Legal Matters

This is not good.

So I am standing in line at the convenience store cashier, trying desperately to enjoy myself despite the unforgiving masses of holiday shoppers because Daddy and PopPop have given me a few precious hours of freedom away from the kids, when my cell phone rings (or, as they call it here, my "mobile") (and oh, try not to call it "texting"-- say instead that you're sending me an "SMS") (which of course always makes me think of PMS but that's neither here nor there). I don't recognize the number but I answer it anyway, something I never would have done back in the States. Cuz I'm looking to add some volume to my mobile phone book so who am I to be picky. Anyway, it's a man's voice and he's speaking quickly in very broken English and I am about to say "wrong number" and hang up when I think I make out the words "Alice" and "Philippines" and "emergency." Ok, you have my attention.

I can't decipher his instructions any further but I assure the man that Alice is with my husband and kids and I will have her call home to the Philippines as soon as possible. I contact Daddy right away. On the drive home (thanks, Z-Man), I imagine countless scenarios wherein Alice is called urgently out of the country and Poof! just like that, I lose whatever is left of my sanity.

By the time I get home, I learn that this all has something to do with Alice's visa. It's not bad-- yet-- but it has the potential to be bad. As in, bye bye, Alice, Baby Whisperer and Housekeeper Extraordinaire.

I considered telling you about the specifics of the whole drama, but then thought better of it because (a) it's kind of boring technical stuff, and (b) I am neurotic and paranoid and think that maybe something I write here could somehow be discovered in a major, headline-making investigation about illegal housemaids and cause Alice to be deported and Daddy to lose his credibility at work and my family to be embarrassed and everyone who thought this blog was a rotten idea to say "I told you so!" and therefore, I have no official comment. Other than that Dubai is great and long live Sheikh Mohammed! Ahem.

Of course I will let you know what happens... Suffice it to say that Alice tearfully left the house tonight to go stay at her cousin's and Daddy is going to get on the phone first thing in the morning to try to figure things out. The bad news-- though it's also the good news-- is that the government offices in the U.A.E. are all mostly closed this week for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha (this holiday commemorates Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son, Ishmael, to God, and often involves the actual honorary sacrifice of a goat, eew) (according to Wikipedia, Islam refers to the characters of this story as "Ibrahim" and "Ishmael," whereas Judeo-Christians refer to them as "Abraham" and "Isaac") (Note to self: WTF. I didn't realize that we shared biblical stories. Learn more about this. You know, in all your spare time.), so while Daddy probably won't be able to make much headway tomorrow, hopefully it also means that the people who do the deporting aren't around tomorrow, either.

In other legal news that probably should not be spoken of on my blog...

I have this friend. And this friend bought a tricycle at the all-purpose convenience store last week and then promptly lost the receipt. When this friend days later attempted to assemble the tricycle, she realized that a critical component of the bike was MISSING from the box. Not a nut or a bolt, but the MAIN AXLE. And this friend was furious. But when this friend told her husband of the injustice, he kinda wasn't as appalled about it as he should have been and said, "I hear that that kind of stuff happens all the time here." My friend was fuming and refused, on principle, to throw away the now-useless tricycle parts.

Well it's a good thing she didn't, because today, at that very same store, the friend saw an identical tricycle on the shelf. And this one's box was open. And when this friend peered inside at the parts, she saw that THIS bike had TWO main axles! Eureka! But what to do?, because she had neither the receipt nor the disembodied bike parts on her. She thought about taking the axle. Just putting it in one of her shopping bags from another store. And then she thought about putting it back. Because she remembered how the law of the land here *actually* follows the "eye for an eye" philosophy (there was a story in the news the other day detailing the criminal punishment of a man who blinded his ex-girlfriend by throwing acid in her eyes... yes, you guessed it).

But then she thought about her kids, and how crushed they were when they discovered the tricycle parts lying all over the floor and no tricycle materializing therefrom. And she thought to herself, what could the punishment be for taking a tricycle part that was rightfully hers? Would the government come to her house and take a tricycle part that was rightfully theirs? Have at it! (Actually, she figured that if she got caught, she would just hope like hell that her charm proved international.)

And so, without going into too much incriminating detail, let's just say that this friend's kids ended the day happily taking turns riding around their kitchen on a very assembled, very low quality plastic tricycle that probably could have cost their mother some hard time behind bars.

But you didn't hear it from me.