DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — President Trump has already played an incredible amount of golf in his first 100 days. He says he needs the break. I sympathize. In fact, I need a break, too — from him, from writing about his relentless assault on truth and science. It’s toxic. So I break today to write about … golf — in Dubai, where I recently participated in an education conference.

Dubai is not a democracy and is fueled by cheap labor. But it’s also not Damascus. With its Ministry of Tolerance, Ministry of Happiness and Ministry of Youth (whose minister is a 23-year-old woman), the U.A.E. has made Dubai into the counter-ISIS, a place where young Arabs can live local and act global. It’s the most interesting crossroad city in the Arab world today. You run into the most unexpected characters here — especially on the golf course — which is where our story begins.

So a Hindu, a Muslim and a Jew are playing golf together in Dubai …

Sounds like the first line of a joke, right? Actually, it’s the first line of one of those serendipitous stories that often happen when you play golf abroad. In my case, I was invited to play at the Emirates Club with a U.A.E. education expert and the famed Indian mystic, poet and yogi Jaggi Vasudev, who goes by his reverential name, Sadhguru.