There is no community on this planet that is as passionate, united, or willing to fight any and all odds as that of the heavy metal listeners around the world. Every year, metal festivals, world tours, and special appearances aim to make loud music and entertain laughably insane fans. From Seattle to Moscow and Oslo to Melbourne, the drums, the bass and the intricately laced rhythms over pumping riffs are becoming (irritatingly for a lot of people) a bit of a norm.

For experts in sociology, pacifists and peace lovers, the worst part of this epidemic is that it refuses to relent. Crowds are not getting smaller, they are increasing exponentially. Fans around the world are willing to sacrifice arms and legs even families and pets for a chance to just get through the doors. Several cities have already become synonymous with such festivals and bands. Wacken, Germany, Oklahoma, Wellington, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo. Wherever there's a band ready to make some noise, there will be thousands and thousands and another thousand of people willing to take a journey as insane as the music they listen to. The most recent addition to the global fraternity: Dubai. Doo-buy.

It started with a conversation, like some great things in life sometime do. An idea was transmitted from mouth to ear. It was analyzed in the mind, and promptly rejected. A few hours later it was well on the path to becoming reality. There are other people involved. Friends who understand and are willing to help you without any personal benefit to themselves. Friends you can convince to spend money for things they don't thoroughly enjoy but cannot see their brethren disappointed. At least, that's the impression one gets and that's what truly matters at the end. Friends who are willing to take a ridiculously hectic and cost inefficient journey from one city to another and then to another knowing it's for some greater good which will manifest itself in due time. And in all this, the most important lesson one can learn is that you can accomplish a lot by constantly talking and refusing to shut up till your goals are met. Talk, talk and talk some more; incessantly, relentlessly, mercilessly and without any sense of accountability or remorse. It will get you places. It got us places, and we're not that special, so if you're someone who knows what you're doing, your chances are pretty good.

Dubai. Where until recently the buildings just got bigger and bigger and the grass was always greener and the air always cleaner. But that was in 2007. This is 2009. Question: How do you add insult to injury to a booming real estate hub nose diving in a recession? You get 6 very angry and very loud Brits who are responsible for more than half the musical aggression and lyrical anger in the world, and you give them an open hand for one night. That's all it takes. Just a couple of hours on a weekend, and you can more or less forget about ever rising out of the wreckage of your past.

If your head's denser than iron, let it be clear on the onset this is all exaggeration. As part of Iron Maiden's 'Somewhere Back in Time' World tour, the band made a pit stop in Dubai on February 13 while en route to India and then Australia and New Zealand. This is a chronicle of crossing international borders against small odds and great ones to indulge in one's passion.

The unexaggerated truth is that spending immense amounts of money to travel to another country seemed like a completely sane idea. In fact, it seemed like the most natural thing to do.

Let's sprint through the boring parts. Take off from Karachi, land in Dubai, and wait for over an hour at the airport while you're trying to live with the fact that you are actually doing something meaningful for the first time in 20 odd years. And the best part is its not for anyone else, its about you.

For those who have been to Dubai on several occasions, you'll know there's not much about the place to write home about. A lot of traffic, a lot of malls, a lot of traffic, a lot of clubs, a lot of traffic, a lot of women, a lot of traffic and a lot of expenses. All these seem even less appealing when you have a clear itinerary and know what you want to do, unlike the proverbial tourists.

Crowd chants: "MAIDEN!!! MAIDEN!!! MAIDEN!!! MAIDEN!!!"
Now when a concert is scheduled to start at 9 and people have already swarmed up by 5 pm, you know it's going to be big and the sense of restlessness not only refuses to cease it takes over you completely. You get more thirsty, you talk more, you want to take more trips to the bathroom, you laugh and smile a whole lot more and dear lord can you become irritating. The melting pot that Dubai is becomes more prominent in such collections. Fans from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Oman and Yemen have already come together for a united cause. Going all the way from Pakistan at once seems more meaningful and less important when you have these odds against to face.

