The Kids Want a Camel

EPILOGUE

2011-06-22T05:55:00.000-07:00

Today the kids were upstairs playing school. Sushi descended the stairs in full travel regalia: hat, sunglasses, high heels, backpack. "Where are you going, Teacher?" I asked. "Africa," she replied. "Oh yeah? Do you know anyone there?" I inquired. The six-year-old benignly rolled her eyes at me. "Um, yes. [S] from my class. And [J] our old housekeeper..."

For what must be the millionth time, I was struck with a pang of loss. How many children of Sushi's age have legitimate connections to several countries outside of her own? And what wouldn't I give to go back to Dubai and make more?

We are coming up on the one-year anniversary of our return to the United States. On July 1 of last year, we thought we had arrived here for a summer visit, not knowing at the time that our family would not be going back to the UAE in the fall. We had said hasty goodbyes to friends and the kids' classmates, not infusing the departure with extraordinary significance. We had driven mindlessly past the schools and the mosques and the shopping malls, not bothering to memorize the details or take note of the architecture. We had absent-mindedly closed the door to our magnificent three-story mansion, not taking the kids on one last lap of the playroom or the roofdeck or the grassy field in front of the house.

And then suddenly it was all gone.

One year later, our unexpected departure from Dubai evokes in me a visceral response not unlike my feelings surrounding the loss of my mother in 2007-- a surge of sadness, a sharp awareness of something taken away, and a knee-jerk repression of any further thoughts on the subject. It's not as profound a devastation as losing a parent, of course; but it still hurts.

You may be reading this with incredulity: surely I am being melodramatic if not downright maudlin about the whole thing. It was just a relocation after all. And perhaps I am suffering from some misplaced nostalgia which puts my Dubai memories under a fuzzy lens. But I think I speak for PopPop, too, when I say that both of us are missing Dubai more, instead of less, as time goes by.

Perhaps that's because little reminders of our time there abound: the wax paper in the kitchen drawer with the Arabic script on its box, the bathroom cabinet's stockpile of antibiotics purchased at the Dubai drugstore without a prescription, the Emirates luggage tags and Dubai immigration stickers wallpapering our suitcases (causing one of my bags to be seized by security after I accidentally left it in an airport gift shop; could have done without the quarantined area and the sniffer dogs that day). We are still frequently introduced to new people as "the ones who lived in Dubai," and our fantastically supportive rabbi can't seem to make it through a Friday night service without gesturing playfully to us and announcing to the congregation, "You can't get this in Abu Dhabi!"

So what is it that I miss so desperately? Well not the oppressive heat, of course... or the dusty unfinished roads rife with nausea-inducing speed bumps... or the often-futile search for familiar brands in the grocery stores... or the outrageously high prices on imports and child-related items... or my neurotic obsession with the fact that we were Jews in an Arab country... or the vague discomfort I continued to experience while walking side-by-side with fully-veiled, seemingly faceless Muslim women in the decadent shopping malls.

No, what I miss is vastly more "meta" than those day-to-day details. I miss the sense of *adventure* that infused our lives in Dubai. Meeting people of countless ethnicities and cultures and languages. Being forced out of our comfort zones and becoming more worldly, more tolerant, more compassionate as a result. Exposing our children to the GLOBE and not just the very narrow American take on it. Coming to understand opposing viewpoints on international conflict and the extent to which our respective media controls us all. And feeling so proud of us for getting out of our own way, abandoning our myriad misconceptions about what life in the UAE would be like, and allowing ourselves to fall in love with life abroad.

I especially miss the microcosm of the world that existed inside our Dubai house. I could not have been happier with PopPop living with us and yet having his own private apartment on the third floor. I loved the way that Alice, our devoted Filipino nanny, treated our children like her own; and I was moved by the passion with which the Z-Man, Daddy's Pakistani driver, wanted to protect us and educate us about his part of the world. Everything about that house now seems to me so precious-- right down to the barely-functional baby monitors and wholly inept handyman service and the squeaky wooden front door that swelled so much in the heat that it would not close without a fight.

It goes without saying, I hope, that I am also heartsick about not being able to see my Dubai friends anymore. Bonnie and Clyde, who were giving me an insider's perspective into Muslim issues. The German, who, despite our falling out over neighborly boundaries, continues to send me the occasional affectionate email. Makes-My-Own-Pillows, who had her fourth baby and was counting on me to be there for her happy occasion. Mommy-of-Screamer's-Soulmate, who had invited me to go into business with her this year. And especially The Australian, who has been going through her own personal challenges, and whom I so desperately want to hug.

Facebook has eased some of the shock of the transition... I am FB friends with almost all of my Dubai gang, right down to the teachers and the babysitters... but it's not the same. Celebrating birthdays with an electronic card or getting important news via status update is a constant reminder that there are miles and miles and miles that separate you and the people you love.

Certainly there is a part of me that is happy to be home-- of course it is a relief to be reunited with my American friends and our old schools and be close to family again. Also, I'm not sure that I wouldn't have had an apoplectic fit if we HAD still been in the UAE this past year during the uprisings in Egypt and Libya... and when that American reporter was attacked amidst cries of "Jew! Jew!"... and when Bin Laden was killed. The Australian had even contacted me after the Bin Laden episode to say, "Be happy you're not here; the US Embassy has issued a warning for Americans." So yes, perhaps it was a good thing that we were sent home when we were, as I was always a tad paranoid while we were there.

But oh, my longing for Dubai is at times almost tangible. To walk through the colorful hallways of the American school... or to peer through the windows onto the ski slope at Mall of the Emirates, or admire the giant replica of the ship at Ibn Battuta Mall, or visit the world's largest fish tank at the Dubai Mall... to drop off the girls at ballet class and meet The Australian for our Saturday morning Starbucks... to go to the Marina and let the children frolic in the jumping fountains... to drive too fast down the desert-lined highway with my Adam Lambert CD defiantly playing through open windows... to pull up to the Clubhouse just in time to see PopPop emerging from the gym in his muscle shirt and Ray Bans... to hear the not-at-ALL-subtle "AHEM" of the Z-Man as he tried to get my attention away from my computer... to be greeted by Alice's never-too-friendly-but-always-sincere "Morning ma'm" in the kitchen as she was packing the kids' lunches... to have the girls stand at the bottom of the spiral staircase and ya-HOOOOOO up to PopPop to let him know they were home... to sit at the oversized dining room table and play "the letter game" over dinner... THESE are the memories that make my heart ache.

*sigh*

Ok, enough sentimental walking down memory lane. [pulling self together] What's been going on over the past nine months since I last wrote? Here are our updates... drumroll please!

DADDY - The biggest news: Daddy has a new job! That's right, he's no longer with the company for which we packed up and moved to the other side of the planet. I can't go into too much detail, because he still has dealings with the former group... but suffice it to say that he was offered a position with a company that has a less complicated infrastructure (recall that Daddy's original company was purchased in large part by a UAE-based company, hence our relocation to set up a Middle East presence) and a seemingly more stable trajectory. And while on the one hand I regret that Daddy left the old company before he could be fully rewarded for all the sacrifices he made, on the other hand Daddy seems utterly fulfilled and appreciated at his new job, and that is, at the end of the day, all anybody can really ask for. I continue to be absolutely blown away by Daddy's brilliance and professional accomplishments, and I am reveling in the fact that the industry at large is finally beginning to publicly acknowledge what I have known all along. Daddy for the win!!

POPPOP - PopPop and I have taken our departure from Dubai the hardest-- and I think PopPop would go back there in a *heartbeat* if he could. That said, he has been the ULTIMATE good sport, never complaining about the fact that he had JUST renewed the tenants' lease on his house when we found out we were staying here, and ALWAYS showing up with a smile to cover the slack during all of Daddy's many, many business trips of late. The purple worm didn't survive the trip home, but it has been replaced with other, better, PopPop magic: pulling jelly beans out of belly buttons, trailblazing alligator hunts in our back yard, and, most recently, coming up with new and interesting proposals for extracting loose baby teeth. He continues to be the patriarch of our clan and we all, rightfully, worship him. :)

[Shout-out to TESS for continuing to put a roof over PopPop's head! We love you and love having you in the mix!!!]

