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The oldest was thirty-eight when my father was born; his name was Mohammed Saeed Ghobash. He
had been the first person from the region—vaguely defined—to have traveled to Egypt to enroll at Al-
Azhar University. This was a journey that required passage through Syria, down through Palestine and
Jerusalem in the late 1920s and through to Cairo.
My grandparents are said to have died within a few months of one another. My father was likely
twelve at the time. This is when he inherited two slaves and a plot of land. I met a former slave of my
grandfather’s when I was eighteen; he was in his late eighties and had long been given his freedom
and was still living in the house provided to him by the family. Though slavery was common in the
region in the early part of the twentieth century, life was harsh for all, and slaves were more often
than not treated as part of the family. My father made the decision to free his slaves based on his own
sense of morality. But as tradition would have it, this caused severe problems, as they were not sure
what to do with the new found freedom. The man I spoke to that day told me that he had been
purchased with his mother while he was still in her womb.
The reason I recount these details is to underline how different and how tough life could be in the
Gulf in the early part of the twentieth century; it also demonstrates how far we have managed to
progress from such humble beginnings. Much of what we know of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula was
formed and polished in this tough desert environment. You should know this when you think of how
Islam works in a world of malls and iPhones and holidays around the world.
The world of the Arabian Peninsula was very small in the 1950s. People knew who was traveling
and when. They knew the names of all the tribes and subtribes. People oriented themselves by
knowing who was married to whom and who was related to whom. You know this still matters today,
but it is not as prevalent as it used to be. The states along the Gulf were all connected by family and
trade. The beautiful traditional boats or dhows that you know from the port of Dubai used to ply the
trade routes up and down the Gulf.
Your grandfather found work in an engineering office in the neighboring state of Kuwait. Here, my
father and his colleagues were invited by another employee in the office to start an organization for
Palestinian liberation. At the time the Palestinians were only a few years into their attempt to organize
themselves after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. In the cozy world of the 1950s, the
colleague was a man called Yasser Arafat, and he was establishing something that he wanted to call
the Palestinian Liberation Organization. This organization became the standard-bearer for the
Palestinian people. And my father would later come across Yasser Arafat in the course of his work.
For reasons unknown to me, my father did not join or participate in the establishment of the PLO.
This simply illustrates how small and intimate the community of educated Arabs was at the time. It
also tells you that the thinking then was not religious; it was national and social. It was about people
and their rights, and not about religion and power over others. This comes later.
A friend of my father encouraged him to think of moving to Germany. Job prospects seemed good.
He finally settled for up to six years in Düsseldorf.
The lack of information, and therefore clarity, about these years is very frustrating. It is near to