I did not go to Saudi Arabia, just saw it from the sky.
It was approximately like this that we flew:
So it wasn’t just Saudi, it was also Qatar and Bahrain and Kuwait. And we hugged the coast all the way up.
These cities are very very rich (at least, some people there are rich):
I don’t know what city that is — it might have been Bahrain? — but it had quite an approach as we passed it:
And below, this was definitely Kuwait. It had been all black for a while, and then all of a sudden, the earth was paved with gold:
Just after this, a vein of living gold throbbed through the black water:
I believe that might be the maritime border between Kuwait’s waters, and Iraq’s waters. Because just look how much more vacant the land looks to the right of that line, than to the left.
It was sort of sad the way the lights just disappeared:
As we flew further north into Iraq, we passed first over cities like Basra. Two things stood out: first, the lights were no longer showy gold, they were pale white.
Second, do you see the square-ish tracts of black amidst all the other lights:
I saw those tracts of black appear in real-time. As you peer out the airplane window, you just see swaths of lights disappear. It’s enforced electrical black-outs. You just see entire districts go black.
Finally, this is what it looks like from the air by Baghdad (though this was when I was leaving, not arriving):
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