Sense-orship?

thehardyheyday.blogspot.com

Remember the puzzles from scholastic magazine? The ones on the back cover that had macro-lens photos of something in nature that you were supposed to identify? It would always be something like a blade of grass or a panda's paw or the filament of a lightbulb. Well, I have the United Arab Emirates version. Guesses anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

It's not exactly the same thing, but it is a little...puzzling. Got it yet? Well, it's not something that occurs in nature as we know it, but it's quite common here. You know, thinking about it, it may have been even more puzzling to see the whole picture, so here goes:

You may be at this point, as I was the other day, squinting and trying to figure out exactly what it is you're looking at, but I suspect you aren't still trying to figure out that you're looking at the stretching curve of a woman's lower back and a bit of the bum. You're trying to ascertain what it is that's streaking over what might have been the more...artistic, shall we say, portion of the photo. And the answer is...black magic marker! Individually-applied black magic marker (ie, this would have been on every copy of that page of the New Yorker's June 1 edition)!

Jacob and I were both reading before bed when I made my discovery and I squealed with delight that I had actual proof of this phenomenon, which to expats not investing in overtly inappropriate purchases is something of an urban legend.

So, there's good news and, well, hilarious news. The good news is that, at one bookstore in one mall, I can get a copy of a week-late New Yorker for the bargain basement price of about $8.33 (USD). The hilarious news is that, should my nearly-100-year-old literary magazine slip in its morals by displaying a slightly-too-spicy illustration or photos, mine eyes will not be tread upon by its hedonism.

You can be sure I'm breathing a sigh of relief.

Hiding in Plain Sight

I love cities - especially the ones with lots of foot traffic and lots of buzz. The buzz of people going somewhere, everyone with a purpose, everyone busy, everyone living his life expediently. I love New York particularly, and particularly I love to go there by myself. It's the most energizing feeling to me, to be walking the streets with milions and millions of people, all with so many things to do, all moving together toward completely different destinations. Everyone is present with the others, acknowledging the person inches away only with his silence and seeming indifference, but silently watching, from behind a newspaper, magazine, book, laptop or darkened sunglasses.

I enjoy the silent observation this kind of environment affords. It's what I think of as a quiet respect that is particular to certain areas and, let's just admit it: Lexington isn't one of them. Lexington is the kind of place where you walk on streets with a couple thousand people who are just hanging out, strolling maybe toward something, maybe toward nothing at all...and chances are if they are walking somewhere, they are walking to the same place (there aren't that many places to go) and they might even be talking about it to one another as they go - sacrelige, right? I used to think so. It was a confounding and confusing thing when I first arrived in a town where the people presumed to trespass on my private public observations with a greeting or friendly question.

My brother even came into town to visit once bearing the startling story of a gas station attendant who offered, in addition to correct directions, a bit of friendly conversation. It was the first thing he told me about when he arrived at my house.

After a few years, I got more than used to it. I loved greeting the parking garage lady every Saturday night when I was headed out with the girls - the one who wears the gloves all winter. I enjoyed making small talk with the girl behind the desk at the gym as she handed me my towel, the people at the coffee shop every morning standing in the line with me. I made friends with the barista, the mailman, the woman who always walked her dog at the same time as me, the jeweler down the street, the restaurant owners in the neighborhood, the cashier at Kroger. I came to enjoy the combination of observation and interaction.

Here I feel like I'm deprived of both sides, though. I glance at the women here and they're shrouded, cut off, free to observe and cut off from interaction. That's not a social commentary on veiling, it's more an expression of the desire to interact more with this culture that is so private, so protected. I can't speak to the men and I sit next to these mysterious women and see only sometimes their eyes, hands and feet. I draw all the conclusions I can about each one from their abbayas, their handbags, shoes, the appearance of their children. They or their children gently bump into me and they look up with silent pardons. I always smile back at them and wish I could say something to them. Something that might start a conversation, a friendship, create an environment where I could ask more questions.

I wonder, and can't recall, what question or statement it was to which I first grudgingly responded...not that it would be the same here. Or maybe it would.

Somebody's Watching Me

Living in a relatively small town in the states, one gets used to the idea of people watching. Not creepy-peeping-stalker watching, but it seems like whether it's Friday dinner with the girls, where you walked your dog, the question of who you went on a date with last or if you appeared at the community council meeting on Thursday afternoon or if you went out on Saturday night, someone always knows the answer.

