Adventures to the World’s Hidden Corners: The Musings of an Architect

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.

—Confucius

The Musings of An Architect

ADVENTURES

TO THE

WORLD’S

HIDDEN

CORNERS

Ray C. Hoover III

Copyright © 2023 Ray C. Hoover III.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5126-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5125-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5124-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023919283

Archway Publishing rev. date: 01/15/2024

To those who inspire:

Lina Jones (Miss Lina)

Ray and Bette Hoover

Genevieve Lachmanek

Frank Beckum

Ray Stainback, Tom Ventulett, Bill Thompson

And most of all:

Lucy Hoover

And to the hundreds of our adventure-loving friends, colleagues, and family members

who shared many once-in-a-lifetime experiences with us.

Contents

Preface

Introduction: New Awakenings

Chapter 1. Dubai, the City of Gold

Beginning a New Chapter

Adjusting to Daily Life in Dubai

Where the World’s Talent Converges

Shabnam Sheikh: Bridging Four Worlds

A Young Afghani Carpet Merchant

An American Thanksgiving: Overlooking the Arabian Desert

Chapter 2. Middle Eastern Adventures

Cruising Ancient Egypt’s Nile River

The Sultanate of Oman: Muscat and Shalala

Breaching Istanbul’s History

Awkwardly Comfortable in Medina, Saudi Arabia

A Final Thought on Dubai and the Middle East

Chapter 3. The Levant: At the World’s Crossroads

Israel and Jerusalem: The Most Conflicted Place on Earth

Lebanon and Beirut: Hollyhocks and Razor Ribbon

Jordan and Petra: The Lost City of the Nabateans

Chapter 4. Bewildering Asia

India, and Getting Lost in the Himalayas

Imperial China

Chapter 5. Southeast Asia Insights

Thailand: The Land of a Thousand Smiles

Vietnam and Cambodia: In Reflection

Chapter 6. Tales from the BlackBerry

Day 3 in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2010: A City of Many Contradictions

Alexandria, Egypt: Egyptian Chaos

Mind the Gap: London

Chapter 7. European Encounters

Cold War Intrigue in East Berlin

Lost on the Matterhorn

Yuletide on the Danube

Chapter 8. Around Europe’s Edges

Ancestral Ireland

Greece: Rediscovering Ancient Athens

Iceland: The Land of Fire and Ice

Discovering the Baltics

Chapter 9. Atlanta Vagabonds Invade Europe;

Local Vineyards Prosper

Chapter 10. On African Safari

Chapter 11. Down Under in Australia

Chapter 12. South America’s Incas

Peru and Machu Picchu

Chapter 13. North America, Far Away

Two Different Jamaicas

Cruising into a New Millennium

Exploring Alaska’s Panhandle

Rafting the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon

Yellowstone: From Fire to Ice

Chapter 14. Antarctica: The White Continent

From Jungles to Icebergs

Afterword

One Last Musing

Acknowledgments

Preface

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

—Marcel Proust

When Granddaughter Kerry was four, she asked, Mommy, why do Grandma Lucy and Papa Fish travel so much? (Yes, my grandchildren call me Papa Fish.)

Elizabeth’s answer: That’s just what they do. Elizabeth was indeed correct. It was our destiny. In spring of 1970, as Lucy and I watched a steady stream of planes from the observation deck at Atlanta’s international airport, we became engaged. A year later, within minutes after our Murrysville, Pennsylvania, wedding reception on June 19, 1971, in a blue Pontiac LeMans, we began our first trip together as newlyweds.

My fascination with travel began early, inspired by great teachers and family. A good friend observed, The understanding, acceptance, and wonder travel engenders cannot be matched by anything else. He was right. With family and friends, travel remains the most rewarding way to experience the globe’s many extraordinary destinations.

After six million miles and almost two thousand trips to seven continents, sixty-five countries, and fifty states, with nine separate passports, whose four hundred twenty-one pages are filled with thousands of stamps and visas, and with more than fifteen thousand slides and one hundred ten thousand digital photos as evidence, we’ve learned that our most memorable travel experiences have been those we shared with those closest to us.

When the last of our three children graduated from high school to begin a new chapter in his life, Lucy and I started another chapter in our lives as empty nesters. Instead of reducing the amount we traveled, we increased it exponentially. During our first thirty years together, our adventures were limited to the United States and the more well-traveled and popular western European countries. After our kids left home for college, we were no longer tethered to their schedules and activities but were given newfound time and freedom. With the global expansion of my architectural practice, especially after relocating to Dubai in 2009, the stunning city in the United Arab Emirates along the Arabian Gulf, many new opportunities for adventure opened.

