I thought this was a nice article..cross cultural and all..
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/dmag9.htm
An Arab with a Pakistani soul
By Mustansar Hussain Tarar
That evening, in the Food Court, at the City Centre, over a bowl of soup I met one of UAE’s most amazing personalities; Mr Suhail Al Zarooni whose name is mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records.
Suhail is fluent in Urdu and Pushto, has an imposing figure and when he walks in his flowing Arab robes. He looks like a character straight out of Alif Laila, speaks haltingly with an innocence of a child, rather shy but confident. One cannot imagine that this simple soul runs a vast business empire beside being an enthusiastic collector of stamps, coins, Swatches and cars of all sorts. His eloquence in Urdu and Pushto is from his mother’s side who is a Pathan lady and his father is an Arab connected with the Royal family.
Educated in Atchison and at heart he is still a pucca Lahori relishing nihari, siri payas and Gowalmandi’s fish. Although affluent even by Dubai’s standards, he is very humble and almost obedient at times.
The very next evening he invited the whole crew for dinner at his, needless to say, palatial house. We were promptly told that Benazir Bhutto lived nearby in an equally humble abode.
As the huge iron gates swung open we thought we had entered a car showroom instead of a residence; the only difference was that the cars displayed were not brand new. These were actually vintage cars collected by Suhail including two Rolls Royce and half a dozen Land Cruisers. The car, which took my breath away, was a red sports car. If I recall correctly, it was a Bugatti from Italy.
“There are at this moment only seventy sports cars of this make in the whole world and only three in the Middle East, would you like to see the interior?” he raised the door and it went up like a huge red wing. I admit that I am not a monsieur of cars and they have never fascinated me as such. But this Bugatti was entirely a different cup of tea and I know I could ever afford it and this likelihood is rather remote as the cost is in millions. So I have to be content for the time being with my ten-year-old Toyota.
The leather interior was fabulous to say the least and one could smell the millions which were prerequisite to its ownership. All the servants who hovered over us in spotless dresses were Pashtuns because the lady of the house was a Pashtun and they were delighted to receive Pakistani guests as they recognized some of the faces from television screen. The endless drawing and dinning room was decorated with stuffed wild animals including a lion and dozens of deer whose sad eyes looked alive.Abdul Rauf who had once upon a time served with the WWF in Geneva, looked disturbed. “Suhail I believe in the conservation of wildlife and hunting and stuffing such animals for your personal pleasure is distasteful to me.”
Suhail was as cool as ever, “I also believe in the conservation of wild animals because I love them and I personally contribute to some of the organizations who are trying to save the precious animal species. But these stuffed deer you see around here are an exception. You see some of the African countries raise these deer in huge farms and then an exact number is released into the wild. You obtain a hunting licence, pay a very large sum and only then are you permitted to hunt one animal. The money generated through this procedure is entirely spent on the conservation.”
Suhail had a point because in the Northern areas of Pakistan this method of conservation was also applied officially with the backing of conservation experts. When the animals exceed a certain number, especially the Marco Polo sheep, a couple of hunting licenses are issued at a rate, which is not easily affordable. The money thus generated is spent on the well being of local residents and the animals in wild.
The Pathans and the Arabs, both are known for their extravagant hospitality and if they are wedded together you can well imagine what the end result will be; an endless table laden with food which looked like a food festival of sorts. “We normally have Pakistani food in our house because once you develop a taste for it, it is well nigh impossible to appreciate any other food,” Suhail told us. "The cook is a Bengali gentleman who has been with us for last many years, he is a chef par excellence but on one point he loses his temper.
“If you praise anybody else’s cooking, for instance if you casually remark that once upon a time in Karachi I tasted a better pillau he will lose his temper.”
“What does he do when he loses his temper?” Aliya looked really frightened.
“Well he will go back to the kitchen, prepare another dish of pillau and will make you eat it till such time that you admit that he is the best pillau chef in the whole world.”
After dinner we were served the typical Arab ghahva, which tasted more like Joshanda but it helped to digest all we had gobbled. The comment which really gladdened our hearts that evening was from Suhail when he said, “You know when I go abroad and people ask me what my nationality is, I always say that I am an Arab with a Pakistani soul.”
Suhail is known as King of model cars and his name has been added to the Guinness Book of Records for the biggest model car collection. For car assortment includes that of the John F. Kennedy limousine in which he was assassinated, Hitler’s cars, Russian presidents, the British Queen and James bond cars. At present he has more than 5500 model cars that is estimated to be valued at more than $5 million.
At the end of the evening, Suhail ordered his two chauffeurs to drop us at our hotel in his limousine, which to my middle-class looked like three cars welded together, one after the other. I hesitated to get in, because ten years ago I had a ten-minute ride in such a machine and my outlook for life changed for the next ten days; then I recovered. I was returning from a wedding and the only car available was this limo. It was a strange experience, sitting all alone in a small room complete with a bar and music system, cruising quietly while through the tinted windows even the dirtiest parts of the city looked romantic, the driver nowhere to be seen. After two minutes the humanity outside seemed, as if they were insects, ants that did not have a right to walk in the vicinity of “MY” limousine. Five minutes passed in that secluded luxury and I thought these insects had no right to live either. After the ride, when I entered my home, it looked shabby and poverty stricken, even my wife seemed rather decadent. This short ride made me realize hat if ten minutes in such a luxury, can change a person’s outlook, then how can the people who are born with such unparalleled comforts realize the agony of the masses, if they treat them like insects, which comes natural to them.
However, this second, half-an-hour’s drive in Suhail’s limousine did not have the same effect as it was crowded with our crew including Abdul Rauf and Aliya, middle class like myself; so it had a sobering effect. However, when the hotel people saw us emerge from this grand white limousine, they immediately started respecting us, and bowed at times, for the rest of our stay in Dubai.
I will always remember the evening spent in the company of Suhail Al Zarooni who was an Arab with a Pakistani soul.
