From Babylon to the Holy Land

After a year of second-guessing our decisions, I can definitively say we recently got one very right: our trip to Jordan over the Christmas and New Year holidays was really, really good.

Winter break is a long one at my kids’ school, with a few extra days’ padding for long-distance travel on either end; on top of this long period, many families take students out early and return them late, basically taking nearly a month off school to go home. Even if we had the funds for airfare to the US, I would probably not take this option. It would fatigue everyone, us and our hosts, at a demanding time of year. We spent the first week “staycationing” around Dubai, and the second week in Jordan.

Our original plan was a week in Turkey; but since we’re in the habit of second-guessing, we did just that and changed our tickets. We flew into Amman, rented a car and stayed at a resort on the Dead Sea. Of course, the chilly weather of the mountains came as a bit of a shock, but we’d stocked up on long sleeves and packed cold-weather clothes, and beside the Dead Sea, it was much milder.

The landscapes were lovely, and everyone was much more relaxed than our day-to-day experience in Dubai. Traffic moved at an easy pace with very little honking and no discernible aggression. Cops at the (many, many) traffic checkpoints were pleasant and polite.

We’re not really the type of family to hole up for a week at a resort, but it served as a cozy home base, where we could relax every night and fuel up with breakfast every morning before heading out on our adventures.

Two awesome kids check out the view of the Promised Land

Our first full day took us to the top of Mount Nebo, where tradition holds that the Maker showed Moses* the promised land, and where some believe Moses may have died and been buried. There is no grave. No bones. But you can stand atop the mountain and look out over the Dead Sea and see all the way to Jerusalem. And it’s incredibly peaceful. There’s a church there, and it’s currently under construction, so the looks weren’t perfect. Until you stepped out to the platform to look over the land as Moses might have.

That afternoon, we visited the Jordan River and the site of Jesus’* baptism by John the Baptist*. This area is politically sensitive, and so visitors are only allowed in guided groups, which are advised to stick close together. Our guide, Ghazi, was outstanding. First, his knowledge of the history of the area, the traditions and collaborated history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, was amazing. Second, based on his presentation of the information, you would be hard-pressed to guess his own faith. Incredibly respectful, and an earnest believer. He helped me understand what John’s baptisms were all about. The whole thing was…spine-tingling.

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There were a few dips in the Dead Sea waters, some mud-slathering, a ride on a camel, and some visits with people my husband needed to see. One such visit included an outing to Umm Qais, the ancient city of Gadara. This, after climbing the heights with a view to Syria, the Golan Heights and Lebanon–including the last checkpoint, where they kept my husband’s passport while we visited the village. Just in case, I suppose.

Noah could have spent days wandering the ruins of Gadara.

The ruins offered more spectacular views of the heights and Lake Tiberias, formerly known as the Sea of Galilee. The whole visit, the wandering up and down the hills, relying on the hospitality of so many local people, felt apt for the season. The sprinkling of churches throughout the area, the visiting Maronite priests at the resort, the cool weather and the heavy presence of so many holy bones was just what our souls needed as an antidote to the hustle-bustle and material focus that is life in Dubai.

Another thought-provoking stop for us was the Cave of the Seven Sleepers, which lies on the outskirts of Amman. For something so revered in Islamic tradition (Surat Al Kahf is a constant reference), it was not made easy to find, and this was further complicated by ongoing road construction and detours, as well as Jordanians’ tendency to give directions by telling you to “keep going straight.” But we found it (after finally asking a woman, after having asked two men for directions), just in time to catch a presentation before the keeper locked up for midday break. The Cave is under supervision, as relic-thieves have in the past stolen things from it.

Taking a few moments with the bones of the Sleepers

We were fortunate to have the opportunity to visit several families in the country, and of course each household presented the national meal, mansaf. The visits were friendly and relaxed, and it was apparent by these examples that in Jordan, family is incredibly important.

Our last day took us up along the borders back to the area of Wadi Shu’aib to the tomb of Prophet Shu’aib*. There is a lovely mosque with a courtyard and gardens, and the tomb is in an adjacent room. A busload of visitors from Syria and Turkey was getting ready to leave as we arrived. We spent a bit of time contemplating the story of this prophet and his people.

It is said in Islamic tradition that it is best not to visit the Dead Sea unless one is weeping or at least remembering the life of Lot* and the demise of the people who refused to listen to the prophets. To me, between the constant visual reminders of not only the prophets but the One who sends them, and the contrast between the peace of those places and steady streams of conflict all around, I could not help but vacillate between the weeping and the remembering.

*Peace and blessings be upon them all.

There have been drafts

I don’t expect you, dear readers, have felt my absence as I have. It has been a while, as so many would-be bloggers like to say when they come back to the blog after a couple months’ silence. Yes, it has, and I have approached you a few times, saved drafts and decided not to post them. So much has happened, and so much has not.

We have completed seven months in Dubai. Just days ago, we passed this milestone, putting us well over the hump. Our first chapter here, thirteen months in length, is now on its wane. As we say in Arabic, alhamdulillah.

This week is the first of a nearly three-week winter school break. I’ll understate things and say that it’s nice to let the kids sleep in and relax all day. No 6:35 A.M. bus to keep waiting, no 3:35 P.M. return. It’s been hard on the two, and emotionally tough on me, to put them through what nearly amounts to a yearlong stint on an industrial first-shift schedule. They’re good little soldiers, and they don’t complain much, carry their lunches and drag their rolling backpacks dutifully along, hit their homework on their return, usually make their bedtime (although too often begging me to read an extra chapter in our nighttime read-aloud), and don’t take it too personally that they have not found close friends at school.

The weather has shifted and is now, I suppose, exactly the kind of weather that many people of means pay money to enjoy. We can have our breakfast out on our choice of three patios–front garden, side patio, back garden. We can choose between the compound pool or the beach. Beach is more active, but (if you can believe it) it’s breezy, and light cloud cover makes it feel chilly for swimming. The pool is enclosed, mostly protected from a breeze, and reliably warm. We can ride our bikes through quieter neighborhoods, but the streets are composed in ways to prevent through-traffic, which means we can get a little lost and ride a little longer than we mean to. I’m working up to taking the kids on the bike paths of the Beach Road, but Dubai traffic doesn’t change with the season, so that remains a downright scary thing to do with/to the most precious little souls in my world.

