Coffee without end: Oasis village tests limits of hospitality

Alighting from an Uber at the souq in downtown Hail, the reporter gets a warning from his young driver about his next destination.

“Don’t eat or drink before you go to Jubbah,” he says.

It’s an odd and ominous warning to receive in Hail, a northern Saudi region so famous for hospitality that it has inspired centuries-old Arabic poems and modern Youtube videos – and where you are never more than a few minutes away from your next lunch invitation.

But in the palm-lined oasis village of Jubbah, 72 miles north of Hail in the desert, where generosity toward guests was ingrained in generations who endured severe hardship, residents provide hospitality as extreme as the elements – even too extreme for Hail