Ubaid Govan was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1997. He lived there until he was six, when his family decided to move to Egypt. He remembers feeling nervous about leaving, though the thought of pyramids and pharaohs made it sound exciting. He left his friends behind, but his father brought the family back to the States every couple of years, so they stayed in touch.
Adjusting to Egypt was not hard, because he was so young. He went to school and played with the neighbourhood children on the fields. He cannot point to a single day when Arabic clicked for him. He just remembers playing with the boys and, over time, understanding them, until it became his life. Years later he visited the old neighbourhood again and stood on the same field where he first understood Arabic.
The family stayed in Egypt for seven years, from 2004 to 2011. Many assumed they left because of the events that began that year, but the reason was simpler: his mother had been offered work in Abu Dhabi. They stayed in the Emirates for eleven years.
The move to the Emirates was a real adjustment. Cairo was chaotic and always on the go, and the Emirates felt like the opposite. Everything was calm. The family settled in Al Ain, on the edge of Abu Dhabi, neither a small town nor a big city. Because he already spoke Arabic, school was not hard, and the other children took him in quickly. The differences he noticed were cultural. Emiratis were not like Egyptians, and only about one in ten people in the country were locals, so most people spoke English and Arabic was not something he needed every day.
He made Emirati friends at school and in the neighbourhood, and at the masjid. Emiratis keep close to their own, so those friendships came slowly, and he has made more Emirati friends outside the Emirates than he ever did inside it. At school there were two Arabic classes, one for foreigners and one for native speakers. He wanted the foreign class, where his friends were, but his parents put him in the native class because he could already speak Arabic. Sometimes he did better than the native speakers, which his Egyptian teacher did not like. The teacher used him as an example to shame the other children, until he warmed up to him.
People often tell Ubaid there is no real difference between the UAE and America, that the same problems exist in both places. He does not agree. The UAE is a Muslim country with a code of conduct, and it makes its position clear. Things that go against that code are not legalised the way they are in the United States. Every society has its bad side, he says, but the question is how easy it is to reach. If you go looking for something, you will find it anywhere, but in the Emirates it is not put in front of you. The culture does not tolerate open indecency, so people are careful in public. That care, he believes, creates a kind of order.
Dubai, in his view, is not the UAE. It is the face the country shows the world, the attraction, a metropolitan city. But Dubai is an emirate in its own right, and once you leave the city it turns conservative and traditional, and even in the city the policing of public indecency is still very present.
The same care applies to what is allowed into the country. A recent Spider-Man film was banned because it contained a flag the authorities would not accept. Ubaid sees his own generation, people in their late twenties, as the breaking point, caught between the ways of the past and the push toward modern liberalism. The push is subtle, he says, and if you are not guarding your religion, it is easy to drift without noticing. The internet gives people access to more than they were built to handle, and it can do real damage. If parents want to keep their children away from those ideas, he would encourage them to come to the Muslim lands, because Islam is the one religion that still stands firmly on its ethical code.
What he loved most about Abu Dhabi was the atmosphere. It was peaceful and laid back, a relief after hectic Cairo, and the people were kind. He loved the desert, the open sand and emptiness, a place to clear his mind.
After eleven years in the Emirates, Ubaid went back to the United States for college, and the return hit him hard. He calls it extreme culture shock. He had been raised in a conservative place and was now living in liberal New England, staying with his grandparents. His grandmother gave him crash courses on situations he might face, and at the time he did not see the point. Looking back, he understands what she was trying to teach him. America, he found, draws you in fast, and you often do not realise how deeply you are woven into it until you are pulled out. He found it strange that people claimed beliefs they did not act on. Going back to the Emirates between terms felt like a cleansing, a chance to step out and come back clean.
He does not plan to stay in America, and he does not plan to raise a family there. He is Wampanoag Native and Black, and his roots in America run deep. He feels strongly connected to the land and plans to keep going back. But as a place to build his life, America is not it. He is studying history and archaeology, leaning toward education, because the world always needs teachers. He hopes to work in museum curating, and he also makes art, which may become a side business. American credentials carry weight in the Middle East, which works in his favour.
His advice to parents thinking of moving is simple: teach your children Arabic. Language is the key to culture. A Bedouin man in Jordan once told him he could not fool him, because he knew the language. When you learn the language, the man said, you learn the people, their good and their bad. There is an Arabic saying that knowledge gained when you are young is like carving in rock. It stays, even when you are pulled away from it. Ubaid did not need Arabic much in the Emirates or in America, but it stayed inside him. Teach it to your children young, he says, and they will settle in quickly.