Our Dubai move was a transition of another kind. In Dubai, Lucy added another chapter to her thirty-plus-year teaching career, working as a frequent substitute teacher at the American School of Dubai (ASD), one of the world’s best K–12 schools, with tuition rivaling that of any top-tier US university.

For four thousand years, the Arabian Peninsula’s trade and transportation were focused on its western shore along the Red Sea. But over the past few decades, much has changed. Now finance and transportation are concentrated on the Arabian Peninsula’s eastern coast, along the Arabian Gulf. Having taken place over the course of fewer than fifty years, the transformation has been phenomenal. A once tiny fishing village on a small meager creek at the edge of the globe’s largest desert is now home to the world’s busiest gateway for international travelers. Almost ninety million passengers pass through Dubai’s two sprawling airports yearly. For thirteen of those years, Lucy and I were among them.

From Dubai’s strategic location, we were within four to six hours of some of the world’s most intriguing hidden corners and unique destinations. With Dubai as our new portal, we learned to appreciate our world as a rich mosaic of diverse cultures whose peoples had fascinating traditions and who lived surrounded by stunning natural environments. We realized that what we saw was less critical than what we experienced and whom we shared those experiences with. Although more than sixty-five hundred languages, six hundred fifty ethnicities, and two hundred seventy nationalities separate the globe’s peoples, the love of family and community unites us all. We discovered that the value of travel is not to see the world through only our own eyes but to see it through the eyes of those we encountered.

Adventures to the World’s Hidden Corners was never intended to serve as either a guidebook or a personal travel journal of all the places we have visited. Rather, I see it as a collection of our more profound experiences in some of the world’s more unusual places, often under unique circumstances with our adventure-loving friends and family.

When younger, I would often focus on collecting photographic evidence to show that I’d been there, done that, checking off items from a personal bucket list. But no longer. Now, Lucy and I look to see far beyond the visual image of the destination. Instead, we look to be moved by the emotion of being there. The experience is not merely about the geography of a place; it is also about the spirit derived from the place and its people. Many of the most memorable trips we have taken were those that were unexpected and unplanned. In other destinations, the natural environment, the weather, and striking landscapes were as much of the story as the destination itself.

For us, the world has been a great teacher, our travels being the classrooms, and the experiences being our textbooks. Lucy and I have been immensely rewarded. Our adventures have changed our perspective and understanding, shaping all that we have become. We have been privileged to have seen and explored much, but much more remains to be seen and shared.

And we can’t wait.

Adventures await in the world’s hidden corners.

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.

—Mark Van Doren

Photo credit: Ray C. Hoover Jr.

Introduction

New Awakenings

Awakening to a Lifetime Ahead

Oakland, Alabama

Tuesday, August 2, 1955, 9:00 a.m.

It was only midmorning but already uncomfortably hot. A beige-gray antique floor-mounted General Electric pedestal fan turned from side to side but provided little relief from the stifling heat and humidity of an Oakland, Alabama, summer. The old fan labored mightily on its highest setting, loudly whirling back and forth with an audible click after it completed each cycle.

A six-year-old boy sat impatiently waiting for his grandmother’s break from her morning chores. She had promised him a story. His mother had already admonished him once to be more patient, but he found that difficult. It seemed he had been waiting for hours—not the fifteen minutes in reality. To him, it was an intolerable eternity.

His grandfather had already been up for hours, having risen at four thirty in the morning, long before daybreak, to prepare the breakfast he left for the rest of his family before going out to tend to his cotton fields and cattle. The youngster looked forward to the warmed-up biscuits his grandmother had made from scratch the evening before. Those biscuits slathered in butter and covered in sorghum molasses would evoke a lifelong connection with his grandparents.

Since sunrise, his grandmother had also been up to begin the noon meal they called dinner, which confused her young grandson. He called the meals at that time of day lunch. Noonday dinners in rural Alabama farming communities were feasts and not the modest midday sandwich lunches he was familiar with. Each day his grandparents’ table was filled with so many dishes of fresh farm-raised vegetables that it was hard for him to keep count. There were plates filled with corn bread or warm buttermilk biscuits, farm-cured ham, and/or fried chicken, and sometimes all four. Ice-cold pitchers of sweet tea and a gallon of chilled buttermilk were always present. But dinner was still a few hours away. First, there would be the stories his grandmother had promised.