SUSHI - Now a whopping 6 years old and headed into first grade in the fall. Sushi has been completely kicking ASS at her fancy private school (at which kindergarten was hardly child's play-- they covered topics ranging from Ella Fitzgerald to mathematical fractions). Straight A's both semesters-- and she even stole the show at a recent dance recital. She is both a completely mature kid (she loves nothing more than sitting at the grown-up table and participating in adult conversations) and a completely immature kid (she still throws temper tantrums when she gets tired, which aggravates me TO NO END). She has started writing her first "book" (about a child who wakes up as the President of the United States) and we are excited to see how Daddy's and my nerdy DNA will continue to propel her academic career.

SCREAMER - Now four-and-a-half. Taught herself to read. This is not a joke. With Sushi, we watched the educational videos, we sounded out the words.... With Screamer, one day she just picked up a book and started reading to us. This is both a blessing-- what smarts! what initiative!-- and a curse-- for now we have been guilted into also signing her up for the very expensive private school so that she can have a stimulating and challenging year. Screamer has additionally been excelling at gymnastics-- never before has a kid been born into such a gymnast's physique-- and we are constantly being told by the coaches that she was made for this sport. Sadly she has outgrown of a lot of the ditziness that made her our little wood nymph, oftentimes surprising us with feistiness when duking it out with her sisters; but she can play school by *herself* for hours, talking sweetly and nurturingly to her stuffed animal students. (That is, until she tosses them violently into the time out corner-- you'd think that she was breaking up a knife fight by the way they get disciplined.)

BABY - Was 6 months old when we first landed in Dubai. Is now 3 and has an opinion on everything. Was the youngest in the family to give up her pacifiers (2 and a half as compared to Screamer at nearly 4) and has an independence and fearlessness that I attribute in part to our overseas experience. She is a silly, happy kid who loves to play school with her sisters and wash ANYTHING with a spray bottle and get her nails painted. And oh-- I guess she's not a baby anymore. :)

HARRY - The old cat survived the 24-hour trip-- twice!-- and is presently napping in the sun. He sends his regards.

BABYCAT - Our adopted Dubai kitten was able to do what our Filipino housekeeper was not-- become a United States resident. Surprisingly, we were not required to quarantine either feline when we returned to the country, despite the fact that Babycat had been rescued from an abandoned construction site in the UAE, and we only needed to show (and I use that term loosely, since the airport employee could not have cared less) a certificate of health from our Dubai vet. Go figure. Babycat has adjusted quickly to American life and the other neighborhood cats have finally stopped making fun of her accent. (ba-dum-bump)

Z-MAN - Here's where the updates take a turn for the worse, as our departure has not been easy for the lovely people who lived with us at the house. The gentle giant Z-Man went back to Pakistan for his (arranged) marriage over the summer (the good news!) but has returned to the UAE to become something of a lost soul (the bad news). He has not secured permanent employment, doing odd jobs for Daddy's old company, and mostly seems to be just moping around Abu Dhabi missing *us*. He calls from a voice-over-internet phone occasionally, and goes on and on in the saddest way about how he should be happy as a newlywed but is not... how he thinks of us and the kids all the time... and how he just wants God to grace us with a happy life. I wish we could bring him here, if only for a visit... but YOU try to get an American visa for a hulking 30-something Pakistani man in this day and age. Sad face.

[Side note: PopPop and Z-Man are Facebook friends. Pause for a moment to appreciate the absurdity of that fact. Gotta hand it to Mark Zuckerberg for truly making the world a very, very small place.]

ALICE - Another imperfect ending. The Australian was able to find Alice a family in Abu Dhabi to work for... but apparently the schedule is unforgiving, the family might be leaving, and she has not made many friends in her new neighborhood. Most sobering of all is the fact that she apparently keeps a photo of us by her bed (*us*-- but not her own children) and says things to the other housemaids along the lines of, "This family will come back for me." We DID explore this possibility when we first returned to the US-- not because we needed a live-in nanny here but because we couldn't bear to leave her behind-- but again, a visa is a virtual impossibility. The only way we could bring a Filipino housekeeper into the country is if we could prove that WE would only be in the USA on a temporary basis before being assigned elsewhere... and even then, she could only stay for a year. I exchange text messages with Alice very occasionally-- usually on the subject of American Idol, which is huge in the Philippines-- and while she is predictably terse she also never fails to say she misses the children.

JULIA - Ah yes, the housekeeper of the notoriously short-lived employment who ultimately accused us of firing her because she is black (good times). After we let her go because of visa problems and whatnot, we urged her to return to Nigeria and regroup. She refused and assured us that God would provide. And I guess He did, since, according to The Australian, she works for a family in Abu Dhabi now. The Australian (who also moved to Abu Dhabi) sometimes bumps in to her but avoids it if at all possible. And who could blame her. Awkwaaard.

ALICE'S SISTER-IN-LAW (ASIL) - Yikes, maybe the most dramatic story of all. Recall that ASIL had been sent to Dubai by her family when her husband (Alice's brother) lost his job. Her English was almost non-existent and she had no experience with housekeeping, so we asked her to stay with us so that Alice could show her the ropes. Well, after we left Dubai, The Australian-- bless her!-- opened up her heart and her home to ASIL so that she wouldn't be fed to the wolves of the general marketplace... only to have ASIL first brillo-pad The Australian's car in an attempt to clean it (removing much of the paint), THEN mistake Tylenol for children's treats, and THEN have something of a *nervous breakdown* and quietly demand that The Australian's husband buy her a plane ticket back to the Philippines. I still don't understand what happened to ASIL-- though her epic hysteria in the driveway when PopPop and I were saying goodbye *should* have been a red flag of instability-- but I thank The Australians for sending her back home (at quite a cost, all in) and hope that her own family could give her the peace of mind she couldn't find with borrowed ones.

Finally, ME - I'm fine. I'm good. I'm less overwhelmed than I've been in years, I suppose-- what with all three kids out of toddlerhood and in the same summer camp and on the same schedule. For the next two months I will have more extended periods of unstructured alone time than I have possibly *ever* had-- which leaves me no excuse not to do things like finish this blog and unpack the remaining Dubai boxes (Daddy bought us a GLORIOUS new home that I ADORE!!) and organize the garage and start to formulate a plan for one day going back to work. I can't help but worry about what's next-- it causes me stress that Daddy's new company is based out of California and it's only a matter of time before we're asked to move again-- but I am trying VERY hard to live in the present, and appreciate this present chapter of calm. Lord knows life can change in the blink of an eye, and these quiet, predictable days are NOT to be taken for granted. So while I absolutely, positively miss the subtle *thrill* of waking up every day in the Middle East-- whether I was in the mall or at the school or even in my own home flanked by our Filipino housekeeper and our Pakistani driver, I was always in a state of heightened awareness-- I must also concede that there is a very distinct comfort in having been returned home safe and sound.

One last heartbreak for Daddy, PopPop and me is how LITTLE the children remember of our time in Dubai, even though it ended for them barely a year ago. Understandably, Baby remembers nothing of it... but astonishingly, Screamer remembers almost as much. When asked, Screamer can't recall the name of her best friend there OR our live-in housekeeper (!!!), which for PopPop and me is like a stab to the heart. THANKFULLY, the clever, memory-like-an-elephant Sushi is our saving grace on this front: she has many vivid memories of Dubai, still includes Z-Man and Alice when listing her family members, and often asks when we can go back and visit.

Speaking of which, for a kindergarten project a few months ago, Sushi was required to design a travel brochure. During the school day and without any input at ALL from us, Sushi created this:

[Come and visit Dubi]

(Editorial note: These are construction workers.)

[You can ride the airplane.]

(Editorial note: We did NOT make her fly on FedEx.)

[Burge Kulifa is one of the tallest buildings in the world.]

[Dubi its so cool you can see all of the bildings and dirt.]

(Ed. Note: that's her drawing of the iconic Burj Al-Arab, also seen in the photo of Screamer and Supernanny at the top of this post. Not bad, huh?)

