RAS AL KHAIMAH, United Arab Emirates -- There's a vague
notion on this tiny satellite campus of George Mason University
that basketball is played by bouncing a ball and tossing it toward
a hoop. It's also starting to sink in that classmates on the other
side of the world have done something remarkable.
"Go, Mason, go!" yells 19-year-old Mohamed Eltigani, who was
born in Sudan.
"Kun fi al-qimma!" campus receptionist Khawla Yousef screams
in Arabic, which means "Reach the top!"
Welcome to the real Mideast Regional.
Come Saturday -- when George Mason resumes its improbable ride
and meets Florida in the Final Four in Indianapolis -- students and
faculty on this campus will hopefully by then have found some way
to watch the game.
And there better not be any Gators fans passing through this
remote mountain town, where large patches of rocks abound and wild
donkeys and camels roam.
The farfetched success of the Patriots caught many people by
surprise, none more than those on George Mason's UAE campus, where
basketball is about as popular as cricket is in America. The
university, too, is even less of a household name in these parts
than in the States, and it doesn't officially open its doors until
September.
"Please win for us to make us popular," said Ahmed Khalid, a
20-year-old Palestinian who grew up in Ras Al Khaimah.
George Mason coach Jim Larranaga, who has likened his
Superman-slaying team to Kryptonite, was intrigued to hear the UAE
students were following the Patriots.
"You think when they're reading it, they're going to ask
someone what Kryptonite is?" Larranaga said from the school's
Virginia campus Wednesday. "Can you explain what Kryptonite is in
Arabic?"
The campus is 60 miles from Dubai and has just 31 students --
many from Iraq, Syria and Iran -- who study English in hopes of
being admitted as freshmen in the fall. Their sports activities
consist of pingpong over lunch and soccer games that start when the
blazing sun dips below the jagged mountains along the nearby border
with Oman.
"We are trying to generate some interest," said Shaukat Mirza,
the campus' executive director, giving a tour of a campus garden
where iridescent green birds flitted among desert plants. "They
are playing not exactly basketball, but football. I mean soccer."
Mirza said he was blindsided by the team's snowballing success,
perhaps because he has focused on the grand opening of the campus,
which sits on a stony plain where goats graze among acacia trees.
"Until you called me I was not aware of it," he told The
Associated Press.
Students' knowledge of the game was slightly better. Eltigani
was asked to name a basketball player. "Shaquille O'Neal!" the
goateed student said with a grin. Any others? "There are some but
I can't think of them," he said.
The students were stumped when asked which team George Mason
beat last week.
"Chicago?" asked one.
"No, it was Michigan," Eltigani said with little conviction.
Informed it was Connecticut, Eltigani winced.
The Patriots' opponent Saturday?
"I think they're playing Minnesota," said Khalid, who
professed the most knowledge of the game, saying he played in high
school..
Scott South, who teaches English at the school, figures the
victory over Connecticut will serve another purpose as well.
"I printed out articles about it, and I plan to do a reading
lesson with it," he said.
Khalid, if he passes the entrance exam, will be eligible to
study at the George Mason campuses in Virginia as long as he can
secure a U.S. visa. Given the chance, Khalid would try out for
basketball.
"If they let me join the team, I'll go there to study," he
said.
George Mason is one of a growing number of American colleges
attractive to wealthy Arab countries on the Persian Gulf, where
U.S. university educations have long been coveted. But after Sept.
11, families have grown wary of sending children -- especially
daughters -- to study in a U.S. atmosphere seen as increasingly
anti-Arab.
Instead, rulers in the Emirates and nearby Qatar have spent
millions to lure some of the best American schools to build
satellite campuses. The effort quickly succeeded.
Harvard is building a medical school in nearby Dubai, the most
cosmopolitan of the UAE's seven emirates. Georgetown is building a
satellite campus in Qatar, alongside those already there: Cornell
Medical School, Carnegie-Mellon, Texas A&M and Virginia
Commonwealth.
These days on campus, there's a prominent bulletin board at the
main building where a story about the Connecticut victory is
posted. There's also a photo of players Lamar Butler and Tony Skinn
and Larranaga. Another picture features George Mason fans cheering.
Butler was dumbfounded to learn George Mason even has a branch
in UAE.
"That's 'Ripley's Believe It or Not,' because I didn't know
that," he said.
Two weeks ago, the school broke ground on a vast campus deep in
the rolling red desert dunes just outside Ras Al Khaimah. For now,
the big question is this: Will it generate any star basketball
players?
The Ras Al Khaimah campus has a fine basketball court, with a
green resin composite floor. But the court has been converted into
an auditorium, with stuffed chairs to the half-court line and
framed portraits of sheiks on the wall instead of a scoreboard.
"We'll start a team here now. It has been an inspiration for
us," declares campus librarian Amuthan Arasan.
"We're proud to say we're in the best of four," he said, then
adding, after a hint, "er, Final Four."