Finally, she joined him, wiping her hands on her pink and white gingham apron.

The six-year-old sat close to her, mesmerized as she read Bible stories from the children’s book borrowed from her church’s Sunday school. He adored his grandmother, and since he was her first grandchild, they had always had an extraordinary bond. The maroon crushed-velvet sofa they sat on had a slight but not unpleasant musty smell. While waiting, he had been fascinated by how the fabric’s silky surface would change color as he brushed his fingers over it. The weather was unyieldingly hot and even getting hotter. Nothing could take his attention away from the torrid August summer heat except his grandmother’s stories. He remained silently transfixed as she read, concentrating on the distant mysterious destinations illustrated in the book before him.

That young boy was me.

My grandparents were great storytellers and pillars of their small farming community. Oakland had two country stores, a cotton gin my grandfather managed, a Methodist church, and a small park shaded by tall oaks where the men played dominoes. Everyone fondly called my grandparents, who were loved and respected by the entire community, Mr. Ed and Miss Lina.

My grandmother Jones loved to share meaningful stories of her deep Christian faith. A retired teacher, she turned a page to reveal an illustration of Jerusalem’s ancient Golden Gate, which Jesus first entered on a donkey to be eventually celebrated in Christendom as Palm Sunday. She shared another of Jesus kneeling with his hands folded and resting on a boulder, soulfully looking to heaven, surrounded by olive trees, praying in the garden of Gethsemane. Ever since she was a little girl, she had dreamed of visiting these places but admitted that she never would. Seeing I was captivated, she quickly said, But someday maybe you will, for both of us. Dutifully, I naively promised that I would, but silently, I wasn’t so sure.

Over the years, my grandmother Jones shared many other stories about Egypt’s pyramids, baby Moses floating to safety in a basket along the river Nile, and when the Babylonians expelled the Jews from Jerusalem. Who could ever imagine that her grandson would visit these places one day?

But after more than half a century after that day of sitting with her on that maroon-colored velvet sofa, I fulfilled my promise to her. I would climb through a long narrow passage leading to the secret burial chamber of Khafre’s monumental pyramid on the Giza Plateau and sail in a felucca on the same waters the infant Moses floated upon. I would walk through King Nebuchadnezzar’s Ishtar Gate (reassembled in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum), which, twenty-five hundred years earlier, the Israelites passed through as Babylon’s captives. And Lucy and I would walk silently among the same ancient olive trees where Jesus prayed at Gethsemane a few moments before Judas betrayed him.

My grandmother’s stories awakened something—a restlessness, a drive, to see and experience more, as I was not content to stay put but had been instilled with an insatiable curiosity to discover what was around the corner, in the next town or state, across the border of another country, or on a different continent across a vast ocean. Neither she nor I could know in the summer of 1955 that her stories would launch me on a personal quest to go see some of the globe’s most fascinating places and hidden corners.

From an early age, inspired by my grandmother and later by teachers, I developed a sort of calling to see and experience as much of the world as possible. When my family was relocated from eastern North Carolina to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1963, that calling intensified. I was about to step through a portal and be introduced to another world, far different from Princeton, North Carolina, the small rural community we had just left behind.

Murrysville, Pennsylvania

Thursday, June 6, 1963, 10:00 a.m.

The family’s yellow 1955 Buick Roadmaster had just parallel parked on the street in front of the Murrysville Real Estate office. My dad was inside, picking up the keys to the house he had purchased just a few weeks before. He had changed jobs and had been commuting to Pittsburgh, leaving Princeton on Sunday afternoon and returning late on Friday two weeks later. While Dad was away, Mom stayed with us in North Carolina as my little sister and I completed the 1962–63 school year. We didn’t know it then, but alone with three children, it had been difficult for her.

We had just driven for two long days, and my sister, my little brother, and I were uncertain about the new house and a community we had never seen. So was my mother; unable to accompany my father on any of his earlier trips, she hadn’t seen it either. We could only study Dad’s half dozen black-and-white Polaroid photos he had taken after buying the house. This was going to be an adventure for Mom too. With the move from the flat rural farmland of eastern North Carolina to the rolling hills of western Pennsylvania, the trajectory of my family’s future forever changed.

