This Empty Page

I made a page on my website today.

It has a screenshot of Google Maps showing the Gulf region. It has two accordion toggles: one titled “March 1st, 2025: Sultan Qaboos Inspired Me” and one titled “March 3rd, 2025: This Empty Page.” Both contain lorem ipsum. Fake Latin text. Placeholder gibberish.

And I am unreasonably proud of it.

This is my kingdom. This is day three of the rest of my life. Welcome to the Perso-Arabian Gulf Project. Population: me.

I want to explain what this page is going to become. Because right now it is nothing, and I need to say out loud what I am hoping it turns into, even if it makes me sound like a lunatic.

The plan is a timeline. Every week or two, I will add a new entry. Each entry is something I thought about, designed, researched, or built for this vision. The entries might be short stories. They might be technical documents with maps showing new railway routes and connections. They might be animations. They might be the design of a car license plate that would work across all the countries of the Middle Eastern Union. Should it have Latin letters? Arabic letters? Both? What symbols do you use to represent different countries or states or emirates or satrapies?

I find the design language of a union incredibly interesting. What does cooperation look like when you put it on paper? On a passport? On a currency?

Another entry could be about renewable energy. We could use the tides flowing in and out of the Strait of Hormuz to generate power. Underwater turbines, without disturbing the shipping lanes or the bridge we are going to build across the Strait. Another entry could be about the Bushehr mangrove environmental research project. Or about Qatar and Bahrain working together on an environmental belt in the Gulf. I want to call it the Mangrove Belt, because we have the most fantastically, fabulously beautiful mangrove forests on the Qeshm Island side, and I want that to spread.

I also want entries about the Cradle of Humanity Agricultural Initiative, turning Khuzestan and Mesopotamia into a food production hub for the whole region. And about tourism: connecting all the islands, ports, and heritage sites into one network that people can traverse freely.

Every entry adds a layer. The page grows. The dream gets more detailed. And all of it is public, from the very first lorem ipsum to whatever this becomes.

Now here is the part where I have to be honest about my budget.

My budget is: almost nothing. I have a full-time job. I have a limited amount of free time. I have limited money. And I have a limited amount of energy at any given moment. All I can do is what I can do, and I am showing it on this website in something close to real time.

But here is the thing about dreams. They do not need a budget. They need a first brick. And today, that first brick is a screenshot of Google Maps and two blocks of lorem ipsum.

I am also dreaming that maybe, if this gets enough attention, people who share the same dream might show up. They might design something for it, or give me their opinion on political details, or suggest geographical solutions, or donate, or just say “I see what you are trying to do and I think it is beautiful.”

And then this project could grow. Could find serious funders. Could find government interest. Could find a million things I cannot imagine yet.

I know. I know. I hear myself.