Includes index.

List of Illustrations; Preface and Acknowledgements; Introduction by Dr Ibrahim Abdulrahman al-Turki; 1 'The Paris of Najd'; 2 Arabic Time, David Copperfield and Lorna Doone; 3 Colleagues; 4 Al-Zghaibiyah and al-Khubaiba; 5 Horrible for Breakfast; 6 Sha'ban Tries a New Trick; 7 Doughty, Philby and Others; 8 The June War; 9 After the War; 10 The Winds of Change; 11 Goodbye to Aneiza; 12 Journey to Makkah; 13 Aneiza Revisited, 2011; Glossary; Further Reading; Index.

Much of this book is a record of the time the author spent between 1965 and 1970 as an English teacher in Aneiza - a provincial town in central Saudi Arabia. In an entertaining series of anecdotes, he describes the daily life and customs of its people, his relations with colleagues and students at the local secondary school, and the events leading up to his 'removal' from the town he had come to regard as home, his transfer to Riyadh, and final departure from the country. In the 1960s Aneiza was still living partly in the age of Charles Doughty, the 19th-century explorer who stayed there for so.