Cross-Cultural Ways to Understand and Relate to the Middle East

Similarities between Arab Bedouins and Native American Tribes. The View from Inside the Tent

From afar, I suspect most Americans look at the Middle East as a dangerous, hopeless mess, unworthy of more time and attention because it is mystifying in its violent complexity. But living in Abu Dhabi, UAE, a peaceful, stable, and economically vibrant city on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, I tried to unravel the mysteries of the region.

Sleeping in an Arabic tent on the side of Jabal Shams, a mountain in northeastern Oman near Wadi Ghul, Oman’s Grand Canyon, I was reminded of a trip to the American West a few years earlier, when I slept in a Native American teepee on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. In both cases, I could hear the wind whipping through the camp and flapping the cloth “doors” of the tents. It inspired me to think of perhaps one way for Americans like myself to begin to understand and relate to the Middle East.

Imagine that there was no significant European colonization of North America, no “Trail of Tears,” and no deadly smallpox virus that wiped out hundreds of thousands if not millions of Native Americans. Imagine that the Native American tribes, some of them warring with each other, continued to grow, multiply, and develop into the 20th century in North America.

A friend from Abu Dhabi posted this meme to Facebook