Roaring through the desert

He had had a rotten day at the office — the boss had barked at him, ordering some project done within an impossible deadline. So he got on his pearl-white Harley-Davidson Street Glide, turned the ignition, gripped the throttle and revved the engine.

He rode through streets crowded with apartments, past well-lit skyscrapers. The city faded behind him and he breathed in the cool night-time air, his motorbike roaring through the desert.

For a few minutes, he felt free of his job, his family, of pressures and demands on his time — just heading out on the highway atop nearly 800 pounds of pure American thunder. On a Middle Eastern highway.

“My mind just clears,'' says Rakan Talal, 26, from Riyadh, who was among a small but fervent crew of Harley fanatics converging on Lebanon a recent weekend for the country's first Harley-Davidson tour. “I don't think about anything. Just the road and feeling the wind.''

About 130 Harley riders roared into town from all over the Arab world — Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia.

These gleaming emblems of American freedom are growing in popularity here, says Marwan Tarraf, who sells Harleys in Lebanon and helped organise the tour. Five years ago, he knew of only 25 serious Harley riders in Lebanon. Now, he says, there are about 180.

Harley clubs are popping up around the region. Talal says his chapter in Riyadh has about 300 members.

They wear the black leather jackets, heavy boots and snarling insignia of biker gangs everywhere.

Talal sees no incongruity in having the green flag of Saudi Arabia, with its sword and Quranic script, right below the glistening Harley-Davidson badge on his black denim jacket, or in playing Arabic pop music as he rides his all-American bike.

Saudi Arabia is the perfect place to ride, he says. The wide roads are fantastic for motorcycles, smooth and well-maintained.

Such highways are becoming more typical in the Middle East, especially in the car culture of the Arabian Gulf. Dry, sunny days are also common in the region: Lebanon gets about 300 days a year of Southern California-like weather.

Most Harley riders seem to have some kind of American tie. “It's part of American culture,'' says Tarraf, a burly 40-year-old with a shaven head and a goatee speckled with white. “It's a lifestyle adopted mostly by people who have lived there or studied there, or are connected to Americans.''

But anyone can ride a Harley. It is all about freedom and the exhilaration of the open road.

“Once you get on a Harley you feel you are really free and that your spirit is always up high and you're going through the wind,'' says Abraham Kadoumy, 51, who discovered motorcycle culture when he lived in Los Angeles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “Freedom is what it's all about.''

Harley-Davidsons have deep roots in Lebanon. Police have been riding them for decades. Tarraf says he fell in love with Harleys after getting a lift on one stolen from the police.

He dreamt of owning one until he was 28. When he bought his first, Tarraf was living and working in New York and went to the dealership there, plunking down every last cent he had. “I didn't even have the money to pay for the gas,'' he says. “But I had the Harley.''

Many of the riders' girlfriends or wives accompanied them on the tour. Talal came with his wife, Sara, 25, who wears mirrored sunglasses and a brown headscarf covering all but her face when she rides with him.

It wouldn't have been fun without her, he says. But she is not the enthusiast he is.

“He treats the bike like his baby,'' she says.

Talal says he lives out a fantasy on the bike. Whenever he rides, he feels like a filmstar from old biker films, especially Easy Rider, starring Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda as two nomads drifting across America in a quest to be free.

“People hated the way they were because they were so free and they weren't afraid of doing what they wanted,'' Talal says.

Luckily, modern-day Lebanon is more tolerant than the Deep South of America in Easy Rider.

As the tour began, few paid the Harley fans any mind as they gathered to greet one another and show off their shiny trophies of steel and rubber in a parking lot next to Beirut's Mohammad Al Ameen mosque.

But heads turned as the riders rolled out, machines roaring, about 11am to travel the country in squads of 25, the glares of drivers on their way to work and the pious headed to church and mosque reflected in mirrored sunglasses, shiny black helmets and polished chrome.