24: Luck of the Irish
“Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV)
Since September 2012, WHO has been alerted under the International Health Regulations (IHR) to sporadic cases of infection with a novel coronavirus. This particular strain of coronavirus had not been previously identified in humans and the characterization of the full genome sequence of the virus indicates that it belongs to a novel species of coronavirus in the genus Betacoronavirus that is distinct from other known coronaviruses and SARS.
The Coronavirus Study Group (CSG) of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses decided on 15 May 2013 to call the new virus Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). WHO strongly urges use of this name in scientific and other communications.
The current understanding of MERS-CoV is that it can cause a severe, acute respiratory infection presenting as pneumonia. –World Health Organization”
I left my apartment in Amman at 3:00am for the airport. After eight hours of early morning travel, a stopover in London, and little-to-no sleep prior, I landed in Dublin, Ireland at 12:30pm local time. During the bus ride from the airport into Dublin, intermittent rain showers accentuated the contrast between the city’s emerald green trees and against a dark, cloudy sky.
When I reached my bus stop in Ballsbridge, I departed, grabbed my bags from the undercarriage, and caught my reflection as the bus pulled away. Wearing a black T-shirt, loose jeans, second-hand Timberland boots, and carrying my bags through the rain in this upscale part of town, I must have looked as out of place as I felt. I walked to my brownstone walk-up bed and breakfast, checked-in, and unloaded my gear. I was incredibly fortunate that the hotel hostess took pity on me and broke one of the 500 Euro bills in my wallet. I still had to go to the Dublin Convention Center and pay the registration fees, so I put on my worn, wool overcoat and hailed a taxi.
Registration wouldn’t begin until 5:00 pm, so with a few hours to kill, I meandered around the city. The postmodern glass and steel apartments and offices and old-world brick and brownstone structures which comprised the heart of the city were so stark in contrast to the cities I’d spent the past year in. The architecture was inviting. The city’s layout was pedestrian, clean, organized. I walked through the central quay as young professionals crowded into pubs. Snappy clothes and dapper styles surrounded me. I wasn’t wearing business attire, but I knew what was sitting in my room: two $50 slave-made suits from a textile factory somewhere in the north of Jordan.
I self consciously trudged toward the conference center and paid the 980 Euro registration fee. Glad to be unburdened of the remaining two, 500 Euro notes, I walked the two miles back to my hotel.
September 11, 2012
On this day a year previous, I was sitting in my parent’s kitchen, drinking Scotch with one of my closest friends, lamenting my lack of professional prospects leading up to that day. More than anything id wanted to seize the opportunities which my parents had afforded me, to realize the potential and social expectations of my education. The morning I woke up in a hotel bed in Dublin, Ireland as a liaison for one of the most prominent figures in modern Arab history, I realized my egotistical gamble had paid off. I was under no illusions about how insignificant I was in the grand scheme of the organization I worked for, but no one had ever previously flown me to Europe to do anything other than be a “student” i.e. drunk, stumbling doofus. I got dressed and went to the dining hall for breakfast.
The hotel served a full Irish breakfast: bacon, sausages, black & white pudding, homemade Irish potato cake, fried button mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, and a poached egg. The preparation of this meal was done with pride. It wasn’t a calculation of affordability and volume for sustenance. Compared to the bowl of boiled beans, stack of bread, and fried falafel balls I had grown accustomed to, this was an indulgence of excess.
The fall morning in Dublin was crisp when I stepped out from my hotel. The sky was clear of the clouds from the day before. The air was clean, rays of sunshine glimmered through the trees as shadows from the leaves cast a patchwork of quivering penumbras on the streets. Children in blue and grey school uniforms scampered in front of the brownstone row houses to bus stops. The city bustled with pedestrians. Women walked freely to work without the burden of leering gazes or catcalls from groups of youths. During the thirty minute walk to the convention center, I began sweating and coughing with unexpected severity. I could feel an illness coming on, but I couldn’t let it get to me. It was the first time I would represent an organization without any backup or regional brand recognition. In my mind, the early success of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh University hinged on this trip.
I reached the conference center and joined the ranks thousands of European education professionals queuing to enter. Taking escalators to the top of the conference center, I attended my first working group of the day, a session on international alumni relations. I asked questions, took meticulous notes, and socialized with the people sitting at my table. At session’s closing, the participants filed out onto the interior mezzanine that overlooked the south of Dublin. I saw the lead presenter, an American technical college president standing near a table of refreshments, so I grabbed a cup of orange juice and approached him.
“Hi Dr. Philip, I just wanted to thank you for the session. I feel like I learned a lot, and wanted to pick your brain about some ideas you might have for my company.”
“Thank you,” he said, leaning in to inspect my name badge, containing my job title and country of origin. He squinted at the badge, saying “Are you Jordanian?”
“No, I’m American, but I work for a Jordanian company,” I said.
“I was going to say — your accent was strikingly American,” he said, as he looked expectantly for further explanation.
Well, alright. “Yeah, I started with the company about four months ago. The company’s chairman sent me here on his behalf to do some outreach and get a feel for what’s going on in higher education. They’ve brought me on in a somewhat of an executive capacity.” I said, trying to sound as important as my title.
We bantered a bit about what I was doing in Jordan and how I ended up working for Abu-Ghazaleh. Then I pivoted the conversation back on my company and partnership opportunities. My mission was pretty simple at this point: recruit universities to partner with us. So I asked Dr. Philip about the online presence and capabilities of his college. Since I knew nothing about recruiting business partners, and was not given budget to entertain potential clients, I decided to make my sell right there, standing next to the escalator on the fourth floor mezzanine of the windowed conference hall.
