But they have also been cursed by violence. From the 1980s, when airliners and even a cruise ship were hijacked, to the savage 1997 massacre of 58 vacationers in Luxor, to the beheading of an American tourist in the southern Philippines last year, the Muslim world has made headlines to horrify the most intrepid traveler. U.S. citizens are not the only victims, certainly. But Americans are the big spenders–and the big targets–and long before September 11 they were caught up in wars on terrorists. Since 1981, Libya, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan and Sudan have been hit by American battleships, bombers or cruise missiles, and that doesn’t count the 1991 gulf war. So the surprise hasn’t been the frequent plunges in tourism from America, it’s been the stubborn resurgence of its numbers. Overall travel by U.S. citizens to the Middle East more than doubled from 1985 to 1999, the last year for which the World Tourism Organization has complete figures.
Today, however, tour operators who work with American clients in the Middle East are, frankly, scared. “We’re not seeing anybody,” says one normally prosperous travel agent in Jordan, who asks not to be named. “At the big hotels a lot of rooms are empty. I can get you into a five-star for $70 a night. There’s one where I can get you in for $50. What does that tell you?”
The downturn started, in fact, almost two years ago. Many Americans come to the Middle East specifically to visit Christian and Jewish sites in the Holy Land, which would include Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as well as at-tractions in Jordan and Egypt. When the new Palestinian intifada began at the end of September 2000, that business mostly disappeared. Then came the attacks on New York and Washington last September.
Tourism ministries from Morocco to Egypt to Malaysia have tried to reassure visitors with slick advertising campaigns that emphasize local color, culture and diversity–while discreetly distancing themselves from religion. Jordan’s King Abdullah took the extraordinary step of personally hosting a Travel Channel special called “Jordan: The Royal Tour.” (First scheduled to air last September, it was postponed after the terrorist attacks and was finally shown in April.) The young king scuba-dives in the Red Sea, hikes around the ancient city of Petra and cruises his Harley through Wadi Rum, where Lawrence of Arabia once wandered.
Still, American visitors remain scarce. The few who can be found–like Marjorie Ricci, an amateur belly dancer from Boston–clearly have an adventurous spirit. She was out in the midday sun earlier this month snapping pictures with friends under the gaze of the Sphinx. “I wasn’t any more nervous traveling here than, say, from Boston to California,” she said. Mick, a middleaged Texan who didn’t want his surname published, was nearby at the Great Pyramid of Khufu. He’d been hoping for 15 years to come to Egypt and figured that now was as good a time as any. “Americans sometimes get paranoid,” he said. “It’s like people afraid of flying–in the end there’s more of a chance of dying in a car.”
Those tourists like him who continue to visit argue that the Muslim world is far too broad and varied a destination to be dismissed because of sporadic and limited incidents of violence. For many Europeans, who generally have a finer sense of the political diversity of the region than Americans do, the Mideast is often simply a place to worship the sun, in much the same way that Mexico and the Caribbean are to Americans. It’s near. It’s hot. It’s easy. From Agadir on the Atlantic coast of Morocco to Sharm al-Sheikh on the Sinai Peninsula and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, enormous resorts have appeared between the desert and the deep blue sea.
Some places have begun to offer very sophisticated attractions. Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, has evolved from a minor way station known mainly for smuggling gold to one of the region’s premier tourist destinations. Exploiting its relatively limited oil revenues in the 1980s, the city built an enormous free port and dry-dock facility for ship traffic; made its airport a regional hub between the Far East, Europe and Africa, and developed one of the region’s best air carriers, Emirates Airlines. Soon enormous desalinization plants were irrigating the region’s first green golf course, and the ruling al-Maktum family was sponsoring sporting events that ranged from golf tournaments to road rallies and camel races. As a result, the number of visitors to Dubai from northern Europe rose from fewer than 50,000 in 1985 to 275,000 in 1999. And they’re certainly not alone. The total number of visitors to Dubai in 1985 was 422,000. By 1999 the number was 2.48 million, many from elsewhere in the Middle East and South Asia, attracted by the city’s night life and shopping malls.
In fact, the Muslim world has witnessed a boom in Muslim tourism in recent years. The most visited destinations, of course, are Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, where Islam requires the faithful to travel at least once in their lives. Other destinations, however, tend to attract Muslim tourists who want to take a break from the duties of worship. Tourists from rigid societies where alcohol is banned and women are hard to meet find the atmosphere a whole lot freer and easier in Dubai, say, or Cairo or Casablanca.
In some countries, Scotch-swilling, skirt-chasing Arab visitors have become so ubiquitous that they create social problems. In Morocco and Egypt, for instance, there’s been a growth industry in “temporary marriages” with local girls, even though local laws and custom frown on the practice. European tourists, too, sometimes visit the Muslim world seeking temptations of the flesh. In recent years, not a few Western businessmen have been enticed by beguiling “Natashas” who have come from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to work in Turkey, the Levant and the Persian Gulf.
Still, most countries in the region would welcome more tourists–especially those big-spending Americans. If the past is any guide, their numbers should rebound before too long. This land is so close to God, after all, and so far from anything they can find at home.