It brings me great comfort to know that, for at least *one* of our children, Dubai will be a permanent fixture in her psychological landscape just like it will be for us adults. At first I didn't want to go there... but just as Daddy predicted would happen, then I didn't want to leave.

That chapter of our lives may be over, but this story has no end. Thank you for coming along for the ride.

xoxo,

Jessica

Post Script. I never did make a close female Muslim friend in Dubai; was never privy to that suspenseful moment when a veiled woman, far from the prying eyes of unmarried men, removes her headscarf to reveal her precious hair underneath. For this I will always be sorry. But thanks to a terrific book, I did feel like I'd been allowed a glimpse of the unseeable. I highly recommend Dr. Quanta A. Ahmed's "In The Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom" for anyone interested in women's issues in the Middle East.

A great, compelling read told from a Western perspective.

And with that, dear friends, I bid you farewell and much love.

Searching for the Bright Side.

2010-09-27T17:14:00.000-07:00

So here I am.

Sitting in the same old desk chair, at the same old desk, as when I wrote the very first entry of this blog a few years ago. In the good ol' USA.

It's incredible how this adventure is ending almost exactly how it began: Daddy is away for an entire month (only this time he's selling off, as opposed to buying up, the items of our Dubai world)... PopPop and I are depressed and commiserating (thank goodness we have the ever-ebullient "Tess" around to lift both of our spirits)... and none of us quite knows what's next for us. In other words, an oddly familiar cloud of uncertainty, resentment, and despair is obstructing our view.

So in a futile attempt to alleviate the I-MISS-DUBAI blues (I get all choked up whenever I think of our utopian home life, Screamer's little soulmate, or my best girls whom I had to leave behind), I have cobbled together a list of twenty things I will NOT miss about Dubai. (Avert your eyes, C, M, M, and S back in the desert, unless you want to be reminded of the occasional annoyances that Dubai living has to offer.)

Therefore I am happily saying GOOD RIDDANCE to the following trivial inconveniences of UAE life, in no particular order:

1) military time on all the digital clocks. I am not that good at math anymore.

2) electrical plugs that require adapters, even right out of the box from a UAE store. I shudder to think of the cumulative time I lost aggravatingly opening and closing drawers in an exasperating adapter search.

3) temperature measured in Centigrade, and weight measured in kilograms. See item #1 above re: my math skills.

4) a marble and stone house in which the baby monitors' reception was spotty at best. Daddy and I probably would have had a much more lively social life had I been confident that ANYONE in the 3-story estate would have heard the occasional plaintive cry for a glass of water.

5) the hugely limited grocery store options, particularly as pertained to American brands. Glorious was the day when a sole package of Eggo waffles magically appeared in our local frozen food section... and long were the months before another box would materialize.

6) the jacked up prices on said American export items. The $14 package of Oreos (which I *bought*, mind you) will live on in infamy.

7) the kajillions of speed bumps. Sure, I quietly blamed the Z-Man for my nausea, but we all knew it was the roads themselves I was mad at.

8) roundabouts where traffic lights should be. As if I wasn't nauseous enough from the speed bumps.

9) streets with either no signs, or a miniscule sign like this: "Street 2." Thanks for making a handicapped sense of direction even MORE useless, Dubai.

10) infuriatingly shaped milk containers. Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to take a photo, but you have to take my word for it on this one: the plastic cartons were just elongated cubes with a hole cut through the top for your fingers to (theoretically) go through. Supposedly it was designed this way to save refrigerator space but clearly, the true purpose was to maximize spillage.

11) no cell phone reception in the house.

12) ...and the companion item to #11: a cell phone company that was lobbying to build a cell phone tower about 20 feet from our BACK YARD. Suffice it to say I had already alerted the newspapers that I was planning a splashy demonstration to protest the first sign of breaking ground.

13) the 3-day suspension of radio programming whenever an important person died. I mean no disrespect here, obviously. But as someone who does not enjoy classical music, which apparently is the only thing allowed to be broadcast during times of national mourning, I absorbed every moment of that loss.

14) no electrical outlets in the bathrooms. It seems UAE architects do not use flat irons.

15) having to pay for shopping carts. Sure, it was only 1 dirham, and ok, you could get it back when you returned the cart, but oh come on.

16) phone numbers written without spaces or hypens. YOU try to remember 0506582394.

17) salons that only offer threading, but not waxing, of eyebrows. Since I was too chicken to try the threading (it supposedly shapes better but hurts more), I was left to my own pathetic plucking devices. For about two years.

18) cars that make an annoying ding! ding! ding! whenever you go over the local limit, and continue ding!ing until you slow down. Some of us have a need... for speed.

19) internet censorship. I bid an unsentimental farewell to this message:

"We apologize the site you are attempting to visit has been blocked due to the content being inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates."

I was just trying to view people's photos on Twitter, damnit!, but what I got instead was this:

And last but not least,

20) American Idol, always broadcast 24 hours after the live show, and long after the rest of the world had already found out that Kris Allen, tragically, had won. :)

So there you are. Back in America I now have more Eggo varieties than I could ever sample; a cell phone I can use in our home office while keeping our land line as a paperweight; and American Idol-- a.k.a. The World's Most Jump-the-Shark-iest Show-- soon coming to me live and in full Seacrest definition.

And to THINK that I was actually feeling depressed a few minutes ago!

;)

Spoiler Alert! Stop Reading If You Don't Want to Know How It Ends.

2010-09-15T16:49:00.000-07:00

Right now I’m on an airplane.

Ten hours left to go on a 15-hour flight.

And I can’t sleep.

Usually, sleeping on an airplane is no problem for me. Especially when, on occasions such as this, I gobbled up a tablet of everyone’s favorite travel sedative, Dramamine.

But here I am. Everyone around me is happily dreaming. And my bloodshot eyes won’t stay shut.

Maybe it has something to do with the ordeal I’ve just been through.

You see, today I closed the chapter on our lives in Dubai.

I don’t even know where to start. This is hardly the blog post I was expecting to be writing at the end of the summer.

Do I tell you about the New Jersey hotel room we were staying in at the end of August, where, as I was lying in bed drowsily reading my book, Daddy came in after finishing a conference call and whispered, so as not to wake the children, “Honey, there’s been a development….”?

Do I tell you about the tears that involuntarily flooded my eyes as he began to form words like “restructuring” and “reassigned” and “not sure they want us to get on the plane next week”?

Do I tell you about my heavy, heavy heart as I excused PopPop and myself from our family going-away party, because I couldn’t bear waiting one minute longer to tell him of the news that was going to rock all of our worlds?

Do I tell you about the virtual fire drill that ensued once we realized that, whereas school in the UAE had not yet begun, our kindergarten here in the States had started two weeks ago?

Do I tell you about the manic 48-hour house hunt we embarked upon in the hopes of magically and instantaneously relocating our family to the part of town districted to the most acclaimed public school? Or the literal eleventh-hour decision to sign Sushi up for one of the most reputable—and expensive—private schools in the county?

Do I tell you about the funk that both PopPop and I quickly slipped into as Daddy boarded a plane back to Dubai for a company board meeting, and the two of us were left to contemplate the realities of a sudden relocation back to the USA? One we hadn’t planned for emotionally (we’d been having the time of our lives!) or logistically (see, i.e., schools... and homeowner PopPop’s recent renewal of his tenants’ lease, leaving him essentially homeless back in the States)?

How my head hurt, all the time?

The way I was constantly falling to pieces, at even the most fleeting thought of the life in Dubai that was astonishingly no longer ours: the superlative academic programs, our devoted “staff,” the international thrills, and the irreplaceable friendships, both on the adults’ part as well as the kids’?

In other words, do I tell you of my broken heart?

Well, no.

That would be silly. You all know what a broken heart feels like.

Rather, I wanted to remind you of that trite expression, “We make plans. Life laughs.”

