Could an Arab and a Texan crossing paths at Dubai airport have much in common?

Dubai International (DXB) has raised the bar on its contribution to Dubai’s economy by welcoming a record 44.9 million guests during the first six months of this year.

Airports can be very lonely places, even when they are busy with huge crowds. One interesting encounter I had with a fellow traveller at Dubai International Airport is proof that they are truly miniature versions of the global melting pot.

I was dragging my feet to the lounge, ready to rest for a few minutes before catching my flight back home to Jeddah. I sat in a comfortable leather seat, ordered a cup of Earl Grey tea and turned my head towards a loud voice coming from the reception.

The source was a very tall gentleman who appeared to have come right out of a John Wayne western. He wore a ten-gallon, broad-brimmed Stetson cowboy hat, Wrangler jeans topped with a huge silver belt buckle and Lucchese boots. Soon, he sat down in the seat opposite me.

A Middle East Airlines (MEA) plane departs from Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport, in Beirut, Lebanon, 12 August 2024. Several countries including the US, Britain, France, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Kuwait, Jordan and Italy have urged their citizens to leave Lebanon amid growing fears of a wider conflict in the region. EPA / WAEL HAMZEH

He took off his hat and said in a Texan drawl: “Howdy.” I replied with a simple hello. He was clearly in the mood for a conversation, commenting on my Saudi national dress: “I bet what you are wearing is cooler and much more comfortable in this terribly hot weather.”

I smiled and said: “I guess so. Which part of Texas are you from?”

He laughed and asked, “Is it that obvious? Well, I am from Dallas, but how did you guess?”

I went to university next door, in Oklahoma, I explained.

“Are you visiting the region, or do you live here?” I asked him. “And may I add, at the risk of sounding stereotypical – you also must be working in oil and gas, right?”

He said that he had been living in the region for the past 20 years but lately was going back and forth between the Gulf and Dallas. Despite the length of time he had spent here, he added, there were a few things that he simply couldn’t comprehend although he had tried hard to do so. Why is religion such an integral part of your lives, he asked me. Doesn’t that hold you back from becoming a civilised society?

His assumption that we are “uncivilised” societies was very patronising and derogatory, I argued. By the same token I explained that I had a great problem accepting that Americans’ unbelievably easy access to guns – which directly leads to preventable deaths and mass shootings – can in any way be a sign of civility. But, I added, I had learnt to accept and respect these differences rather than asking them to change.

This exchange of views took me to a very special book by one of my favourite Indian writers, Gurcharan Das. It’s called The Difficulty of Being Good and in it Das explores questions such as why we should be good, how we should be good and how might we more deeply understand the moral and ethical failings that have not only destroyed lives but caused widespread calamity, bringing communities, nations and indeed the global economy to the brink of collapse.

I do believe there is a lack of “goodness” in the world today. I wish I had a more sophisticated way of analysing the reasons behind all these cracks between people, such as I experienced in my Dubai airport encounter, as well as nations.

I recalled my meeting with Nelson Mandela shortly after he became the president of South Africa and how I was mesmerised by the man and his aura. He was filled with peace, calm and serenity of a kind I never experienced before or since. He was the walking example of spreading goodness. I quoted a sentence from South African writer Alan Paton’s famous book Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful to him when we met. He smiled and said, “but our hearts are more beautiful”.

That is what David Brooks, the Canadian-American writer, highlighted in his 2015 book The Road to Character: the ability to stand out by being good. This is not something we are born with. It needs to be developed and worked on. But, oh, what a wonderful world it would be if more people did that. It might be a world where a Saudi and a Texan crossing paths in a global airport hub find that they have more in common than what divides them.