Arabic text from OS X 10.7 unreadable on OS X 10.6.8

I saved a text file (file.txt) from TextEdit to my Google Drive on one Mac running OS X Lion. I opened the file from my Google Drive in TextEdit on another Mac running OS X Snow Leopard, and now it's all garbled with strange characters. The original content was Arabic text. Both computers have full Arabic language support installed. The Snow Leopard Mac is still opening other Arabic documents OK, just not this one. I no longer have access to the Lion Mac, and the only version of the file I have is on my Google Drive. So is this the end of that file, or can I salvage it?