The Bro Code of Saudi Culture

This work sets out a series of rules meant as guidelines to live by and behave properly among Saudis and/or to understand their culture. Most of these rules have long been unwritten and only verbally communicated among each other. As a result, visitors to Saudi Arabia have been unable to follow these rules appropriately. Those interested in Saudis or their civilisation have reported neither understanding nor recognising these rules. For such reasons, these rules need to be spelled out in bold print. This publication has been written to respond to this need, as well as to inform a broad audience on the nature of gender roles and relations in this country. Every culture is governed by an internal code of conduct, and this work offers the first written code of Saudi society. It is the product of close observations of daily activities and more than 2,000 interviews with nationals and residents, over the past four years. This code shows 666 (often previously unrecorded) rules on how the human body should act inside Saudi Arabia. It covers everything from top to bottom; the face, eyes, ears, mouth, extremities and genitals. These rules must be carefully considered if one wishes to stay within the circle of Saudis. For easy reading, this book is presented as a ‘listicle’ (a piece of writing presented in the form of a numbered or bullet-pointed list).