Death to America? More like Dunk to the Donut
My middle-east misadventure
#8. The Middle East
Thoughts were exploding through my mind like an IED as I checked in for my first ever flight to the Middle East. I was caught in an eddy of emotion - excitement, nervousness, hunger. What would it be like stepping into another cultural and spiritual dimension? Would I say the wrong thing and get arrested? Would the Pret in this terminal be sold out of cookies? (It was.)
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I have to admit, I was anxious. Yet, the air hostesses were lovely (all female, for some reason), and as I disembarked after a comfortable seven hours, a girl in a hijab passed me my bag from overhead and flashed me a beautiful smile. Plus the plane was spotless - so unusually clean that I felt compelled to write about it - and so too was the airport when I landed. It was light, airy, and so immaculately white it could have been the set for a toothpaste commercial. Men stood guard in almost luminescent robes, while the deep black burkas of the women sat in stunning contrast to all the white.
Heading into the luggage reclaim area, I dodged women like they were depth charges. Accidentally brush your hand against someone’s leg in the UK, and the worst you’ll get is a humiliating nickname for life (just ask my friend Nuts). Here, I feared, put your hand in the wrong place and you could lose it.
(Unsurprisingly, I was stuck at the bag reclaim for a while. I know they say the Middle East comes with a lot of baggage, but this was ridiculous.)
I eventually left the airport and got picked up by an obsequious fellow who drove me to the hotel in a Cadillac with tinted windows. My first impressions of the country were two-fold: there were a lot of rug shops (like, a lot); and if a shop wasn’t selling rugs, it was probably an American brand. Even in the Middle East, you can get an Uber to Burger King. In my silly mind, I had thought it would be like the third world but with extra public stoning. In actual fact, it was less death to America, and more Dunk to the Donut.
I was staying inside a spectacular skyscraper, entirely lit up with an animation of the waving national flag. Most other buildings were illuminated in the national colours, and cars drove by waving the flag out of the window. Outside the hotel, a Humvee full of women was taking pictures with a flag of their own.
They really love the flag here, I thought. A lot more than Brits love the Union Jack. Mind you, if our flag had a rad sword on it, we’d probably love it too.1
There were a few impressive skyscrapers in the city, but I had the feeling that the it was unfinished. I nearly tumbled over a breezeblock, discarded on the pavement; elsewhere I had to duck to avoid live wires dangling from a construction site. My hotel room was luxurious, but I had the sense that, if I pushed the windowpane too hard, it might pop out. Up on the skyscraper’s observation deck, at almost one thousand feet, one of the windows was cracked. There was a sheet of plastic slapped over it, and a haphazard cordon around it, as if it were a Primark shopfront window on a Saturday morning.
The view from the deck was breath-taking. The horizon stretched infinitely into the desert. I have never been somewhere so flat. With all the flat land, I wondered, maybe that’s why they love rugs so much. Lounging by the pool later, I noticed that even the clouds were flat. They moved differently here, like one plate gliding over another, twisting gently under the sun like candy floss, giving me vertigo.
Sadly, I had some work to do. After a few days, I moved to a corporate hotel for a conference. It was a business hotel like any other on the planet. It could have been Milton Keynes. The only notable point about the place was that it was split into two wings, which it had named North Tower and South Tower. Talk about rubbing it in.
Yet I have to say the people were always warm and welcoming. I didn’t get beheaded once. In fact, I enjoyed my time there. I mean, I wouldn’t go back, or write a good review, or recommend it to other people, but it was okay, and really, isn’t that better than I expected?
Ever been somewhere that surprised you - for better or worse? Drop your wildest travel tales in the comments, or tell me if I should pack my bags (and my rainbow cake) for somewhere new.
I subsequently found out I had arrived on a public holiday called Flag Day. Regardless, it was a funny observation and I’m keeping it in.