On my return from a recent visit to the United States, I was flooded with inquiries from people who wanted to know more about the situation there. They asked if I experienced any inconvenience during my stay and how the American people viewed us in Saudi Arabia in the light of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington.
Well, since those tragic events, the US is no longer the country we used to know. Americans, too, now view us differently. And the simple act of traveling to America has become an adventure in itself, one that merits being recorded.
Osama Bin Laden should be proud of having succeeded in erecting a thick wall of mistrust and suspicion between the Americans and us. It is an achievement that has pleased a broad base of extreme rightist Americans as well as the pro-Israeli lobby who are now doing everything possible to plug any cracks that might appear in the wall and to prevent it from coming down.
However, Bin Laden and the Israeli lobby notwithstanding, we have to deal with the United States, as an important world power despite our wide differences with it over its Middle East policy. America continues to enjoy a substantial share in our country’s economic and development activity.
There is also cooperation in political and military affairs. Further, we are not its only “ally” that has policy differences with it. Japan and France, for instance, have them. They clash with Washington at international forums on many issues, particularly economic and environmental. But that does not prevent them from doing business with a country that accounts for fifty percent of the global economy.
We may get angry, extremely angry, with Washington and its leaders, many of whom have suddenly developed a touch of religious fanaticism and ultranationalistic fervor. They don’t have to put on the Taleban turbans to show these tendencies; they can well be concealed under dark suits and fashionable neckties. Yet, we have no option but to continue dealing with America — albeit carefully and cautiously.
The US is a mighty country. I found that might more evident in a city like New York with its busy streets and people who seem to be in an endless race, everyone is running in a different direction. New Yorkers discuss business while crossing the streets of a city famous for its yellow taxis. You have to move quickly and jump into the taxi the moment you see a passenger coming out of it, otherwise someone else will do. Outside restaurants, people queue up for a seat while those inside are either busy munching away at a midday meal or hurriedly preparing to return to work trying to wipe off a spot of ketchup that has stained their papers. Outside the express service offices are parked many trucks ready to take away parcels and letters destined to all parts of the world. Some of them may be on their way to corporate clients in Jeddah and Riyadh.
I sat in a crowded restaurant listening to New Yorkers chatting loudly while watching the CNN news. They were reading the instant scripts of what was being reported; hearing was not possible in these conditions.
Maybe, with their endless movement and action, the New Yorkers wanted to remind those who had threatened to reduce them to poverty by destroying their economy on that black Tuesday that they were still there. It is obvious that America’s strength does not lie under the rubble of the World Trade Center; it is to be found in a successful system capable of adapting itself to eventualities, exceptional circumstances and emergencies, both short term and long term.
While having these thoughts, I recalled my childhood days during the Haj season in my birthplace, Madinah. At the town souk, I used to bring the homemade midday meal to my father’s cloth shop where he shared it with his workers. Work was nonstop and the only time the market would close was for prayer. I remembered watching Yemeni laborers reeling under the heavy loads of garments they carried on their backs while negotiating their way through the narrow streets teeming with pilgrims and shoppers, shouting at people to give way. As soon as the shops got emptied of their goods, new consignments arrived to fill the shelves. My father accepted all kinds of currencies brought in by pilgrims. If no agreement could be reached on the exchange rate, he would send me to the nearby moneychanger where the money was quickly changed into the local currency, the Saudi riyal. No documents, no complications, everything was done on trust. Deals were quickly struck with the pilgrims on the price of the goods they had brought with them.
It was free trade with no export or custom restrictions. It was this that, later, came to be known as market economy”, one of the pillars of modern globalization and a driving force behind the success of a city like New York.
The season in Madinah lasted for a few weeks but, during that short period, a trader would make profits equaling that of a whole year.
In New York, it is an all-year season. It is thus necessary to ask ourselves in which camp we want to be: a Kandahar-Taleban camp that relies on UN handouts or a New York camp that, right now, has the upper hand and is ready to give others part of its surplus?
