Fight or Flight?

When I was at Kuwait airport waiting for my flight back to India via Colombo, I found myself sitting next to someone who looked Indian. Being bored, just to wile away time, I struck up a conversation with this guy. Initially he was a bit hesitant to talk to me and he seemed to be fighting some inner turmoil.
He told me his story.
It turned out he was a Tamil Muslim from Chennai, basically a mechanical engineer, who had come to Kuwait to exploit the fortunes that promised to await him.
Alas for him, things turned out sour. His sponsor was an extremely shrewd Arab cheat who wanted the entire credit for the work done by this poor guy. Finally one fine day, he decided to call it quits and decided to flee the unfriendly country, though it meant a minimum loss of 30,000 rupees which he had borrowed from friends and realtives before leaving from Chennai, but had no qualms about it now. He had planned his exit carefully. His plan was finalized one week prior to this.
He was unsure of the status of his visa and that was his first problem. If he was on a work permit, his sponsor could stop him at the airport and gaol would be the place for him. Even if he did flee Kuwait, he would be blacklisted by the Kuwaiti government on behalf of his sponsor and would be stopped from ever returning to the country.
He could not read the arabic on the visa and he showed it to all and sundry, to find out whether his was a work permit or a visiting visa. If it was a visiting visa, then no one had the right to stop him and he would be free as a bird once he arrived at the airport. The many expatriate taxi drivers hailing from Pakistan and India assured him that it was a visiting visa, under which he had no right to work, and hence the sponsor would have no hold over him and could not hold him back under Kuwaiti rules. Confident now that he would not land in gaol if he indeed tried to flee, the guy meticulously planned his return to his native land. He borrowed his visiting visa and passport from his Arab host on the pretext that he planned to make a short trip to neighbouring Dubai to visit a friend. That done, he surreptitiously planned his exit.
His first stop was the Sri Lankan Air office in the city where he booked his return ticket. Just to be on the safe side, he showed the Sri Lankan air guys his passport and visa and asked them whether it was one of those damned work permits. But the agents feigned innocence not wanting to get involved in a legal lacuna of any sort.
On the great day, when the boss was sure to be out of office, he feigned illness and stayed away from work; packed his meagre belongings and hailed a taxi to the airport. Bu not before he was spotted by one of his co- workers. Throwing caution to the winds the Tamil guy told his countryman that he was fleeing once and for all but made him swear that he would not breathe this to a soul.
Unfortunately when he reached the airport, his Arab boss unexpectedly returned to the office and found him missing. And apparently his friend who had last seen him spilled the beans. It could be left to imagination, the state of anger the Arab would have been when he heard this.
The poor fleeing Tamil was being called on his mobile by the Arab intermittently, which he had no intention of answering.
I sensed him perspiring and calling out to Allah to save him in his hour of need.
How many hours to the flight he asked me. "15 minutes", I replied. The mobile in his hands rang once again. I could see him itching to answer the phone and maybe hurl some choice invectives at his torturer.
"Don't respond", I said, understanding the gravity of the situation.
So there he was, so near and so far from freedom. He muttered somthing to me in English that sounded like he would be having one big swig at the bottle once he got onto the Lankan flight.
Five minutes before the boarding he switched off his mobile and heaved a sigh of relief.
We proceeded to the docked airplane.
I later saw him on the plane and he said he had just come to see me one last time. I found that he was extremely relieved on being freed from his ordeal and I was all the more symapthetic to his plight and to that of so many other countrymen who face a similar ordeal in hostile Arab lands.