They’re 'almost' people

Sitting in the small cubicle prayer room, some 50 meters adjacent to the front entrance of my international high school in Arabia, my classmate sat twirling his prayer beads in his hand. We all had our shoes off and had just washed ourselves as best we could in the small sink. While scrolling on his iPhone, he shuffled over to me, easier to do in the soft, flexible fabric of a traditional thobe, rather than in my stiff jeans. “Look,” he said. Glancing from mine to his phone, I saw he was watching an Instagram post of an American with a large following, one I happened to be following as well. “My Dutch friend sent me the same one,” I replied. 

The first few months after moving, I remember going fine; I acclimatized to the hot desert, and despite Covid, found socializing in a metropolis of towering skyscrapers facilitating. It was only after three months that I heard my Lebanese friend mention, while over at his family’s rented house in a reserved compound, that his mom disapproved at first of us “hanging out” due to my addiction to weed, presumably a consequence of my Dutch heritage. I had never smoked weed.

Later, separated only by a few weeks, I was reminded by a classmate that I dressed like a “poor white boy.” Funny, I had never been addressed as white before, probably because I never thought to note it. 

A month ago, I read Joris Luyendijk’s book “They’re Almost People” (published in English as “People like us”) about his time as a foreign correspondent in the Mediterranean harbors of the Middle East. It's a satirical title, meant to highlight our disconnected assumptions about what “those Arabs” are actually like. And as the region has enjoyed the media's brightest spotlight over the last two years, I feel the title no longer rings the same. Perhaps through my viewing of Palestinian Instagram accounts in Gaza, media influencers in Dubai dressed in traditional garments displaying a wealth of Swiss watches, or Saudi’s hosting of F1. They’re not “almost” people anymore; they’ve adapted to my language and my equipment. 

Consequently, it leaves those unable to do so tied to their own traditions, language, and equipment, as illegible to me. My time in their country left me to socialize with those more inclined to Westernization, while those not, remained hidden to me behind Arabic dialects and local schools. I picked up a few words, encouraged by my classmates' chuckling when I improvised them into my sentences, but did I really make an effort?

Historically, Western coercive assimilation probably carved my image of the Middle East between the people and the “almost.” Those who strove for Western modernism became the frontrunners in my eyes, perhaps not in theirs. Living in Utrecht again now, I feel those three years in the desert left me a sand-loving Brit, a T.E. Lawrence, eager to go back. Though what I have to show for it is a few words, a slightly darker complexion, and an inherent reproduction of my initial notion that, when I go back, I don’t need to make much of an effort to fit in. 

On Students' Viewpoint, UU students share their views with the rest of the university community. Connor, a Master's student in Media & Culture, is one of the columnists invited for this space. You can also read the perspectives of staff members on Staff's Viewpoint and click here to check out the columns by students and staff in Dutch.