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Dubai, UAE (Dexter)
11/21/04 Day 5 – CairoSong stuck in my head today: Rock The Casbah
Dude, I should have gotten sponsored! I didn‘t think of it till now, but people making trips are always getting sponsored. I could like, put a big ‘Skoal‘ sticker on the side of my plane, or ‘Cingular Wireless‘ on the tail.
Well, maybe not. This trip is full on independent, DIY style. It‘s sort of like a glorified road trip, really. Every morning I get in the plane and go a little farther. The plane is stocked with Doritos and beef jerky, there‘s lots of maps all over, and there‘s clothes and other assorted junk in the back. If I just had a dog hanging its tongue out the window I‘d be all set.
So today I was in Cairo, which is of course a Muslim country, and sort of the beginning of my time in the Middle East. To most Americans, the Middle East seems like a scary and dangerous place, and I really wasn‘t sure what to expect. I‘ve certainly seen enough horrible images of bombings and hostages to think twice about coming at all. But I found it to be much less sketchy than I would have thought.
To be sure, there were signs of a post-9/11 world. When I took a taxi to the hotel, the hotel rolled a mirror under the car to check for car bombs! And when you walk into a hotel, you have to go through a metal detector just like at an airport. I was never hassled, though, even when the detector went off. Luckily for me, racial profiling probably works in my favor! Just kidding, was that one in bad taste? Anyway, what surprised me is how friendly people were toward me and how they wanted to talk about the world situation. They wanted to stress to me that Islam is a peaceful religion, and the acts of a few extremists do not reflect on their religion as a whole. They pointed out that there are religious zealots in all religions, even Christianity. For example, they said, what about Christian fanatics that bomb abortion clinics – does this make us think that all Christians are violent or dangerous? Of course not.
Believe it or not, some people were even pro-American! I couldn‘t believe it. They talked about the vast amounts of foreign aid the the US gives countries in the Middle East every year, and some even said that they were glad that Saddam is gone! They were also frustrated with the dangerous image that the Middle East has now. They blamed the media for sensationalizing certain events, making it seem like the whole region is like that all the time. I thought that was a really good point. How many times have I watched CNN showing kidnappings, or suicide bombings, or demonstrations in the streets, and thought, this must be how it is everywhere over there all the time?
Now, I don‘t want to get into whether we should be in Iraq or not, or whether Bush is bad or not, because it‘s a really divisive and complicated situation. However, I thought it was a very enlightening and educational experience to actually talk to the people that are living it.
Overall, Cairo was a mellow, cool place and I‘m glad I stopped there.
My flight today took me four hours over Saudi Arabia to a tiny country called United Arab Emirates. I landed in a city called Dubai, and as I flew towards Dubai, I actually flew over the Persian Gulf. Wild. It was night, there were lots of oil patforms in the gulf, and they all had fires burning on them. I gotta admit, being by yourself in a plane over the Persian Gulf at night with the orange glowing fires under you is a creepy experience. It was for me. But hey, that‘s life.
I will tell you more tomorrow.
