Sorry, Carmen. I don’t mean to infringe upon copyright law, but the syllabication was just too perfect to resist.
So I think every email from me should automatically come with an implicit apology for not writing sooner; this would save me the trouble of having to always say sorry for being out of touch for so long and would therefore reduce (if only slightly) the amount of reading that you lovely people would have to do: an elegant and mutually beneficial solution, I would say. That said, this is a long one, so get comfortable.
Things have been good since my last update. The 5 days of non-stop rain are now but a memory and the weather seems to be deciding if it wants to be spring yet – 80 degree days and 50 degree nights are par for the course now. Other meteorological oddities have included a week of gale-force winds that I swore were going to tear my open bedroom window right off my building and a recurring phenomenon during which the air simply seems to be full of sand.
Then there was the strange night of fog (which the good people of Scotland must have lent us because it seemed like something right off the moors) that delayed my girlfriend Andrea’s visit by a day a couple weeks ago. Thankfully that was really the only glitch in her visit, and while it caused me to throw a tantrum and kick a trash can at 1 AM at Abu Dhabi airport, it did not keep us from having an absolutely wonderful week together. We went on a desert safari on which we rode camels, scaled dunes, and were treated to a performance by a belly dancer. Andrea was as captivated by the desert as I was the first time I was introduced to it, but she’s such a beach-lover that I would have expected such a reaction from her when encountering any large expanse of sand (with or without an ocean accompanying it). Speaking of beaches, we then took a weekend trip to a lovely one just across the Oman border where we lounged in the sun, went for many a clichéd but nonetheless enjoyable long walk, and introduced ourselves to the local fish and coral while snorkeling. All in all we had a fabulous time, and we’re both counting down the days until she’s out here again.
Anyway, I know you’re all eagerly awaiting my next batch of observations and anecdotes so I’ll keep you waiting no longer.
Those of you who know me well will recall that I’m a lover of all things publicly misprinted; maybe it’s the latent English-major-mind reawakened or the product of a severely grammatically strict upbringing at the hands of two educators, but whatever the cause, spelling errors, improper use of apostrophes, and mistranslations simply tickle my funny bone. Well, I seem to have stumbled into the land of milk and honey for the typo-phile – or a copywriter’s version of purgatory – on the streets of Abu Dhabi . Many establishments proudly display signs that leave the perplexed American wondering what exactly goes on just beyond their neon incoherence. If you’ve looked at my photos on Facebook, you may have noticed one of a shop front with the curious name Butt Sweet House. I believe it’s a bakery (and I’ve heard they have the best buns in town). I think that’s my favorite so far, but running a close second are the vast majority of the city’s hair salons which, through the slightest of errors in transliteration, boast the name saloon instead. A favorite of the NECC crew is the Handsome Gentlemen Saloon, which sounds like a hangout for pretty-boy cowhands, but whose wares none of us has been brave enough to test out. Even road signs are different than those back home. I’m routinely warned that the roads are monitored by “radars” (I suppose the pluralization makes the technology even more effective), and construction areas are clearly announced with deceptively enticing “Diversion Ahead” placards that leave me expecting to see a carnival or at the very least the world’s largest ball of twine (“Ooh, what an entertaining diversion that was!”) but yield nothing more than an even more convoluted traffic pattern than what passes for normal around here.
Speaking of driving, I had my first experience behind the wheel when Andrea and I took our trip to Oman, and I must say it was far less harrowing than I had expected, though the fact that we rented a car at the airport, which is half an hour out of town, limited the amount of city driving we had to do and kept us away from most of the automotive lunatic fringe I mentioned in my last email. What I did find interesting about the trip was the border crossing. In order to get to our hotel, we had to enter Oman , but we didn’t cross a legitimate border checkpoint and as a result did not have to have our passports stamped or show any form of identification. Instead what we got was a dude in camo gear with a machine gun standing in the middle of the road and basically waving as motorists immigrated and emigrated in front of him. I don’t think he would have even stopped me had I not rolled my window down in the expectation that he would demand some sort of ID from me. Quite to the contrary, we had a short and pleasant conversation that tested the limits of my current mastery of Arabic (“Hi, how are you? I’m good”) and then he asked me (in English) where I was from and told me how to get to the hotel. Apparently the Omanis are not very discriminating about who they let into their country. The experience reminded me of my stint in south Texas when I would frequently cross over into Mexico and back. Upon returning to the states, I was always subjected to the most thorough of inquisitions by the border patrol: “Are you an American citizen? Yes? Well then, go right ahead! We don’t need to see your ID; you’re white, so we trust you implicitly. Would you like to upgrade your crossing today to our Contraband Special by helping yourself to some illegal fireworks and non-native flora and fauna?” Thank god for the Homeland Security Act: your tax dollars hard at work.
