Home for the Holidays

“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

Well, I’m home for what’s been a few glorious holiday weeks. I don’t know if I could have done the holidays alone in an Islamic country without becoming a quivering mass of snot and tears only vaguely resembling a Danielle-shaped form.

I have been told by veteran expats (that would be anyone who has been living abroad longer than I have – four whole months) that there’s sort of a mythical quality that one’s home country has that gets shattered upon return. I can attest to this. Before returning, Lowville had somehow acquired a Shangri-La-like utopian status in my mind. Everyone is wonderful there. Everything is perfect there (freezing temperatures and the ever-present smell of cow poo aside). Picturesque motifs of a pristine countryside danced in my imagination like something from a fairy tale. In my mind I call it the Cult of Home. I have drunk the Kool Aid. I am a believer.

Now, I’ve admitted to myself that perhaps my homeland is not quite so grand as I have pictured in my mind’s eye. I love my family and friends here, don't get me wrong. But there are huge problems here just like everywhere. If I allow myself this shadow of a doubt, what then? What do I plan for my future? If I don't pack myself back to the States when my contract is up, do I stay in Dubai longer than the two years I’ve planned on? Do I return to Northern New York? Or do I try another country on for size? Granted, I do have a considerable amount of time left here in Dubai, but I have to wonder … what’s next?

I keep waiting for the plan for my life to suddenly become clear. What is the best thing for me to do? What will make me perfectly happy and content for ever and ever? Of course, I probably would be bored with my life if I wasn’t always wondering “What’s next?”

On another (and completely unrelated) tangent, I spent my Thanksgiving holiday in Indonesia. I know, I know, my life is hard. I’ve taken more trips in the past four months by plane than I have in the past decade: Kuwait, Quatar, and Indonesia. I love my life. And may I just say, Indonesia was fabulous.

I went to visit my Aunt Jeanne, Uncle Dan, and Cousin Paul. The day after I arrived, Thanksgiving, we went camping on the beach of Pantisiung on the southern coast of Java.

My cousin loves to rock climb. If you look closely at the picture below, he's perched on top of a cliff. My aunt is walking on the beach toward him at the bottom of the picture.
There's a great variety of religious heritage in Indonesia. Gedung Songo is famed for its 9 Hindu temples. Well, sort of. The Dutch colonists miscounted. There's actually only 5. Below my aunt, uncle, and I are sitting on the steps of one. There are no velvet ropes or "off limits" signs anywhere.

Here I am in a sulfur spring heated deep within the earth by lava, then channeled into this pool. Borobudur: a huge Buddhist temple that was buried under a lava flow then excavated over the past hundred plus years. It was once one of the seven wonders of the world.
This is a lucky Buddha I'm touching. I am now very lucky.

This is not a lucky Buddha. It's just one of many Buddhas stationed around the temple.

Like I said, my cousin Paul likes to rock climb and he tried to teach me. So here I am: rock climbing. Pretty impressive, huh?

And then reality hits and I realize the photographer was being kind since I'm only 10 feet off the ground.

While we were camping at the beach, there was an commercial being shot at the same time.

The biggest thing that kept me bug-eyed while in Indonesia was all the greenery. It was so lush and verdant. After looking at mono-chromatic sand tones for months, the green was such a relief.

A Very Belated Ramadan Account

I had to confess to a friend, “I’ve never felt dirty about eating.” She was handing me bite-size pieces of Zatar and cheese in the car as we zipped through traffic, surreptitiously and below the window-line, then I cupped each piece to my mouth pretending to yawn. I don’t know if was the illicit nature of the snack or the fact I hadn’t had anything to eat in hours, but it was the best tasting food I think I’ve ever eaten in my life. I shushed her when she tried to comment so I could savor the flavor in silence. It was that good.

Since Eid al Fitr is the celebration of the end of Ramadan, and I had a week off in honor of it, I thought I’d dwell a little bit on the subject. Ramadan is the month of fasting for Muslims and one of the five pillars of Islam along with praying five times a day, public confession of faith, giving to the poor, and a pilgrimage to Mecca. Obviously, if it’s a cornerstone of the religion, it’s a big deal.

