Americans in the Desert Now Wonder How Long They Will Stay

When the enormous bomb went off on Tuesday at about 10 P.M., killing 19 American servicemen, Ruth Rosser was making dessert for her husband, Tom. He had worked late at the Saudi company that employs him and provides his housing, in a foreigners' compound called Al Rushaid Village No. 3, less than half a mile northeast of the explosion.

"There was a big boom, a tremendous, indescribable sound, and glass was coming down like rain -- we could hear it coming down," said Mrs. Rosser, 62, still full of wonder.

It's amazing no one here was hurt," she said. "But it makes me much more unsettled. The American Consulate puts out warnings, but you think it won't happen here, it won't happen to me.

"In the shops," she continued carefully, choosing her words, "you wonder which Saudis are like us and think like us, and which ones want more of this."

But the Rossers intend to stay here -- where the job and pay are excellent, amenities superb and European vacations common -- "unless we're ordered to leave, or there are a couple more bombs near us," she said.

Some of the 35,000 or so civilian Americans living in Saudi Arabia, -- 20,000 of them around Dhahran, are more jittery than the Rossers, especially families with children.