We can now enjoy the park with its greenery, and so can everyone else, so a trip to Safa Park reminds me of vaguely of the Seurat painting. It has water features, a small pond where electric boats can be rented, and a waterfall, some hills that the kids can roll down until they’re too dizzy to walk. But there is an entrance fee, so a visit to the park is a planned event that requires the carrying of ID and extra cash to lay down for the deposit fees for rental bikes (you can’t bring your own bike into, or even on the path around, the park).

I’ve taken to walking the two-mile stretch of beach across the road from our place. It’s a long walk, and the sand is a challenge to all the muscles of the feet and legs. The waves, water, smell of sea air and flocks of sea birds are truly the only connection available to any sort of wildness, nature, life beyond human. We have, of course, the hordes of street cats that we’ve befriended, and the three we’ve given safe haven in our home and garden, but in truth the result of that is a garden that needs constant cleaning. I am also shooing stray cats out of the house, as they freely wander into the kitchen looking for breakfast or dinner, knowing we’re among the reliably kind folk, and also those who eat fish.

We’re looking forward to a little trip next week, finally taking geographical advantage of this move to explore a chunk of Holy Land along the Dead Sea. The temperatures there will be much cooler, and I am assessing our clothing, looking for things like sleeves and long pants, socks and shoes (not sandals). We brought a few things, and luckily I did have the foresight to pack things that were big on the kids when we left. They have grown, each a full size, since we came here.

Apparently the winter break brings with it winter break-ins, and we have been warned by the watchman that several villas have been robbed. Already this week. So it is up to us to lock doors and windows, pull curtains and put away electronics. Fortunately, we don’t own valuables like jewelry, art or luxury goods, and I can only hope that will help reduce the likelihood of anyone coming to take what little we do own these days.

After the holiday break, we are looking forward to the start of the Season of Visits. Already, we have two scheduled, back to back, first my parents and then a beloved friend, and I am hoping/lobbying/planning for a visit from another dearest friend before the weather begins to turn again to fire and brimstone. That will carry us, the kids and me, to spring break, when I hope we can take another short trip somewhere on this side of the globe, glean some learning and some joy from where we are. And then it will be a hectic slide toward summer break and a shift in how we do things for the second chapter here.

Right now, I am favoring pulling the kids from their current school environment and enrolling them online, for a couple of reasons. First, this would enable us to spend a longer period with friends and family in the U.S. We knew we’d miss them, but perhaps we didn’t know how very much, and more months together with cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents and best friends will make the (subsequently shorter) time back abroad much more bearable. Online school would eliminate the need to leave the house at 6:30 and the nine-hour day that results (plus an hour of homework). It would present the very real challenge (at least to me) of building structure, order and discipline into our days. P.E. would consist of long jogs on the beach, riding lessons if we like, ocean swimming, and improving our urban biking skills. We would be in the U.S. long enough to enjoy the colors of fall, the orchard season, the changing light and sudden shortness of days–and we’d be there again in spring for the smell of mud and worms, the mania of May. Ramadan falls mid-summer now, and while the fasting days are shorter in the UAE than they are up in Wisconsin, they are unbearably hot and lonely, spent locked inside, curtains drawn, AC blasting, sleeping until 1 P.M. and up until nearly fajr in an effort to stay hydrated and stave off the blubbering insanity that isolation brings. We’d spend Eid with friends and family, as holidays should be spent. We would begin and end our school year in America, and spend the middle months here in the UAE.

Not to say it would be a simple transition. It is one thing to spend two months among family and friends, bouncing from one home to another as houseguests and taking occasional road trips and mini-vacations; it is entirely another to be around for five months at a time. This would necessitate my owning a car, renting and furnishing an apartment (however small and spartan), and securing storage for the months we’d once again be abroad. Not without its inevitable snags. We will also need to look for a different housing scheme here, as our current place is (frankly) more house than we need, more than I care to clean, more dust than I wish to manage. Too many toilets.

For now, I am in a holding pattern, as we have not made a final decision either way. But I am expecting that, after some visits with family and friends, some long conversations from which I can tap the insight of people not enduring the psychotic psychological effects of culture shock and all, that I will know what to do, and will begin planning the steps toward it.

The work assignment is not one year; it is at least three, and possibly five or more years, and we need to take whatever steps necessary to build a positive life around it. This, I believe, is the plan that can get us through it, mostly intact, with an understanding and close connection to life back home, and fresh eyes every year, preventing the psychic callous I see on too many people who shrug–at the driving, the giant cars and conspicuous consumption, the overdone artifice, the mistreatment of laborers, the sudden inability to use a hammer or yard rake or mop or to carry a bag of refuse to the dustbin–and carry on as if it were normal to live in Babylon.

In the meantime, I spend at least an hour each day at the water’s edge, marveling at things so simple as the water cycle, the tides, and tiny pink clams that burrow into sand under lapping waves. If I raise my eyes from the sea-foam, I can see The World islands out there, Atlantis at the tip of the Palm, Burj Al Arab just down the coast on one side, the ever-busy loading docks of the port on my other side. I try to fix my focus on those tiny, pink clams.

 

Just the facts

I know I’ve not been great with keeping up on the blog; I’d apologize, but if I’m being honest, my absence has been more about sparing you the bellyaching and homesick stories. You know, Mom always says, if you can’t say anything nice, just zip it. It’s been zipped a good while.

Now, it seems, we’ve arrived at the best part of the year here in Dubai, and it’s about time I try saying something nice.

November has been a month of cool mornings and short school weeks. We’ve had parent-teacher conferences, American Thanksgiving, and this week, the kids have another long weekend for UAE National Day. The long weekends have been nice. Kids get an extra day to catch up on sleep, and we’ve been able to spend a day relaxing before the “real” weekend. Mbarek still has to work, so it’s been up to me to do something fun with Noah and Meryem, and we have. We’ve been to the Dubai Zoo (which we would not call fun, but educational in its own way). We’ve spent a long morning at the beach, building sand castles, catching jellyfish, reading books. The kids are doing just fine in school.

