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In terror, Americans flee kingdom

She spent years in an oasis of suburbia in Saudi Arabia. But gunfire and death have brought her back to St. Petersburg. For now.

The gunfire erupted shortly after dawn, and Esther Brier "freaked out" when she heard the news: One of her friends had been shot as terrorists rampaged through a nearby housing complex in Khobar, Saudi Arabia.

Over the next 24 hours the reports grew worse. Another friend had been killed, his body dragged through the streets. Twenty-one others were also dead - many of them foreigners targeted because they were not Muslims. And although commandos rescued dozens of hostages, they somehow let three of the attackers escape.

A day later, Brier and her husband made a tough decision. With their only child in college in Boston, it was time for Brier to leave Saudi Arabia, the country that had been the family's home for five years.

"The bottom line is that we didn't want our daughter to lose two parents at the same time," says Brier, now back in St. Petersburg. "We thought it was a wise precaution to get me out for a while and see how things play out."

Since the May 29 siege in Khobar, there has been no letup in violence against Westerners. Last Sunday, gunmen in Riyadh killed a BBC cameraman and critically wounded a reporter. On Tuesday, an American contractor was shot nine times in the head at his Riyadh home. And Saturday, another American - the 14th killed in a year - was shot in the capital.

Those and other deadly attacks have rattled global oil markets, worried about the Saudis' ability to protect an industry that produces almost 15 percent of the world's oil.

The violence has also forced the Saudi government to admit it has a major problem with Islamic extremists, bent on driving all Westerners from the birthplace of Islam and destabilizing an unpopular regime.

But for the Briers and 35,000 other Americans in the kingdom, the concern is far more basic. Is it safe to stay?

"I never felt threatened up until now," Brier says.

It was excitement, not fear, the Briers felt when they made the career change that took them to Dhahran in eastern Saudi Arabia in 1999.

Lewis Brier, an accountant, went to work for the huge Saudi oil company Aramco. His wife, who started the band program at St. Petersburg's Shorecrest Preparatory, became band director at Aramco's English-language school. The pay was good, and for Americans, the first $80,000 is tax free.

The Briers and Carmen, then 13, moved into a well-guarded compound alongside Britons, Canadians, Saudis and other Aramco employees. In an exotic desert land, the "camp" was an oasis of suburbia - tidy green lawns and tennis courts, Scout troops and soccer teams.

"It was like a Midwestern city in the '50s," Brier says. "It was a great place to live as far as raising a family."

There were reminders, though, that this wasn't Chicago or Cleveland. In deference to Muslim modesty, women and men used the swimming pool at different times. Alcohol is banned, so Westerners drank homemade brew or drove across the causeway to Bahrain. Women aren't allowed to drive, meaning the only way for Brier to go shopping in nearby Khobar was to ask Lewis for a ride or take the taxi or Aramco bus.

Still, she often went into town, wearing jeans and one of her husband's dress shirts, left untucked to hide her shape. A few times the mutawa, or religious police, told her to cover her hair, but other than that, "I never had anything personal directed against me in any way," she says.

Last year, some Westerners left the kingdom after dozens of people died in suicide bomb attacks on residential compounds in Riyadh. And after six Westerners were killed May 1 in Yanbu, the U.S. government urged all Americans to get out. But there was heavy security at the Aramco compound, and it was not until May 29 that the Briers' own sense of safety began to fray.

Around 7:30 that morning, gunmen burst into the Oasis compound a mile from where the Briers lived.

A friend, Dianne Reed, was exercising at home when she heard a shot, followed by the sound of someone trying to kick down the front door.

"It was at this point she decided that she better make a run for it as it was a short 40-yard dash to the safety of the steel gate and guard house at the end of our street," Reed's husband said in an e-mail to friends. "She felt if he had gotten in, he would have killed her on the spot."

As Reed tried to flee, one bullet struck her in the left thigh. Another tore through the right leg just below the knee.

"She was literally three steps from the safety of the guard building when hit," her husband wrote. A few minutes later, another woman trying to escape with her two small children found Reed. "Dianne's color and the look of the leg scared her but Dianne looked up at her very calmly" and told her to call an ambulance.

For hours, the gunmen terrorized the complex, demanding to know which residents were Muslims and killing several who were not. The Briers later heard that Michael Hamilton, a British friend, was among the dead, shot as he drove to work.

Although Saudi commandos ended the siege, violence elsewhere convinced the Briers that Esther should leave. She wanted to make one final trip into Khobar to buy gifts for friends, "but for the first time I was scared."

So for only the second time in five years, Brier donned an abaya - the long, black cloak worn by Saudi women - and covered her hair with a scarf. Instead of taking the Aramco bus, which she feared could be a target, she went by taxi.

"I figured I would fit in better," she says.

Ten days ago, Brier bid a temporary goodbye to her husband and headed back to Tampa Bay, where she is staying with a friend.

As a longtime "guest in their country," Brier hesitates to say anything negative about the Saudis, whom she finds hospitable if somewhat aloof. But she agrees with experts, who say the Saudi government has been slow to acknowledge that its repressive policies and support of Islamic fighters in other countries have contributed to the rise in extremism.

For years, the government insisted that a string of attacks against Americans and other foreigners in the kingdom stemmed from turf wars among expatriates engaged in the illegal liquor trade.

"We didn't buy into it - obviously the perpetrators were anti-Western Islamic extremists," Brier says. "The Saudis present themselves as if they can do no wrong and they are great blame shifters. But you can't pin this on anybody else, and perhaps they've come to realize they have a problem."

But whether the Saudis can do much about it "is the reason I'm here," she continues. "We don't know how the Saudis can solve these issues and stop other incidents from happening."

Dianne Reed is still hospitalized in Khobar, recovering from surgery on her legs, but will return to the United States as soon as she is able to travel, her husband has said. But of the hundreds of expatriate families in the Khobar area, Brier knows of only six that have left since the May 29 attacks - and two were planning to go anyway because of retirement.

"The type of person who lives in a place like that has got to have at least a little sense of adventure," she says, "so they're much less likely to pull up stakes and go."

Brier herself has a return ticket and hopes to return to Saudi Arabia in September. But she isn't taking any chances - she's buying a house in St. Petersburg, just in case her husband "needs to get out in a hurry."

- Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com