When you go out on assignment, in sports, in the UAE, a concept you don’t really consider, at first, is this:

About 90 percent of the Gulf Arabs you will encounter … will all be wearing kandouras.

OK, sure. So what’s the problem?

Everyone is wearing the same thing. The same quite plain thing. Long white robe. Sandals. The ghutra — the head-covering.

And the reality is, for a Westerner, it is very, very difficult to pick out someone you don’t know from a group of 10, 20, 100 guys. Not saying everyone looks alike. Not even.

But if you remove the visual prompts of individual clothing in a variety of colors and styles, specific shoes, haircuts … when girth or lack of same is disguised by a generally featureless robe that covers everyone from shoulders to toes … you are reduced to recognizing faces and facial hair. And maybe height. And if you don’t already know the person, and I rarely do …

Two examples of how this has been a problem, for me.

I saw a volleyball match (men’s, of course), between the Al Ain and Al Wasl clubs. Guys in shorts and jerseys, with numbers, like volleyball players anywhere, and I was keeping statistics and telling myself, “Hmm, No. 8 is pretty good, and No. 4 isn’t bad.” Like that.

After it was over, I realized I was depending on a deeply ingrained notion to actually find guys I wanted to speak to, and to interview them. To wit: Associating the player with a jersey number.

American football players may be totally covered up and hidden behind a helmet and mask, but in the lockerroom after the game you can check numbers posted above lockers and find your guy, even if it is a team you don’t know well. Baseball players and basketball players … easy, because you can see them before and after, and maybe even note tattoos …

Thus, at sports events in the West, you never figure you’re going to be unable to identify the guy to whom you wish to speak. But here? A major problem. Even at football games, where the guys who were wearing soccer jerseys for two hours now are striding past in the same white robes, and aside from the dozen guys from the national team you recognize … they could be starters or scrubs.

Back to the volleyball.

I was talking to Al Ain’s coach, who is media-shy and from Slovakia, and his English is shaky, and he was trying to suggest I talk to players. I was willing. I said, “Sure, where is No. 4?” — and used his name, too — and the coach said something like, “he’s ready” and I said, “OK, where is he?” And the coach said … “Here he is. Here.”

Like, standing next to both of us, looking at me.

The guy I had seen playing for two hours in shorts and a jersey, whose hair I probably knew was long or short … was now wearing a white kandoura and his head was covered. And I had not recognized him and wouldn’t have even if I had studied him. I was oriented toward jersey number and a sense of narrow or broad, short or tall, long hair or short, and “traditional” dress robs me of all those cues.

Second example, and even more hopeless.

The UAE professional soccer league had an “official drawing” for the coming season last night at a posh hotel in Dubai.

What we had was a couple of dozen media people in Western clothes (including some expat Arabs) … and more than 100 Emiratis between the ages of 30 and maybe 60 … all wearing (to my eye) the same thing. White robe, sandals, ghutra. (And yes, I know, the Arabs certainly pick up cues from the color and patterns on the cloth in the head dress; I, however, do not.)

So. No name tags. No club logos pinned to their robes. No apparent aggregation of guys representing a certain club at a certain table. (No tables, actually. Just the usual status-based seating — honchos in overstuffed chairs in the first row, lesser-status guys in seats behind … and the media in the back.)

A hundred guys, and I would have liked to speak to maybe a half-dozen of them, and had written down their names and club affiliations … but how would I find them, exactly? Walk up to a random guy and say, “Have you see Mr Awadh? How about Mr Marwan?”

Just before the event began, one man, maybe age 50, in “traditional” dress, made his way through the media guys seated in the back of the ballroom where the draw (and show) were to be held, and he was shaking hands … and said “I am Mr Saeed” … and I had made the mental note of “the chairman of the interim committee running the league is Saeed Abdul Gaffar Hussain … and we’ve run his photo a few times, though I have never met him, and he said ‘Mr. Saeed’ and looks familiar, this must be the committee chairman.”

And it was. So, one guy ID’d. Only because he had come to me and said his name.

Then, the CEO of the league, a Lebanese guy named Carlo Nohra, came to the event wearing a Western suit. And I recognized him right off.  Thank goodness. So there’s two guys I can ID.

When the event was over, and 100 guys in cover-all kandouras got up and left the room, I was able to find the two whom I had recognized, and get enough material  to move ahead with my story. But the idea that I would be able to find the chairman or CEO of Al Ahli or Al Wasl, and get more background … it was not going to happen.

If I stay long enough, presumably I will begin to focus on things like height/bulk, mustache/beard, graying/not graying, round/sharp face. I will have met enough people personally to note some of this stuff, rather than relying on photos.

For now, I really could use some jersey numbers or big, fat name tags.