Cuz let me tell you, we had big plans for this next year in Dubai, having every reason to believe that it would be our last. (Daddy had originally signed on for only a two-year expat contract, which would be coming due next month; later we had—I thought—all agreed to extend it for a third and final year.) (Apparently not everyone got that memo.) We’d planned to travel more around the region, taking better advantage of the ridiculously luxurious live-in help that we might never have again. We’d planned to have more friends and family come to visit us. We’d planned to watch proudly as an excited Screamer marched off to the “big kids’ school” with her sister Sushi, seeing as our school in Dubai, unlike the schools in our home state that adhered strictly to a September 1 birthday cutoff, was willing to place her according to aptitude and bump her up to the next grade level.

Yet there I stood a few hours ago in the overheated driveway of our beloved Dubai home— a dramatically sobbing housemaid clutching my shoulder, a conspicuously sniffling driver revving the engine, and two miserable cats wailing from their crates in the back seat of the car.

At the moment it almost feels like I dreamed the whole thing.

And yet the facts remain: PopPop and I are presently heading back to the USA, having spent a mere 36 hours in Dubai grabbing our most treasured belongings and saying a few agonizing goodbyes and gathering up the reluctant felines... while Daddy stays behind (like the unflappable head of the family that he is) to pack up the house, find new jobs for the maids and the driver, sell the furniture and the cars, and turn off all the utilities. The three kids, meanwhile, have been looked after for the past couple of days by the marvelous Supernanny and the equally extraordinary Mr. Supernanny (no offense intended, A; your alternative nickname can be The Hulk, because you’re so mightily muscle-bound these days), as well as my precious, generous, ever-the-lifesaver BFF "Kate" (as in Bosworth, because of her similarly striking two-toned eyes).

And somehow life just goes on.

This is not the last I want to write to you about Dubai—I need a few days to process a jumble of extreme emotions and complicated thoughts—but I figured it was time to let you in on what’s been going on.

Because in a way, you were on this incredible adventure right along with us.

I’m just so terribly sorry that there won't be more Dubai story to tell.

Which—in light of the overwhelming fear and uncertainty that punctuated the first several entries of this blog back in September 2008—leads me to believe that Life is having a big ol’ guffaw at my expense right about now.

Happy New Year.

2010-09-09T18:45:00.001-07:00

Today I celebrated the Jewish New Year. In America.

What the heck are you still doing in America??, you ask, acknowledging that the school year is starting and we live in Dubai.

Well, friends, that's a story for another day. A long story. One I don't have the energy to share now. But I will soon, I promise.

No, today I just wanted to tell you about spending Rosh Hashanah in America, after nearly two years in the UAE.

It was, in a word, wonderful.

It was wonderful because...

It was the first time that my 5-year-old daughter could follow along in the prayerbook, and participate in the responsive readings.

The melodies and songs were all familiar, and even if I didn't remember the exact words, I had the gist.

So many members of the congregation went out of their way to welcome us, knowing of our travels and appreciating that for us, this was not just another high holiday.

My 3-year-old daughter was invited by a little boy from the temple summer camp to go sit with him and his family on the other side of the room... and she happily went, without once looking back.

None of my kids cried or fussed during the service.

We got to hear the shofar being blown, which, if you ask me, is always good luck.

Afterwards, we went to the home of my oldest friend, and were treated to a delightful meal that was warm and comforting and reminiscent of everything that means "family."

None of my kids cried or fussed during the long car ride.

I was celebrating in a country where the Jewish holiday was not ignored or tolerated, but, as evidenced by the widespread school closings, respected.

I didn't feel like I was missing out.

This year, I was on the inside.

This year... I am coming home.

I wish you and yours a year of joy, possibilities, and above all, peace. Shana tova. xoxo.

A Welcome Reassurance.

2010-08-07T04:04:00.000-07:00

Thank you, Zunaid! :)

"For what it's worth I don't find your blog off-putting at all. I think it's a rather interesting perspective on life in the UAE from an outsider's viewpoint.

Just two comments from me:
1. Are you sure that is what Ameen meant? Maybe he got the word order mixed up? Easy to do if English isn't your first language for example.
2. Whatever you do, at the end of your time in the UAE don't come away assuming that Arab culture equates to Muslim culture or vice versa. If you really want a broader experience of the religion in different cultural contexts you'll need to visit other Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey and even Pakistan and Iran. That should just about cover all your bases ;)

From a non-offended Muslim reader.

To paraphrase Dory from Finding Nemo: "just keep blogging, just keep blogging..." ;)"

Little Miss Unpopular.

2010-08-03T06:08:00.001-07:00

Hello. Sorry I've been quiet lately. But I just picked up a comment to my entry about the consequences of pre-marital sex for Muslims that I thought was worth sharing:

"I really don't like you, but I would like to point out something that you obviously would not know as a non-Muslim. The lashes thing, its SORT OF the girl's fault, because if she did have consensual sex, she shouldn't have made it public. In religion, it states that a man came to the Prophet PBUH and told him he had committed zinnah i.e. extramarital sex, and the Prophet PBUH HAD to have him stoned to death but the same man had gone to the Prophet's companions earlier who repeatedly told him to keep the matter private. Basically, this means that Allah hides your secrets and forgives you when and if you repent truly, so if the man had just stayed quiet and repented, he would have been granted mercy and would not have to be punished in this life. Similarly, this girl, if she had consensual sex, should've kept it to herself as well.

May Allah bless you and your family in all that you do, Ameen."

Wanted to repost this for two reasons: First, because the content is very interesting... and second, because the "I really don't like you" part has sent me reeling. (Not even "I don't really like you"!-- it's "I *really* don't like you.)

This bothers me because I have tried, when expressing my discomfort over certain Muslim traditions and rules, to be as open-minded and non-judgmental as I could possibly be. I have tried to be respectful, even when stating my Western-influenced dismay, and I have tried to educate myself a bit so that I could present a somewhat balanced description. But the above comment makes me feel like I have failed-- like I have described our experiences in the UAE in a way that has been off-putting to a Muslim reader. Which was certainly never my intent.

I have learned, the hard way through the experience of this blog, that people do not like to read about themselves in anything other than the most exemplary terms. I have probably made more enemies than friends as a result of it, in fact. And yet I keep writing, as much for myself (it helps me process our experiences in a foreign land if I can think through them in writing) as for my friends back home who have expressed an interest in our travels. And I think I will continue to be honest, because I would not be able to stand behind my efforts here if I felt like I was compromising my ideas.

But still.

I don't like the idea that I have offended anyone.

Cuz I guess that I, too, only want to be thought of in exemplary terms.

So I restate my standing invitation to the author of the above comment, or any other person of the Muslim faith who has stumbled upon my blog: I would like to be friends. I would like to learn more about you, and what you believe. I came to the UAE very willing to learn more about a culture and religion that was wholly unknown to me, and I remain committed to that end.

In other words, you don't have to like me, I guess, but I'm still open to liking you.

Sex and The City 2: An Insider's Take.

2010-06-24T10:22:00.001-07:00

I am a HUGE Sex and the City (SATC) fan.

I lived and breathed that series for years. Not so much for the labels and the shoes (I can't be bothered with expensive stuff like that; would rather buy 100 pairs of $12 shoes and wear each of them one time before they fall apart), but because of the honesty. I loved the honesty of the relationships between the women, and the honesty of the relationships between the women and the men. I mean, who among us can say that she never let her heart be broken again and again and again by a Mr. Big? And who among us didn't look to an Aidan to kiss it and make the hurt go away?

So when I finally saw SATC2, after what felt like an eternity of waiting (the movie has been *banned* here in the UAE, despite the fact that it is supposed to take place here) (it was actually filmed in Morocco), my first impression was that, even with its occasionally amateurish script and somewhat unsatisfying plot, it lived up to its legacy and was... *honest*. About the UAE. From the viewpoint of a first-time American visitor.

Now, if you've read any of the reviews, you'll know that the movie was panned not only for its content (which I didn't think was *that* bad... but then again, maybe I was just SO relieved to see my four favorite fictional girls again), but for its portrayal of Muslims. I saw the film described on more than one occasion as "offensive" and, in one instance, guilty of "lampooning" the Arab people.

