Journeys to the Middle East: Part 2

Second, I led more or less a sheltered life while growing up in Chicago. I’ve mentioned in previous articles that for various reasons, my parents separated us from Filipino people and things. So I effectively lost my country, my culture, and my native tongue. But, unexpectedly, I found so many Filipinos working throughout the Middle East. I hadn’t been around so many of them, since I was a little boy in Manila. They’d smile that knowing smile at me – knowing that I was their kababayan (fellow Filipino). Funny thing, though, once they’d hear my American accent, they’d get confused and wonder where the heck I was from – Indonesia?  Malaysia?  Japan? I’ve had Filipino friends in Dubai jokingly tell me to keep my mouth shut and let them do the talking.

I joined this consulting firm, because I knew they had a strong presence in Asia – and more specifically because I thought I’d have an opportunity to make my first visit to the Philippines in ages and ages. Well, I never made it to Asia, while I was with the firm, even though I pushed for a year to join a consulting project there. Instead, I landed in the Middle East. One key reason I felt so at home in the Middle East was the wide presence of my kababayan.

Third – and this is the main reason why I felt more than just at home, but fated to be here in the Middle East – I had a particular series of conversations, over time, with various Saudis. A couple of them, on separate occasions, said I looked Saudi. I was flattered, and thanked them. But another incident made me shudder. Three Saudi men asked me if I had trained them before. I said, “It’s possible. I’ve done many training programs before. Where were the programs held?” “Jeddah,” they replied. “Well, no,” I corrected them, “It wasn’t me, because I’ve never been to Jeddah.” These men were actually not asking to begin with. They were convinced that I had, in fact, been their trainer. When I joked, “Well, it must’ve been my twin brother,” they were not laughing in the least! (Oh, man, I exclaimed to myself, I just had to slide out of that conversation.) What I came to learn was that the Western province of Saudi Arabia, where Jeddah is located, was populated with Central Asians and other Asians. One gentleman said I must be a “Bohari Saudi.” I related this story to a Pakistani driver in Riyadh, and he confirmed that I looked as such.

So I had begun to wonder, Do I have Arab blood in me? I suppose it’s possible that I have ancestors from Central Asia. But what I think is a more plausible explanation is this. I do have Spanish heritage, with Spain having colonized the Philippines for almost four centuries. And we know that Arabs had a strong presence in Spain at points in history. Maybe some of my ancestors – from my great grandfather, and back – were Arab Spanish.

My friend Herdie, the most Arabic non-Arab I know.  Me, do I look Arab?

But did fate bring me to the Middle East, because somehow it knew that this region was my home?  I’ll tell you, my relationships with the Arabs in the region were more than just about friendships. There was a resonating connection we forged with each other. Honestly, I think they loved me, because I could understand them. I listened to them, with the kind of empathy in which I placed myself mind and spirit in their bodies. In turn, I loved them because they’d share their personal stories and helped me learn and feel comfortable. Over dinner, another Saudi gentleman mentioned having traveled to Makkah in the last few days of Ramadan one year. He had brought his son with him, but he felt the need to be in the mosque by himself, so he had him stay with his sister. He told me about being very uncomfortable sleeping on the floor the first few nights in the mosque. But by the fourth or fifth night, it was a sort of revelation he had. His eyes lit up in the dim light of the restaurant, as he related his story. He said he felt close to God, at that point. Americans don’t often talk about religion. The country is so secular in its separation of church and state that it’s outside business protocol to talk about God or religion. You just don’t do that. But there I was, with this Saudi gentleman, talking about this very thing – the first of many such open conversations I’ve had.

Such talk of God didn’t so much shape my religious ideology and values, but more, I think, it gave a forum for the things that were already inside me, then, to come forth. Interestingly, some friends have not only wondered whether I was Muslim, but have complimented me when I had said something that mirrored Islam. This is my story – I was born Catholic, but gave up this religion in my teens for reasons I talked about in a previous article. I had never studied Islam, except for reading a few articles and a couple of books on Arab culture and history. But clearly what was emanating from my heart and mind, naturally, was Muslim!

We did our best to accommodate prayer times, in scheduling our programs in the Middle East. Besides the curiosity and learning I had around this, I came to pine, quietly, at the relative lack of sacredness in American society. A Muslim friend tells me, his daily prayers help him not only to feel close to God, but also to rid himself of any negative feelings about anyone. How wonderful, I thought. Since arriving in the Middle East, I’ve incorporated prayer in my daily sitting meditation.