The move opened my eyes to much more than tobacco and cotton fields, farming, and flat loblolly pine coastal plain landscapes. Pittsburgh had the world’s highest number of steel bridges and was an energetic city of almost two million people with excellent museums, professional sports teams, and heavy industry. There were mountains, broad rivers, and hardwood forests. Princeton, a small farming town of six hundred, was comfortable, slower-paced, and secure. Pittsburgh was fast-paced, intense, and exhilarating.

The people there had bizarre last names, such as Czyzewski, Delissio, Gebrosky, Hornyak, Jankovick, Lukowski, Oslosky, Porczak, and Mastorocich, to mention only a few. Those family names from faraway Italy, Poland, Russia, and central Europe sounded weird to our ears and were impossible for us to pronounce. The contrast between the two places couldn’t have been more stark. The transition could have been difficult, especially for three southern-raised children, but my parents had conceived a plan to introduce us to our new home in this strange new area of the country. Each weekend that first summer, they cleverly took us to explore something far different from anything we had left behind. My parents’ plan was ingenious—and it worked.

Beginning an Age of Personal Discovery

Stretching for miles along the north bank of the Monongahela River, the massive Jones and Laughlin steelworks were still belching dense clouds of thick, gray polluting smoke. Today, people are horrified at the amount of pollution they produced. But as a fourteen-year-old from a small rural farming community, I found those hulking structures fascinating and the intense energy of the city that surrounded them inspiring.

Pittsburgh is where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers converge to form the Ohio River. During the French and Indian War in 1754, a young colonist major loyal to the British Crown failed to capture the French’s Fort Duquesne, where those three rivers meet. That major was George Washington. Soon after, the first baby of English descent was born at the newly constructed Fort Pitt, the structure that became the namesake of the new settlement that formed around it. We believe that the baby was one of Lucy’s ancestors. And within another five decades, twenty-nine-year-old Captain Meriwether Lewis contracted a boatbuilder to construct a keelboat, the flagship of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery.

Seventy years after Lewis departed Pittsburgh to rendezvous with William Clark downstream in Louisville, Kentucky, to begin their epic journey, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and megabanker Andrew Mellon became titans of US industry. Pittsburgh played a strategically important role in opening the young country to the horizons that lay beyond. It did the same for a fourteen-year-old. It was on August 31, 1803, that Meriwether Lewis began his Corps of Discovery in Pittsburgh, and it was on June 6, 1963—one hundred sixty years later—that I started on my own journey.

Mill Run, Pennsylvania

Late June 1963

As I was walking along a shaded gravel path from the visitors’ parking area, I noticed that the sweet scent of blooming western Pennsylvania mountain laurel was hanging in the air. Sunshine streaming through the tall tree canopy over our heads created pools of dappled light on the ground, guiding us to something special. Even in summer, the air was cool and crisp under the shade of the forest canopy. This was much different from the sticky-hot North Carolina summers I had grown up with. We could hear the crunch of gravel with each step and the occasional chirp of a bird flitting among the laurels. Bear Run Creek was to our right, directing us to our destination, which had yet to reveal itself. But we knew it was not all that far ahead now; we could hear the waterfall. Soon, the path made a sweeping turn to the right. Frank Lloyd Wright’s stunning architectural masterpiece Fallingwater was before us. Suspended over a picturesque waterfall, it was spectacular!

To say the experience was a profound one for me personally would be a vast understatement. That day would set the course for my academic and professional future.

Franklin Regional Junior High School, Ninth Grade Spanish Class

Fall 1963

The first moment I entered the classroom, I was intrigued. Mrs. Lachmanek’s ninth grade Spanish class in September 1963 awakened something in me—not because of the Spanish language, but because of that day’s subject, the Inca Empire. The black-and-white photos on Mrs. Lachmanek’s classroom bulletin board of Machu Picchu’s iconic ruins were captivating. A Peruvian by birth, Genevieve Lachmanek was intensely proud of her country’s culture and was intent on sharing it with her students. While the language was academically the primary focus of the class, Peru’s history and its ancient architecture intrigued me the most. To ensure that we appreciated much more than the mere fundamentals of the Spanish language, Mrs. Lachmanek asked each of us to research an aspect of Peruvian culture and make a presentation on it at the end of the school year. My classmates all wrote papers. I built a model of the fabled Lost City of the Incas instead.