Part of me thinks that this was just a knee-jerk reaction by a bunch of movie reviewers who have never even *been* to this part of the world, and don't really know anything about Muslim culture, all just mindlessly pushing and shoving to be the first in line to show how PC and forward-thinking *they* are.

And yes, there *were* moments that Michael Patrick King did go too far. Among them:

1) The four women singing "I Am Woman" at the karaoke bar. I thought this was the low point of the movie, not only because it squandered the opportunity to create a truly memorable, fun moment (my husband suggested that, if the objective was to make a statement about women, they would have been better off with something upbeat like "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun")... and not just because it's a song that people of my generation don't even know... but because it was way, way too obvious in its agenda. I mean, have you ever looked at the lyrics of that song before? (Let me guess: you haven't.) Well here they are:

I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back an' pretend
'Cause I've heard it all before
And I've been down there on the floor
No one's ever gonna keep me down again

Oh yes, I am wise
But it's wisdom born of pain
Yes, I've paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to
I can do anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am woman

You can bend but never break me
'Cause it only serves to make me
More determined to achieve my final goal
And I come back even stronger
Not a novice any longer
'Cause you've deepened the conviction in my soul

Oh, yes, I am wise
But it's wisdom born of pain
Yes, I've paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to
I can face anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am woman

I am woman watch me grow
See me standing toe to toe
As I spread my lovin' arms across the land
But I'm still an embryo
With a long, long way to go
Until I make my brother understand

Oh, yes, I am wise
But it's wisdom born of pain
Yes, I've paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to
I can face anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am woman

I am woman
I am invincible
I am strong
I am woman

We get it, uber-writer-director-producer Michael Patrick King (hereafter, MPK). You think the women of the Middle East are oppressed. They need to roar more. To be more strong and invincible. We get it. But hitting us over the head with it is beneath you.

2) The use of the abayas and the face veils as a comedic disguise for the four women on the run. Now I get that it was right there, and a hard punchline to resist... but maybe it should have been resisted anyway. Because those garments aren't a fashion statement (or lack thereof); they are pieces of clothing ostensibly worn in response to what Muslims believe is a directive from God. So to have Carrie, et al., goofing off behind veils is probably a little disrespectful.

and, last but of course not least...

3) The Samantha meltdown in the marketplace, which culminates in her thrusting her hips wildly at the agitated robed men who surround her and screaming, "Yes! I HAVE SEX!" Now here, too, you certainly get what MPK was going for-- a loud and clear message that women should be free to express themselves sexually, and that any society that prohibits women from doing so is (a) oppressive; (b) unenlightened; and (c) a fair target of ridicule.

But again, what MPK lost sight of with his script is that the Muslim prohibition on extra-marital sex is (I believe) a religious mandate. In other words, it's not some passing social convention; rather, it is an enduring religious principle that has, I assume, some express foundation in religious scripture. So to have Samantha make a scene like this is kind of like having her show up at a Hasidic Jewish household and run around pulling off all the women's wigs (if people even do this anymore, I have no idea) and telling them how much they are missing out on, while brushing her long, luxurious hair.

So okay, we can all agree that there was some religious insensitivity on display here.

However.

It is an insensitivity that is not wholly unfounded. If I can be so bold.

Rather, I think that, even in it's most cringe-worthy moments, the movie rather accurately reflects the (yes, sometimes-politically-incorrect) first impressions of a first-time American visitor to the UAE.

In truth, I didn't actually pick up on a lot of the "offensive" parts until I watched the movie a *second* time. The *first* time I saw it, I was too busy giggling at how similar *my* first impressions were during *my* first week here in the UAE.

Just like Carrie and co., I, too...

... was tickled by the Arabic script on the Pringles can;

... was grateful not to have a conspicuously Jewish last name;

... was fascinated by the abundant rhinestone embellishment sparkling on many a covered woman's veil and cuff hem;

... marveled at the process by which fully-veiled women have to painstakingly lift the veil for every bite of food; and

... chuckled at the concept of a "birkini" bathing suit.

Is this "insensitive"? Does it make me "intolerant"? Were these first impressions of mine "offensive" to Muslim people?

I hope not, and I don't think so. Rather, these first impressions were simply a product of my admitted ignorance of Arab culture, and a function of the vast cultural divide that currently exists between many Judeo-Christian Americans and the native Muslim population.

I mean, honestly, I am TRYING, every day that I live here, to silence the little voice inside of me that still gasps on the rare occasion that I see a woman who has her *entire* body cloaked in black-- not even those slits for the eyes-- just a solid black shroud walking through the mall. (She can see, I believe, through the thinner material over her face.) I try to tell myself that it is probably her CHOICE to dress this way (at least, that's what the official representative of the Center for Cultural Understanding told me), and that she probably is doing so out of a spiritual obligation to God.

But you must believe me, silencing this little voice is VERY hard. Perhaps it's just because, in America, I had never seen anything like this before... and because I was conditioned by my university women's studies classes to have a reflex-like aversion to any social classifications of people merely on the basis of their biological sex.

It is also very hard not to feel about the veils the same way that Carrie did when she likened them to the caricature with the tape over its mouth; it is *hard* not to think of those veils as a means of silencing women and trying to make them invisible. Now I *know* that the covered women don't *feel* that they are being silenced (again, this is what I've been told)... but it's hard. It's hard to see a woman whose mouth is covered by a veil, and still believe that she is free to speak.

But I am trying to see it that way. I am trying to accept unfamiliar religious traditions without applying my own Western judgments to them. We all need to try. We all need to make the effort to learn about the things we don't know, and don't yet understand.

That doesn't make those first impressions any less valid, though.

So I guess what I'm saying is that MPK wasn't wrong to have the SATC girls react the way they did when they first encountered the UAE culture: I consider myself a pretty open-minded person, and I felt much the same way when I first arrived. Perhaps his mistake was setting the movie here in the first place. Being schooled in a grand political statement on the status of Middle Eastern women, and the degree to which they need to start roaring, wasn't really what the SATC audience was coming out for. We came to see our old friends, and laugh with them, and cry with them, and leave the theater feeling warm and fuzzy and in the mood for a Cosmo.

In other words-- We love you, MPK. But next time leave the heavy-handed political commentary to someone who *doesn't* have Samantha Jones to account for. :)

The Silver Linings.

2010-06-20T10:08:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me that a bunch of my recent posts about Dubai have been a little negative. That's probably because the bad stuff always makes for more interesting blogging, I think, than the good stuff.

But I would hate to give the impression that Dubai has been a negative experience for us personally. In truth, it's been a remarkable experience.

We have lived here for more than a year and a half now, having arrived in November 2008. Here are some of the things that I have truly been impressed by.

1) The international community. Never before have I been surrounded by a group of people for whom "What country are you from?" is the natural progression from an initial introduction. My 5-year-old now proudly explains that she has friends from Lebanon, Germany, India, Pakistan, Canada, South Africa, Wales, Italy, Croatia, and Spain. I highly doubt she'd be able to rattle off all of those countries so effortlessly if we'd stayed in the U.S., let alone have names and stories to go along with each of them. It's very cool to become intimately acquainted with the vast expanse of world beyond America's borders.

2) The schools. Sure, they cost a fortune, but we have been thrilled with the education that all 3 of the kids have been receiving here. Sushi's Pre-K class this year tackled subjects that I honestly did not expect to see until first grade: real addition and subtraction worksheets; short books for homework; the travels of Christopher Columbus. And this is PRE-K! I can only imagine what she will learn in kindergarten next year.

3) The welcoming environment. Before we landed in this part of the world, I imagined that we Americans would stick out like a sore thumb and generally feel like outsiders wherever we went. Now, it's true that a subtle anti-American sentiment does exist here (for example, when our 15-year-old British babysitter told her friends she was working for an American family, she felt compelled to follow it up with, "They're not all bad!"), but I think that's a function of simply living outside of America as opposed to being in the UAE specifically. Furthermore, I've detected that slight snobbery among fellow expats from Europe as opposed to the locals themselves (then again, I've never met a local, but I digress). The truth is I actually feel largely accepted and safe here. Even the semi-hidden fact that I am Jewish has never caused an issue outside of my own paranoid imagination.

