Clapboard houses in the desert: A trip through Aramco's Smalltown, KSA

Dhahran The Camp Courtesy of Murre And The Pacific/FlickR

• The Camp in Dhahran harks back to Aramco's origins in the 1930s
• The Camp's Al-Fayrouz cinema predates the latest wave of cinema openings in the Kingdom by several decades

DHAHRAN: Through the tight rings of security at Saudi Aramco’s world HQ you are checked and rechecked, until you reach an area that looks very different from any of the glass and concrete corporate buildings that dominate the site.
You could be in the suburbs of any big America city — rows of clapboard houses, most of them single-story, some with a small porch where you might enjoy your barbecue at weekends. You drive down main street — King’s Street — past neat gardens, grocery stores, medical facilities and a cinema.
While it looks like Smalltown USA, a typical American edge-of-town community, the residents call it The Camp. The name harks back to the area’s origins in the 1930s, when the Standard Oil Company of California — which was granted the concession to drill the oil reserves of the Dammam Dome — built a residential cluster to house the mainly American expatriates that had been shipped in to work on the nearby well.
Apart from the clapboard and porches, there are signs of a US military legacy all around the area.
“Apparently the only experience the Americans had of building in the desert came from their military bases in some parts of the USA. So it was built and operated according to army rules. The grocery stores are ‘commissaries,’ the restaurants are ‘dining halls,’” one young Saudi “Aramcon” explained.
Of course, the Al-Fayrouz cinema in the heart of The Camp predates the latest wave of cinema openings in the Kingdom. It has been around for decades, showing the latest Hollywood releases.
At the Community Heritage Gallery, Isobel Vail, the wife of a veteran Saudi Aramco worker, keeps alive the expat heritage of the company. She explains how the building that houses the beautifully displayed exhibits was one of the first built in The Camp, and was originally inhabited by the American doctor, TC Alexander, that the Aramco engineers and their wives insisted on.
That early clinic has since been superseded by the nearby John Hopkins Aramco Healthcare center, a medical facility for the 21st century.
Other parts of the camp are less Smallville suburbs, more barracks-style accommodation for engineers and rig workers. As the area expanded, the American planners realized that they needed some more basic accommodation for the growing blue-collar workforce.
These days, some expats still live and work in The Camp, but so do many Saudis, reflecting the change in the workplace demographic at Saudi Aramco over the decades. Residence there is in high demand, and awarded according to your pay grade at the sprawling headquarters building just down the road.