Photo credit: SIDDHARTH SIVA

In late 2020, retired Israeli space security chief Haim Eshed became—for a brief time, at least—the most celebrated figure in the world of ufology. Already respected in aeronautics circles, Eshed shot to wider fame following an interview in Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, in which he claimed that aliens have not only visited Earth, but have joined humans in an inter-species “Galactic Federation.” As luck would have it, this headline-grabbing revelation coincided with the publication of Eshed’s as-told-to book The Universe Beyond the Horizon, which made similar claims. It’s unclear whether the disclosures made news on other planets.

At around the time Eshed was drip-feeding the world tales of interplanetary collaboration—coordinated, perhaps, from an underground base on Mars—the US Congress got in on the act, instructing the Pentagon to deliver a report on the 144 unresolved sightings of UFOs (or unidentified aerial phenomena—UAP—in the current parlance) recorded by the military since 2004. The paper, which came out in June, amounted to a series of observations which could be summed up as: dunno. Perhaps, as Eshed has suggested, the Federation is withholding full disclosure in order to avoid “mass hysteria.”

Believers, for their part, have remained unfazed by the lack of definitive answers, pointing to grainy military footage of inverted pyramids flitting across the sky, or dark blobs plunging into the sea, as evidence that the truth is not only out there, but right here. Even Dubai, not traditionally known as a destination for alien joyriders, was reportedly treated to a visitation in 2020, this time in the form of a huge saucer-shaped object hovering over the Arabian Gulf. As self-styled UFO-hunter Scott Waring put it in a subsequent blog: “looks like there is an alien base not far off the coast of Dubai.”

The 2016 sci-fi film Aerials, which depicts similar objects looming menacingly over Dubai, is said to be the first full-on alien-invasion movie shot in the UAE—possibly because the region as a whole has had more immediate conflicts on its mind. According to Dubai-based filmmaker S.A. Zaidi, however, his movie grows out of a longstanding, widespread regional interest in the subject. “I belonged to UFO clubs,” he says of his childhood. “I was a part of that geek culture.”

Zaidi is quick to add, though, that having a passion for science fiction does not make a person—or indeed a region—more inclined toward tin foil hats. He also objects to the idea that the Middle East’s supposed penchant for conspiracy theories—which he calls a “cultural stereotype”—transforms every errant weather balloon or odd-shaped cloud into a scene from Close Encounters. “After Aerials came out, my father kept asking me, ‘what do you think will happen if aliens actually land?’ I told him, ‘dad, I don’t know. It’s just a film.’”

That said, Dubai’s “UFO” was by no means the first in the region—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Morocco are just some of the places that have reported sightings over the years (albeit mostly debunkable). The most notorious incident occurred in 1976, when glowing, fast-moving objects appeared in the skies over Tehran, and were deemed threatening enough that fighter pilots scrambled to intercept them.

More recently, The Washington Post ran an article on how UFOs have become a “national security worry” in the US. “The question is, what is it? What are its intentions? What are its capabilities?” said one former intelligence official in the piece, referring to the objects that have appeared on air-force pilots’ screens. Such comments may not point to mass hysteria, but they do suggest a kind of mass concern. As the late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking put it: “meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn’t turn out so well.”

The aliens in Zaidi’s film Aerials are not of the city-incinerating variety—partly because he lacked the budget for global annihilation, partly because he was more interested in building a subtle tension, and partly because he doesn’t necessarily buy into the idea that aliens would come here with the aim of stirring trouble. “I’m not sure a race that had the ability to travel all this way would do it just to say, ‘hey, I’m going to take this laser out and zap you,’” he says. “Maybe they just came because they were interested.”

Zaidi’s reluctance to venture into fire and brimstone territory was also a matter of what he describes as cultural sensitivity. “When we made Aerials, maybe the region wasn’t ready for something like Independence Day, you know, where the beam comes down on the White House,” he says. “We have local landmarks in the film, Emirates Towers and so on, but we were not going to shoot lasers down on them. We were not going to show Dubai getting destroyed.” He pauses and adds: “Then again, your imagination takes you there whether you want it or not.”

Dubai-based filmmaker S.A. Zaidi says his alien-invasion movie grew out of UFO “geek culture.”

