Daoud Taylor enjoys reading his favorite newspaper.

Daoud Taylor arrived in Saudi Arabia in October 1974 from England, six months before Arab News first rolled off the presses. With a background in health care, he found that he was unhappy with his lot in the United Kingdom and went in search of a career elsewhere in the world.

“We arrived at the old airport, with the antique shops across the way, and the buzzing atmosphere, and I can honestly say that I fell in love with Saudi Arabia on the day I arrived,” Taylor said.

Taylor, currently the chairman of the British Business Group, is an unusual British expatriate in that soon after arrival in Saudi Arabia, he converted to Islam and married a Saudi lady.

“I consider that when I come back from vacation, I am coming back home,” Taylor said. “We were married over July 3 and 4, 1975. I had become a Muslim a few months earlier. We had a very formal courtship, and had permission from the Royal Family. Thirty years later, we are still married and have five wonderful children.”

Unlike his compatriots, therefore, Taylor is very likely to remain in the Kingdom, or at least to spend a considerable amount of time here, long after retirement.

He confesses to a fading memory of the Jeddah of that era, but he remembers a much smaller city that reached as far as the old Bukhari Restaurant, next to the now-razed Juffali Building, leaving behind a burned shell on Madinah Road. There was then a gap up to the Pepsi Cola Bottling Plant.

“Jeddah, in effect, stopped a kilometer before the Pepsi Cola factory,” Taylor said. “There was nothing going north. The only two landmarks at that point were the Pepsi Cola factory and the Art-Deco effect of the Cement Factory. It used to give off dust, which landed on the cars, and you couldn’t wash it off in those days. And there was a boat outside the cement factory and a single carriage way, which used to snake through the north of Jeddah up to Obhur. That was Madinah Road.”

Of the expatriate population, he remembers it being very small. “One almost felt like a pioneer. The expat community was significantly Raytheon employees who were working at the still-existing air base, where the Military Hospital now is on the Corniche next to the desalination plant. So there was a fairly large American community here then. But, interestingly, there was not a large British community. Of course being in the health care business, we had some of the very first ladies in the Western Region working in Saudi Arabia who had come over as nurses and technicians and doctors and so on. You really did feel like a pioneer in the expatriate community.”

With no Arab News yet in production, he remembers that the only source of information was to get the newspapers that would be flown out two days late from the supermarket. “You could get the Daily Mail and other newspapers. Of course many of us in those days had our short-wave radios, which I still have to listen to the BBC World Service, and I used to try to listen to the cricket series that was on in those times as well. So if you were to ask me in the mid-1970s about what was happening in the world, what was happening in England — especially with music — there was just a gap in information. We didn’t hear about people like Sting and Phil Collins until much later. Then when you went on holiday, you tried to absorb everything like a sponge to find out what happened. There was a dearth of information and news — social, business and cultural — in terms of what was happening in the world, or, for that matter, what was happening in Saudi Arabia.” He no longer remembers the launch of the paper, but what has stuck in his mind was the excitement of having an English newspaper.

“One wondered at the time how successful it would be and how much information one would be able to gather from it. If I think back over all that time, there was a mixture of excitement that it was there and then some doubts whether or not it would be capable of filling the gap of the Daily Mail (two days late), or the World Service, if there was sufficient news and information to keep you up to date. I can honestly say that it is now the main source of my information — whether it is the Indian news, the Pakistani page, Filipino news, the European page, the Americas page, or the local Saudi page. It gives you a broad overview of what is happening around the world. I don’t listen to the World Service any more; I watch Sky News, but that is principally English news. But I can’t go without reading some specific pages in the Arab News — certainly Page One to find out what is going on; certainly Page Two to see any local news and any announcements. Then I skip to the back page to find out all the general chitchat around the world.”

Taylor is an avid cricket fan and speaks highly of the sports coverage in Arab News. “I have to praise the commentary on cricket that goes in Arab News, being a cricket fan myself. It is excellent.”

He says it should be everywhere. “In my role as assistant general manager of Al-Jazira Bank, I have a selection of newspapers that I can choose to get, and I read Arab News every day. I don’t get on a Saudia plane without asking for one — and disappointingly, why is it not there all the time? Sometimes other newspapers are there, but not Arab News. It should be there all the time; it is the leading paper in Saudi Arabia.”

As a businessman, he also reads the business pages.

“I read both the regular pages plus the recently included Wall Street Journal supplements,” Taylor said. “They are excellent reading, and, to me, are part of Arab News. It is an association that only benefits the reader. And who doesn’t look up the exchange rates all the time?”

When discussing the development of Arab News over the years, Taylor is specific.

“It is a well-known fact throughout the Western community — and Arab community who read the paper — that it has become staggeringly honest in its comments. It is reporting on issues that couldn’t be reported many years ago, and I think the general public appreciates that. And I think that has to be a compliment to the owners, the editor and the editorial staff. I have no idea whether this is happening through the Arabic press as well, but it is certainly happening with Arab News, and it is appreciated.”

One regular writer in the Letters section who seems to have made an impression is Francis Andrew.

“I gather he is based in Jordan — but I don’t read much of those pages. I find those middle pages quite heavy. There are quite long articles there, and I much prefer the short and to-the-point articles, whether it is Page Three or one of the other leading Saudi intellectuals who will give a column and a viewpoint on a particular aspect of Saudi life or interaction with the Western life — short and to the point. When you are busy, it is a little bit difficult to get into some of the heavier material.”

Taylor admits to having a five-day businessman approach to the papers and doesn’t read the Review section.

“The company subscribes to Arab News. We have it delivered. It is there in the morning when I come in. Even if it is just a 60-second overview, I always go to Page 2, I always want to know if there is something specific in either my business, the insurance business, announcements, something along those lines.”

“Page 2 will always get my attention in the morning. I will have a quick glance to see if there is anything I want to send out to my staff, comment on with management and so on, and then I read it later at lunch time or if I take it home.”

Taylor defines himself as a very relaxed, easy-going person. “So I actually don’t put a stamp on myself. I don’t really see myself as this or that. I am from the Northeast of England, a Geordie, from Northwest Durham, but I do associate myself very closely with Sunderland where my parents are.”

Although he considers himself to be very British and internationally minded, he also considers Saudi Arabia to be his adopted home.

(Bizzie Frost is a freelance photographer and writer who moved to Jeddah in 1984 from Nairobi, Kenya. In 2001, she was awarded Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society and the “Diwaniya Photographer of the Year” award.)