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Note:  A version of my article was posted on Relativity Online.    

Journeys to the Middle East: Part 1

Have you ever visited a place, and found the place changing your life before your very eyes? Is there such a thing as fate that happens in your life?

Six months after the horrors of the September 11th terrorist attacks (2001), I made my very first trip to the Middle East. And nothing about my life could ever be the same again. It wasn’t anything that I chose to do – but, as I’ve come to see, a thing that somehow was chosen for me. What’s more, to feel so much at home in the Middle East was something I could not have imagined in a million years.  I was a privileged boy from Manila, who became an American citizen from Chicago and who had rarely traveled outside the North American borders.

How and why does a Filipino-American feel at home in Middle East? I’ll tell you the story.

Diplomat Radisson, Bahrain, Friday brunch (2004).

I was working for a US-based international consulting firm, and a colleague contacted me about a consulting project in Bahrain – leadership programs. Apparently my General Manager had assigned me to be part of this team, because of the successes I’ve had in consulting on such programs – and because, I imagined, he knew I was ‘game’ to travel to some place new. At first, I had no idea where Bahrain was on the map. So, yeah, it was new alright!

The client was Saudi Arabian, the biggest oil producer in the world. And, collectively, the projects we were doing for them came to be among the top two or three projects that our firm was doing worldwide. Fairly quickly, I was involved in something that had high visibility in the firm – not just because of the business potential of working with this client, but also because there was quite a stir in the American media and public about the fact that the majority of the terrorists were Saudi.

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The trip from Chicago, through Amsterdam, then to Bahrain in March 2002 was interminable. We arrived in the middle of the night, tired but too restless to fall asleep. Our client planned to take the team out for lunch, so he met us at the hotel. The noonday sun was way too brilliant for my eyes, even while standing inside the gilded lobby of the Intercontinental.

Well before this trip, we were oriented to Arabic culture and trained on how this project was going to be different from others we had done. We were schooled, for example, to never show the soles of our shoes, and this meant that we were to keep our feet on the floor whenever we sat with our client. On our first meeting, I sat nervously like this, upright with a stiff back and as alert as possible in the haze of jet lag and sleeplessness. We were also told not to eat with our left hand, so even lunch and dinner were, at first, an awkward experience, as I kept my left hand on my lap and ate with my right hand.

Further, we were not to extend our hand to shake an Arab lady’s hand, unless she extended it herself first. Remember, we were working with a client from a country that was among the most conservative and strict in the Islamic world. So, knowing this, I took these cultural lessons further and made sure that I made no eye contact with Saudi ladies (many were completely covered). I also made sure that there was absolutely no risk of brushing up against them. Now, don’t think I was taking this to an extreme. I was spot-on with the extra caution I was taking. In fact, our security detail in Riyadh, for another Saudi project, told me that, yes, even the slightest, incidental contact with a Saudi lady could land me in jail.

David, one of my consultant pals.  We ventured to the Van Gogh Museum on our first layover in Amsterdam.

Thankfully, all such nervousness passed in short order. I quickly and markedly came to relish my trips to the Middle East – which were about once a month, lasting two to six weeks.

I found the diverse people in the region to be the friendliest I’ve known, without question. For example, I was in Kuwait, and had a business meeting scheduled with a prospective partner. But the taxi driver didn’t know exactly where the office building was, so without speaking English, he vaguely pointed me ‘somewhere over there.’ After walking around for a few minutes, and running late for my meeting, I walked inside the Kuwait Finance House for help. The Arab gentleman at the front desk must’ve seen on my face that I was lost. Well, he not only gave me directions, but he actually got up and walked me to the office building! No way would this happen in Chicago.

What’s more, the Saudi managers we were working with often invited us for dinner at their homes. I had my first ‘dose’ of their hospitality – and further lessons on their culture – when a colleague and I arrived to find our host’s wife and daughters separated from anything we did. The four of us, including his brother, had a lavish spread for dinner, which his wife had prepared for us. An Omani manager I was coaching offered to show me around Muscat, as our visits were often consumed with work so I had had very little chance to tour the city. In Dubai, too, I easily made friends, in just a matter of a day or two, during extended layovers, for example, from Riyadh to Muscat. For instance, an Emirati gentleman took me out for dinner, the first time we met, and we talked for hours as if we were brothers.

Interestingly, I’ve had a number of friends tell me that people in the region weren’t very friendly. So they’d look at me with a fair amount of skepticism, when I kept saying the opposite.