I should have guessed

There were quite a large number of empty seats on the plane, so who should be sat next to me that one of the larger members of the fat 17. Rani struggled into his seat, asked me how I was in Arabic, smiled and then began to recite pasages from the Koran, counting off the verses on his fingers. After about five minutes paused, drew his hand over his eyes as though he was weary and sighed deeply, before starting to recite once more, stroking his beard and teasing out the long strands. I turned up the volume on my iPod and wondered if this was how a suicide bomber might behave on his final mission. That I am writing this in Bahrain suggests my fears were misplaced.

Once we had taken off Rani no longer felt the need for Koranic verse and turned to me, interrogating me in a friendly but persistant manner. He was a religious teacher from Dammam, very much in love with his job. He was baffled that I could live in Saudi Arabia for six years and not have converted to Islam. Rani didn’t speak much English and it was obvious that the process of composing questions was time consuming and rather painful. At the end of an exchange I made a show of turning up the volume on my iPod, inserting the earplugs and turning the International Herald Tribune to a new page. A couple of minutes would go, just long enough to get into an article and relax and then another question would hatch. I escaped eventually when we both changed seats, him to sit with the seventeen, me to find more legroom.