4) The lifestyle. There is literally nothing more you could ask for when it comes to the malls, the restaurants, the brands, the labels. It's as if the cream of all the crops has converged here to offer a diversity unlike anything I've seen before. Dubai Mall's directory of 1,200+ stores really says it all (can you even *think* of 1,200 stores, let alone shop in 1,200 stores?).

5) The weather. Honestly, it's not that bad for most of the year. I mean, yes, it's now June, and the kids can't play outside anymore. And sure, by the time August rolls around, you can't even open the door without the heat smacking you in the face like a wet towel. But for most of the year, it's fine, if not downright heavenly between November and March. And it's only rained a handful of days the whole time we've lived here. There are virtually no bugs. There is hardly ever a thunderstorm. There are no earthquakes or hurricanes. At worst, it's HOT HOT HOT, and the occasional sandstorm is highly annoying to the sensitive eyes. But it's not nearly as insufferable as I expected.

6) The high roller fantasy. I admit that my conscience is somewhat bothered by the fact that just about every store and restaurant in the mall is staffed exclusively by Filipino workers, and that every single house appears to have a Filipino maid, and that nearly every single construction worker, gas station attendant, and delivery person is of Indian descent. I wish that the racial components of Dubai's society were more balanced. That said, it has been an INCREDIBLE, INCREDIBLE luxury to have Alice living with us, and Z-Man driving Daddy on his hourlong commute to work each day. I mean, these are indulgences that we never could have afforded in the USA. I cannot tell a lie: it's a scream to be addressed as "ma'am." As if I could ever be anyone's ma'am! Have you met me? ;)

7) The variety of children-oriented activities. This is not a bad place to be raising little kids. On a weekly basis, my girls have participated in all of these extra-curricular activities: Playball, Little Gym, swimming lessons, drama class, ballet, and soccer. Pre-K finished only two days ago and already my 5-year-old has started at an indoor day camp. Add to this the abundance of indoor play areas and McDonalds and water parks and Wanado City-type operations, and you'd be hard-pressed to think of anything more a kid could ask for.

8) The friendships. It goes without saying that I miss my friends and family back home very, VERY much. And if it weren't for Facebook-- which keeps me up to date and involved in my friends' lives in a way that email never could-- this would be an infinitely harder, lonelier experience. But I'm happy to say that I have also met a couple of women here who actually GET ME. And I get them. Which is something that I had never dared to imagine before we made this move. Now granted, these are not Arab women (much to the disappointment of my burning curiosity). But they are moms, who arrived in this country feeling like fish out of water, determined to make a happy life for their families here... just like me. And their love and support and companionship has been a wonderful surprise.

9) The Western influence. Alright, maybe some of the tv programs are a season or two behind, but I *never* expected that something like American Idol would be broadcast here only a day or two after the live broadcast (and then repeated incessantly)... or that the Kardashians would be on every ten minutes... or that a movie like Iron Man 2 would actually debut here in Dubai *before* it opened in America! Every mall has current American pop music being piped into its changing rooms (would you believe I've even had to speak to store managers-- twice!-- because I found the R-rated lyrics of the rap music to be offensive??), and the UAE tabloids even keep tabs on a bunch of American stars (though they also tend heavily toward Bollywood actors, interestingly). And forget about my frenzied purchases of long-sleeves and long dresses right before we boarded that first Dubai flight: I see plenty of cleavage and short shorts running around here on a daily basis, and I have found it to be nearly *impossible* to find a one-piece bathing suit amidst a sea of zzzexy bikini options. Who knew.

10) The change of perspective. Just about the ONLY thing that I don't love about living in Dubai is that I feel we can't be openly Jewish here, and that there is no Jewish community that exists beyond the occasional closed doors. I am genuinely saddened by the fact that my little girls are missing out on the identity-molding education that they would otherwise be getting right now at our Jewish nursery school back in the USA.

And yet.

Being a Jewish family-- one that's been saddled with all of the preconceptions and prejudices that I think often come part and parcel with being Jewish and being American in the 21st century-- it has been an invaluable experience to view life from the other side of the looking glass for a little while. When we first arrived here, I was astounded that "Palestine" had been given a booth at the school's International Day... now, I not only expect it, but I understand why it belongs there. (It goes without saying that I wish Israel also had been given a booth, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.) Before this adventure, I reflexively took Israel's side in every fight... now, I probe the political motives of the media before I make up my mind. (For whatever it's worth, I've concluded that "impartial reporting" on any Arab-Israeli affair is unrealistic... but even *that* is a valuable revelation for me.) Had we stayed in America, I never would have given a second thought to those women whose faces are completely cloaked in traditional Muslim dress: I would have assumed that those women are oppressed and degraded and that was that. Now, I have ambivalent feelings about the covered women of the Middle East: if they say that covering their faces is their choice, who am *I* to tell them that this choice is not being made freely, or in response to some larger, more spiritual call? How can you liberate a woman who doesn't feel imprisoned? And why would you even want to?

All in all, I am absolutely a better person for having had this experience. And if it turns out that next year is our last year here, then I want to embrace these opportunities even further in the coming months. I want to travel the region more; I want to meet people more (hopefully, some Emiratis, so I don't have to go on just wondering about what's going on behind the literal veil); I want to find out what's really at stake for a well-intentioned Jew in the UAE.

Because one day, when we're back in the States, and it wouldn't even *occur* to me to ask a new acquaintance what country she's from, I bet I'm going to miss this place.

Rock On, Kinokuniya Book Store

2010-06-18T04:27:00.001-07:00

Just found this book at the Dubai Mall. Got it for the girls. Fun!

p.s. The store was also displaying, in a somewhat prominent spot, "The Invention of The Jewish People," a book written by Israeli historian Shlomo Sand. I initially was pleasantly surprised, but now after having read the Amazon description, and learning that the book's thesis is actually a rejection of the concept of a "Jewish people" per se who have a legitimate entitlement to Israel... maybe not. Hmmm.

Update to the Update.

2010-06-17T01:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, I was just busted doing some one-sided reporting of my own. After reading my last post, Seacrest commented on the fact that the 18-year-old woman who alleged gang rape was sent to jail for a year while the six men apparently went free.

Not true, and I apologize for my willful omission. I was trying to make a point by highlighting only the woman's punishment, but now I see that I have unfairly characterized the sentence.

One of the men got a one-year jail sentence as well.

Four of the men were fully acquitted of the rape charge. Then, of those four, two of them received 3-month jail sentences for "illegal mixing with the opposite sex."

Finally, two of the six men were fined 5,000 AED (about

US $1400) for "violating public decency."

This is all more than a little mysterious to me still-- I mean, did the court decide that the woman was raped or not? If she willingly participated in non-marital sex, then wasn't she-- as a Muslim woman-- supposed to get life in prison? Or, if she was an unwilling participant, then shouldn't she have gone free? And what of the disparate sentences for the five men-- does that mean that some raped the woman while some watched? What's the difference between "illegal mixing with the opposite sex" and "violating public decency"? Was the man who got the year in prison the only one to actually have had sex with the woman??

Sigh. I guess I still have a lot of learning to do about how things work around here.

I still think it sucks that the woman was sent to jail.

Blaming the Victim.

2010-05-26T09:58:00.000-07:00

[I ORIGINALLY WROTE THIS POST ON MAY 26, 2010, BUT NEVER GOT AROUND TO PUTTING IT UP ON THE BLOG.]

Ok, here's another hot button issue that Dubai has me mental about: women who go to the police claiming that they were raped, and then end up BEHIND BARS themselves.

There are 2 news stories on this subject in the papers right now:

First, there's the 18-year-old Emirati girl (Emiratis, you recall, are the "nationals" here who are granted privileged status but are also held to high social standards) who alleges that she was gang-raped by her boyfriend and 5 of his friends in the back of a car. The prosecution charged the 6 boys (4 of whom are Emirati, all of whom are 19) with rape, in part due to the evidence of physical assault that was produced by the woman having undergone tests at the Forensics Unit of the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department.

