Cities of Salt

When Americans arrive to drill for oil, the timeless desert oasis of Wadi al-Uyoun is bulldozed away and its people scattered, many washing up in the raw coastal boomtown of Harran, remade by the oil economy into a place of camps, wages and grievance. Munif's great banned epic of the Arabian oil age is drawn from the real eastern province of Saudi Arabia: the vanished oasis of the interior, the coming of the machines, and the segregated oil town on the Gulf where a new and bitter world is born.

Miteb al-Hathal

Wadi al-Uyoun

The oasis

In the green oasis of Wadi al-Uyoun, a place of palms, wells and caravans, Miteb al-Hathal lives the settled rhythm of a world that has scarcely changed in centuries. Munif opens in this vanished paradise so that we feel, when it is destroyed, the full weight of what the coming of oil sweeps away.

The opening chapters

inspired by The lush oasis of Wadi al-Uyoun is Munif's invention, drawn from the desert oases of the eastern Arabian interior before the oil age; sited in that region.

Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