We’ve done a few other things over the course of the month. We took a road trip to Al Ain, which is just an hour and a half away, to see a more proper zoo, with humane habitats and proper vet care for the animals. This past weekend, we visited the Date Palm Festival at the Abu Dhabi National Exposition Center. It’s essentially a trade show for the date industry, which allowed us to taste more varieties of dates than you might have imagined could exist. So now we know the names of our favorites. Meryem “planted” a date palm, but neither kid was keen on climbing the date palm that was set up with climbing cables. We also got to try specialty sweets made from dates, date milk, and camel’s milk ice cream (delicious). We stopped at Shaykh Zayed Mosque for Friday prayers, but we have yet to take the tour of this breathtakingly gorgeous house of worship.

Mbarek spent one day fishing on a charter boat this month. I was invited, but had to stay home to meet the school bus. He accompanied his boss and a colleague to Fujairah, and they fished out in the open sea, and he returned late at night with about forty pounds of the freshest fish possible. We have since grilled mahi-mahi twice, and both meals were exceptionally good.

The children have made friends with a pair of sweet kids whose mother is also quite lovely, so I believe I can safely say, even with abundant caution, that we have finally each made a friend. They’re a global-expat sort of family, surely much better at adapting to places, schools, lifestyles and such than we are. At the same time, they are the most normal of people. The kids make up their own games together and do normal kid things like play with Legos, make-believe, draw and color, and swim. Their mom is happy to drink coffee from mismatched mugs on the front step and listen to the birds in the trees. We’re looking forward to enjoying the parks and beaches together over the coming months, until March rolls around and the heat and humidity return full force.

The school gave its nod to Thanksgiving with classroom celebrations followed by a day off. I brought the stuffing for Meryem’s class and watched, disappointed, as 25 or so 8-year-olds couldn’t manage to politely cue or behave through a picnic lunch on the green. I distinctly remember a Thanksgiving meal last year, with a class the same size and students a year to two years younger, including many with special needs, who behaved beautifully even when going back for seconds, in a little public school in Wisconsin. There really is value in being nice, and I’m thankful for kids (and parents) who know the difference.

We’ve planned a family getaway for winter break. We’d originally planned for Istanbul, but that changed when Mbarek was cautioned that a winter storm there could ground us to a hotel room. Instead, we are now looking forward to a week at the Dead Sea. I’m disappointed, since I was really looking forward to Istanbul. But the Dead Sea has its own ancient history, and maybe Istanbul can happen later.

That’s really all there is. Not a lot of news. Very little has happened–indeed, it seems very little happens overall lately, and I should be thankful. There are places in this corner of the world where a lot, too much, really, is happening, and it mostly amounts to suffering. Such places seem to surround us while we remain in our protective cocoon, where the worst we suffer might be loneliness, alienation, boredom and artificiality. It could be much worse.

So now, with December’s start in just a couple of days, I need to get on with my pool-lounging, patio-sitting, beach-walking winter and enjoy it while it’s here.

Quality of life

While a woman in my position–a trailing spouse, somewhat sudden full-time homemaker, mother of school children and perhaps most particularly a North American expat–has little opportunity to meet and get to know the local, host-culture counterparts in Dubai, there are many occasions where a woman like me can meet, greet, shake hands and exchange small-talk with women of similar circumstances. We’ve got school events, extracurricular events, a curious thing called the coffee morning. We’ve got the odd opportunity to chat up another grocery-purchaser in the checkout aisle (“Wow, now that’s a lot of hot dogs!” or “Yes, I do know where you can get a wide variety of canned soups at decent prices.”).

These times and places have their shortcomings; you can only get so deep before the cashier butts in. Or, at the school event, a speaker walks up to a podium and everyone goes silent. Or riding lessons are over and the proprietor of the stables starts looking at you like, “Move along, now, or pick up a shovel.” Mobile numbers are exchanged, play dates arranged, and the next thing you know, you just aligned your daughter with the class Queen Bee. Sigh.

But then, these are also the days of Internet, and like a lot of Western expats, I like to slum on the boards and see what everyone’s talking about, maybe live a little vicariously through the ranks of working expats. I have met a couple of nice people this way, people I can meet for a coffee or a meal, commiseration, a little laughter, and generally a short-term booster shot of feeling somewhat understood. It can be a little complicated for me and my husband to find a whole family that’s a good fit, because while I’m a Western expat, he only sort-of is. Most of his country-of-origin peers here are operating in a totally different socioeconomic layer and live here without wives and families. So we’ve begun building what looks like separate social lives–one for him and one for the rest of us. And while I’m wholly Midwestern, I’m not out meeting my fellow Americans at bars or clubs–the usual place where the expats are meeting up. I have no use for the $150 all-you-can-drink Friday brunch; indeed, I have to be at the mosque for prayers just when brunch is kicking off.

I’m a little ashamed and perhaps apologetic to be so lukewarm about our life here. I know how lucky we are. UAE ranks high on lists for expat “quality of life.” Our kids’ school seems quite adequate. We’re generally safe, as long as we’re not in a car. We have access to good quality health care, and, for a price, decent groceries. The city claims the municipal water is safe to drink.

But that leads me to an examination of “quality of life” as a concept. I am not sure I measure the value of my days on the same scale as my expat counterparts. And that seems to be where I hit the wall.

I can walk across one major street and get from my front gate to a beach–a free, public beach on the Arabian Gulf–in about as many minutes as it takes to break a sweat in 85-degree weather. (I might be mown down by a Bentley while crossing that street, but the beach really is right there.)

On days I don’t want to face traffic, jellyfish or perhaps even sea snakes or hammerhead sharks, there’s a perfectly good 25m pool even closer to the house, in the opposite direction. Temperature-controlled. At least, that’s what the landlord calls it.

An apartment building on the corner has a closed courtyard with a couple of nice coffee shops where I can get freshly juiced lemon and mint, as well as wi-fi.

