"Listen son.... money is happiness. If you have it you are happy. But if you don't, you'll be sad." I was six at the time, and the words didn't make sense then, like they do now. At the time, I was anxious to get into the fish market and look at the smells and sights and excitement of this strongly social occasion. These trips to the fish market were special, for these were times when my father and I were alone, a rarity since he was always busy.
He was building a business then, a construction company that specialized in building electrical power stations. There were many of these needed, for my country, the United Arab Emirates, had become an independent nation in 1972 and all throughout the city of Dubai where I lived, there was constant excitement. My father talked much about this growth, but not in the abstract concepts of nationalism, or social revolution, but in pragmatic terms.
A man of little education (his father died when he was 12, and he had to leave school to support his family), he would always tell me that experience was the best teacher, and the lessons he learned from being in the world had stayed with him forever. But that was not what he wanted for me. For my future, he saw a world of education, not for the intrinsic value of the knowledge gained, but as a key to a more fruitful job.
Living up to his expectations, I did well in school and made serious plans to follow in his footsteps. Education was important to my mother also, and it is to her I owe my love of adventure and travel. Also, thanks to her drive and dedication, my siblings (three sisters and one brother) and myself, all excelled in the joy of academics. (She still has a plaque I won, when, as an 11th-grader, I was a member of a Math/Physics team that competed against other Arab nations and placed second after Bahrain.)
It is to my mother, also, that I owe my social skills, thanks to her belief that travel is broad
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