The life she had imagined for herself and family comes to an abrupt end, with the revelation that her new husband is in fact the head of a banned political organisation, in direct conflict with the ruling Al-Saud family. What follows is a true account of political unrest in the Kingdom; arrest, torture, intrigue, and ultimately, heartbreak, set within the everyday existence of family life in Saudi Arabia. The Littlest Hostage is a book that will take you into the world of family life inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as well as give an insight into the political and human rights abuses suffered by citizens and expats alike.

    She thinks migrating to a foreign land would be the only hope. The only qualification she has to migrate to a foreign country is to be a housemaid. That salary would be way better than in Sri Lanka, flying to Saudi Arabia as a housemaid would be a dream come true.Yet day after day, Kamala comprehends her mistake and regrets her stupid actions of leaving her beloveds. She is trapped by the secured walls of the Arabian house and by the rules, regulations and her negligence on working. She gets punished by horrific physical and mental abuse by the hands of her employer. Finally trapped her in a room as a punishment with nonpayment of her salary.When she tries to escape she is being physically tortured by the employer with nailing her body feet beating her with chains and sticks. Finally, when she escapes and returns to her mother land, everything what she worked have gone on a waste by her husband and leaving it all for nothing.Why I wrote this book.Labor migration to the Middle East has become a main feature of Sri Lankan economy strategies making it the second biggest foreign exchange earnings. Migration is likely to continue in the future. Foreign embassies continued to receive many reports that employers abused foreign women working as domestic servants. Some embassies of countries with large domestic servant populations maintained safe houses to which their citizens may flee to escape work situations that included forced confinement, withholding of food, nonpayment of salaries, beating and other physical abuse, and rape.These are few stories... "One particular day I dropped a saucer which broke into pieces. My employer was angry and he heated up five nails and drove them into my hand. When I shouted out in pain my employer's wife held a knife to my neck," she said.Why you should read this book?When you Google Sri Lanka all you see is a beautiful island with beautiful sceneries and nature surrounded by lovely sandy beaches, diverse landscapes ranging from plains to highlands, rainforests, wildlife and exotic food.But not many know how the Sri Lankan lower middle class suffer. How everyday is a challenge for them to make their ends meet. How much they suffer to keep their families alive, insufficient money to feed their children and to spend for their education.I was inspired by so many stories about how these migrant workers suffer. I have been fortunate enough to help these people and listen to their stories.This shows us how cruel the world is. Another side of life which many has not seen, or even think about, simply a nightmare. Why cannot the governments take any action about this? Non-government organizations? Is there anyone at all? When they send their hard earn money with high hopes, most of the time husbands waste money on alcohol and gambling, children go astray and get abused. These women and families fall of from the frying pan into fire. Time, money, pain all gets wasted. Everything end up in tears.This story will give you the inner aspect in depth about the middle class migrant workers and their lives, how hard they work, how much they sacrifice, how hard they hide their feelings and pain, suffer and struggle to survive every day.This book is a story about a family that went through this horrific abuse and torture. Hope you enjoy this book.Scroll up and grab your copy now.

    Restless and looking for something new and exciting, two nurses traveled to this ancient kingdom to ply their skills and practice close personal contact—along with modern medical care—with people for whom slavery, buying wives, and female subjugation is just a way of life. Living in a culture far different from their own, they met many wonderful people, both locally and from several other countries, all the while walking on eggshells with the religious police of Saudi Arabia, lest they do something, that as females, was forbidden and could have gotten them deported—or worse, thrown in jail. Join Ramona Forrest and Judith Corcoran as they explore life in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—from a woman’s point of view.

    His fierce jealous mother hates and fears her as does his brother, an Islamist hardliner. A feminist, an idealist, and very much in love, Sarah aims to live with integrity. Can she—dare she— in the kingdom where women are kept veiled and secluded? This love story of cultural collision is also a spiritual quest for Sarah, who is both fascinated and repelled by Islam. Former Middle East journalist Jean Grant takes us behind the locked doors of Saudi Arabian society. She presents a picture of the controversial kingdom on the cusp of change and of the men and women, both expatriates and nationals, who either embrace or courageously confront their destiny.