A large park close by has a rubberized, marked 3400m track around it. Yes, I have to prime with albuterol before braving the morning traffic exhaust, and again there is that whole risk of being killed while crossing the street, but it’s there. It costs 3AED to enter.

When my husband travels, I can use the car and get myself to either of the Big, Crazy, Destination Malls in less than 20 minutes. I’ve learned how to navigate them all right, but I can still get lost in the car parks, which I believe are bigger than the malls themselves.

The Creek is a super-cool place to take an evening walk, ride across the water on an abra, watch the sun set, the city lights come up, and listen to a hundred muezzins call the faithful to prayer. Bur Dubai is definitely the fancier side, but Deira has its own character.

Satwa’s a great place to have a dress copied or a suit made at very good prices. The tailors can do almost anything, quite adequately. There are also sweets shops where you can blow a week’s worth of calories in minutes, seconds maybe.

On my way to Dragon Mart, I pass a flock of flamingoes.

I believe I’ve mentioned in previous posts the World’s Tallest Building and the dancing fountains outside it.

I can walk to a waterpark that boasts a 100-foot drop on which you reach speeds up to 80km/hr.

Another park on the other end of town offers jetski rentals.

Still with me? So much to love, what’s my problem, right? Gosh, add a liberal amount of liquor on a Friday morning and it sounds like the perfect vacation destination. I’ve only begun to mention the things people can do and buy.

And I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who enjoy that feeling of living in a vacation destination. Thing about these destinations is that they’re vacation-priced. As much as the kids like a waterpark thrill, I’m not going to pony up the admission more than once (maybe twice) a year. And while that park down the street only costs 3AED to get into, well…do that a couple times a week and it gets old fast. And most of these things are attractions–not hobbies. You see the fountains dance to a Michael Jackson song once, you really don’t need to see them twice. You see the way these fools motor about on jetskis, you’ll quickly think twice about paying for the chance to play chicken on the water with them.

And while the flamingoes never get old, I can’t stare at them and drive in Dubai traffic at the same time. That would be irresponsible.

What I’m getting at is, more and more it becomes clear, we are a family of people-people. Not stuff-people, not places-people. I watch my son play football once a week and I see he’s the only kid out there smiling, joking and chatting. Not because he’s the only kid who enjoys playing (he doesn’t really love it at all)–but because it’s a social opportunity for him, and like me, he is desperate to feel connected again. I almost cried watching him this past Saturday.

And I know there are people who do feel connected here. There must be, as there are millions who come and stay. I have heard so many stories of people who came for a year, fifteen years ago. They make their way. Unfortunately, their way seems to become a habit of working 12-hour days, commuting an hour each way, developing insomnia or some other health issue, and living for that month off everyone takes in summer. I can see that path so clearly from here, but I don’t want to take it.

So it looks like we are going to have to blaze a trail of our own. That’s always a little tougher, takes a little longer, but I really do think in the long run, it will be worth it. It’s not about the authenticity of our Dubai experience, but about the authenticity of our selves. And that’s something I feel desperate these days to preserve.

‘You must go to the City of Emeralds’

Burj Khalifa can be seen from 95km away

So, a few weeks ago, the kids and I were at Mall of the Emirates. They had a half day of school, my husband was out of the country, and in an act of benevolent desperation, I agreed to take them to the mall (we’ve already firmly established, I think, my opinions about malls in general, and MOE is the superlative form of “mall”) to browse Borders and have an early dinner at the Thai place.

Among the bargains we picked up from the cheapo bins was a Puffins Classics paperback of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz.

I had no idea–and believe me, I know how stupid that sounds–that I’d soon be reading an analog of my own experience that so tightly fits my (and our) feelings and struggles and challenges and triumphs, that I’d be struggling not to sob as I read, and then laughing at myself at the spectacle.

Nightly. Because it’s our bedtime reading. I like to read aloud to my kids, and they like to listen. We all wind down together this way, and bedtime is relaxed and ritualized, whether Baba’s in the house or on the road. This little bedtime ritual belongs to us.

I’d never read the book. I’ve seen the movie probably 30 times, figuring my age, the number of years I’ve been capable of watching TV and the number of years I’ve been in the U.S. when it was aired. I know the movie, love the movie. And I saw Wicked–at the Orpheum in San Francisco, actually, same day as finishing the San Francisco Marathon. Loved it. So you’d think I might have anticipated the themes, rolled my eyes and put the book back in the bin. But, I didn’t.

And for some reason, I put it together with the Halloween theme, most likely because they’re pretty common costumes. So, we’re reading it now. As a matter of fact, just last night, Dorothy missed her chance to catch the balloon across the desert with Oz, because she couldn’t find Toto, and the ropes broke and he floated away without her. Ahead of her still lie a battle with fighting trees, a city made of china, and Quadlings, if she is indeed to make her way back to Kansas to see Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.

So last night, we watched in amazement as Oz filled the Scarecrow’s head with pins and needles and bran, and then handed over the control of the Emerald City to him. And how he poured the Lion a drink and called it courage. How the people of the Emerald City thought fondly of Oz and appreciated the Scarecrow as their new ruler, since they so trusted Oz–who’d lied to them the whole time:

Oz was always our friend. When he was here he built for us this beautiful Emerald City, and now he is gone he has left the wise Scarecrow to rule over us.

…

The Scarecrow was now the ruler of the Emerald City, and although he was not a wizard the people were proud of him. ‘For,’ they said, ‘there is not another city in all the world that is ruled by a stuffed man.’ And, so far as they knew, they were quite right.

Ahem.

So, while we don’t have magic silver shoes or a golden cap, and there’s no one-eyed Wicked Witch of the West sending Winged Monkeys to carry us to her castle where she might make slaves of us, we do face daily little checks on our wisdom, our courage and our ability to remain open-hearted and tender toward others, especially in the face of an often cold-hearted urban life. We do try to keep to the outer rings of society–among the Munchkins, if you will–because it is out here where we find friendly, helpful and kind people. And we know, even when we are moving within the inner circles, closer to the glittering city of jewels, that we can always call upon the field mice as our friends and witnesses. And you’ll know the field mice when you see them: they will be working earnestly and with quiet dignity at difficult and under-appreciated jobs, and can be quite strong in great numbers.

