Banin

Banin, on the day you arrived, the world was busy, loud and enormously pleased with its own shoulder pads. It was a Wednesday in mid-November 1984, and in Dhahran the fierce summer heat had finally eased into something a person could survive without negotiating. Somewhere above you, astronauts were doing something outrageous, and somewhere in a recording studio, pop stars were fussing over synthesizers. None of it mattered much to you. You had your own grand entrance to make, and you made it.

The world stage that week was crowded. In Riyadh, King Fahd was a little over two years into his reign, steering a kingdom that oil had transformed within a single generation. Next door, the Iran-Iraq War ground on into its fifth year, keeping the whole Gulf watchful, and especially the oil towns along the coast. In America, Ronald Reagan had just been re-elected in a landslide, winning 49 of 50 states. India was still in mourning after the assassination of Indira Gandhi two weeks earlier, and the Cold War hummed in the background like an air-conditioner nobody could switch off. Meanwhile, Dhahran was doing what it always did: home to Aramco's headquarters, it quietly kept a fair share of the planet's engines running while the headlines argued elsewhere.

Culturally, 1984 was a riot of neon and hairspray. In Britain, Chaka Khan's 'I Feel for You' sat at number one, rapid-fire Melle Mel intro and all, while Wham! had people across the world wearing oversized T-shirts with slogans on them. At the cinema, a little-known Austrian bodybuilder was terrifying audiences as a cyborg in The Terminator, a film nobody yet realized would launch a decade of catchphrases. Computers had just learned to smile: the Apple Macintosh had arrived that January with a mouse and a cheerful little face on startup, and people had no idea it was the beginning of carrying the entire internet in their pockets. Music came on cassettes you rewound with a pencil, phones were attached to walls, and if you wanted to see a photo you had to wait a week for it to come back from the shop.

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Sport had its own drama. The Detroit Tigers had just swept to a World Series title, and the Los Angeles Olympics, featuring a Saudi football squad, were still fresh memories. Closer to home, the Saudi national team was gearing up for the Asian Cup in Singapore just weeks away, a tournament it would go on to win for the first time. And on the day you arrived, NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery was literally grabbing a stray satellite out of orbit, which is about as showy as Wednesday gets. Down on the ground in Dhahran, it was the good season: warm days in the high twenties, cool evenings and a sea breeze off the Gulf.

So that was the world that welcomed you: a little anxious, a little ridiculous, full of big hair, big ambitions and machines that were only just starting to get clever. Much of it has changed beyond recognition, the gadgets, the maps, the music, even the city around you. But the best thing to come out of that particular Wednesday was not a song or a spaceship. It was you. Happy birthday, Banin. The world has been a better place ever since you joined it.