Saudi Arabia's rulers are doing their utmost to resist the tide of history. The wealthy Arab country wants peace and stability within its society and in the region. But even the ultraconservative kingdom has not remained untouched by the unrest in the Arab world.

He landed at around midnight with two wives, an entourage of 59 people, including three cabinet ministers -- and a 7.6-centimeter (3 inch) piece of shrapnel in his chest. He walked down the gangway with great difficulty -- but "upright," according to eyewitnesses -- to a waiting convoy that would take him from the airport north of Riyadh to the city's large military hospital. The Saudi Arabian capital lay silent in the desert night, its landmark Kingdom Tower brightly lit in the darkness.

Riyadh stood in sharp contrast to the city Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh had just fled. For the past four months, the people in the Yemeni capital Sana'a had demonstrated against his regime and had taken to the streets, first by the tens and then by the hundreds of thousands, to demand an end to his regime. Saleh had his forces shoot at the protesters almost every night, but with each week the attacks from the other side came closer to his palace -- until June 3, when grenades were launched into the presidential mosque during Friday prayers, killing several of Saleh's bodyguards and seriously wounding him and his ministers.

Saleh, 69, is the third autocrat to be swept out of office by the tide of Arab unrest in the region, and the second to find refuge in Saudi Arabia. Since the Tunisians forced their leader, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, to flee to Jeddah in January, none of the monarchs and presidents in the Arab world can be sure of retaining power anymore. Their subjects continue to vent their rage across four time zones, from Mauritania to Oman. The Arab world is out of joint.

Life As Usual

But not Saudi Arabia, or so it seems. And not Riyadh. As ever, Saudi men sit in their large SUVs, stuck in traffic between the steel-blue facades of office buildings, and the wives of these men are still having their drivers drop them off in front of the shopping malls in downtown Riyadh, where they scurry from Prada to Ralph Lauren and then disappear into Starbucks for a latte -- in the "family department," a room on the side kept separate from the world of men.