Based on those classroom photos, I made a series of scaled drawings and intricate diagrams as the model’s construction documents. The materials would be plaster of paris, balsa wood, and a blended palette of paint. Quickly morphing from a simple crafts project, the endeavor evolved into a full-fledged construction site in my dad’s basement workshop. Bags of the principal component, plaster of paris, were hauled in by wagon—but there was never enough. Because I was continuously running out, my parents often returned to the local hardware store to retrieve more. Once I’d mixed it with water, multiple cascading terraces of the moldable snow-white material would rise on the model’s heavy plywood base. With my model weighing dozens of pounds, the Incas’ mysterious city slowly reemerged.

Constructing the weighty model left an indelible impression on this teenager’s consciousness, imprinting a never-to-be-forgotten image of the mountain citadel. After that ninth grade Spanish class project, I would often try to envision what it would be like to stand amid the ruins the model attempted to represent. Fifty-two years later, I would finally get the chance to find out.

Georgia Tech School of Architecture

September 1967

The first day of architectural history class was terrifying. But whether we liked it or not, Professor Beckum would ensure we came to appreciate the thousands of history’s most significant architectural achievements—or else! His method was to drill his first-year students by giving nonstop lectures accompanied by rapid-fire barrages of black-and-white images flashed on the large screen in Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture’s darkened auditorium.

After experiencing Fallingwater for the first time, even as a fourteen-year-old boy, I knew I would someday become an architect. Four years later, Georgia Tech would accept the responsibility of helping to make me into one. But first, Tech insisted that all its incoming design students be enlightened on the contributions of the greatest architects in human history, beginning with the dawn of civilization. That task fell to Frank Beckum. His legendary architectural history lectures were a rigorous academic boot camp showcasing architecture’s most significant milestones over the past five thousand years.

Those lectures were then neither recorded nor published in a detailed syllabus. Before affordable portable tape recorders and smartphones, we had only paper notebooks, ballpoint pens, and pencils to frantically sketch what appeared on the screen before us. To prepare, we invested countless hours in memorizing much of the 1,366-page A History of Architecture by Sir Banister Fletcher, which I still refer to more than fifty years after the frenzy of those infamous classes. On command, Beckum’s students had to instantly recall an innumerable litany of buildings, including the dates they were built, who designed them, and their architectural significance.

Twenty years after Professor Beckum’s classes, I still had recurring nightmares about the many all-nighters my classmates and I pulled to cram for his midterm and final exams. In a state of near-panic, we had to record the structure’s who, what, and where within the few seconds the slide remained on the screen. Those exams were agonizing and nerve-racking. If I could survive Professor Beckum’s classes, I promised myself I would someday visit the places whose photographs so rapidly flashed before the eyes of a whole auditorium full of shell-shocked first-year architecture students. It was a tortuous first year. To no one’s surprise, the engineers on campus would often refer to Georgia Tech’s architecture program as archi-torture.

Years after graduation, when I saw Frank, now a good friend, I once grumbled that I had found his courses impossibly difficult. With a self-satisfied grin, he just laughed without either offering an apology or expressing regret. Then, in the classic drawl of a southern gentleman, he retorted, speaking as rapidly as he switched slides, Well, Ray, I don’t understand. You did quite well as I recall.

My response was equally swift in coming: But, Frank, what about the nightmares I still have?

Professor Beckum just smiled, content he had done his job well. Indeed, he had.

Georgia Tech School of Architecture, Fifth-Year Design Studio

March 10, 1972, 3:00 p.m.

My parallel bar and triangle sped across the drafting table’s surface as the latest iteration of my thesis concept materialized. But my concentration was rudely broken when a classmate’s shout reverberated across the third-floor design studio: Hoover, there’s a call for you. It’s some guy. The call had come in to one of the two pay phones adjacent to the design lab. I was annoyed by what I saw to be an unforgivable interruption. It was my last year at Tech, less than three months before graduation. For months I had been self-absorbed in my terminal thesis, designing a hypothetical new city in south DeKalb County, Georgia, dedicated to helping those with medical, psychological, and physical challenges adapt to meet the demands of contemporary society. The project was intentionally massive in scale and admittedly naive in its mission, but it was monumental in scope.

There was no way some meaningless phone call would interrupt my latest burst of creative energy. Without raising my head, I shouted, I’m too damn busy. Tell him to call back! I remained bent over, drawing for two more hours, until my back and head throbbed.

Then as I stood to stretch, another student shouted, Hoover, you have a call. He said he had called earlier. I again was highly annoyed, but at least this guy was persistent, and I needed a break.

When I answered, the voice said, This is Ray Stainback. The blood instantly drained from my head. I thought, Oh no! What have I done?

