No Place Like Home

After a four-month, $4,000,000 sojourn in Vienna for treatment of a duodenal ulcer, Saudi Arabia's King Saud, 61, returned to his desert capital of Riyadh last week. At the airport he received full honors and an embrace from his half-brother and heir, Crown Prince Feisal. But it was hardly a triumphal homecoming, for Saud is now no more than a figurehead ruler.

During Saud's absence Feisal, as Premier, pushed ahead with a new-broom campaign to sweep the king's sons (an estimated 32 in all) out of the palace, and to make a start on reforms in the feudalistic monarchy. On paper at least, Feisal has abolished slavery, and he is even stumping oasis villages promising schools, hospitals, housing and freshwater wells. By slipping arms to the royalists fighting in Yemen--something he denies--Feisal has helped the fight against Nasser expansionism.

Princes and tribal chieftains have taken Feisal's side. Thus, there was no great applause when Saud last month sent word that he wished to come home. At a three-hour conference, Feisal and most of his 38 other brothers drew up a document allowing the monarch to return, on condition that he stay out of affairs of state and issue no more decrees. A three-man Feisal delegation flew to Vienna, handed Saud the document; sadly, the King signed.

He could do little else. Only one of Saud's sons, Prince Mansour, is still around the palace, and his powers are largely ceremonial. The King's last personal armed force is being merged into the army. The King, whose cunning is legendary, may use his fortune, estimated at more than $100 million, to buy out his pro-Feisal kinsmen. The outlook was perhaps best forecast by an Arab journalist: "I see ahead a period of intrigue and suspicion, in which a passing word from a harem woman might take the sleep for nights from the eyes of important princes."

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