Travel educates young people: what you learn traveling around the Arabian peninsula
Yes, travel broadens the mind, but not only the mind of young people. I am no kid, but I think I shed some woeful prejudices that come from living in Europe when I spent a little more than a week on the Arabian peninsula, in the United Arab Emirates and in Oman, to be specific.
What kind of prejudices? Well, the sort of prejudices which you can hear in the offhand remarks of the EU’s highest ranking diplomat, Commissioner Josep Borrell. His complacent racism came out when he said recently to a reporter: “Europe is a well-cultivated garden. What is outside our borders is…the jungle.”
A similar racist turn of mind was implicit in all the hullaballoo recently before and during the football championships held in Qatar. We were reminded incessantly by major media that there was exploitation of the foreign workers who built the stadium and other facilities for the games. We were reminded of the homophobia of the Islamic culture, and also of the shameful restrictions imposed on women in the region, beginning with legal rights to act independently of men and ending in the dress code. We were reminded how terrible it was that visitors to the stadiums would not be offered beer or other alcoholic refreshments.
To be sure, things really do look different on the ground in Dubai or in Muscat. And I am not talking about the urban infrastructure which is so advanced especially in Dubai that it puts all European cities to shame. Even if you do not exchange a word with the locals or with guest workers, you quickly see the positive sides of these conservative and ultra-conservative societies for the convenience and happiness of the people living there. When you enter into conversation with them, or they enter into conversation with you, spontaneously and quite anonymously, the positive impressions multiply.
I do not mean to be simple-minded about this. I am not describing Eden. But these societies are doing something right, judging by the dignity of bearing, by the very clear close family bonds of the local Arab guests in the hotels I frequented, by the respectful behavior of husbands to their wives whom they freed from looking after the children to assume that obligation themselves.
Yes, I know, I am talking about upper middle class Arabs when I speak of guests in 4 or 5-star hotels. But, without meaning to give offense to my Indian acquaintances, I will say without any reservation that the interaction between the sexes that we saw in Dubai and in Muscat was far more even-handed than what we witnessed during our travels in the same category hotels in Greater Mumbai and Kerala State a few years ago. So much for the world’s biggest democracy.
These conservative Arab states are also doing something to give comfort to the guest workers who uniformly told us they were content to be employed here and would start a business or build a home when they returned to their native countries after several years. Some even are earning enough to go home to Bengladesh or Nepal for big family events, as we learned from speaking to fellow passengers in the waiting lounges of the budget airlines airport at Sharjah.
I mention this because it runs directly counter to the widely held notion in Europe that all of these people of color have got it into their heads to immigrate to Europe by hook or by crook to improve their lot and to stay for good. The Nepalese, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis and Indians we spoke to were quite satisfied with guest worker jobs in the hospitality industry in Arabia. And let us remember that they constitute 85% of the population in Dubai, so if they are not having a nice day, neither will you.
I understand full well that these societies are deeply religious and subscribe to the rules of prayer and holidays and so much else that comes with the creed. All of this is deeply offensive to secular, or shall we more properly say militantly atheistic Europe of today. So be it. The coming age of a multi-polar world will vindicate the variety of structures of human society in which people find happiness. It would be better all around if Europe learned some humility sooner rather than later.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023