    Political and business leaders such as former UK prime minister Tony Blair and WME chairman Ari Emanuel flew out to meet with the crown prince and came away convinced that his desire to reform the kingdom was sincere. He spoke passionately about bringing women into the workforce and toning down Saudi Arabia's restrictive Islamic law. He lifted the ban on women driving and explored investments in Silicon Valley.But MBS began to betray an erratic interior beneath the polish laid on by scores of consultants and public relations experts like McKinsey & Company. The allegations of his extreme brutality and excess began to slip out, including that he ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. While stamping out dissent by holding 300 people, including prominent members of the Saudi royal family, in the Ritz-Carlton hotel and elsewhere for months, he continued to exhibit his extreme wealth, including buying a $70 million chateau in Europe and one of the world's most expensive yachts. It seemed that he did not understand nor care about how the outside world would react to his displays of autocratic muscle—what mattered was the flex.Blood and Oil is a gripping work of investigative journalism about one of the world's most decisive and dangerous new leaders. Hope and Scheck show how MBS' precipitous rise coincided with the fraying of the simple bargain that had been at the head of US-Saudi relations for more than 80 years: oil, for military protection. Caught in his net are well-known US bankers, Hollywood figures, and politicians, all eager to help the charming and crafty crown prince.The Middle East is already a volatile region. Add to the mix an ambitious prince with extraordinary powers, hunger for lucre, a tight relationship with the White House through President Trump's son in law Jared Kushner, and an apparent willingness to break anything—and anyone—that gets in the way of his vision, and the stakes of his rise are bracing. If his bid fails, Saudi Arabia has the potential to become an unstable failed state and a magnet for Islamic extremists. And if his bid to transform his country succeeds, even in part, it will have reverberations around the world.Longlisted for the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award

    Subsequent U.S. presidents have had direct relationships with those kings and their successors--setting the tone for a special partnership between an absolute monarchy with a unique Islamic identity and the world's most powerful democracy. Although based in large part on economic interests, the U.S.-Saudi relationship has rarely been smooth. Differences over Israel have caused friction since the early days, and ambiguities about Saudi involvement--or lack of it--in the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States continue to haunt the relationship. Now, both countries have new, still-to be-tested leaders in President Trump and King Salman. Bruce Riedel for decades has followed these kings and presidents during his career at the CIA, the White House, and Brookings. This book offers an insider's account of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, with unique insights. Using declassified documents, memoirs by both Saudis and Americans, and eyewitness accounts, this book takes the reader inside the royal palaces, the holy cities, and the White House to gain an understanding of this complex partnership.

    Since his father, King Salman, ascended to the throne in 2015, Mohammed bin Salman has leveraged his influence to restructure the kingdom’s economy, loosen its strict Islamic social codes, and confront its enemies around the region, especially Iran. That vision won him fans at home and on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley, in Hollywood, and at the White House, where President Trump embraced the prince as a key player in his own vision for the Middle East. But over time, the sheen of the visionary young reformer has become tarnished, leaving many struggling to determine whether MBS is in fact a rising dictator whose inexperience and rash decisions are destabilizing the world’s most volatile region. Based on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, MBS reveals the machinations behind the kingdom’s catastrophic military intervention in Yemen, the bizarre detention of princes and businessmen in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, and the shifting Saudi relationships with Israel and the United States. And finally, it sheds new light on the greatest scandal of the young autocrat’s rise: the brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul, a crime that shook Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Washington and left the world wondering whether MBS could get away with murder. MBS is a riveting, eye-opening account of how the young prince has wielded vast powers to reshape his kingdom and the world around him.

    She was a young, beautiful Saudi TV news anchor-the first woman to have such a job-when her abusive husband beat her into a coma and left her for dead. She later underwent thirteen operations to reconstruct her face. When she agreed to make horrifying pictures of her ravaged face public, her story sparked general criticism of Saudi culture. A month later, the first Saudi research into domestic violence began at King Saud University in Riyadh.