All hyperbole aside, the concept of borders, geographical and otherwise, has come to fascinate me since I arrived here. In a country in which some boundaries, such as those governing interactions between men and women, are so clearly delineated, others, such as where one country ends and another begins, are remarkably fluid. What I find most interesting is that the very same boundary can be both rigid and dynamic depending on where and when you cross it. So as not to delve too deeply into the philosophical, I’ll illustrate with some examples.
In my short time here, I’ve been to Oman four times, each time entering it at a different place; only half those times have I needed to even present a passport and only once has it actually been stamped. Sometimes the border is demarcated by nothing more than the aforementioned dude with the machine gun; other times there are a whole series of toll-booth like gatehouses at which you must present, in a particular order, various legal documents that you may or may not have. And regardless of the type of border post (or lack thereof), it’s not always clear exactly when you have exited one nation and entered another. When going to Muscat , my friends and I first had to stop at the UAE side of the border, get exit visas stamped in our passports, and fill out some other forms. Then we got to the Oman side of the border where we had to get entry visas. Perfectly normal…except that the Oman side of the border is 25 miles away from the UAE side. Where exactly we were in those intervening 25 miles remains a mystery. Though we had officially left the UAE, we had not officially entered Oman . Even better, during one of my rock climbing trips with my boss and a co-worker, we were driving down a road between two fences. On the far side of one fence was the UAE; on the far side of the other, Oman . The road itself, however, was technically not in either country and apparently exists in some sort of liminal zone between the two nations, terra firma’s version of international waters, I suppose – I was tempted to open a casino or rebroadcast football games without the express written consent of the NFL just to see if I could get away with it.
Now contrast the ease of these crossings with what my friends and I had to endure when returning to the UAE from Muscat . We passed the Oman checkpoint with no issues and drove the 25 miles through geographical limbo to the UAE checkpoint. Upon arriving at the first of three gatehouses that are about 20 yards apart from one another, we have our passports taken from us and are directed to weave our way across three lanes of two-way border traffic (most of which are full of very large trucks hauling what looks like dirt) and park next to the same counter at which we had stopped earlier that day when leaving the UAE. Thinking we have to fill out even more forms, we then wait for a few minutes without further instructions until the guy who had taken our passports walks from his gatehouse across the truck-laden lanes of traffic, hands our passports back to us, and proceeds to walk back to his gatehouse. Still not entirely sure why we were asked to park and exit the vehicle, we pile back into it and travel back past the dirt trucks, back to and past the first gatehouse with its exercise-enthusiast operator, and on to a second one, where we show its occupant our car insurance. Everything checks out; on to the third and final gate at which we are asked for “the paper.” Nothing more specific that that: just “the paper.” We once again show the insurance paper but are told that this paper is not “the paper” we need and that “the paper” should have been given to us at the second gatehouse. Throw the car into reverse, back up to gatehouse 2, where we get out, explain the situation, and are told to wait a moment while the all-important paper is painstakingly prepared. While we are waiting and light-heartedly chuckling about the situation, a young man, who up to this point has been engaged in idle conversation with the penultimate gatehouse’s guardian (and who was likewise occupied when we first passed by him mere minutes before), walks over to us and asks if he can search our car’s trunk. Obviously aware that his only recently aborted chit-chatting has not endowed him with any modicum of authority, the young man strives to rectify this misunderstanding and offer an irrefutable display of his official nature by taking from his pocket and attaching to his neck the universal symbol of professionalism: a clip-on tie. A cursory glance of the trunk leads Sergeant Clip-On to the conclusion that his original instincts to not take a moment’s pause from his sewing circle and to allow this car full of potential terrorists to pass unhindered in front of him were indeed correct and that his perfunctory examination and corresponding wardrobe change were unnecessary. Meanwhile, “the paper” has been readied, we get back in the car, arrive once more at the last gatehouse, brandishing our newly and not easily acquired ticket to freedom from the bureaucratic nonsense to which we’ve just been subjected, which the final gatekeeper accepts cheerfully and waves us on our way. All in all, the experience nicely illustrates one of my recently coined phrases about the infrastructure of this country: the right hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
Well if you’ve read this far (or even scrolled down to view the extent of my pontificating), you certainly deserve at the very least a small reward, so I’m attaching some new photo albums (they’re up on Facebook if you have an account there). If for some reason you can’t see them through these links and would like to, please let me know and I’ll find some other way of getting them to you. For those of you who can see them, enjoy.
Andrea’s visit: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=29252&l=10215&id=538315779
I’ll try not to take so long in between responses next time, but then again, I’ve left you with plenty of material to peruse in the interim. As always, I hope you all are well and would love to hear from each and every one of you when you get a chance. Til then…
Maxa salaama,
Jared
