Everyone deserves to tell their side of the story

Cycling hobbyist Hamdoon Sultan reached out to us on Instagram to tell us about his recent trip to Yemen. Since we’d been championing and encouraging people to send in their stories to be featured in Eyewitness segment in recent weeks, we’d been noticing more approaches like this but I felt, Hamdoon’s story needed to be made more prominent.

If you didn’t catch Hamdoon’s story — this young Omani is a cycling hobbyist who pedalled his way around Salalah but found the urge to push his limits and go beyond the border of Oman towards Yemen.

Despite warning from friends and family who were concerned about his safety and fed by news that the country is in turmoil, he didn’t listen to those warnings but instead got more encouraged to see what’s beyond the border. And see the other side of the border he did. Hamdoon reported of the kind people he found there, of the hospitality they extended to him, of a country no different from the one he came from — beautiful, different and contrary to what is often reported, the side he went to was relatively peaceful.

And that was why I thought his story needed to be told in a prominent way — cause his eyewitness account provided perspective.

Before I made my move to the Middle East three years back, my perception of the region was shaped by Western media. I have a limited view of this part of the world and my naive description can be summarised into three words — oil-rich, cruel and different.