Ayesha Malik was born half a mile from Dammam well No. 7—the well that started the Saudi oil industry in 1938. She was raised among some of the world's largest oil fields and refineries. Yet her home was an oasis within the kingdom: the 22.5 square-mile gated community created to house employees of the state-owned company that's known today as Saudi Aramco.
She documented the buzz of the compound and nearby area in a series of striking photographs she is publishing in her book "Aramco: Above the Oil Fields." (Daylight Books, $50) The compound forms a world largely unknown outside the closely knit community of Aramco staffers. The city, which was built by the American oil companies that owned Aramco before its nationalization in 1980, could be any small town in America. Children travel in iconic yellow American school buses. Baseball fields abound. The Boy Scouts have their own pack, number 253. Set aside the desert heat and this could be suburban Los Angeles.