled Death of a Princess, loosely based on the execution of a member of the royal family, led to a full-scale diplomatic crisis between Britain and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabian complaints about interviewing exiled Saudi dissidents led to the collapse of the BBC’s first Arabic television news service in 1994, a joint venture with Orbit satellite television. No such ructions await this film – it has just been shown on the BBC’s Arabic service.
Mill got an introduction to Prince Saud in April 2000 through a falconing contact in Scotland. It was agreed that he would go out to Saudi Arabia in Oct 2001 – but the September 11 terrorist attacks put everything on hold for five years. He went out with a crew for a week in 2006, shooting enough film to persuade the BBC, his former employer, to back the project. They finally returned to Saudi Arabia for three weeks in Oct 2007.
At every stage they were accompanied by an official from the ministry of information, as well as a posse of police. Not surprisingly, there are no secretly filmed scenes. It is a portrait of a prince at work.
When the film was previewed in London at the Frontline Club – a venue for journalists – there were some gasps of surprise when Mill said he had shown the film to Prince Saud before release.
“I am not a hit-and-run filmmaker,” Mill said. “I always do this. I am always upfront with my subjects because I believe trust is the key to documentary making. ”
Only once has he failed to show a film to its subjects – in this case the Orange Order, a Northern Irish Protestant group. He decided his safety required him to leave the province.
The portrait that emerges is one of a country anxiously facing major social change. Hail is a traditional province where no women venture out of the house without wearing the niqab. Half the country’s student population are women, expensively educated but generally excluded from the work force, and still barred from driving.
Having overcome the threat of domestic terrorism, the country’s leaders are looking for ways to secure its future – with the population likely to reach 40 million, the kingdom must reduce reliance on increasingly expensive foreign labour.
Prince Saud said: “If you took an opinion poll here, 85 per cent would be against women driving.”
Yet the women’s issue will not go away. From behind her mask, a female student named Fatima Saleh Yahya said her ambition was for women to take decision-making positions at the pinnacle of the Saudi leadership. “I would like to be a minister,” she proclaims.
A female hospital doctor, Fawzia al Otaibi, who trained in the capital, Riyadh, but chose to work in the more restrictive atmosphere of Hail, is now working alongside male colleagues. Her life, she said, was unrecognisable compared with that of her mother. “Over the past five years my life has changed dramatically,” she said.
The changes will not stop there, Mill said. “There are so many educated women now that they are going to have to join the work force. And unless Saudi Arabia buys a lot buses, they are going to have to drive. There is no doubt in my mind that women will be driving soon, probably starting in Jeddah as an experiment.”
Every day when he is in Hail, the prince holds a majlis for petitioners. The women’s majlis is a lifeline for those who are single or have no guardian and are thus practically invisible. The prince takes their petitions and passes them on to a specialist all-women team to sort out their problems – often accommodation. Some of the women come to the majlis just to pay respects to their benefactor.
But what if women want to make their way in society on their own terms and not have to petition the prince? Interviewed in the film, a male civil servant shudders in horror as he ponders the idea that his daughter might one day come home from work with a strange man and say: “Daddy, this is the man I am going to marry”. For all the economic necessity of getting women out to work, this is something that will take time for Saudi society to digest.
aphilps@thenational.ae