And on the road, there are a number of wondrous things to see. Unbelievable things. Not Fighting Trees or Kalidahs or Quadlings, but the strange events of a rapidly evolving Universe, all going on around us. From the vantage of our little floating bubble, we are afforded a near-miraculous view of multiple sides to every event, everyone’s bias and backstory. And here, we can coexist with characters who hail from those mysterious places held so dark and vilified in our otherwise Western minds. And as varied and complex as our viewpoints may be, it is especially in a place like this where we can all find agreement in one thing: indeed, there is no place like home.

Of course, in the meantime, there is this important journey, and we’re all in the middle of it, earning our brains and our hearts and our courage.

 

Prospecting for something real

There’s no escaping the intentional, the created, the artifice, in Dubai. Some of the oldest parts of the city (which, by almost any other country’s standards are not old, but still) are marked for tear-down, to rebuild into fine housing, complete with shopping complexes et cetera. ‘Islands’ built in the shape of palm trees host fine housing and shopping complexes, et cetera. A giant mall is home to a ski hill. A waterfall inside another giant mall. A fake cloudy blue sky inside another giant mall. Another mile-long shopping complex, devoted to Chinese goods, is built in the shape of a dragon. There is a little fake ‘city,’ built to look like cities of old, with a little fake moat where perfectly silent little boats motor tourists around, replicas of stinkier, noisier abras on the real Dubai Creek a few miles southwest. Inside the fake city, a fake Bedouin–really, a worker from the Indian subcontinent or Philippines–poses as a falconer. There is a hotel shaped like a sailboat, floating on another created ‘island.’ And another collection of islands, The World, lies just off the shore of the beach where I like to swim. I can see it out there.

This has not been easy to swallow for a family from the Upper Midwest, used to dirty fingernails and the smells of soil, rotting leaves, manure and what-all else on a morning commute from home to school and office. Now, my husband’s commute is 25 minutes on a seven-lane stretch of racecourse dotted with heavily irrigated landscaping and ineffectual traffic cameras, where that guy in the Mercedes G55 AMG or Porsche Cayenne won’t think twice about actually bumping you if he thinks his hurry is more important than yours–and, let’s face it, it is. Just get out of the way. The children ride the bus, earlier than holy highway hell hour, but on the same stretch of road. And don’t think I don’t worry.

The creation of community also relies on artifice here. Web sites are the medium through which people ‘find’ one another, and then dates and times are arranged where people meet, usually at safe public places (at least the first time). Groups are created based on common interests, perhaps shared backgrounds, hobbies, even aspirations. For religious minorities, churches and temples provide a place to meet people with shared…well, shared something. For the majority, the Muslims, no worship community–just worship.

Last month, I gave a book club a try. I met with a group of women at the appointed time and place, ordered a coffee and jumped into the conversation. It was all right, but as with so many intentionally created things–things that, in my opinion, are just better in a more organic format–there was a slight reek of pretense hanging off some participants. It made me want a gavel, something to ring against the table mid-conversation, or a whistle to call time and say, ‘look, twenty-year-old girl. I’m not here to impress you; please do me the kindness of knocking that off.’ The book wasn’t brilliant, which might have been the first problem. The second would have been that only some of the group was there for community; the rest was there for an audience. I would argue that there are more appropriate venues for that–karaoke, open mic, or some such.

I want to go back and try again, but I have yet to get interested in their upcoming book selections.

Last night was a writers’ group. I was excited to learn they would be meeting close to where I live. In fact, I can see the building from the sidewalk in front of our villa. So I walked over to the cafe and squeezed in at the end of a table. The ones around me were kind, and even a recently-published novelist (!) at the table seemed perfectly human and delightfully modest. People asked many questions about one another, listened to and read one another’s work and offered feedback, honest feedback, in an earnest manner. There was a lot of hand-wringing over the hows and whens of just getting it written in the first place.

It felt okay.

In fact, a couple of people sitting next to me made me feel really quite all right, for that hour at that cafe. I admitted that I have terribly mixed feelings about being here, admitted to being a displaced farmer. I betrayed some of my feelings about stratified society, what I think about when I run down the Beach Road in the mornings, and how I feel about privilege. At some point in the conversation, the novelist turned to me and remarked about the strange jumble that I am. How interesting, he thought, this American farm girl who likes to greet all the Subcontinental gardeners on her morning run, who studies the teachings of a Sufi order and writes copy for a living. Him? Twenty-five years in banking.

As we chatted on, the woman next to me and I discovered that she is in the same book club as my neighbor, with whom I visit at the compound pool while our children swim. She recommended what I am sure is to be my next read, and even suggested that I consider joining their book club. They’re looking for another member, and they don’t have an American (they try not to have doubles of any one nationality).

I’ll think about it.

At any rate, it was only an hour, and I didn’t bring along any of my own work. With my husband’s travel, it will be difficult for me to regularly participate in any adults-only group. I don’t feel it’s fair to make commitments to groups when I can’t be reliable. And I’m already starting to gaze ahead to 2012 on my calendar and think about where that year might take us.

We spoke a little bit about deadlines, too. Another woman in the group works for an ad agency in town, and she agreed, deadlines are just the best. Without them, very little work is ever done. At least, this is true for me. I referred to so many of my creative friends, the artists, how they seem to either have children or marriages, but rarely both–with the exception of the men. I don’t know why this is, or I don’t want to think too deeply about it. There was some nervous laughter, as though I was maybe a bit of a pyromaniac at the table. The woman next to me insisted that in Dubai, it’s not like that. Possibly because fewer women are working here. We’re dependent. We’ll make it work.

Anyway, after an hour or so, I excused myself. Someone’s got to put the kids to bed, I said, outing myself yet again as maid-less. And as I walked home, I thought, I’ve taken something good from this evening. First, I don’t need to be cool enough or witty enough or rich enough. Second, if I really want to, I suppose I can always surround myself with people; but I should first decide whether I really want to. And third, I have some deadlines of my own, just over that hump in my calendar. So I’d better keep writing.

