Saudi beach party

By Jerome Socolovsky ~ The Associated PressMARBELLA, Spain -- It's the hottest hour of the day at the Puente Romano beach club when a girl of 13 dashes out of the hotel gardens, throwing a black cloak over her flowing hair, T-shirt and jeans and leaving the topless sunbathers behind.

Sarah al-Kabbani, child of Saudi royalty, is obeying the muezzin's call to prayer, and she's running late.

King Fahd, leader of one of the world's strictest Muslim nations, has come to his vacation residence in Marbella, the Mediterranean capital of sun and sin, bringing along thousands of members of the House of Saud.

As usual, Saudi princes and princesses are expected to snap up Hermes scarves and Rolex watches by the display case, slap down millions on roulette tables and boogie into the night with bejeweled blondes at the discotheque.

It's a lifestyle strictly prohibited in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, where boys and girls are forbidden to hold hands in public and the constitution is based on Islam's holy book, the Quran.

This summer the gap between the monarchy's practices and preachings is under greater scrutiny than usual, as war talk rumbles through the Middle East and Saudi Arabia wrestles with the fallout from terrorism and the fact that 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudis.

Saudi royalty has been part of the Marbella glitterati ever since the 1970s Arab oil boom. When Fahd built his summer residence atop an artificial hill overlooking the city, the White House look-alike mansion shocked a city whose gaudy architecture makes Beverly Hills look staid.

Although princes vacation in the palace every summer, the House of Saud has virtually transplanted itself here for the first visit in three years by the 81-year-old sovereign, who handed over authority to Crown Prince Abdullah after suffering a stroke in 1995.

Fahd, who now uses a wheelchair, hardly ever comes into town. However, he sends aides on shopping sprees or summons merchants to bring their most exclusive offerings to the palace.

Shopkeepers have stocked up on luxury items, expecting the royal to spend some $5 million a day during the month or more that they stay here.

The Saudi men seem to have more fun. The women wear veils and waterproof robes, even on Marbella's topless beaches. A woman riding a Jet Ski while covered head-to-toe in a black robe is not an uncommon sight.

But after Friday prayers were over at the Abdulaziz al-Saud mosque, Sarah al-Kabbani tore off her garment and wove her way on foot through a traffic jam of Mercedes sedans back to the Puente Romano, where suites cost $1,270 a night.

There's plenty of ways kids can have good clean fun in Marbella, such as hanging out or going to movies. But when Sarah started to talk about them, a man in sunglasses appeared, scolded her in Arabic for talking to a reporter and sent her away.

He turned out to be a royal family member named Adnan al-Fadda. He said Saudis behaved no differently in Marbella than at home. Then, after indignantly knocking down the gossip in Marbella about Saudi men and blonde escorts for hire, he turned to Sept. 11.

It had nothing to do with the political situation in Saudi Arabia, he said. He refused to believe that any of the hijackers were Saudi citizens, and maintained the attacks were an Israeli-CIA plot.

"Do you know how many Jews in the World Trade Center didn't go to work that day?" he said, repeating a conspiracy theory rampant in the Arab world.