Our last day in Dubai was equally spectacular. On the first day of conferences, we were taken out to family-run businesses around Dubai to tour them and hear about how they are structured. Dad and I went to a presentation by the Al-Futtaim Group, an investment group that owns 60% of Dubai's economy and just about every franchise of every retail store in the GCC, from Ikea to Toyota to Ace Hardware to Lamborghini, plus several American-style private schools and an entire district called Festival City, complete with homes, a school, hotels, stores, and a country club and golf course. At the brunch, we just happened to sit next to one of the most kind, generous, and interesting people I have ever met -- Abubakr Al-Futtaim, one of the owners of the Al-Futtaim group and a top-level officer in the company, brother of the CEO. He was very interested in our family business, which produces library and school supplies, because Dubai (and the Al-Futtaim Group) has to build six to eight new schools every year to accomodate the growing population, and they need supplies to fill those classrooms. We quickly made friends with Mr. Al-Futtaim, and he offered to give us a tour of Dubai for the day. On our last day in the UAE, we met Mr. Al-Futtaim at a hotel he owns for breakfast -- we had come just a few minutes too late for the buffet, but Mr. Al-Futtaim said, "They never close for me," and had them prepare us a delicious brunch.
At breakfast, we met with two friends of his, a Chinese businessman now residing in Dubai and a college classmate of his from Iran now living in the United States (Mr. Al-Futtaim went to college in the United States, as do many residents of the UAE). He gave us a complete tour of the city, taking us to all the most beautiful sites, including Palm Jumeirah, a manmade, palm tree shaped island covered in hotels owned by the Jumeirah Group, the business incarnation of Dubai's royal family. Mr. Al-Futtaim really knows how to run a business. He likes everything perfect all the time, because that's how his customers like it. We were driving past one of his Ace Hardware stores when he suddenly pulled over, got out of the car, and approached an employee who was headed home for the day. "What did you do wrong?" Mr. Al-Futtaim asked him, before pointing out several shopping carts strewn across the parking lot and instructing the employee to put them away before leaving. He got back in the car and we drove off like nothing happened.
We had dinner at Mr. Al-Futtaim's country club where his 13-year-old daughter Hind was competing in the FBN golf tournament. At dinner, we met a friend of Mr. Al-Futtaim's, the manager of several of his car dealerships. This man also happened to be the former bodyguard of the late King of Jordan, a former mixed martial arts world champion, and the father of two GCC mixed martial arts champions. We met Hind Al-Futtaim after her golf tournament, and she is really a remarkable young lady. She's extremely bright, eloquent, and confident, fluent in two languages, very concerned with issues facing women in the modern world, and not at all phased when her father asked her to give an impromptu speech to everyone present at the FBN gold tournament during the awards ceremony -- in short, much more mature than her 13 years.
After dinner, we went to Mr. Al-Futtaim's house, where he gave us the use of his guest suite to clean up before meeting his wife and 8-year-old son Hasan. They made a ridiculous amount of food for us, which they packaged up for us to bring on the plane. They also told us how to get in touch with Sarah Al-Futtaim, their 19-year-old daughter who is a student at Loyola University here in the U.S., and invited me to stay with them if I ever get an internship in Dubai. The Al-Futtaim family are some of the loveliest people I've ever met, and without them, I never would have gotten to experience how people really live in Dubai.
As a last treat before we caught our midnight flight, Mr. Al-Futtaim took us to see his pet tigers. At his mother's ranch, he kept two fully grown lions, one male and one female, two adult female tigers, two adult male lions, two 4-month-old Siberian tiger cubs, and a one-week-old blue-eyed Siberian tiger. He breeds the extremely rare blue-eyed Siberian tigers to sell to zoos so more animals do not have to be taken out of the wild, and in the past he has also owned monkeys and cheetahs. The adult animals were kept in decently sized, very secure pens, but even so, I was able to get within a few inches of one of the female tigers. I kept all my apendages away from the metal grating. The infant tiger, however, was kept in a dog kennel, since they don't get to be dangerous to humans until they are about two months old. After showing us his very luxurious RV, Mr. Al-Futtaim took the baby tiger out of its kennel and let my dad and I hold it. It squeaked and meowed just like a kitten, but even at a week old, it had some substantial claws, and I was glad to be wearing long sleeves. After I finally made myself put that adorable little critter down, we headed to the airport to catch our 14-hour flight home.
On the way to the airport, Mr. Al-Futtaim gave me a lot of advice for finding a career and learning to work well with people and be successful, but the last thing he said to me will always stick in my head most: "People come into your life and they plant seeds in your brain and they leave. What do you do with the seeds? That's up to you."