The defense refuted the charge of gang rape and alleged that the woman had consensual sex with her boyfriend (sex outside of marriage).

Yesterday, with no reason given, the woman went to court and requested that all of her accusations against the defendants be withdrawn.

The charge against *her*, meanwhile, still stands.

According to our newspaper, The National:

"If the prosecution drops the charge of consensual sex, the woman could face a lesser charge related to DECEPTION, which is punishable by SIX MONTHS TO TWO YEARS IN PRISON.

"If found guilty of consensual sex, as a Muslim woman, she would face LASHES and A MAXIMUM SENTENCE OF LIFE IN PRISON."

[emphasis mine, obviously.]

I'll pause for a second to allow that to sink in: Theoretically, an 18-year-old has consensual sex with her boyfriend, who then allows 5 of his friends to come by and gang rape her. She is pressured into dropping the charges... at which point the 6 men go free... while the 18-year-old woman is subjected to LASHES (what century is this??) followed by

LIFE.

IN.

PRISON.

This honestly-- and again, with all due respect-- BOGGLES MY MIND. Could this really be the law of the land I'm living in?

The second news story accompanies the "CABBIE TELLS OF SEDUCTION" headline above. Here, a 24-year-old British woman claims that she was raped in the back seat of a taxi at 4:00 in the morning by the 47-year-old Pakistani cab driver.

The driver's defense is summarized by the first sentence of the article:

"A drunken partygoer allegedly seduced a Dubai taxi driver by ripping off her clothes in his cab and then having sex with him on the back seat."

Adding insult to injury, today that same newspaper published *this* reader's letter:

"I am appalled by the article 'Cabbie Tells of Seduction' and feel there are too many unanswered questions about this case. For example, why did she not have the money to pay for the taxi? Did she feel she was above paying? Why did she not have a key to get into her house? She sounds like a spoilt woman acting like a teenager. She was 24 what did she expect. I am fed up with females who behave badly and their excuse is because they had too much to drink.

My sympathy goes to her parents. My plea though is for the cabbie. Please please listen to what he has to say. Let's have equal justice.

[Signed,] Female Brit"

Arghhhhhhh, I don't even know where to begin. Never mind that this letter was ostensibly written by a fellow British female; did I seriously just read the words, "what did she expect"?? I mean, let's say that the driver is in part telling the truth, and that a completely *WASTED* British girl got into the back of his cab and took off her clothes... In what universe does that constitute CONSENT?

The Dubai universe??

It's a sad commentary that I wouldn't be at *all* surprised if some Dubai court finds this 24-year-old woman guilty of having consensual sex outside of marriage. With an almost-5o-year-old taxi driver she didn't know. And tosses her in jail. But lets the poor, *violated* taxi driver walk.

Bet she's just thanking her lucky stars that she's not "a Muslim woman" right about now.

It's all a bit of madness, no?

* * * * * *

JUNE 15, 2010 *UPDATE*:

Saw it in the paper this morning: Yup, the 18-year-old woman from the first news story is being locked up for one year.

The crime? "Illegal sex."

Well, I guess she should be grateful. Very likely gang raped by 6 men, and she gets only a single year in jail. No lashings or anything!

All things considered, it's actually a bargain.

This School Exercise is Rated PG-13.

2010-05-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

Actual conversation that took place between my 5-year-old and me as we were walking out of her school this afternoon:

ME: So how was school?

5-year-old: Good.

ME: What did you do?

5YO: We had a lockdown.

ME: [stopping in tracks and getting down to face kid] What?

5YO: We had a lockdown. But it was only a practice one.

ME: [incapable of disguising the horrified expression on my face] Are you kidding me? WHY did you have a lockdown?

5YO: In case any bad guys came to the school. We practiced lying on the floor so if the bad guys came looking for us, it would look like no one was there. [happily resumes walking to the car]

ME: [horrified, horrified, horrified.]

Um.... does this happen in schools in the USA and I just don't know about it? Because I have to tell you, the idea of my child being taught to lie on the ground, "in case bad guys came looking for her," makes me incredibly anxious. Aren't we still supposed to be lying to our children when they're 5 years old, and telling them that the world is a happy place? Don't we all follow the party line that "bad guys" are just make-believe characters in movies?

More importantly: is the concept of a "lockdown drill" a factor of our living in the often-volatile Middle East, or is it simply a part of the post-Columbine world??

Either way... UGH.

A Slight Contradiction...

2010-05-12T02:15:00.000-07:00

Um, I can't hold Daddy's hand while walking through the mall (there's a sign at the entrance forbidding public displays of affection)...

but you can display *this* in the store window?

REALLY, Dubai?

South African Safari Photos

2010-04-30T02:52:00.000-07:00

Impossibly amazing adventure. Loved every minute. Here are some of my best pics!

FAMILY UPDATE.

2010-04-23T18:42:00.000-07:00

Hello gang. Well with our second annual CHILD-FREE mini-holiday right around the corner (African safari!!!), I wanted to touch base with a personal family update in the unlikely event that our plane disappears forever into some wayward volcanic ash. (Note: We are not flying anywhere *near* the volcanic ash. I just like to obsessively predict my own random demise, under the theory that it is in fact very difficult to predict one's own random demise.) (Though I have to say, if we *did* disappear into some wayward volcanic ash, how cool would it be that I told you about it in advance! I'd be famous!) (Though admittedly I'd have bigger problems at that point. But ANYWAY.)

So here's what you might have missed on the home front:

(1) Some additions to the family!

NO, not another child, people. (Though I understand the expectation: Baby is the only one of our children who did *not* get a new sibling on her 18-month-birthday. But hey, we couldn't go on giving humans as gifts forever, kid. Gets expensive.)

The first new addition is actually "Baby Cat" (her real, if pitiful name; we're still working on it), a playful stray kitten whom we adopted from a foster family (there are currently no cat shelters in Dubai despite the massive numbers of strays, shame). No hugely complex justification for adopting another pet at this time... maybe it was just my biological clock demanding something new to mother at that 18-months-after-last-baby mark? Regardless, the kitten has adapted well to her new lavish digs (supposedly she was found abandoned and starving in a vacant building; the other strays now refer to her as "Annie") and spends her days sleeping in the sunshine and using Harry's face as a punching bag. (Hey, Harry, you might have 4 superficial flesh wounds to the head, but at least now you have another cat to talk to, so overall it's a win, right?)

The second new addition was more of a surprise: One evening at bedtime Sushi nonchalantly mentioned, "Alice's sister is coming to Dubai tomorrow." This made my jaw drop, because I have been asking Alice for what feels like years if she was ever planning to move one of her SIX sisters here (lots of families employ two nannies who are cousins, sisters, even mother-daughter pairs). Well, turns out Sushi got the story a *little* wrong-- it's Alice's sister-in-law, not her sister-- but either way, we are suddenly offering temporary (?) asylum to one of Alice's relatives, and it's been really nice. There isn't the psychological drain of monitoring the household dynamics like I had to when it was Alice and Julia, plus we don't have to give up our one spare bedroom (STILL AVAILABLE FOR GUESTS, COME VISIT!) because Alice and her sister-in-law (SIL) (S-I-L... Sil... Sylvia?) have requested to stay in Alice's room together. One bunk bed later and we're in business.

Sylvia is 40 years old (but has the youthful glow of a teenager), is the mother of two boys back in the Philippines (ages 10 and 17), and is wonderful with the girls. Her English is definitely a work in progress, and she has no experience being a housemaid, so for these two reasons (along with all the selfish ones: her arrival a few weeks before our vacation could not have come at a better time) we have offered to have her stay here until she gets on her feet. (Supposedly her decision to show up in Dubai resulted from her husband unexpectedly losing his job in the Philippines; part of me strongly wanted to just be direct and ask, "Well, how much did your husband make in a year?", because the thought of a mother having to leave her children against her will and with little warning is enough to make my heart break; I considered pooling some money and just sending her back home; but worried that this might come off as just about the most patronizing and condescending offer an employer ever made. We'll see.)

