The long-awaited Academy Award-bound movie, “Walk the Line” has just opened. Seeing the biopic about star singers Johnny Cash and June Carter caused me to recall a chance meeting with Cash and Carter in the Washington D.C National Airport over 20 years ago. I was traveling with a Saudi delegation to the United States and we were getting ready to board a plane. Suddenly walking the line to the next flight, Johnny Cash and June Carter appeared. I approached June Carter and asked her if she recalled an incident that took place in the early 1960s.
While attending college in North Dakota during the 1960s, I worked part-time as a bellman in a hotel to help pay for my college tuition. One night, a group of country singers who had appeared at a local concert, returned to my hotel where they were staying. That group included the Carter Family Singers with Mother Maybelle Carter and June Carter. As they were walking up the stairs, June Carter fainted and fell down the steps to the bottom. Mother Maybelle started screaming. I grabbed some smelling salts from a first aid kit, rushed over to June and, while holding her, applied the smelling salts under her nose. She woke up looked at me and said, “Thank you darling.”
I helped her to her room and the whole Carter family invited me into their suite. All the other stars from that evening’s show also came into the Carter room and they decided to have a party to cheer June up. She was suffering from exhaustion. June Carter said to me, “Please join us. You were so nice to help me when I wasn’t feeling well.” Since I was about to get off work, I spent the next couple of hours listening to June and the rest of the stars singing and enjoying each other while we all visited. They were all just nice country folks.
So at the Washington, DC airport June Carter said, “Sure I remember you darling. You carried me up to my room that night.” She then looked over at her husband, Johnny Cash who was dressed in black and said, “Johnny, come over here. I want you to meet a nice young man who helped me out many years ago.” Johnny came over to us and June told him the North Dakota story. He smiled and said that he would like to meet my friends.
I introduced him to the Saudis who were sitting in the departure lounge and he said to all of us, “June and I would like you all to come to Nashville and be our guests at our ranch there. You all seem like such nice folks and we’d like to show you some real Southern hospitality.” Unfortunately, our group was on a tight schedule and we had to decline his gracious invitation. However, both June and Johnny told us that if we ever got to Nashville, we should look them up and they would like to invite us to their ranch at any time.
Last week, I was again with a Saudi delegation. We were all part of a Saudi cultural and educational exhibit sponsored by Friends of Saudi Arabia at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas and a lecture series on Saudi-American relations at the same university. We proceeded from Texas to Orlando, Florida to have a similar event in the city of Disney. In both venues we experienced that same kind of Southern hospitality that June Carter and Johnny Cash showed us with many years ago. And the Saudi delegation returned the hospitality to our Southern hosts in Texas and Florida.
The Saudi exhibit featured aspects of life in Saudi Arabia. There were pictures and films and artifacts from the Bedouins and the Empty Quarter. There was even a traditional Saudi souk. The highlight of the exhibit was, however, Saudi hospitality. Every guest who came to the exhibit, the lectures and banquets was served traditional Saudi green coffee and dates, often by Saudi students dressed in their gutras and thobes. And all the members of the Saudi delegation visiting Texas and Florida were at the exhibit and other events greeting their American visitors and guests. So many of the American guests commented on the gracious hospitality and friendliness of their Saudi hosts.
And over and over again, we heard comments like, “Hey they’re a lot like us.” and “That Saudi hospitality is an awful lot like Southern hospitality.” The Saudis ceased being an image, usually negative, concocted by the media and started to become real human beings who are “a lot like us.”
More events of this same kind are being planned by Friends of Saudi Arabia, an American nonprofit organization dedicated to people-to-people activities between Saudis and Americans. The idea behind Friends of Saudi Arabia was conceived by Prince Abdulaziz ibn Abdullah about three years ago and the Saudi Friends of Saudi Arabia committee, made up of private Saudi citizens who now function as an advisory board to their American counterpart, has sponsored two people-to-people delegations led by President Bill Clinton to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
In the movie, “Walk the Line”, Johnny Cash played by Joaquin Phoenix and June Carter played by Reese Witherspoon portray again and again simple country-folk friendliness and courtesies which are so much a part of American culture. In the same way that Johnny and June got to meet Saudis many years ago and the Saudis experienced their Southern hospitality, thousands of people in Texas and Florida enjoyed meeting Saudis and experiencing Saudi hospitality over the last couple of weeks. Nothing beats people-to people activities to really get to know each other. And you know, Saudis really are “a lot like us”.
