​The towers of KAEC were still visible in the rearview mirror when Abdulaziz said it.
“Now you’ll see the other side of Saudi.”
He said it simply, eyes on the road, as if he were mentioning the weather. But the words settled into me with weight. I had seen the ancient — Al Balad’s coral-stone alleys, narrow enough to touch both walls at once. I had seen the future — KAEC’s glass towers rising out of reclaimed coastline like a promise not yet kept. Now, apparently, I was going to see something older than both. Something that didn’t care about either.
The cranes shrank first, then the towers, then the neat grid of streets that didn’t have buildings on them yet. And then there was just the road. Flat, grey, endless, with heat shimmering off it in waves that made the horizon look liquid.

King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia
Before visiting the city, it is recommended to pre-register for entry. You can do that online or even at the city gate.

​The gate appeared first.
Modern boots rising from the flat earth — clean lines, steal and stone, the kind of architectural confidence that doesn't ask for your approval. We passed under it, and then: nothing. Empty road. Empty sky. The desert pressing in from both sides, patient and unbothered, as if the gate were simply a mistake someone had built and abandoned.
I looked at Abdulaziz. He kept his eyes on the road and smiled the way you do when you already know the punchline.

​A coffee cup with my name on it. Three scoops of ice cream and a white thobe that paid the price. The highway north, with the Red Sea on my left and the desert on my right. This is not just a road trip. This is the chapter where Saudi Arabia stopped being a place I was visiting and started becoming a place I belonged.

I should have known what was coming. I had, after all, already eaten dinner with Abdulaziz. I had already heard him say, " This is nothing, wait until you see what comes next.” I had filed that away as the kind of thing a generous host says, a mild pleasantry, a gentle oversell.
I was not prepared. I want to be clear about that from the start. Nothing in my forty-plus years of breakfasting had prepared me for what was about to happen to that table.

​This day started with a decision.
It had been forming quietly since the moment I landed — I saw Abdulaziz in the morning in his white thobe, effortlessly elegant, looking like he had stepped out of somewhere timeless. I had watched the men around me in Jeddah move through the city in their thobes with an ease and a dignity that I found genuinely beautiful. There was something about the garment — the clean, unbroken line of white from shoulder to ankle, the way it moved, the way it seemed to belong so completely to the light and the heat and the pace of the place — that made everything else I had packed feel slightly beside the point.
Here is the thing: I had come prepared.

There is a word in Arabic — karam — that translates, roughly, as generosity. But translation is a blunt instrument, while karam is precise. It does not mean simply giving. It means giving without calculation, without ledger, without the quiet expectation of return that runs beneath so much of what passes for generosity in other parts of the world. It means making someone feel that their presence is not an inconvenience to be managed but a gift to be celebrated. I did not know this word before I went to Saudi Arabia. By the time I left, I still didn't know the word, but I understood it in my bones.
This part is about Abdulaziz. It is, in many ways, about him entirely.

The drive from King Abdulaziz International Airport into the city of Jeddah at seven in the evening is not a gentle introduction to Saudi traffic.
Abdulaziz drove the way Saudis drive, which is to say with a fluency and confidence in the language of the road that I, from the passenger seat, could only observe with wide eyes and a grip on the door handle. The highways were broad and fast — genuinely fast, not European-motorway fast, but a different category altogether — and they were absolutely not empty. Rush hour in Jeddah is a phenomenon unto itself. Headlights kept multiplying around us. Lanes changed with a decisive lack of ceremony. There was a certain smoothness to the highway dance at 100 kilometres an hour between drivers who all seemed to understand the rules of an exchange I had not been briefed on. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a classical European 'stick by the rules' guy either. My Croatian driving style is sometimes too much, even in the city I live in (Vienna, Austria), but I was deeply, profoundly grateful to be in the passenger seat. It would have been a much more stressful experience if I had to be behind that wheel.
But between the white-knuckle moments, I was looking.