Here, it's similar, in a way. It took about 5 seconds for the neighbors to realize that there were Americans moving in and you get the idea that the barber, the shopkeeper, the parents of the kids who play in the sand and dirt outside our apartment building are always keeping one eye out to see what we're up to.

But I've started to realize that they aren't just watching us to see what we'll do, they're watching us to see if we'll do what they expect us to do. And all of their expectations are based on the trashy TV that is licensed here. We're just a newly-moved-in cast of some horrible series. They must be waiting for us to start conducting illicit affairs out in the open and then kill each other over hidden stashes of money, and maybe kidnap their children for some nefarious purpose.

According to the media's information - a selection straight from the worst of Hollywood flicks and TV - Americans are sex-obsessed, crime-ridden, money-grubbing, foul-mouthed, irreligious degenerates. Pair that with the news, and you can add war-mongering fiends with irresponsible foreign policy to the staggering list.

We have several friends here, people who have been exposed to us and other foreigners, who don't buy into the stereotypes, but there are a lot of people we meet and with whom we're combating the image from day one. It's a tough place to be. And it certainly makes me think about what I'm doing and saying...does it back the type or crush it?

Girls' Night Redux

For the six years after college before Jacob and I got together, I was a seriously committed single girl. A few guys and dates came (and promptly went), but they weren't what I - or most of my friends - would have labeled a priority. We had other ways to be spending our time, like working long hours, decorating our homes with swap meet finds, new paint colors and gigantic sale-item mirrors. We had charities, parties, dinners and vacations. Everything was girlfriends: day or night. Things are different now for lots of reasons (no house, no steady work, little shopping, few restaurants), but there are a couple of things I'm lucky are still around in addition to my wildly attractive, sweet and considerate husband: vacations being one and girlfriends being the other.

One of the highlights of the week was talking on the phone to a girlfriend who, due to all of our crazy activities and her work schedule is pretty hard to pin down. If our plaster walls weren't so thick, I'd have disturbed the entire apartment building, I'm sure, with the maniacal laughter so characteristic of our friendship. Another phone date is planned with the BFF from back home and, frankly, it's so comforting knowing that they're still there and still there for me.

But even those reassurances aren't enough when you need to get out and away with some friends now. So last night, Ellen, Leigh, Miriam and I took leave of the boys and headed out for a girls night. It's not the same as home, but delicious Indian food, and chic mountaintop hotel sheesha bar aren't too shabby. Not to mention the talking...and the laughter.

Cultural Conversations: Deodorant

There's only one thing for which I have put in a specific request here from home: The New Yorker. I wouldn't argue if someone managed to snag a container of OPI Bubble Bath nail polish, though, but that's off the subject. There's also only one thing that Jacob has requested from home: deodorant. I laughed at first when he said that, but after a few months living here...hoo, boy.

No, my hot (literally and figuratively) husband isn't getting overripe here in the desert sun, but deodorant isn't a commodity that's...caught on, culturally.

And for all the cultural capital we may have built up over these past few months living overseas and melding into different countries and traditions, it's probably still not going to be enough to cover my persistent insistence that people stop skipping the stick - deodorant, that is.

Why why WHY do men (not necessarily Emiratis, but other expats) refuse? We're not talking road crews here. We're talking stockboys at the grocery, security at the mall, TAXI drivers, for Pete's sake! One foreign service employee at an Embassy cocktail party in Abu Dhabi commented to me about returning to the states from Africa, "It was like they pumped perfume into the air or something. I couldn't stand it, it was so unnatural. I mean, bodies, or rotting milk, I guess it doesn't smell good, but it's natural, you know? I was glad to get back to it."

NOT ME. Crank up the chemicals, pump in the perfume. Anything but B.O. Am I insensitive? A priss? Unnatural? Whatever, just spread the antiperspirant love, join the neo-deo movement. And, no, sorry folks: Axe (just like all the incense or cologne in the world), despite it's sexy (somewhat tamed here) ads promising women all over you, is not the same thing, does not work, will not do anything but make it worse.

Mall of the Eighties, I mean the Emirates

Shots of a recent visit to the Dubai Mall...click for pics above.