As the United Arab Emirates is an Islamic country, there is no eating, drinking, chewing gum, or smoking in public during the hours of fasting (sunup to sundown) for anyone, whether or not one is Muslim. Restaurants are all closed. I heard that there are upscale restaurants that put up blinds so people won’t be able to look in and see the patrons eat, but I never saw them.

I mentioned to a few friends back in the States, Brianna and Delite, how difficult I was finding it not to drink or eat in public. “Well,” said one, “what if you just put juice in an opaque container. No one will know.” But it’s not just juice or alcohol that are forbidden. It’s any liquid including water. And I just want to remind the reader: this is the desert.

I never realized how much I drink in public until I was forced not to. I have my cup of coffee on my way to work in the morning. I sip a bottle of water while I’m teaching all day. I munch on trail mix between classes or at my desk if I miss lunch. After the first week, I realized I wasn’t really eating or drinking during the day either. Since I tend to multi-task (probably too much) and always am doing something while I eat, I kept up the doing part of the equation and just cut out the eating. I couldn’t understand why I was so moody and irritable. Oh, yeah, because I was hungry and thirsty! Now compound that by every other person in the country. Fuses tend to be very short during Ramadan.

Why would a religion impose this type of torture on its people? The idea behind Ramadan is to remind the faithful of the poor: by being hungry for the bulk of every day, one is better able to understand the plight of the poor and be sympathetic. This is also why this is the traditional time to give a large portion (fourteen percent) of one’s income to charity.

I understand the philosophy behind it, and I respect the fact that it is one of the cornerstones of one of the world’s largest religions, but the problem I see with it is that it makes food feel wrong. The problem with making something feel wrong is the tantalizing allure of something illicit. As with so many things (drugs, alcohol, and sex just to name a few) one knows that if something is forbidden, people will want to try it all the more. I was reminded of this as I snuck bites of food in the car with greedy pleasure, or took the bottle out of my bottom desk drawer – my bottle of water, of course.

Vacation Excitement

Well I'm, nearing the end of my first vacation in honor of the end of Ramada, Eid al Fitr, and before I plunge almost entirely into working (sometimes I have to remind myself of my primary reason for moving to Dubai) I thought I'd review my recent escapades.

Monday, what started as an innocent shopping trip with Samantha became a scenic tour of the neighboring emirate of Sharjah. I got a little lost. Obviously my skills at getting around in Dubai are still developing. In my defense, Sharjah is the nearest emirate and the neighborhood I live in, Qusais, is right on the boarder of Sharjah. On the bright side, I saw camels for the first time. On the downside, driving through the desert with no food, water, or extra gas in the car is a rather disconcerting experience. Vultures were circling my little Yaris. Fortunately, Samantha is a very understanding riding companion, and we did wind up at the mall we had originally intended, but only after we had picked up Heather who has been living here for over a year. She knows her way around.

Yesterday my neighbor and colleague, Wasan, took several of us to Ras al-Khaimah for the day. It was beautiful. After a month of seeing only desert and cityscape, I saw mountains and greenery. Before you judge these pictures too harshly as there is no greenery in them, let me say the greenery was sparse. Also, I forgot to take pictures of it when I had the chance, so now it appears I'm telling a whopper about the greenery that got away.

As if seeing a more varied landscape were not enough, I swam in the Arabian Gulf for the first time. I also learned from the Salamah, an Iranian friend knowledgeable enough about Ras al-Khaimah to chauffer us around, that “Persian Gulf” is not an appropriate term any longer. In fact, it rather smacks of the Victorian notion of “Persia” being anything in the Gulf region. Historically (and I’m cautious of writing this and thereby inciting a backlash from all of my history colleagues more knowledgeable about all this history stuff) Persia is very specific to what is now modern day Iran. Who knew? Even if I hadn’t known all of that at the time, swimming in the Arabian Gulf was lovely. It was all I thought it would be and more: warm, clear, salty, mild water. Lovely.