Crowd chants: "MAIDEN!!! MAIDEN!!! MAIDEN!!! MAIDEN!!!"
There is an overtone of the music that unites us. You can meet new people, hold entire conversations and discuss things you never knew you had the guts to talk about with an utter and absolute stranger, come from dynamically different ideologies and backgrounds, and still get along comfortably. Because nothing is more important than the music. For all practical purposes, it is like a seminar for the angry and composed.

Crowd chants: "MAIDEN!!! MAIDEN!!! MAIDEN!!! MAIDEN!!!"
Patience, a virtue so elusive when you know you're so near and you begin to fear will I live through this? You want to. You've got to. There is no choice. It's an opportunity that might not come again for as long as you live. We all live a lie and to be part of something as fantastic as an Iron Maiden concert is the REAL reality. But to get there you'll have to sit through the opening act. Lauren Harris made us feel the same way. We appreciated her music yes we did… she is quite a looker, and the romantics in the crowd would have had their money's worth right there and then. But it paled in comparison to the hymns of the mighty kings of rock. Glam-metal is not everyone's cup of tea and surely not ours; out there in the throng amidst the damp sweat and cigarette fumes. You know you have to bear with this because this all takes us back to the lies that are part of the bills and more bills cycle. Thank heavens Lauren has exited, stage right.

Crowd chants: "MAIDEN!!! MAIDEN!!! MAIDEN!!! MAIDEN!!!"
Calling it perfect would be an underestimate, an affront to the adrenaline and passion that was collectively spilled out of hearts, lungs mouths ears noses eyes and every other imaginable pore in a human body where these things come out of… everyone venturing out of the muck of lies and transcending all that is mundane and… and… and everyday. Everywhere you looked, you'd see faces representing all colors and creeds, looking beautiful; and you look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what exactly, precisely, is going on, and you realize that you don't have an answer. You feel the frayed ends of something major happening in your life but you can't seem to quite put your finger on it. Maybe it won't let you put a finger on itself. Not yet. Not for the next hundred years. All you know is that somewhere in this mixture, there is a touch of something…divine.
At about 1 am the band announces after their second encore a loud and surprisingly energetic "Goodbye Dubai!!!" and disappear. For about 3 hours after the concert, across the city of Dubai, fans bumped into more fans from the concert. People so happy and expunged of their love for the iron in their ears, they refused to fall into the mosaic of an ordinary Dubai weekend. It just wasn't going to happen, because you cannot keep a bundle of energy in one corner or hidden from the general populace for too long. It might come back and punch you in the face. Do considerable damage to your friend on the other side of the mirror. Suffice it to say that at 3 am on the morning of February 14th, the air had never smelled sweeter, the food had never tasted better, the sounds had never been richer and the color of anything had never been more vibrant. Technically, this is probably the best valentines' one could ask for. But that's all perspective.
What transpired after can only be labeled as euphoria, with a zest of arrogance. There is no better way to describe it, and to illustrate it further would only dilute the simple magnificence of the experience. An entire population and generation of Arabs, Pakistanis, Indians, Turks and expatriate westerners made their way towards the exits. The shrill and siren-esque goodbye not only put an end to the night's fun, but also the lights in their eyes. What's left behind was a lot of beer glasses, cigarette butts, promotional material and tissue papers. All of these have probably been cleared by now. But no cleaners on earth can take away the heart and soul that was left lying in the aftermath of the single greatest night in thousands of lives.
While en route to the exit, it is trivial but excessively important that the only thing required after the concert was a nice cold plastic up of sprite. With lemon. But at the exit a 7 ft tall security guard told us (friendly but extremely firmly) to finish our drinks before we leave. No glass would be allowed to venture outside the venue.
"You believe this? We're in a city that prides itself for its liberalism and being a beacon of happiness for the entire eastern hemisphere, and we can't take a glass of Sprite onto the streets!" says one of us. Memory and the circumstances make it impossible to recollect exactly who it was.
"Who cares? At least now we can die happy."