If, like me, you’ve never had formal negotiations training or brokerage experience, then a small-time representative cold-pitching an individual at the executive level is absolutely the best way to achieve your mission. I took a brochure out of the TAG-Org I was carrying and handed it to Dr. Philip. I expected that once he opened the brochure our conversation would lead to a negotiation, whereby we’d be transported to a dimly-lit room with a 400 year old handcrafted oak table, sitting in oversized chairs, pounding Irish whiskey, and chortling between business buzz phrases.
“It’s just fantastic to synergize with you!” he’d say. “I believe in our potentiality!” I’d say. “Opportunity for growth!” He’d say. “Revenue streams!” we’d shout in unison, clinking glasses as confetti dropped from the ceiling. Then we’d drink a celebratory glass of champagne while wiping tears of laughter from our faces with 500 Euro bills. You know, business.
My thought bubble exploded as Dr. Philip said, “Well, it sounds like your Tal-uh Aga-boo— uh…” he waited for me to fill in the blanks as he flipped disinterestedly through the pages of the brochure.
“Talal Abu-Ghazaleh.” I said, taking a sip of juice. My voice cracked and I felt beads of sweat trickle down my back from a rising fever.
“Yeah.” He said. “It sounds like you guys are on the right track with moving to online education. Let me introduce you to my friend Sergei. You should come to our conference in Portugal next month.” He said, passing the torch and unburdening himself of my company.
There was some real education. We were big fish in the Middle East. To the larger world, we were “Aga-boo.” It dawned on me as to why Mr. Hafez and Dr. Nabil weren’t proactive about getting travel visas. Why would they not want to go to Dublin? It would be a great opportunity to get our name out there. I had thought previously. Selling Talal Abu-Ghazaleh University was hard — I knew that, mostly because I was the only person apart from Mr. Chairman who’d read the business plan I’d written over the summer. But I didn’t think it was an unreasonable sale, especially considering the influence the Arab Spring had on raising people’s awareness to the region. I walked around the conference hall for a bit after my conversation with Dr. Philip, before heading downstairs to the exit. On exiting the conference hall, I saw my reflection in the glass: my $50 Jordanian suit — grey, oversized and unfitted; my worn, black leather shoes — caked in dirt from a year of political conferences in the desert. I was a hunched shoulder and patched elbow away from hustling people at the conference with, “My friend, my friend, I have a very good deal for you.”
In Jordan, my attire was perfectly acceptable. Most of the Jordanians I worked with, even the executives, wore similarly unfitted suits. Many Jordanians had remarkable fashion sense, but generally speaking, wearing a suit of any quality was a good suit, not to mention the costs associated with wearing nice clothes. But in Ireland, I had gone from having a professional appearance to the garb of a carpetbagging huckster. My self-consciousness led me to the nearest TK Maxx, located at Stephen’s Green Shopping Center in central Dublin. I loaded my debit card on a suit, sport coat, shoes, shirts, ties. Then I walked a few miles back to my hotel to sleep off my fever.
That night I attended a welcome dinner for new members and participants at EAIE, before cutting out early as I had still not gotten any better, and went back to sleep. I woke up 14 hours later on September 12 to news reports that the Arab world was on fire again. Protests raged across the region over a low-rent Youtube video called the “Innocence of Muslims” which depicted the Islamic Prophet Mohammad as a pedophile and warmonger. Without a sense of irony, Islamists demonstrated their peaceable nature by violently attacking the American Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, while protesting and burning U.S. and Israeli effigies elsewhere in the region. Separate attacks were organized in Libya against a CIA station and the US consulate in Benghazi, killing the American Ambassador to the country and four other American citizens.
I called Lindsay to make sure she was unaffected by the regional turmoil. She said there had been a minor protest at the U.S. Embassy, but nothing had gotten out of hand. Then I opened my email to learn my grandmother had died from an ongoing battle with cancer. She was a poet and writer, and probably the greatest inspiration for my initial draft of this book. Without a moment to mourn or process the news, I headed out of the hotel and back to the conference center. With my fever stabilized around 101 degrees and in my newly acquired snappy clothes, I taxied back to the conference center to attend the remaining sessions. I’m sure my coughing fits unnerved my European counterparts as I unwittingly played Patient Zero for the first Covid-esque “pandemic” of the new century.
The topic of last session I participated in was on exchange programs in the Middle East, with an emphasis on Jordan. I sat in the back of the room, wringing my hands for the opportunity. During the Q&A session, someone asked the presenters whether or not it was feasible to make lasting connections with Jordanian universities, and whether consistent communication could be expected.
I stood up and hoarsely blurted out, “Um, actually, I’m from a Jordanian university.” People in the room laughed at the total improbability of the moment.
“Well then,” the presenter said.
“So, if anyone would like to discuss partnering with a university in Jordan, just talk to me after the session.” Half of the room lined up, handed me their business cards, and asked to keep in contact.
I was beaming. In my element. Quipping witticisms, snapping photos, kissin’ hands and shakin’ babies — I was doing it. I was extending the credibility of my company in an untapped market for the Jordanian education sector. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh had sent me on a mission to find partners and generate interest in our project. It’s not that this was some resounding success, but at least I hadn’t cowered in a corner for the week. With that, I left the conference and began the nine hour journey back to Amman.