I’ll probably meet up with these writerly folks again. Like I said, they’re earnest people. Not overly friendly or bubbly, but certainly not taking themselves too seriously, either. I think I might just let the book clubs do without me in the meantime. If I’ve found one good thing, one real thing, I should probably focus on it, and not be distracted by some beckoning mirage a little further on.

 

 

Thoughts on culture shock

I’ve been here before.

I’m in my fourth extended stay abroad; I did two stints in Germany (a year in high school and a semester in college) and spent a little over two years with the Peace Corps in Morocco. So I’m not new to the ups and downs of figuring out a new culture. There are good days and bad days, days when you actually go without food just to avoid leaving your house because you can’t possibly deal with the intricacies of communication with humans of a culture outside your own. And there are days when you want to hug strangers on the street for reasons even you don’t understand.

There is even a “typical” progression, from honeymoon through culture shock, to adaptation and eventual mastery, when one comes to terms, as they say, with a new culture. At that point, one accepts it as another way of living, other than a home culture but just as legitimate. One might adopt some aspects or practices into one’s own culture. In this way, we bring home our new favorite foods, perhaps ways of dressing, exercise habits, even religious practices. Or we marry a dude. Whatever.

Here, you can have a look at the typical “W-Curve” of culture shock that most people experience. It is a sadly predictable affair, with all its excitement and fun at the start, and then the steep descent into the deepest part of the trough where everything is hateful.

 

I’d say we’re right now somewhere between “Crisis” and “Recovery.” We’re figuring out how we’re going to navigate this place, how we’ll tolerate some of the irritants. We’ve figured out how to stay in relatively close touch with family and friends back home, in spite of time differences and the massive expanse of geography between us. We’ve plotted timelines with milestones and checkpoints, stepping stones across the deep.

We’ve learned the therapeutic value of an ice cream or a movie. I’ve developed selective tunnel vision and cultivated a highly affected naiveté that allows me to run, sleeveless and alone, in public, and even on the beach. The children’s skins have thickened and they’re becoming comfortable with the strange sense of solitude in crowds that one can have in a place like this.

But, for us to continue with the typical culture shock developments, I think we would need to have a coherent culture to begin grasping. For better or for worse, we don’t get that here in Dubai. This is a totally contrived environment for the expat. There isn’t a choice, as there are in many other foreign-living situations, of whether to embrace or avoid the local culture; the local culture is shielded from outsiders. Oh, we have just as much right to attend prayers at the mosque as the nationals, and we do. We shop at their grocery stores. We stroll in their parks.

But, you see, we–the expats–are not the minority here as we would be in virtually any other place in the world. In Dubai, we–if, by “we,” I mean everyone who is a citizen or national of a country other than UAE–are the enormous, thronging majority. We are about 80% of the population.

So, let’s consider for a minute. How would you, given that sort of math, attempt to dig in and find the “real” culture? And, even if you did, since that’s not the culture you’re walking through in the day-to-day of living here, how much would adaptation within it actually help you? For example, a very large majority of the expats here are from Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Philippines. Already, there is great cultural diversity just between these groups. And even though I can count on crossing paths with many of them, much of our interaction may be prescribed, as there is a whole separate world of the service-worker here. And that is a world almost wholly closed to an American. I wouldn’t be expected to live in a labor camp, or live here for years at a time without returning to my home country, or without bringing the family to live together.

This is just one small aspect of the cultural incoherence that will serve to prevent our “mastery,” or internalization of the local ways. Another is what’s described here as the “nanny culture.” Just yesterday, my son announced that “almost all” the other kids in his class have “two maids and a nanny.” of course, my first reaction is to think about how nice it might be to have someone else clean up after breakfast. This passes when I consider that a family on a single income can afford two maids and a nanny. How is this so? Well, someone has to make the sacrifice–and you can bet it’s the two maids and nanny. Maids can be paid as little as $200 a month, even less, and the luckier of these service workers are often treated with indifference. The unlucky get hostility, abuse, even rape and murder. The same goes for houseboys, drivers, gardeners and all manner of people doing manual labor. They come from some of the poorest countries in the world, many without any skills or even language to help them, and they are quickly absorbed into the system, invisible yet incredibly essential to the “Dubai lifestyle.”

There are a lot of people who apparently “get used to” this aspect of life in Dubai. They hire the help and learn to mistreat their own small army of workers to the expected standard. That is not to say everyone does. I have met very respectable people who pay their housekeepers well, who speak to them with respect bordering on (I think, appropriate) reverence (they are, after all, keeping them clean and fed and clothed as a mother would do). These are a blessed minority. And the rest of us wash our own clothes and cook our own noodles and live in a relatively lower standard of housekeeping, and make our kids empty the dishwasher and put away their own laundry.

And I suppose that is going to be what mastery here looks like. As it is a very curious “expat culture” here, so our mastery will depend upon how successfully we build our own little idiosyncratic way of living inside ourselves–within the four walls of the villa, within the walled garden, within the walled compound, and finally within our own observations of self as we navigate the city and actually allow our little bubble to touch those of others. When I can drive from one end of the city to the other without a spike in blood pressure, I feel mastery. When I cook a dish, using ingredients bought at the store, that makes my children happy to eat dinner, this is mastery. When we give and receive friendly greetings to and from our co-expats who have nothing in common with us besides our shared foreigner status, this is the sort of mastery we wish upon everyone in Dubai.

Right now, according to most experts on the subject of culture shock, we are smack at the bottom of that first trough. Four to six months in, the subject pretty much hates everything. We arrived four and a half months ago. I suppose we’re lucky to have recognized already a few things we don’t hate. We have the beach, we have shwarma, we have sandals in October. I like that I can get my car washed in the grocery store parking lot while I buy food. I like that I can talk to the taxi drivers and that, for the most part, they treat me like their sister. I like laban and dates, and date syrup and spices in Arabic coffee. I love fresh fish. I like the smell of diesel fuel in the morning. (But I like that everywhere.)

