Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

by Kim Ghattas

The darkness of night is the close companion of dictators.

According to one interpretation of the Quran, after being exiled from paradise, Eve and Adam were reunited on Mount Arafat near Mecca.

Legend had it that Eve, the mother of mankind, was later buried in Jeddah, the city whose name means “grandmother” in Arabic.

The Wahhabis, with the Al-Sauds as their standard-bearers, tolerated nothing that could come between man and his God: not the intercession of saints, not tombstones in cemeteries or visitation of the graves of loved ones, not even worship of the prophet—all of it was shirk.

“It is perfectly true . . . that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.”