Prayer time in the United Arab Emirates started at 12:30pm, just as we sauntered up to the passport control window located on one side of the tiny box of a building on the border with Oman. No one was there; a stamp and ink pad lay haphazardly to one side of a stack of unfinished paperwork, the one light bulb dim, a ballpoint pen dangling half off the countertop. Then we spotted the body on the far side of the little room. He was on his knees, facing Mecca and deep in prayer. We had to wait to be stamped out of the country – a classic Arab wait – for the one man inside this building to finish his Salat, the obligatory Muslim prayer. A few minutes later, the officer rolled up his mat with
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