Sylvia's Journal

I am biding my time at Terminal 2 of Dubai’s airport. In back of me a group of men is sitting, spellbound, around a dark skinned bearded gentleman who is giving the equivalent of a Bible lesson. One of his 10 disciples is asleep but the others are eagerly listening. There is talk about dark and light stones, and a ring that protects travelers to ‘strange’ places. They are, I presume, on their way to Mecca.

The teacher speaks without taking a break for the entire time I am waiting to board (about 2 hours). He admits not to know Arabic, but speaks nevertheless in a mixture of English and Arabic . I can follow his lecture fairly well. It is part history lesson, part religious class and part storytelling, mysterious, miraculous and always about the truth. Sometimes he is deadly serious, sometimes laughing and always the ultimate authority on whatever he says. No one contradicts or questions him.

I learn that angels always obey and that one should have a little water and a small breakfast – nothing like what they serve at the Meridien hotel – before doing whatever they are going to do. He likens it to being like a sick child. There is much about ritual, purification and absolute belief, not requiring proof, just faith. One of the young men is particularly eager and engaged and receives special recognition from the teacher (you are a strong one!). He grins and bends forward even more, showing off what he knows.

Later he changes from teaching to self disclosure and telling his life story. He loses nearly half of his disciples but it is infinitely more interesting than his lecturing. The man is a book to be written. I learn that he is from Trinidad, and only a recent Moslem, more Moslem than Moslems, a converted Catholic. He tells about a friend he hung out with, a pot smoker, at the time of Woodstock (no signs of recognition on the face of his young followers – they have no idea). The friend, uninsured, got throat cancer and died despite his family spending 200.000 dollars on treatment. Ever the religious teacher he stresses the moral of that story: security can only be gotten from God, not from health insurance, money or the police. He is free-associating – the word police triggers a memory of his being arrested in Egypt by the secret police who followed him to mosques, thinking he was a Southern Sudanese (he could have been) planning some fundamentalist mischief.

I tire from listening to him and get myself a cup of freshly squeezed pomegranate juice for what might be a day’s wages or more for a Bangladeshi construction worker. I top it off with a macchiato from a Starbuck’s wannabe, making it two days of earnings for the said worker.

Most of the women waiting to board planes are clad in black formless gowns although a few have adorned their gown with colorful enhancements, like embroidered geometric shapes in bright colors or pastel ribbons. If they are not busy with looking after small children they are reading their holy books or staring into space. Several of the women, mostly the older ones but a few young ones as well, wear a burnished copper contraption on their head that covers their cheeks and eyebrows. I can’t see a purpose for it other than making it impossible to slap them in the face. I would love to sit with one of them and ask them a thousand questions but I don’t have the guts (and probably miss the language skills as well).