When I was being held by UAE immigration authorities for deportation, after having been abducted (which is probably a more accurate term than arrested ) by the UAE intelligence authorities, I shaved the sides of my head so as to appear as a non Muslim. I hated the idea of shaving my beard but did not want the New Zealand ambassador, who I was going to meet, to recognise me as a Muslim.

Obviously it was a pretty stupid idea as I realised pretty quickly. I forget the reason, perhaps I couldn’t get access to the trimmers again, but I met the ambassador, Gavin Young, like that and got my photo taken for my passport in the same condition.

My old passport had gone missing while I was in the UAE, which was great for me as it had visas showing that I had overstayed in Iran (I had been in Iraq). The intelligence people kept asking me where it was and they said they couldn’t find it in the place I described.

Go through the posts in the ‘Me’ category for background details. Click ‘Previous Entries’ at bottom of screen to see all of the posts.

Here’s the stamp from UAE banning my ass for one year on the 9th of September 2009:

After arriving back to New Zealand on the 11th of September 2003 I did a Limited Service Volunteer course with the New Zealand Defence Force. I was unemployed at the time and was due to leave for Egypt with a scholarship from Al Haramein (a banned Islamic charity) to learn Arabic and Islam in their Cairo facility.

Guess which one I am Apparently some of the soldiers wondered what the Taliban were doing there. Would have been funny if they had known I had just recently been involved in fighting in Iraq

Someone took a photo of me doing one of my 5 daily prayers. They were kind enough to give it to me

Good times!

Here’s my Saudi pilgrimage visa from my return there in late 2004 after having studied in Egypt:

Here’s a random passport photo and the other pages from the passport that have something in them, including my Egyptian visas:

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