BEIRUT — He'd had a rotten day at the office -- the boss had barked at him, ordering him to get some mammoth project done within an impossible deadline. So he got aboard 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-lighted skyscrapers. The city faded behind him and he breathed in the cool nighttime 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, a 26-year-old from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capital, who was among a small but fervent crew of hog fanatics converging on Lebanon the first weekend of October for the country's first Harley-Davidson tour. "I don't think about anything. Just the road and feeling the wind. Riding on two wheels is something else. Riding a bike makes it all feel better."
About 130 Harley riders roared into town from all over the Arab world -- Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia. The group driving in from Jordan ran into trouble at the Syrian border. Apparently, someone didn't have the proper papers. They were held up for hours. But in the end, it was cool.
Even as clerics and politicians in the Arab world ring out denunciations of U.S. foreign policy and the encroachment of Western-style decadence, these gleaming emblems of American freedom are growing in popularity here, says Marwan Tarraf, who sells Harleys in Lebanon and helped organize 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 ride in one of the world's most religiously conservative countries wearing 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 elaborate Koranic 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.
