Sultan's Farm in Al Wathba, UAE

Recently a good man by the name of Sultan Al Q’basi invited me to go out to his camel farm in the desert in an area of the UAE called Al Wathba. I accepted his invitation and he picked me up in his pick-up truck. His little boy, Ali, was with him and I always enjoy children. What I discovered when we got to his farm was that I was spending time with true Bedouins, modern Bedouins, but real Bedouins. I used to look at the pictures in the National Geographic from years ago. My father had a collection going back to the thirties and the forties. I looked long and hard at those pictures and a strange desire to go to such a place and see such people was in me. I never thought I would actually go and find them.

The Bedouin left those pages long ago and now, in the UAE, they are wealthy and live in fine big Villas in the city, but the men I was with still keep something going of the old culture. They told me they go out to the farm almost every night like this, as we sat around the fire drinking gawa (Arabic coffee made with cardamom), dates, and fresh fruits while waiting for the servants to bring the chicken bryony. It had been a wonderful afternoon of finding out about camels and training falcons. When the Pakistani and Indian attendants brought the bryony on a large silver communal plate, the Arabs taught me how to eat with my fingers by mixing the yogurt in with the rice and chicken and wadding it up into a ball to eat by hand. They offered me a spoon, but I wanted to do it the way they did it. I felt rich. I felt that I was involved in a true experience of their culture that no tourist could ever really get. It was a wonderful sample of Arab hospitality. I loved the falcons, the camels, the kettles and teapots, the food, the night sky and the full moon, The sand and the desert expanding out seemingly forever. Every night? I thought, out here, every night with good friends and plenty of gawa, good manners, and sweet arid desert air. Now that is the good life.

There are so many prejudices Americans have about the Arabs, but my whole experience with them here in the UAE is that these are some of the most peace loving, kind, and generous people I have ever met.