Stars of an Arabian Night

Barry Maher
Mon, 12 Jan 2026 17:56:49 -0800
Opinion

I was speaking in a Middle Eastern country shortly after 9/11. The people were friendly. The food was wonderful. If I hadn't determined that the sultan's brother was planning on shooting me and leaving my lifeless body rotting in the desert, it would have been a perfect trip.

The sultan's brother was the absentee owner of the company that had brought me in to speak. Apparently, he was anxious to meet me and was sending a car. Maybe he believed all the hype his people had generated. It'd certainly sold tickets. After seeing just some of it, I couldn't wait to meet myself either, though I suspected I'd be a disappointment.

I'd tried to beg off. After a 12,000-mile trip, a six-hour session and two days of navigating local dignitaries and press, my charm level had hit undependable. Unfortunately, the huge black SUV was right on time.
Updated: Mon Jan 12, 2026

I was speaking in a Middle Eastern country shortly after 9/11. The people were friendly. The food was wonderful. If I hadn't determined that the sultan's brother was planning on shooting me and leaving my lifeless body rotting in the desert, it would have been a perfect trip.

The sultan's brother was the absentee owner of the company that had brought me in to speak. Apparently, he was anxious to meet me and was sending a car. Maybe he believed all the hype his people had generated. It'd certainly sold tickets. After seeing just some of it, I couldn't wait to meet myself either, though I suspected I'd be a disappointment.

I'd tried to beg off. After a 12,000-mile trip, a six-hour session and two days of navigating local dignitaries and press, my charm level had hit undependable. Unfortunately, the huge black SUV was right on time.

I climbed in front and started chatting with the driver. That worked until I asked him how long he'd been driving for the sultan's brother. Suddenly, he was furious. Apparently, mistaking the sultan's brother for a lowly driver was an insult on a par with groping Mrs. Sultan's brother. Worse, was calling him "the sultan's brother" — as if that was all he was. Though I'd never heard him referred to any other way. Maybe I shouldn't even be sitting in the front seat next to his royal butt.

The ensuing tirade was bullet-pointed with questions. Did I realize he'd skipped the sultan's birthday party to meet with me? (No.) Did I understand how many businesses he owned and how important he was? (Apparently not.) Did I think he'd gotten to be a colonel in the Army simply because he was the Sultan's brother? (Ah ... yes?)

Meanwhile, we were getting deeper and deeper into the desert. Where the hell were we going? After my session, I asked a friendly attendee for his name. "Osama," he said cheerfully. "I'm not Bin Laden, but I wish I were." Earlier, someone had joked that I was "the most prominent American in the country, after the U.S. Ambassador, who's cowering as usual in that fortress of a U.S embassy."

The sultan's brother was going on about being captain of their Olympic rifle team. "Put a bullet in your eye at a thousand meters." I don't speak metric, but I wasn't partial to a bullet in my eye from any distance. I was thinking, 9/11, would-be Bin Ladens, prominent Americans. Me, I'm nobody — but not after all that over-the-top PR. Besides, when it comes to Americans, I'm all they've got. The damn ambassador's safe in his fortress.

"You can't outrun a bullet," the brother said. Maybe that was the general "you," but I was the one he was glaring at. Would he give me a running start, let me dash a thousand meters, then bang!?! My body would never be found, and who's going to prosecute the sultan's brother? I had an image of myself, life bleeding out, writing my killer's name in the sand. Except I didn't know his name. The sultan's dad probably had 10 wives. There could be 50 brothers.

Seventy minutes into the desert, he cut left, off the road. This is it! Suddenly, we were overlooking a deserted bay. He pulled onto a beach that was nothing but small stones and stopped 'What do you think?" he asked, confusing me. But what I thought was that we'd driven through much better places to leave a body than this.

But it turned out that this wretched beach was actually the point. The sultan's brother was also the head of tourism — why not? — and he wanted me to tell everyone in the States about this spot. Which — even aside from the rock beach and the unswimable water and the lengthy drive across poorly marked desert roads — was still the least likely tourist spot I'd ever seen. Oh, and you couldn't drive on the beach. We were stuck.

Then the sun went down and — a world away from the nearest electric light — an unimaginably glorious, star-filled universe opened around us. No tourists would be coming. But they'll never know what they missed.

Barry's supernatural thriller, "The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon," is available on Amazon. Suggest column ideas at www.barrymaher.com.