From Sydney to Abu Dhabi is around 14 1/2 hours. There's a 3 1/2 hour stopover in the Emirates and a further 8 1/2 hour flight to Casablanca.
Access to the Emirates business lounge at the beginning of the journey and the rather less salubrious Al Reem lounge in Abi Dhabi improves things but it still is quite arduous in a first world problem kind of a way.
The Casablanca leg provided an interesting aside to the journey. A Saudi former Airforce General was seated as the only passenger in the central section of the 777 adjacent to me. At times he made the most of the three empty seats by lying fully stretched out and sleeping in a sleeping pill assisted repose.
However, for the first hour or so, and the last hour or so, I was the main subject of his attention.
Dressed in the pristine white robes, white skull cap and red and white keffiyeh uniform of the Gulf States, this intensely happy man soon discovered my name, that I had adult children and that we were heading to Morocco for a 15 day holiday.
From my perspective, his classic social engineering discoveries revealed no nefarious intent and was both friendly and innocent. It did, however, allow him to set the agenda for the next hour or so of conversation. (I should add here that Cathy's impressions of my new Saudi friend were far less endearing.)
My error, if you will, was not to immediately challeng the good General's assumptions. So he then proceeded to pour out one pious statement after another regarding his faith.
Following 14 1/2 hours of (albeit) Emirates economy class travel I was in no state and had no motivation to counter his assumptions and, in the interests of avoiding conflict with the General and becoming entangled in a fruitless theological debate for the next 8 1/2 hours, I acquiesced to many of his pronouncements.
The General took my acquiescence as agreement and it was not very long before I realised that his intent was to capture a new soul for Islam.
My cost for befriending this fellow traveler and failing to counter his arguments in the interests of a conflict-free flight, was to become ensnared in a chess-like strategic logic trap that this happy faithful man was intent to spring.
That said, the Generl achieved little more than a vague commitment from me to further investigate the Qur'an and a reluctant agreement that, based on his immaculate presentation of the facts, Islam may well be the true faith.
As an aside, the General did postulate an interesting, if flawed, theory as to the progression from JudIsm through Christianity to Islam. It went something like this:
If you wished to purchase a computer and had the choice of a model from the nineties, one from the mid-two thousands and one from 2015, which one would you choose?
Judaism, by this theory, represents the nineties model which is now out of date and, in the General's estimation, corrupted.
The mid-two thousands model superseded the nineties model and this represents Christianity superseding Judaism. Christianity has also become outdated, corrupted and obsolete leaving the 2015 model of Islam.
The General went on to expand his theory by claiming that the Jewish Torah was inaccessible and never read by the people, that the Christian Bible was written by many different individuals sometimes as much as two hundred years after the events it depicts but that the Qur'an is the work of one single prophet - Mohammed and so is the true written word.
He did concede that all three faiths had some legitimacy as their prophets all were sent by God rather than depicting themselves as God but where Christianity had gone wrong was in the confusion of the triumvirate - God the father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. His comments regarding the Jews and Judaism were far more predictably critical.
Having no real skin in this game but having neglected to challenge those initial assumptions I was compelled to accede to the irrefutable logic of the faithful.
General Hossain was a former fighter pilot who left the Saudi Airforce quite recently following the death of his father. He was traveling to Morocco, partly for business and partly for pleasure and his ultimate destination in Morocco was the coastal town of Agadir where the Saudis have invested heavily in decadently opulent seaside resorts and villas.
Agadir is reputedly the premier tourist location in Morocco although in many respects it is not typically Moroccan. It is a city that was completely rebuilt in the 1960s following a devastating earthquake. Originally a fishing and trading port, Agadir's premier industry may now have become prostitution and it is for this that the Saudis have allegedly come.
The Saudis are not well liked in Morocco.
That there is a predeliction for just post-pubescent girls is, understandably, particularly troubling for them.
It would be poignantly disappointing if General Hossain's attempted proselytisation of me on the Abu Dhabi to Casablanca flight were merely an act of pre-absolution for his trip to Agadir.
Insha'Allah it is not so.
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