There’s still a lot I don’t like. I don’t like that the water runs hot in the pipes; it’s impossible to take a cool shower. I don’t like that it’s 90F and humid when I leave the house at 7AM to run. I hate the aggression and hostility with which most people here drive (particularly the people who can afford the large luxury SUVs, and no, most of these are not the Asians I mentioned above). I hate it more as a pedestrian or cyclist than as a driver. I don’t like that there are stray cats everywhere. I don’t like the smell of grocery stores here–and I am aware that a preoccupation with hygiene is a symptom of culture shock. I don’t like how much we have to pay for everything here, from parking to electricity to…well, everything but gasoline and maids, it seems.

Anyway, it goes on. And within a month or two, I’m sure we’ll be working our way uphill toward the next crest. It will surely help that temperatures are expected to begin falling this month, from 36C/97F forecast today (though I’m confident our thermometer will read 38C/100F) to 32C/90F for highs by the end of October. Lows around 22C/72F will open a whole host of new possibilities. Like perhaps even cool showers now and then.

Car lift, madam?

I was fingerprinted today.

First time I was fingerprinted, it was at the Appleton Police Department. I know, sounds like the start of a really good story, but it’s not. Or, it is, but not like you’d expect. Peace Corps applicants are fingerprinted and run through a crime database before moving on in recruitment. So, perhaps, since Peace Corps led me to Morocco, where I married my husband, maybe those first fingerprints did lead to these. But as always, I digress.

The UAE will soon require all residents to hold an Emirates ID card. I am a generally compliant person, and they are also now posting deadlines and per-day fines to begin next year, so it made sense for me to register now, before everyone who’s been here ten years and never got around to it freaks out and the lines get long and backlogs start. I went to the typing centre a couple of weeks ago. That’s a place where people behind a counter, or at little desks, often wearing light blue button-down shirts, enter your info into a database on your behalf, and you pay the fees. There are typing centres all over town handling all sorts of bureaucratic things such as residence permits, medical examinations, and probably lots of other things that don’t affect me, but may affect expats from other countries.

I don’t like typing centres. They are sad little places. Some have little number machines for customers, others you have to sort of jostle with the public and wrestle your way to the counter. Fees feel unpredictable, though I am sure they are probably off a formula and quite systematic. But there is just something incredibly out of sync to have these rows of scribes entering info off a passport and into data fields, something I’m perfectly capable of doing myself. Like two things are happening about 200 years apart, but at the same time. It feels like time travel. The typists aren’t comfortable being friendly. The boss is looking over their shoulders, and snide remarks about bureaucracy are probably not wise to make in those circumstances. But you want to. But you don’t.

Anyway, I got my SMS before making it out the door of the typing centre, with the date and time of my in-person portion of the registration process. Today was my big day. Well, husband said he was busy today and I’d just have to cab it over myself. Turns out, cab fare was nearly 50 AED (each way), and the office (a different one from where the husband had his stuff done) is out in the boonies, down a gravel path on the edge of something, somewhere with lots of speed bumps and roundabouts.

My first cabbie offered to wait for me outside the building, but I sent him off, afraid it could take me an hour or longer. He assured me it would not take ten minutes. He didn’t know how embittered I am by bureaucracy. I didn’t remember that Dubai is always a surprise.

Inside the building, I was quickly (albeit not politely) served up a number by a woman wearing an abaya and surgically inflated lips at reception. I took the number to the next room, marked “Ladies Only,” where another woman, this one transfigured to a beauty by her kindness and friendliness, waited at the contraption desk. She took the most thorough “fingerprint” scan I have ever imagined. Full hand, fingers, ends of fingers each separately rolled over the scanner, palm pressed against the scanner, and even the heels of the hands.

I was embarrassed by the outrageous trembling of my right hand as she worked it through the calisthenics of the scanning. She was kind about it, claiming her own shaking was worse when she had hers done. I know, nice, right?

Then, I got to stare into a camera and she shot my eyes. And that was that.

I got a receipt and instructions about the next SMS I am to expect, and was free to go, certainly not ten minutes after arriving. Shorter than the cab ride. The driver had been right. But he was gone. I’d told him to go. I stood a few moments in front of the building, looking for another cab, but there were none just then. A man called to me, “Taxi, madam?”

“Yes,” I replied. He asked where to, I told him.

“Use a car lift, madam,” he said. “Just the same.”

“No thanks,” I said, smiling. “I’ll wait for a taxi.” He protested, and we went back and forth a little, but I wasn’t buying. I’d never heard of a car lift, and I assumed it was an unlicensed taxi. Just then, a licensed taxi arrived, and I flagged him down and got in. The driver asked why I was laughing when he arrived, and I told him about the car lift: I was right, he said, and I should never use one. They’re not metered, and they are illegal, and if they were to get in an accident, my ID would be taken and I’d be in trouble for hiring the car in the first place.

He was clearly delighted to be able to offer me this bit of instruction.

As is my habit, I asked the driver where he was from (Pakistan), how long he’s been here (not long, just 11 years, madam), whether he likes Dubai (it’s okay). We talked about snow (he will go home, near here, for snow this winter), our children (we both have 10-year-old sons), a little about politics, and then that quickly veered into religion, a much safer bet, where it stayed for the rest of the ride. In the end, my taxi-driving brother refused my tip.

“Inshallah,” he said, “next time I will take it.”

There are approximately 7,500 taxis in Dubai.

Of a morning

What a luxury it is to spend a morning almost entirely in self-directed thought. No write-to-order thought-organization, no keeping mental lists of what must be done today; on my list, for this day, nothing is urgent.

I started with my usuals, waking at dawn with the adhan and fajr prayers. (You can hear what that’s like here. The one on the bottom of the Sunni list is the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens.)  I make my little pot of coffee and check in on Facebook while friends in the USA are still awake and posting. Make the kids’ breakfast and wake them, drink my coffee, pack their lunches and help them with backpacks, and then we’re out front to meet the bus by 6:35 A.M.