Back to the future

The day German academic Jörg Matthias Determann landed in Doha, he felt as though he’d stepped onto a different planet. “You see all these glass towers rising out of the sand,” he says. “From the inside of these air-conditioned buildings, you look out at this hot, inhospitable environment, and you almost feel as though you are in a city on Mars, some kind of future habitat, these glass containers where the heat and dust storms are being kept out.”

Determann, a professor of history specializing in science, technology, and society at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar, believes the Middle East’s reputation as a “very traditional, conservative place” does not take into account its appetite for extravagant ideas. “Look at Dubai, which is about to open a Museum of the Future,” he says. “There is a broad interest in futuristic mega-projects here, a commitment to try things that haven’t been tried before. And there is a long history of this—rulers wanting to leave gigantic legacies, going back to the Pharaohs. The Emirates Mars mission is another of these mega projects.”

In his latest book, Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life: The Culture of Astrobiology in the Muslim World, Determann traces a line from groundbreaking astronomers in ancient Mesopotamia to the burgeoning interest in space exploration today. Along the way, he draws our attention to various cultural aspects that have made the Middle East fertile ground for stargazing, ranging from religion to commerce to the fantastical stories in One Thousand and One Nights (which became known as The Arabian Nights in English)—the latter of which, he says, could be seen as the root of it all.

It seems odd to think of The Arabian Nights as the starting point for regional futurism, given that its tales tend toward talking donkeys and vindictive demons rather than interstellar travel. Yet the collection has undoubtedly influenced generations of storytellers, who in turn have wielded an influence of their own. “No matter where you grew up, you couldn’t escape the power of these stories,” Determann says. “So you’ve always had these broadly speculative elements to culture here—you see it in the architecture, and in the science fiction I’ve had the pleasure of reading.”

Ahmed Salah Al-Mahdi, the Egyptian author of the dystopian novel Malaz: City of Resurrection, is currently working on a book about extremely unpleasant aliens touching down in the desert between Egypt and Libya. “I like imagining other worlds, life on other planets,” he says. “I read the stories in The Arabian Nights as a child and was fascinated by the magic, the heroes, the kingdoms. It created another world here in the Middle East. Anyone who wants to understand how to build fantasy worlds should read The Arabian Nights.”

Medieval folk tales, however, are not the only thing fueling imaginative storytelling in the region—or, for that matter, the willingness to accept that alien life forms may actually exist. In his book, Determann argues that Islamic beliefs—which accommodate ideas of multiple worlds and the existence of sentient, invisible beings—have played an important part, too. “To believe in the Quran,” he says, “is to believe that we are not alone.”

Following close behind religion, meanwhile, is the Middle East’s age-old role as a center for global trade. “Doha and Dubai are not so much desert cities as port cities—there’s a long tradition of going to distant shores,” Determann says. “This leads to stories of adventurers sailing off to strange lands, encountering strange creatures. You can see the movement of this over time: from seaport to airport, trading center to global aviation hub. The next step could be the spaceport. The urge to explore the unknown—that is something you can see here very clearly.”

Even the multicultural makeup of Gulf cities, Determann adds, leads back to this spirit of adventure and exploration. “One of the things I love about here is the coming together of so many cultures, like the cantina in Star Wars. There is an openness to the stranger, the alien.”

Ayham Jabr, “Damascus Under Siege”

(AYHAM JABR)

Battlefield Earth

If the idea of aliens flitting around our planet represents a kind of superstition, then there are strains of Middle East culture that foster this, too. “Many people believe in magic, its ability to affect lives,” says Al-Mahdi. “They’ll go to a man who they think will help them marry or divorce or have a child. They’ll take a piece of paper with the name of a loved one written on it, put it in water and drink it so they will be married. People really believe this stuff. It’s not fantasy, it’s something that exists. So, yes, a lot of people believe in aliens.”

Maybe so, but there is also a broad streak of pragmatism and skepticism here, epitomized by S.A. Zaidi’s aunt, who used to berate him for wasting his time reading stories with titles like Ray of Death. “She kept telling me I fantasize too much, go back to your schoolbooks,” he recalls. “This is not practical.” Then there are people like Syrian artist and filmmaker Ayham Jabr, for whom science fiction has a very practical purpose—namely, the idea that “fantasy can help the artist or writer to deliver his point.”

“Sci-fi provides a way to bypass censorship and address taboo subjects. You can present criticisms in a story about Mars, or about alien invaders, which gives you plausible deniability.”