    Taking aim at the long-held belief that the Arabian American Oil Company, ARAMCO, made miracles happen in the desert, Robert Vitalis shows that nothing could be further from the truth. What is true is that oil led the U.S. government to follow the company to the kingdom. Eisenhower agreed to train Ibn Sa'ud's army, Kennedy sent jets to defend the kingdom, and Lyndon Johnson sold it missiles. Oil and ARAMCO quickly became America's largest single overseas private enterprise.Beginning with the establishment of a Jim Crow system in the Dhahran oil camps in the 1930s, the book goes on to examine the period of unrest in the 1950s and 1960s when workers challenged the racial hierarchy of the ARAMCO camps while a small cadre of progressive Saudis challenged the hierarchy of the international oil market. The defeat of these groups led to the consolidation of America's Kingdom under the House of Fahd, the royal faction that still rules today.This is a gripping story that covers more than seventy years, three continents, and an engrossing cast of characters. Informed by first hand accounts from ARAMCO employees and top U.S. government officials, this book offers the true story of the events on the Saudi oil fields. After America's Kingdom, mythmakers will have to work harder on their tales about ARAMCO being magical, honorable, selfless, and enlightened.

    But as he delves deeper under the deceptive veil of the immense skyscrapers, lavish hotels, beautiful women and unspeakable riches, it is soon apparent that the rollercoaster city of Dubai hides a sinister underbelly which will either make or break him."'Sheikhs, Lies and Real Estate' tells the remarkable story of one man's journey through the rise and fall of Dubai; the extraordinary untold tale of a rude awakening from an Arabian dream..."This ground-breaking, rollercoaster book will shock, amuse and entertain you. We have all heard about or visited the larger than life city of Dubai, but nobody has heard the inside story like this before... An absolute must read!" - A. Hopkins (author of 'Journeyman')

    The choice of Saudi Arabia is based primarily on the best salary offer, an all expenses paid round trip flight and secondarily to satiate a desire to explore a country steeped in mystery and taboo. Little do they know that the experience will come with a price and change their lives in a profound way, witnessing human rights violations that go unchecked even up to today and an ultra-conservative culture wrestling with tradition and modernity. A Year Under Sharia Law is written as a travel memoir with vignettes of daily life and interactions with the community at large. It was also written to shine a spotlight on the plight of impoverished ladies who come to Saudi Arabia in the hopes of earning a salary to send money back to their family. They find work as nannies and house maids primarily. These ladies are often stripped of their rights in a patriarchy that makes them prime targets for unspeakable abuses. Their passports are held by their Saudi employees and they essentially become prisoners. This memoir is not only dedicated to them and their plight but also the tireless and dangerous work done by journalists who are critical of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. Some have paid the ultimate price.

    She hates the hardships of life in Kfar Etzion - an isolated kibbutz south of Jerusalem - clearing rocky hillsides, bathing in rationed cups of trucked-in water, and being confined behind barbed wire. Her own dreams have nothing to do with national self-realization; she longs for steaming bubble baths and down comforters, but most of all for a place on earth where she can feel safe. She is in love with Amos, but refuses to acknowledge these feelings. She knows he will never leave his homeland and Tonia plans to emigrate to America. But can she really begin a new life there? Tonia's story in The Lonely Tree is interwoven with the true story of Kfar Etzion, a kibbutz that was overrun by the Arab Legion during pre-War of Independence hostilities.

    It deals with the realities of business, and the stresses and strains of operating in the Gulf as a Western visitor or expatriate. It also focuses on the need for a common bond of understanding between staff in the Gulf and their managers at home. It shows, in a straightforward manner, the effects of Islam upon the daily life of the expatriate, and is a valuable reference to proper conduct in the Arab world.

    41 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more – everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia. This detailed literature summary also contains Topics for Discussion and a Free Quiz on Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia by Jean Sasson.

    In a fit of rebellion, he quits his job to bicycle the Karakoram Highway in northern Pakistan. He is twenty-two and absolutely clueless. Miraculously, hilariously, he survives — and discovers his life’s passion.Over the next fifteen years, Kirkby navigates an evermore uncertain and uncommon path, honing his skills on some of the most challenging expeditions the world has to offer. Whether it’s gun fights and crocodile attacks while running Africa’s Blue Nile Gorge, the rescue of a fallen sherpa on Mount Everest, evading capture in Myanmar’s forbidden tropical paradise, or learning to embrace the wilderness on the Tatshenshini River of Canada’s Arctic, Kirkby shares with the reader the excitement, doubts, insights, and even the uncomfortable self-knowledge that a life lived on the edge brings.