Dealing with animals in Dubai Airport

By animals I mean rude people.

I was reading this post on Omanymous's blog (which is an awesome blog by the way) and it reminded me of an incident I had in Dubai airport back in 2006.

I was flying back to Oman for my holidays. After a 10 hours flight Christchurch to Singapore, 13-18 hours transit in Singapore airport (can't remember how long but every time I spend no less than 12 hours) and another 7 hours on the plane I finally arrived in Dubai. I think my flight was not until another 8 am in the morning and I had another 7-8 hours in the airport. By then I was an expert in utilizing my time in the airport so 7 hours wait was nothing for me. I read a book and reconfirmed my belief that Dubai airport is nothing compared to Singapore's solely for the disgusting state of the bathrooms there. Anywaaay, I chilled out until the counter was open to get my boarding pass for my connecting flight to Muscat.

I must've went there only half an hour after the counter opened and there was already a queue. I stood in the queue waiting patiently and few minutes later a group of 7-10 came and sat in the corner with two of them in the queue just behind me. Those guys were Swahili, but not any Swahili. They were the african based ones who hardly spoke Arabic (I think only the two who stood behind me did) and had big beards with short trousers. The queue wasn't moving for over an hour and then started moving very slowly. I noticed as we kept moving those two kept moving closer and closer and they were pretty much standing next to me. I thought of telling them something but thought, come on there is no way they would want to jump the queue.. also am only one person while they are processing their whole groups passports..surely not.

Just before I reach the line I heard the guy from the back telling the one standing in the queue to go to the counter and not let me in (they said it in Arabic, I doubt they knew I spoke Arabic). I made the biggest mistake of trying to reason with him.. IN ARABIC... OMANI ARABIC. They said no we were before you. I said, ask the Omani girls in front of us they know I was ahead, the girls were walking away and ignored me. Then the dude comes out saying "Moo betesawi ya3ni? Inta min waayn asslan?"= "What you going to do? where are you even from?" in the manner you see Omanis talking to the cleaner in the mall or something (i.e. very insulting manner). After I told him to consult his conscience about lying and taking people's rights to no avail...ok f*ck it you go ahead and take my place.

The incident really angered me, I was upset about it for a whole week after I reached Oman. It made me feel even more depressed about my identity crises. What made this guy think he is better than me? Would he have treated me the same if I spoke to him in English or did he think he could play the "you're a foreigner ho ho ho" i.e. racist card because I spoke Omani Arabic? Was it because of the "Mambo Tanzania" t-shirt I was wearing?

The guy ended up holding the queue for another hour or so. All the passports he was holding were green, not a single red passport (Green = Tanzania, Red = Oman). The flight ended up being delayed due to the boarding tickets not being issued fast enough.. but I ended up reaching home safely alhamdullilah.

Suffice to say, I never wore that t-shirt again... It looked horrible anyway!

Gee I thought I could write an entertaining post like Omanymous, sorry I fail >_<