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In this return the problem was not the cold, on the contrary…

The difficulties of the project were enormous, but I was very lucky and, above all, I was in the United Arab Emirates of Dubai which I consider a motor of liberalism like few others in the world.

Once, many many years ago, a mother and daughter, adults, of Jewish origins, who had recently moved to our country, came to consult me, because of that feeling that determined their diaspora for millennia. In practice they were fleeing, but who knows why, entering Italy, they had chosen an absolutely Jewish surname.

I advised them, for their daughter’s birthday, I think, that year, a trip to Dubai.

On their return they came to tell me.

They were leaving from Fiumicino (at the time there were few flights) and while the plane was already on the runway, it was stopped. The Emirates station manager came on board and asked, shouting, who the ladies XXX were. The poor women, quite scared, followed him off the plane. And the man shouted at them: “But you are Jewish and you want to go to Dubai?”

And they: “Yes, but we are open to all religions and…”

“Not me!!”

In the meantime, the man, in front of them, received a phone call from the Emirates manager in Dubai who, after putting him to attention, ordered him to apologize to the ladies and take them back on board!

In Dubai, the XXX ladies were welcomed with the utmost cordiality and this anticipated by decades the Abraham Accords that would have made something happen that just a few years ago amazed the world: the recognition of Israel by Dubai which was the first country on Earth, if I am not mistaken, to open an embassy in Jerusalem and not in Tel Aviv!

And we come to this return trip that you see here translated into an image by the wonderful AI of Photoshop.

As many of you will remember, both before and after having released the measurement of 2.5 degrees for a cusp, I did thousands of tests, on myself and on others, to test this border point and on that occasion I needed to go a few hundred kilometers from Dubai, where there are hundreds of oil wells, and stop for a few minutes near one of them, but not just any one, but rather a particular well that, in latitude and longitude, offered me that particular Lunar Revolution.

Accustomed to the way things are in the world where even in Milan (until “yesterday” …) it was forbidden to photograph the works of Caravaggio in a museum, I expected much greater censorship and dangers and even the possibility of an arrest.

I discussed it the evening before with the manager of the Hilton Jumeirah in Dubai Marina where I always went, at that time, when with very modest sums you could have the most unbridled luxury imaginable.

I asked that the driver who would take me there the next morning also attend the chat.

I first gave them a short lesson in Active Astrology and the two were very taken, I think for professional reasons, and didn’t miss a single word of my bad English. Nor did they make jokes.

I asked them direct questions like: is it possible? Won’t they arrest me? Do I need special permits?

On the third question, they didn’t even answer me because my request was so absurd that perhaps it didn’t deserve an answer.

There were three huge problems:

1) Getting to the right place when cell phones had just appeared and certainly didn’t have GPS.

2) Being able to stay still for about half an hour because I couldn’t risk being late and I had to be there half an hour early. How would the guards armed to the teeth react, seeing a white SUV stopped for half an hour a hundred meters from an oil well?

3) Driving away as if nothing had happened.

As I said, in my experience, Dubai is almost a place “of the future”, where the noun “liberalism” takes on the fullness of its meaning.

The mission went very well, no one even came close to asking for anything and I was able to put to good use a new proof of the validity of the 2.5 degrees.

On that occasion I used one of the first models of the Garmin GPS locator.