Ray’s firm, Thompson, Ventulett, and Stainback (TVS), was the hot new firm in Atlanta and at the top of my list to interview. Now I was screwed. TVS had a reputation for demanding the highest level of design and was known as an excellent firm for young architectural talent. I feared I’d blown any chance of employment with TVS. But thankfully, I hadn’t.

Within a week of those two calls, Ray reviewed my portfolio, introduced me to the firm’s leadership, and offered me a position—which I accepted on the spot. Ray Stainback was a great mentor. He, Tom Ventulett, and Bill Thompson became wonderful friends of mine. Answering that phone call and joining TVS proved to be the best two professional decisions I have ever made, both serving as the catalyst for many adventures ahead.

Years later, Ray enjoyed telling the story about calling an incredibly arrogant Georgia Tech architecture student from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who had the inexcusable audacity to demand his future employer call him back.

I’m so glad that he did.

Tell me, and I forget; teach me, and I may remember; involve me, and I learn.

—Benjamin Franklin

Pilgrims from all over the world were making their way to the place deemed the pearl of the Middle East. Its buildings, like towering pillars, tested the sky’s limit. People of all colors, ethnicities, creeds, and social statuses came bearing money, knowledge, or experience in order to build their legacies in the new kingdom sprouting out of the desert.

—Soroosh Shahrivar

Chapter 1

Dubai, the City of Gold

2003–2016

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Thursday, February 20, 2003, 6:00 p.m.

The evening is near, the best time of the day to be in Dubai. The sun’s bright golden disk slowly descends behind the silhouetted old wind towers along Dubai Creek, known to locals simply as the creek. A calm has settled over its ancient waters. The humidity in the air hangs heavy in the City of Gold. Right on cue, the chorus from the many nearby mosques begins its beckoning melodic harmony. Sunset on Dubai Creek is alluring and mystical. The beautiful Islamic call to prayer, the adhan, has begun. Echoing along the creek, the sounds of the adhan softly reverberate between the old and new structures, blending into an exotic peaceful symphony. The experience is both comforting and soothing, while also strangely distant and unworldly. The first time I heard the adhan, I knew home was far away. I had been transported somewhere profoundly different and hauntingly memorable.

The creek is the soul of this city, where an ancient fishing settlement first emerged thousands of years ago and where early traders sailing from Persia first landed. This is where the place we now know as Dubai was born. Though the city we see today and its country, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is new, this destination on the Arabian Gulf is ancient and steeped in a rich history.

I heard my first adhan on the creek in 2003, a few days after a grueling thirty-two-hour journey from Atlanta to Dubai via Detroit, Amsterdam, and Abu Dhabi. I will never forget it. On that first journey and every trip after, including my last on December 8, 2016, I would return at sunset. Whether strolling along the creek’s banks, or shuttling across the Gulf aboard one of many small abra water taxis with people sitting shoulder to shoulder, or gazing across the Arabian Gulf from atop one of the city’s architectural icons, I find that the adhan at sunset is magical. The experience reconnects me with this city and its culture, and with this part of the world.

Oh, No! Not the Middle East!

Five Days Earlier: Saturday, February 15, 2003, Early Afternoon

I’ll admit it—I was concerned. It had been fifteen months since nineteen terrorists struck the United States on September 11, 2001. US military ground forces were in Afghanistan, and hostilities had been building to a crisis level between the American and Iraqi governments. An imminent strike by US-led coalition forces was anticipated. And I was planning my first trip to the Middle East, I realized that my timing was less than ideal. The State Department had not restricted Americans from traveling to the UAE, but tensions in the region were high and intensifying.

Yes, I was worried—not about my and my colleagues’ safety, but about my mother finding out.

For years, my mother and Lucy talked daily by phone, and Mom would ask, What’s Ray doing?

Whenever I was traveling, Lucy would answer, He’s on a business trip.

Usually, Mom’s reply was, That’s nice. The exchange was always the same. Because my mother was a chronic worrier, we hoped to keep my Middle East travel plans secret until my return.

So, before my first trip to Dubai, Lucy and I had carefully orchestrated a response for when my mother asked her routine question, even rehearsing the usual answer: He’s on a business trip. It was the truth, just not the whole truth.

While I was en route to the Middle East, my mother called and asked her usual question, which Lucy answered flawlessly: He’s on a business trip.

My mother gasped. Oh, no! He’s not going to the Middle East, is he? How did she know? I was still in the air, hours away from Dubai.

When I next saw my mother, she didn’t speak the