Pigging Out -or- Bacon Bender

Daily Report
Sunny, 115

Many of you know that, in Muslim countries, bacon is basically banned. You can get it, of course, but it's a slightly black-market-like affair that makes you feel like, in Jacob's words, "you're sneaking into the liquor store before you're old enough to buy contraband."




I suppose he's right, but boundary to boundary, it's harder to find a store that will offer a "strictly non-Muslim" storefront in addition to it's normal operations in this country (actually, there isn't a store where we live in Oman, we have to cross the border to the UAE) than it is to find the sleepy cashier at the suburban grocery who'll sneak you the schnapps (or so I hear).



Well, until I made my first entry into the sanctum, I didn't realize how much I missed the other white meat. There were some failed attempts at constructions with turkey bacon, but it hit me when I walked into Choithram what I (we, Jacob's been on a recipe request rampage) was missing...I felt like Bubba from Forrest Gump as the possibilities whirled through my head.



Green beans with bacon, bacon and eggs, chicken and chorizo, sausage patties, sausage gravy, ham biscuits...you get the point.



And just in case you didn't...

Goodnight, Moon

Daily Report
Sunny, 120

I love to consult a crescent moon, but for different reasons than for those the lunar sliver is regarded here. To Muslims, the moon is more than a calendar, its a signal of the sacred. Holy times, such as the end of Ramadan, are determined by when the moon makes its appearance. They wait to see the sign of the moon to tell them something new about their seasons of fasting, prayer, celebration.

For me, the crescent moon has always held answers to ponderings on the world. I love the crescent moon, especially the one that is so fine that the sunlight illuminating it's profile reaches all the way around to form a faint but perfect orb. I imagine, as I see the rays reflecting on the moon, the days that are going on elsewhere in the world while I sit and ponder the night.

The light of someone else's day lights our night every time the moon is shown. I used to watch it, dreaming and wondering about what that day was like, where it was that for my moonlight, someone else was seeing day break.

Now I watch the moon, my crescent moon, and I think about the days I know are happening on the other side of the world. It's now my life, my family, my friends, whose day brightens my night. It's wonderful and at the same time wrenching to gaze up at the sky right after dinner and just before bedtime and bid my life, my people, my moon...goodnight.

Know Your Audience

Daily Report
Sunny, 119

In my days as a single girl I was focused. I had it all together and could handle it all myself. I didn't need or want someone else to tell me what to do or try to do it for me (some people call that help, I called it nosing in). I didn't want anyone to be my excuse. "I'm not helpless, thankyouverymuch. I can do it by myself." (Another childhood phrase that repeated itself during wedding festivities and, probably, pre-proposal permission discussions).

I didn't want someone to change my tire, my faucet, my mind or my plans.

Let me tell you about how effective that particular line of thinking is here, in the Muslim Middle East, where it's a religious affront, a family breakdown and a societal ill if a woman is unescorted by a father, uncle, husband or brother. At first I bucked against it. I found it restrictive to need someone there with me and yet found the behavior of some men in the presence of an unescorted woman beyond abberant (maybe worse because I didn't feel that I could respond and, believe me, if someone is inappropriate with me back home, he is going to hear about it). To be fair, that kind of behavior was more common metropolitan Morocco than here in Oman and the UAE, where it's more frequent to draw sidelong looks or outright stares before a crude comment.

I'd like to say that I'm just smart enough to adapt and sensitive enough to be culturally acceptable, but it was an accident that I learned to turn it to my advantage.

One afternoon, the SC group had piled into the van and headed to the Jimi Mall to do our weekly grocery shopping. Unfortunately, the van was the first victim of the heat and the battery had given out. Leigh and I were assigned to sit just inside the foyer of the mall along with the groceries from 7 other people to prevent the food spoilage that is sped along by the desert temps. As we sat, waiting for the van to be repaired Jacob and Matthew ran into the store to purchase jumper cables and the others were outside tinkering with connectors and such.