As with many of his peers, Jabr got hooked on science fiction as a kid. “My family are artists, actors, screenwriters, so multiple cultures were in front of my eyes,” he says, going on to recall the fantasy TV shows he watched, the books he read, the tales of Pharaohs and kings. He has no time, though, for the conspiracy theorists and myth makers who occupy the margins of ufology. “There are so many fake, cheap stories, such as the one about the pyramids being used as fuel tanks for alien ships,” he says. “For some, this isn’t seen as fantasy but as theory.”

Religion, Jabr continues, also fired up his childhood imagination, though not always in a positive way. “My interest was coming from fear,” he says. “All these stories about the afterlife, Judgment Day, angels, and demons.” Fear is the prevailing emotion in Jabr’s Damascus Under Siege, a series of surreal collages that depict sinister-looking spacecraft either looming over the Syrian capital or shooting lasers into it—a representation of the country’s civil war rather than the prospect of an alien invasion.

“Science fiction provides a way to bypass censorship and address taboo subjects,” says Determann. “You could write a realistic story set in the present that criticizes authority, but that might get you into trouble. Or you can present the same criticisms in a story about a society on Mars, or about alien invaders, or about the future, which gives you plausible deniability.”

Al-Mahdi, too, admits to cloaking political and social provocations in fantasy. “I like to write post-apocalyptic novels, to imagine the collapse of what we have now and start anew—you can chop and change things however you like, and it is the same with alien invasions,” he says. “If you look closely, you’ll see I’m criticizing current regimes.”

Not all fantasies, however, fit this mold. It’s unlikely that the makers of the hammy 1959 Egyptian flick Journey to the Moon intended much more than a bit of harmless escapism. The same could be said of Rex Chouk, the Saudi artist whose works include trippy images of flying saucers hovering over the desert. As for the alien-invasion film Aerials, Zaidi says this: “I’d like to be able to say that we had underlying messages, but the reality is I’m just obsessed with UFOs.”

Ayham Jabr’s “The Guardian of Life”

(AYHAM JABR)

Brave new world

In 2007, former Syrian culture minister Riad Agha stood before a science fiction symposium in Damascus and delivered an address that, in its own way, provided a direct rebuttal to Zaidi’s skeptical aunt. “Man is an imaginative being,” Agha said to the assembled geeks. “The more he excels in imagining, the more he excels in innovation and invention.”

For Determann, the truth behind this statement is apparent in everything from Abu Dhabi’s futuristic Masdar City to the emerging Saudi-UAE space race. “There are three things you need before you can explore space,” he says. “You need knowledge and technology, you need money, and you need imagination. Before you go to Mars, you have to imagine going there.”

In fact, Determann continues, potential engineers and astronauts should be encouraged to immerse themselves in sci-fi. “There’s an idea that you can use space research to build a high-tech, knowledge-based economy, which the Emiratis have really bought into,” he says. “So if the aim is to inspire young people to go into space and contribute to that economy, we have to start early, building up the fascination long before they’re ready to study physics at university.”

Jasem Mutlaq, founder of the Ikarus Observatory in Kuwait, would likely agree. “It’s rare that you’ll find astronomers who are not fans of science fiction,” he says. “I grew up in the 80s watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. But the biggest impact of all was in 1997, when Contact was released. I was literally in tears when the movie was over. I’ve been hooked ever since.”

Like Mutlaq, Al-Mahdi grew up on a diet of science fiction, though his career took a different turn. “I wanted to be an astronaut, that was one of my childhood dreams,” he says with a laugh. “In high school I was good at chemistry and physics, but I liked poetry and literature more. I went to an engineering college, but then left for the faculty of the arts. So I was torn. In the end, I put both things together.”

Here, Mutlaq offers a word of caution. For him, the intermingling of science and science fiction is a positive thing, but not to the extent that it blurs the line between fantasy and reality. “Following the footsteps of Carl Sagan, I usually do not fall prey to conspiracy theories, especially those related to aliens roaming around,” he says. “While recent videos of UAP encounters are intriguing, they are not conclusive evidence for beings who traveled thousands of light years to go zipping over coastlines for a couple of seconds.”

And while Mutlaq will continue to gaze into the stars from his observatory, to read his sci-fi books, and abide by the moral standards of Captain Picard, he has learned to keep his own fantasies in check. “Alien life has yet to be proven scientifically, so we shouldn’t fall prey to our whims and wishes,” he says. “We ought to understand the universe as it is, not as what we aspire it to be.”