“Listen,” said my friend the captain excitedly last night, “I have a story for you.”
This sentence was music to my ears because as usual I hadn’t written my article on time and the subject I had been mulling over for a week was proving too controversial to address even in my own reckless estimation.
“What happened?” I asked intently with uncharacteristic concentration.
“I was taking a flight back from Jeddah and when I got to my seat the guy objected to my sitting next to him.”
“That’s odd,” I commented. “Since when can’t you sit next to a guy?” I imagined the dramatic front-page headline, “National Airline Bans Same-Sex Seating” and a picture of little space capsules for passengers to crawl into underneath.
“Well, his wife and baby were sitting next to him and he didn’t want me near them,” he remarked.
I knew that the captain was going to launch into this huge tirade about how ridiculous the whole scenario was and how absurdly inconvenient and untenable such practices were. What’s more, I totally agreed with him.
I had flashbacks of my frequent flights between Jeddah and Riyadh where the plane would invariably take off late because of the inevitable game of musical chairs that we would have to endure. It used to make my blood boil that so many people with assigned seats would be moved around and inconvenienced to accommodate the whims of a single person.
Or on the flip side the sight of passengers being harassed because others objected to who they were sitting next to. On one flight a Pakistani gentleman found his seat next to that of two Saudi ladies and so he politely asked their permission before sitting down. They consented but a whole group of male passengers commanded him to “Yalla! Goom!” and “Get up!” hurling abuse at the poor guy. Or the equally ludicrous sight of a woman who had to sit at the end of a central row of men and was chastised for not refusing such a degraded position and offered free religious guidance by some of our more benevolent self-appointed vigilante.
“You should have complained,” I suggested expecting the captain to regale me with a story of frayed tempers and fistfights.
“No. Of course not. I didn’t have an issue with it,” he replied nonchalantly.
“So what happened?” I asked half-heartedly as I began to realize that this would never make it to print.
“While the airhostess was finding me somewhere else to sit I just turned to the gentleman and asked, ‘Do you speak English sir?’ and he said, ‘Yes’. I then asked, ‘Does your wife speak English?’ and to my surprise, even though she was completely covered up, she replied directly to me and said, ‘Yes’.”
“How did that help?” I asked disinterestedly in an attempt to abort the conversation.
“Well, I just explained to them that I totally respected their wishes and would gladly move to another seat if they felt more comfortable with that.”
But I also wanted to make it clear that I had come to Saudi Arabia because I love this country. I told them that I wasn’t here just for the money, but because I really liked the people, respected their values and traditions and felt at home here. I told them that I would be the last person to want to offend them, apologized for any offense caused and concluded by saying, ‘If you still want me to move then I totally understand.’”
“And then?” I goaded with hopes rekindled.
“They invited me to stay. Their baby was crying and I managed to calm him down. I even took him from his father and he fell asleep in my lap. We talked for a long time and when we landed I told them that I was so honored to have been allowed to sit next to them and to my amazement his wife got quite emotional and said, ‘No. Thank you. You really turned the situation around and we are so glad that we met you.’ That made my day,” he beamed.
“Yes, but don’t you find the whole thing a bit strange?”
“You are right,” he concurred. “But we have to remember that when we are in somebody else’s country we have to respect what it is that they stand for and not just try and impose our way upon them. What we really need to do is realize that we are guests in someone else’s land and that we have to abide by their culture and customs and not expect them to bend over backward to accommodate ours.”
I was actually quite taken aback by his statement and felt heartened that there are people here like The Captain who actually cared enough to empathize with, what probably seems from a western perspective, an outmoded value system. I know from personal experience of many experts who genuinely love this country. They want as much as we do to see positive change and progress and take as much pride as we do in the achievements and successes of our people.
Saudi Arabia is a very diverse country with deep-rooted traditions and strong cultural values. I have come across many foreigners who willfully adopt a snide and carping attitude toward the country and its people.
This superficial perspective disallows them from seeing the beauty of their surroundings and the incredible warmth and generosity of the locals.
There are many Saudis who adopt a similarly blinkered vision when traveling to the West misjudging the people and demeaning their culture.
Instead of adopting a patronizing tolerance of the manner in which people conduct themselves, it would be far more enriching to cultivate a keener understanding and genuine acceptance of things that may appear alien but nonetheless form the bedrock of a way of life. Respecting people’s right to live the way they see fit without projecting our own value system onto them would make us all better people. Myself included.
