Bloggers meetups are awesome, period, and meeting up with Fouad Al Farhan was really awesome. He is absolutely one of my favorite Saudi bloggers, and few weeks ago I interviewed him for Global Voices. I thought he was in Riyadh, which he hates so much, to attend Gitex, but he actually was here for business. We were supposed to meet at Dr. Cafe, but he said he needed a sheesha, something modern coffee shops such as Starbucks and Dr. Cafe don’t serve, so we decided that I should come to his hotel where it is served.
We talked for a couple of hours about many stuff, and it was a good conversations that I enjoyed very much. One of the interesting things Fouad told me was that he does not feel he belongs to this place. “Probably the only place I can call home is the little village my family comes from,” he said. This reminds me with a post I read a few days ago on a friend’s blog. “I think it finally has clicked that I am no longer tied to one location on this planet. I think when you travel enough you realize that you really are part of something much bigger than the state or the country you come from. You are really a ‘global citizen.’”
It was really great meeting Fouad, and next time I visit Jeddah (hopefully this summer inshallah), I’ll make sure to meet him again.
2 Comments
The Ability to shed ones ties to a country and ethnic group is our last step to real peace around the world, so nice to see that some are starting to make this transition.
Salam
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[...] blogging because he believes that freedom, justice and equality are values worth fighting for. I have met Fouad a couple of times and I have interviewed him for Global [...]
[...] I have met Fouad a couple of times and I have interviewed him for Global Voices.Fellow bloggers and friends are launching a campaign to release Fouad. More details about the campaign and what you can do to support him can be found here. [...]