BEIRUT, Lebanon — Saudi Arabia knows about head-spinning change.
“One day there was nothing, the next day there was everything,” a business student, Noura Khalid, 23, said in Riyadh in December, describing how it felt to watch her once-staid country welcome international rap stars and wrestling champions, cars steered by women. movie theaters, gender-mixed cafes and other previously unimaginable innovations in just the last few years. “There’s no break! It’s happening so quickly.”
Now the kingdom faces yet more whiplash.
Not only is the coronavirus redefining daily life for Saudis, but plummeting oil prices are robbing the kingdom of the enormous wealth that was underwriting the new Saudi Arabia. The twin blows threaten to sink Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s sweeping social and economic agenda, and have already curtailed the vast welfare state that has given most Saudis a comfortably subsidized life. » | Vivian Yee | Saturday, May 16, 2020
