The human experience offers us more perception and less reality. RELATIVITY OnLine’s own Editor in Chief takes us inside his journey into the desert. David Anthony Hohol’s tale of a Canadian farm boy’s Middle Eastern adventure is one of surprise and enlightenment and conversely, one that brings his heart closer to home than ever before.

Sometimes I wonder how I ended up in the middle of the desert. I grew up on the other side of the planet, in Canadian small town, on a farm in the middle of an ocean of prairies. It’s been years since I’ve lived there, but every time I return to Canada from another year in the Middle East, the vision in front of me is always the same.

After walking through the markets of Cairo, the streets of Amman, the ruins of Baalbek, and the bridges of Esfahan, I climb into my 1973 Chevy pick-up on a glorious summer morning, and make the short drive in from the family farm just north of town. As I make my way down Main Street, the little town has been awake for a while is bustling with activity. The bank and supermarket parking lots are full, mothers are dragging their little kids down the sidewalks, people are darting in and out of the pharmacy, and farmers drive by in their trucks, still half-loaded with hay bales.  As the warm sun sparkles through the thick white clouds, nearly everywhere I look, people have stopped for a quick chat. As a young boy, this was something I took for granted, but in a small town one can rarely take more than a few steps down the street without saying hello or stopping to talk to someone.  I’ve had the privilege of spending time in places ranging from less than one hundred to tens of millions people, and have developed the ability to feel comfortable in either. A small town, however, to those who have lived there to then occasionally return, is a place that will always feel safe, comfortable, and familiar. In other words, it will always feel like home. To this day, my hometown of Two Hills is the only place where my feet truly feel as though they’re firmly planted beneath me, and while under the soft and comforting wing of my humble beginnings, the rest of the world often seems like a noisy, cluttered, and fast-paced dream.

My journey started in academia and upon graduating from the University of Calgary, I took a job teaching at small local college. Not long after, I left for Asia and chose Tokyo as my initial destination. One of our planet’s most amazing cities, for more than three wonderful years the center of the Asian world was my home and I will forever be indebted to the Japanese people for teaching me the virtue of humility, the necessity of patience, and the importance of respect. After spending time in places like Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, and China, in the summer of 2004 I decided to leave Asia behind and make a rather adventurous move to the Middle East. I wanted to see for myself what made this part of the world tick and was drawn to it in a way that is difficult to explain; and with the world in a post nine-eleven haze, a part of me felt it was almost my duty to do so. I suddenly found myself living in the little country of the United Arab Emirates, in the booming city of Dubai. I was soon provided with an opportunity to learn about a part of the world so many have an endless amount of pre-conceived notions about. With Saudi Arabia to the west, Kuwait to the north, Iran to the East and Yemen to the south, I was right in the middle of a culture and lifestyle I knew little about and I sunk my teeth into all that surrounded me. So much of what I had been force fed via CNN and the North American mass media was debunked in less than a year.

When I first informed family and friends of where I was planning to go to next, almost everyone asked me why, told me to be very careful, and often enough even tried to change my mind. “What? You gotta be kidding Dave. Why? It’s so dangerous over there,” was something I heard over and over again. Time and again I was told that because I was a white Westerner, I was placing myself in harms way simply by choosing to live in the Middle East. “They don’t like anyone who isn’t Muslim, they’ll think you’re American, there’s wars breaking out all the time,” and more was directed my way, right up until the day I once again left Canada behind. I didn’t agree with what people had to say or I never would have come to this part of the world. With that said, even my liberal minded thought process was surprised at the openness and acceptance from the world that was soon to be my own.

