I wanted to write a little something about perspective.

A couple of days ago, I found myself in Aït Benhaddou — yes, the Aït Benhaddou, backdrop to so many films, including Lawrence of Arabia. We stayed in a kasbah hosted by a middle aged man named Majid. I found the place on Booking.com. The breakfast? Average. The sleep? Not so much.

Majid was an interesting character — called himself an artist, built the kasbah himself, poured his energy into the space. And yet, I couldn’t help but think I might’ve slept better if I had booked the one with the “Tent Under the Stars” package. But then again, travel isn’t about comfort — it’s about contrast.

And that’s where Lawrence of Arabia came back to me.

Standing there in the ancient kasbah, I was flooded with memories from my childhood. I remembered jumping on my parents’ king-size bed, wrapped in my mom’s white dupatta, pretending to be T.E. Lawrence, savior of the desert, master of destiny. I knew the lines by heart:

“The secret, dear boy, is not minding that it hurts.”
“No prisoners.”
“Nothing is written.”



I played those scenes over and over on our 14-inch TV/VCR combo, utterly mesmerized by the myth of the man who bent the desert to his will.

But perspective changes.

In February 2022, after a mental health spiral, I found myself in Saudi Arabia with my mother. And it hit me hard — the reality of the state, the systems, the control. I started to wonder: Who was I rooting for back then? Was I cheering on the “hero,” or the hand of colonial power dressed in a white robe and romantic idealism?

It’s strange to reckon with that — to realize the stories you loved as a child might have been… skewed. And maybe that’s the nature of perspective. Maybe I’ll change again. Maybe in another ten years I’ll look back and think something completely different.

That’s the thing about Hollywood. It dramatizes, simplifies, and frames complex cultures through lenses built in studios far away. And yet, there I was — in the very place where that fiction met the land — and I couldn’t help but feel both nostalgic and unsettled.

Would I come back to Aït Benhaddou again? Maybe not. But I’m glad I came.

Two days there. A head full of old movie lines. A reminder that perspective is never fixed — it’s a living thing, reshaped by where we go, who we meet, and what we learn.

And ChatGPT? Yeah, sometimes it feels like dancing with the devil — you go in for help and end up in a philosophical spiral. But hey, at least I’m writing again. Travelling is opening my eyes in real time…