A security guard (yes, the malls are full of multi-national expat Paul Blart wannabes) approaches and starts going on and on about how "You can't sit, you can't sit. Management doesn't want you to sit here. You can't be here." I tried to explain the situation, I tried to say it would only be a few more moments, I told him I was a customer - look at all this stuff - and was just waiting for my ride, so I should be able to stay here, I even became annoyed and asked him where I was supposed to go exactly, and was he going to carry all these groceries because, if not...

then an idea. "My husband went into the store to buy something else and he told me to stay here. I can't move until he comes back. Are you telling me to leave when my husband told me to stay?" I watched and waited. I swear, fear nearly came into his eyes and he acquiesced, saying weakly only, "Ok, but when he comes and says so, you have to go." Triumph! I put my hands on my hips and stuck my chin out. "Ok, I will go when he says I can go, and not until then."

I've discovered my trump card. Who would have ever thought that my trump would be in submission? Not me...

'Cause it's all about the coffee pots

Daily Report

Sunny, 110

We don't have Benjamins here in Oman, we have coffee pot- and camel-currency. All the same, president's mug or cultural cameo, everyone is trying to hold on to as many as they can. Admittedly, I've never been highly skilled at cost-cutting and budget living, but I've learned a few things here and I'm ready to share these techniques for economic efficiency abroad.

Housekeeping: Kitchen Gnomes

Just before we left, I was subjected to numerous vaccinations and examinations, some of which were accompanied by blood tests. One talkative phlebotomist, from Iran, assured me that I would love living abroad because, she said,

"You will have a maid."

"Oh, no," I assured her. "I will not have a maid. We are just students."

"Everyone has maids in the middle east. You will have a maid to clean your kitchen and your house. I love America, but when we came here, I do not have a maid anymore. Too bad. But you will have a maid."

I let it go. I wasn't going to win this one, so I put it out of my mind, assured I wouldn't have any more help in the kitchen than my wonderfully supportive and considerate husband who always does the dishes after dinner. I was wrong! Each night, and sometimes even during the day when they're really sneaky, we are visited by what Jacob and I have termed 'kitchen gnomes,' whose sole purpose is to "clean up" after us...and remove anything that is left behind. The only problem is, we're having trouble defining for them exactly what is left behind and what we'd like to hold onto (unopened foodstuffs, etc). Not only that, but we're encountering some boundary issues. For example, I found a kitchen gnome in our bedroom the other day. We're working on a solution.

Travel

If one person riding in a gas-guzzling SUV is the proverbial wrench in the gears of a transmission of tyrannically insistent evironmentalists and economists, carpooling is the properly disposed of and recycled motor oil - a virtual salve on our hearts, minds and wallets. Can you imagine driving down the freeway and spotting 9 adults crammed into a giant white van that doesn't have church lettering plastered on the side? Now can you imagine that scene here? What must all the Emiratis think as they speed by, lights flashing, horns blaring in their Porches and Mercedes and Range Rovers? They just may not understand how advanced we are (suckers). Well, forget anyone who is down on us. We're thinking of getting a van when we return to South Carolina (all of us Arabic-trackers and hangers-on). Aside from the money-saving side, we all truly think we might miss the haggling over destination, speed, route, car seat position, A/C, music and driver.

Utilities
How much do you pay a month for electricity? Gas? Well, aside from the A/C units that are on near round-the-clock operation schedules here, we are doing the responsible (and necessary) thing by cutting down on our water heater usage and electricity, especially while doing laundry and taking showers. Have you heard the ads for the never-be-without-hot-water-again tanks? We can do you one better. We are never without hot water (especially from late March through September) because it's so hot outside that the (outdoor and indoor) pipes and tanks are constantly heated by mother nature's forboding, flickering flame of a tongue. We now use the hot water (in the holding tank inside the cooled house) for cool and the cold water for hot.

Laundry utilizes the same system, delivered to our modest (but automated!) washing machine via hose or bucket. All clothes and linens are line or rack-dried and, I guarantee you, the desert's drier is faster, and more efficient than any piece of machinery I've ever owned - even at night.

Attire

At home, waiting in about 15 meticulously-labeled, well-organized, cedar-outfitted boxes, are the remains of my fashionable life. A life full of stylish, trendy, accessorized, dry-clean-only clothes that will be out of style by the time I get back, I'm sure. I'm considering adopting the way of the abbaya. I mean, seriously, you buy one or two black sheaths and spend your extra dollars on decorated sheilas (veils) and you are assured to always have an array of affordable, appropriate attire options.