The vast majority of the U.A.E. is indeed Muslim, but with that said, there are churches available for all those who need them and Christianity is practiced freely. In fact, after having traveled through a variety of Middle Eastern countries, I can safely say I was never once made to feel conspicuous about who I was. The average minded Middle Eastern citizen seems to be more aware than we are that a nation’s people and its government are two very different things. Most even counted the United States as a good country filled with good people, who just happen to be represented by a rather unfortunate administration. If only more of us Westerners could make the same distinction in terms of their corner of the world. Whether it was Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, UAE, Qatar, or Bahrain I was made to feel welcome and times, even treated like VIP of sorts. Even while venturing into Iran, and spending time in part of the so-called ‘Axis of Evil,’ I saw a church in downtown Tehran. Further still, the hospitality and kindness of the Persian people made me feel more welcome than I ever expected. Iranians were as hospitable and curious as any I’ve encountered in all my travels, only to be matched by the Jordanians in terms of kindness and hospitality. Whether it was an older gentleman introducing himself and spending nearly two hours walking me through the streets of the ancient capital of Esfahan, before taking me to a tea house and insisting on paying; or a young university girl, who asked me if she could practice her English by offering to answer any questions I had about her country, before taking me to her family’s shop and introducing me to her mother, I was made to feel like a true guest. This is certainly not what we see playing out on our televisions nearly every night. In my experience, no matter where I was in the Middle East, I was never once made to feel apprehensive and further still, was never expected to be anything expect who I am.  

With a population of just over five million, my current home base of the United Arab Emirates is a small country indeed, but when taking into consideration less than one million are actual Emirati nationals, it becomes even smaller. This means well over three million foreign workers, or expatriates, live there. Within a few weeks of my arrival, I’d met people from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, Ukraine, China, the Philippines, Iran, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Hungary, Turkey, Armenia, the United Kingdom, Australia, Belarus, Romania, the U.S.A and of course, a my beloved Canada. There is indeed a hierarchy in place steadfastly based on the immovable capitalistic pillars of education and finance. Those from G7 nations fill out the large majority of professional jobs, while those who stem from the poorest countries work as laborers, and the rest then fill out the many vocational possibilities that lie in between. The lifestyle choices of expats, most especially those from the upper tier, are thus readily supplied with all the trappings of Western culture. There are posh night clubs, low-key bars, casual pool halls, well stocked shopping malls, high end beach resorts, five star hotels, and upscale restaurants serving food from every conceivable corner of the world. Whether it’s The Dark Knight or Indiana Jones, you can catch the latest summer blockbuster at the Cineplex, after which you can grab a coffee at Starbucks or Mister Donuts. If fast food is your game Burger King, KFC, and McDonald’s outlets are located on every other street, with places like Chile’s or T.G.I. Friday’s readily available, if you want to take things up a notch. The Emirati nationals, an extremely likeable group of people, for the most part, stick to themselves. By extension, the country is an eclectic expat mix of race, religion, and values that result in making the UAE a most unique patch of earth.  

Following several years in Tokyo, the Arab world, a collectivity of 22 countries stretched throughout Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, has been my home for the last five years. We plan a return to Canada soon, but living here has quite simply changed me forever. I’m always telling my family and friends not to take what they see on their televisions and in their newspapers as the absolute truth. I also say the same to my Arab friends from countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, and the U.A.E. about the image of North American life they see on their televisions and in movies. One thing I know for sure is that the many souls on this amazing planet are all simply people, working hard, wanting the best for our children, and hoping for a better future. We all love laughter and take pride in who we are; we all cherish our families, and count dignity as paramount to life. All that is needed to bridge the gap between cultures is to remove the biased middle-man that is the mass media and replace it with simple exposure; simplicity is often the truest form of beauty and so much of the world has forgotten.

We can live our whole lives and not know who we really are, until we see the world through the eyes of another. When we first get to know someone, all we notice are the differences, but as time passes we begin to notice the similarities – that’s how any relationship begins.  My wife, a Jordanian National, and I, a Canadian from the Alberta Prairies, learn from one another everyday, as do all those around us. It’s at least a start, but then again every great journey will always start with a single step towards to that which we do not know. Sometimes in life we need to remove the glasses prescribed to us by the culture from which we stem and step closer. Give it a try. Afterwards, you just might be surprised at what you’ll find.