First Impressions

A wise friend of mine, Brianna, said to me before I embarked on this adventure, that I should try to note all the interesting, unusual, and fascinating things right away and write them down because after a while, one gets used to what’s around them. I suppose that’s the intent of this blog: to remember the experience I’m having while I’m having it and try to share that with those who’ve expressed an interest. Here goes.

Almost as soon as I got through customs at the airport, I saw two men in long white robes walk up to one another and kiss on the mouth. And this was not a peck. This was a wet smack of a kiss. I had heard before I got here, from my Uncle Dan, that it’s not uncommon to see Arab men holding hands or walking arm in arm, but to see it in person is still rather shocking when coupled with the knowledge that this is a country where homosexuality is illegal. That’s the way it is here: it’s fine for people of the same gender to show their affection for one another by holding hands, kissing, and putting their arms around one another, but for a man and a woman to do the same is a big no-no.

But same-gender affection has hardly been the most difficult thing to get used to. So far, the thing that is giving me the biggest challenge is living in a city with crazy city traffic. On top of having to watch in every direction as I’m driving down the highway for someone who thinks he should be occupying my car’s space, it is completely illegal to give anyone the bird or swear. Those things can land an expat like me in jail and perhaps even a one-way ticket home. So I keep my hands on the wheel and a smile on my face. My thought, though, will wander where they may.

There are a lot of pluses to living in this new place. One is that I can pretty much get anything I want done for me. Don’t want to lug my groceries to the car? There’s someone to do that. Want a Coke from the corner market? Someone can deliver it. The culture is very service-oriented. Why do something for yourself that you can pay to have someone else do for you? So yeah, I’ll be getting a cleaning woman here soon.

Another thing that has been really nice is that there are certain things reserved only for women. Now I know for men, this might not seem fair: that there are times for women only at the local water park or jogging path, but it’s nice to be able to go there and relax, not having to worry about the leering stares of men. Especially since most of the time I see women here, they are covered from head to toe in black. It’s been explained that they are protecting themselves from the prying eyes of men, and being modest. When there are no men around, they take off their abaya and hijab and reveal their unreserved selves. It’s like watching a flower open. My students also uncover when they come in to the women-only environment of the school, and cover themselves before going in to the outside world. They look so much more like children when they’re not covered, I barely recognize them outside.

Finally, simply living in another culture is gloriously new and fascinating. Women and men wear flowing robes with their heads covered in a traditional style while sporting designer shades, shoes and the newest and best cell phones. The women all seem to have bags with labels on them like Mark Jacobs, Coco Chanel, and Prada. This includes my seventh and eighth grade students. I feel like a pauper with my faux leather knock-off, but so far I’ve kept the fact that it cost me virtually nothing to myself.

Time has a different meaning. When someone tells me they’ll be at my apartment by 7, it could mean 7, or 9, or tomorrow. A common phrase to hear is “Insha’Allah” or god willing which basically means, “I can’t promise since God might have other plans I didn’t know about.” It seems to make things a lot looser. It’s frustrating for me as a Westerner, coming from a culture so dictated by time, but sometimes it’s nice to know I won’t get the hairy eyeball if I’m late. I’m just being cultural!

The neighborhood I live in is not the trendiest part of the city, but it has wonders all it’s own. It’s almost entirely Pakistanis who live in Al Qusais, so when I walk down my hall I smell incense and curry. I met a little girl yesterday while working out in the gym upstairs. In the course of our conversation I said “Holy cow!” without thinking. She thought it was hysterical.

With a few friends in Sharjah, a nearby city.

There are mosques everywhere. This is one in Sharjah.

Night along Dubai Creek. It's so hot right now, no one really goes outside until after it gets dark.

Al Mizhar American Academy for Girls: the school I now work for.

Arabian coffee pitchers.

An Iftar tent. I see them everywhere now that it's Ramadan.

The lobby of AAG (American Academy for Girls). Again, this is where I work.

Me posing in front of some traditional-style architecture.

It's hard to see, but that's the Burj Al-Arab behind me.

My one and only camel sighting!