Then, I make my husband’s morning tea and cook him some eggs. He has yet to simply rise with the kids and share breakfast, which I think would be nice, but it would also require him to go to bed a lot earlier than he does, and frankly, he would likely be more a distraction, and then I’d need to wake the kids another 15 minutes earlier, so I’ve let this go. He eats his breakfast and is out the door by 7:30.

I clean up the kitchen, set the dishwasher to run, start a load of laundry, take trash–or perhaps I should call it rubbish, a new favorite word for my kids–to the dumpster a few doors down. Received a delivery of drinking water and then set off to walk. I’ve been running, but once in a while, one needs a rest from the repetitive impact, and my back and IT band have been complaining. So I walked and listened to Freakonomics Radio’s Suicide Paradox podcast.

Returned to the villa and a fresh load of whites–socks and undershirts–was waiting. I carried the basket out to the lines we tied across the back garden and took down the towels that had hung overnight, and carefully hung the socks my kids wear as part of their daily uniform as they attend their high-priced, somewhat-exclusive private academy. Every expat child here attends a private school. I’m sure there are exceptions to this, but it is the rule. And I can’t tell that my kids’ school is any better than their public school back home. Oh, they have all the amenities–two covered pools on the campus (split into elementary, middle and high schools), two soccer fields, a sweet track, an amazing library, hot lunch on offer, specialized counseling options to meet the needs of expat kids, integrated and separate IT education, Islamic studies, Arabic language, really nice playground equipment, and even school supplies are more or less taken care of–but I don’t know whether my kids will advance to middle school with a quantitatively substantiated, higher-quality education than they had been receiving at the local public school back home. There, we dressed them in hand-me-downs, packed lunch because the hot lunch was appalling (in itself an education), bought our own school supplies, and paid a meager $40 book fee per year. Or some such. Field trips were out of pocket or PTA-sponsored. There was no swimming pool for lessons.

I “listen” (online, in forums) to a lot of expat parents complain, in fact, about the quality of education their kids receive, especially in view of the money that’s spent. So I suppose I’m primed to pay close attention. I’ll be watching my son’s math homework, pushing reading on my daughter, and maybe even looking for some way of introducing European and American history into their day-to-day (young adult historical fiction?), since Social Studies here focuses on Dubai (all fifty years of it),  and economics (I’ll be very interested to see what that looks like), as per UAE educational standards.

Of course I think about the fact that we live here, and what that means in terms of a social and geopolitical education to my children. They are making friends with kids whose countries of origin literally span the globe: places in Europe, Asia, North America, Australia and Africa for certain; I’m not sure whether there’s anyone from South America in their classrooms. And I’m sure there are no penguins in class, either. But they are meeting these children and having to navigate the waters of making acquaintances, judging character and choosing friends based on something wholly other than shared citizenship (or skin color, or language or religion). They’ll need to find other indications of shared humanity. And I have to hope that as the centuries pick up speed and continue to fly past us, this skill will help them make the world a more hospitable place.

But back to hanging socks. Because that’s where I am. As my husband puts in an eight-hour day in the free zone and my kids tumble around in the petri dish of an international academy, I’m hanging white socks in a walled garden and taking note of how the sun and humidity prickle almost magically into beads of sweat on my bare shoulders. And as I tick off the list of chores, now all complete (until dinnertime) and it’s 9:30 A.M., I realize with some relief and perhaps also a little fear that whatever meaning my life here in Dubai will have, will be brought to it by my own hands.

Just as it will not do for my children’s social studies to consist of Burj al Arab, the Palm Jumeirah and Burj Khalifa, it will not do for me to simply deliver scrambled eggs and white socks. Although it’s a start, and I may as well build on success. I’ll just try to take it from there.

I missed something

Something crazy happened around here this weekend, and I’m afraid I missed it.

See, we had something of a weird week. It was the last week of summer vacation. We’ve all long since lost our minds, so the past week was sort of a haze of who-still-needs-whats and Do-I-have-to-go-to-Carrefour moments. I don’t like retail stores. I never have liked them. I don’t like aisles, don’t like the lighting, and crowds in Dubai have a very…special…quality to them that makes me want to send my husband out with lists rather than actually venturing out.

No, I am not developing agoraphobia.

But every time–and I mean every single time–I have a retail experience, it is guaranteed to include:

• Someone cutting the line, often directly in front of me, and usually at the fruit scale;
• Out of control children pushing those stupid small carts–or their parents’ carts–and slamming against other shoppers as though the whole world is their abused Sri Lankan nanny/maid;
• Foul smells emanating from meat, seafood and/or produce;
• Far too many people operating without the most basic consciousness of what is happening around them, or perhaps simply without a care about who may be trying to navigate through an aisle while they’ve parked their trolley sideways and lined up three across in the noodle section.

And I don’t really even eat noodles.

So, I don’t go out much. My husband likes to go out. He likes to socialize with the butcher, so as long as he’s at the store, I have him pick up milk or cabbage. He’s constantly looking for new electronic garbage gadgets, and the only thing I dislike more than a grocery store is an electronics store, so I often stay home and clean while he shops. The kids go with him. I don’t mind.

On top of my distaste for shopping, we had a little car thing this week. My husband got rear-ended and as a result, the car is having some work done. At a garage. This leaves us without a car. Now, Dubai’s not the kind of place you can’t live without a car. A lot of people live just fine here without cars. There’s a Guiness-World-Record-Holding Metro (look it up; Green Line launched this weekend); a good network of buses with air-conditioned shelters; and, of course, enough taxis to keep us all on the move.

But it’s hot. Swelteringly so. So we spent most of the weekend in. I took the kids to the beach one late afternoon, and we did manage to go here and there, but I missed something, obviously.

Because this morning, I found Ganesha on the beach. Washed right up on shore, poor fellow. Hope he had a good time.

Onam is a Hindu holiday celebrated by Indians from the Kerala region. Dubai has many Keralites, and Ganesha’s appearance on the beach this morning when I arrived to swim a few lengths after a very sweaty run, was a sweet reminder of some of the happier sides of the diversity in a place like Dubai. To my neighbors, a belated happy Onam! I’m sorry to have entirely missed the festivities, and I look forward to experiencing future holidays with my eyes and ears a lot more open.