Green Sands: My Five Years in the Saudi Desert [Hardcover]

Martha Kirk (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 1994

When Martha Kirk left her small West Texas hometown in 1983 to move to the middle of the desert in Saudi Arabia, she began a dual life that lasted for five years. Her husband, Terry, was hired to manage a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm for a wealthy sheik, and Martha joined him six months later. The farm, located ninety miles from Riyadh, was isolated and lonely. Within the confines of the farm, Martha continued her independent lifestyle. She dressed as she pleased, often wearing shorts for jogging. She drove the farm's pickup truck and mingled freely among the male farm workers. Outside the boundary of the farm, her life took on a different perspective. In observance of the strict rules that governed the lives of women in Saudi Arabia, Martha wore long dresses with long sleeves. She was not allowed to drive and was not permitted to travel unaccompanied. She ate in separate dining facilities in public restaurants. Martha embraced the opportunity to live among the Arabs with a positive attitude. She was curious about the Arab culture and immersed herself in its customs, society, religion, and traditions. While in Saudi Arabia, Martha did research for her master's thesis on Saudi education for women, interviewed the Prince (who was the first Saudi Arabian astronaut), and attended a traditional wedding of the Sheik's sister-in-law. She also sat around a Bedouin campfire and drank warm camel's milk from a communal bowl, became quite adept at ridding her home of camel spiders and scorpions, and learned to cook a variety of native dishes. Although Saudi Arabia is a country veiled in ancient myths and legends, Green Sands gives readers a peek beneath the dark mask that shrouds this land of mystery and its women. From the book: When the Brits returned to their vehicles to leave, I wanted to jump into the car with them and travel with them to Riyadh, back to civilization. But their visit had a positive effect on me. It made me realize that I had a unique opportunity, living out in the desert, to experience authentic Saudi culture that few foreigners ever have the opportunity to experience. They bragged about our ability to literally transform such a barren wasteland into a lush garden of wheat, actually changing the sand to green. This revelation brought a change in my attitude about my new home. Instead of thinking about the past and longing for all the things and people from which I was separated, I began to crawl from my shell of insecurity to appreciate and enjoy this strange new world around me. I thought of myself as an anthropologist who had been catapulted back in time, with limited time to learn as much as possible about a place that had its roots in ancient civilization. This is not to say that I didn't occasionally relapse into spells of homesickness and loneliness, but I didn't allow myself to wallow long in that state. I had a great deal to learn and experience.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The title of this book honors the fact that agricultural projects are turning the desert green in Saudi Arabia. Kirk reminisces on the five years she spent there with her farm-manager husband. She met rich as well as poor Arabs and many foreigners who do the menial work for the affluent Saudis. More interestingly, she was welcomed into the tents of the Bedouin to drink warm camel's milk from a communal bowl and eat their strange food, while sharing traditional American treats with them. There are no surprises here for the veteran traveler, but the armchair variety will "ooh and aah" over the incongruities of that fascinating society and the trials and tribulations of a Texas farm girl thrust into a strange new world. For large public libraries.
Louise Leonard, Univ. of Florida Libs., Gainesville
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 321 pages
• Publisher: Texas Tech University Press (January 15, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0896723372
• ISBN-13: 978-0896723375
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,780,208 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Suprising comedy of life and agriculture, November 7, 2001

By 

"hcjack" (Lubbock, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Green Sands: My Five Years in the Saudi Desert (Hardcover)

I learned so much about how similar and how different it is in the middle east. The happenstance that a woman from West Texas could end up living, for five years, in a country where she must keep a driver handy makes the book worth the money.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WOW!, December 3, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Green Sands: My Five Years in the Saudi Desert (Hardcover)

I have so much more respect for the Islamic religion and culture now. This book gave me a deep understanding of that as well as an insight to the country of Saudi Arabia-something I previously knew nothing about. This book is fantastic. I would describe it as a page turner with an excellent author. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone. It gave me a new appreciation for being an American.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars American vs. Saudi women life, January 13, 2008

By 

William Garrison Jr. (Bellevue, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Green Sands: My Five Years in the Saudi Desert (Hardcover)

Ok, this is not a college textbook detailing hundreds of differences between how American and Saudi women differ. It is a rewrite of an American wife's diary of living with her husband for 5 years in Saudi Arabia, while he developes a farming project during the 1980s. As she does not speak Arabic, she has little interaction with Saudi women. What little she learns is what is relaid to her in translations from other foreign women living there. Nonethless, any American (on non-Saudi) woman who plans on visiting Saudi Arabia should/must read this book to learn about the limitations that any woman has while living in a Muslim country, especially where it is difficult for women to obtain an education or run a business or try to break through the various social barriers that the country has to enforce the religious norms that women are severly restricted in meeting or talking with Saudi men, for either social or business purposes. The author does relate numerous experiences as to how Saudi men like to have their pictures taken with non-Muslim (western) women (and she expresses numerous times how the Saudi men seemed to be 'coming on'to or 'flerting' with her when her husband was not around); how the Saudi men not only hold hands while walking down the stree, but also frequently kiss other men (on the cheek) throughout the day. The author relates how Saudi women raise their children, but as she did not live with them, she was not really able to learn much depth about the Saudi women's lives. She relates how most marriages are arranged. An entertaining look at living out in the desert with Bedouins, and how the Bedouins on their camels would trample through the crops simply because that was the historical shortest route between two areas: the public sand-land really wasn't 'owned' by anyone until the 1950s, but the Bedouins didn't respect such new-fangled private-land ownership of the dunes. A book written an educated women too confind intellectually out in the boonies, and anyone can readily gain many useful insights about Saudi life and business and social norms. A book detailing how difficult it can be in getting spare parts out in the boonies, but true of many under- developed countries.