Ok, so now we are Daddy, Mommy, PopPop, Sushi, Screamer, Baby, Z-Man, Alice, Sylvia, Harry, and Baby Cat. ahaha this is a long list of characters, no?

(2) Sushi turned 5 last week! and it was a joyous occasion for sure. My beloved friend The Australian pulled out all the stops with her new party planning business, and threw Sushi a Barbie-themed fete that will undoubtedly live on in infamy. All in our back yard: a manicure/pedicure station, hair braiding and coloring and glittering, cupcake decorating, art station, dress-up costumes, a fashion show, an hour of games and dancing with a top-notch kids' entertainer, and of course a giant birthday cake made out of a real Barbie doll. It was such a success that I am still afraid to talk about it for fear of jinxing it. Thank you, The Australian! You are loved and adored, and not just because you will one day give Mindy Weiss a run for her party-planning money!

Also on the Sushi front, with the clock about to run out on her being 4 years old, that kid took the idea of literacy and freaking RAN with it. To say that there was a miraculous transformation in her reading ability is a massive understatement: seemingly overnight she went from struggling to sound out words, to literally picking up almost any book and reading aloud with relative ease. (As PopPop would say, all of a sudden the files just started to DOWNLOAD.) Now if only she could find a reliably available audience... understandably, Screamer and Baby are beginning to tire of this frequent announcement: "Come on, little kids! I will read you a story now!"

But of course we're so thrilled as she continues to tear up her homework and impress the heck out of her teachers at the American school. Yay for Sushi!! (Now if only we could do something about her frightful temper and epic meltdowns.) (But she inherited that stuff from me, so I probably shouldn't call calm, rational Daddy's attention to it any more than necessary.)

(3) Screamer. It makes me happy just writing that. Because for all the times I looked at those 3 baby faces and joked, "Look! We got the same kid 3 times! Same model, just different years!", suddenly it's becoming glaringly obvious that we didn't get the same kid three times at all. Sushi is ALL GORMAN (long-time readers, you'll recall that this is what I *thought* Z-Man was saying with his thick Pakistani accent, when really he was saying "government"; the word GORMAN has now taken on a life of its own to represent ME and my obsession with RULES and ORDER and NOT GETTING ANYONE IN THIS FAMILY THROWN IN DUBAI JAIL) (Daddy is also sometimes accused of being GORMAN, usually on the issue of UAE visas)-- but meanwhile Screamer is the ANTI-GORMAN, an absolute hippie. I don't know if it's the wispy blond hair... or the frequent daydreaming... or the way that her body has somehow remained nymph-like and waif-y and immune to the forces of gravity while both her older and younger sisters have become sturdy and robust. You just can't help looking at her without picturing an imaginary garland of daisies on her head. She's magical.

She's also, potentially, a real ditz. (And I mean that in the most loving way.) The recent reports coming out of Screamer's nursery school are less about her academic prowess than about her mildly disruptive conduct during circle time (for better and for worse, she has found a soulmate-- we'll call her Kissy-- a similarly blond [in every aspect of the word] partner in crime who would ALSO prefer to examine the split ends of her ponytail than commit to lower case letters). But at least for the time being (her spacey facial expressions will be less adorable in high school, no?), we are loving that she is turning into her own chilled out, zoned out, totally groovy kind of person. She's like a benevolent stoner. Already. At age three. You just can't watch her flitting around in her little Screamer world without catching yourself in a smile. In other words, Screamer is over The Wiggles and ready for The Dude.

(4) Baby. Is only weeks away from her second birthday, I can't believe it. She is talking up a storm these days (I'd say about 70% of it is intelligible, even funny!) and has more opinions than one toddler ever really needs to have. She is bossy and loud but also supremely cuddly and clever. Nothing's more adorable than when she gets into a silly mood and methodically marches around the perimeter of the room rattling off baby-talk versions of just about every kid song known to man. ("Trinkle, trinkle, widdle stawr...") Another diva is born!

(5) Daddy. Boy does Daddy travel a lot. Italy, Russia, Maldives, Spain, Germany... and these are just the recent journeys. But he is so completely kicking ass at his job that it would be criminal for me to interfere (though I certainly do try, with an endless supply of guilt trips). In fact, Daddy just got *his* report card (aka, annual performance evaluation), and it was littered with superlatives such as "Most impressive executive in the company" (!!!) and "Extraordinary work ethic." I am so proud of him and so inspired by him.

Furthermore, on top of all this work success, Daddy continues to prove himself to be the *most* devoted father, son-in-law, and husband. He may work around the freaking clock, but somehow he ALWAYS makes the time to get down on the floor to play with the girls either before bedtime or first thing in the morning... *and* to tell my dad all about his latest deals and business conquests... *and* to patiently listen as I unload my stay-at-home-mom related stresses on him (I just celebrated my five-year SAHMom anniversary-- it adds up, people!) until my head is clear enough to face another trying day with the rugrats. Truly, the guy is a saint and he encourages all of us to be a better person than we might otherwise be. Settling down with that man was the best decision I ever made!

(6) PopPop. Still the coolest grandfather there ever was. The iPod, the sleeveless shirts, the deep brown tan, the MUSCLES... is it just me, or is he just a can of hair product removed from GTL at this point?? (That's an embarrassing "Jersey Shore" reference, for those who actually exercise discretion in their television habits.)

And the novelty of PopPop living with us hasn't even begun to wear off for me, even after a year-and-a-half. Last week we had a minor medical emergency-- Screamer dislocated her elbow; in a panic I considered attempting a move I had learned from my pediatric First Aid class in the hopes of sparing us both another traumatizing emergency room experience [this had happened to her twice before, almost 2 years ago]; and miraculously, my medical intervention was a success!-- but I don't think I would have even *attempted* a DIY fix on Screamer's dislocated arm if my dad had not been standing there, 12 inches away, solidly having my back. His being here is an indescribable source of strength and happiness for me. And while he never makes me feel like a little girl... I love that I still do, anyway, when he wraps me in his strong and capable arms.

(7) Z-Man. The big fella of few words but giant heart, much more our family guardian than just Daddy's driver. Curiously, has taken to wearing a carnation pink shirt and lavender wristwatch of late. Still weighs about 300 pounds. To which I say, Amen, brother! Equal rights for all!

(8) Me. Doing pretty well indeed. At the moment am overwhelmed with party planning (Sushi's, and now Baby's in a few weeks) and vacation planning (if only I can get there, I just KNOW I will remember how to relax and have fun!), but am certainly never bored. Am getting excited for our summer visit to the USA, while not necessarily anxious to leave here. Mostly, am just painfully aware that we may never have it this good again (the family and PopPop all living harmoniously together, in this big ol' house, with Alice and Z-Man and now even Sylvia treating us like royalty, despite our genuine protestations)... and I'm trying not to take a single day of it for granted.

Ok, would write more, but my nervous stomach (vacation-related) is now becoming distractingly painful. Must go eat and meditate and remind myself that we have an entire ARMY of people in this house to take care of the kids... THEY WILL BE FINE.

Actually, I think I'll go back to predicting my own random demise. It takes my mind off worrying about the kids. :)

See you on the other side of Africa! xo.

Passover Follow-Up.

2010-04-19T23:24:00.000-07:00

Hey, look what Daddy brought home from the grocery store on Friday afternoon! (Don't let the baking tray fool you; it had just come out of plastic wrap.) Looks oddly familiar, no?

The label says it's "SPELT BERLINER." Not sure what to make of that. And Google wasn't much help. But there you are. Challah in Dubai. I mean, Spelt Berliner in Dubai. [shrugs]

And They Said It Couldn't Be Done (And By "They" I Mean "I")

2010-04-03T09:17:00.000-07:00

Well, if I didn't feel like we were living undercover before, I certainly felt like it on Passover night.

There we were, 38 relative strangers, huddled together in an unfamiliar kitchen listening to a child we'd never met reciting the 4 questions.

Not exactly a family gathering. But in some ways, a more meaningful Jewish holiday than I'd ever experienced before.

We'd heard about it through the sibling of a friend of a friend. The brother of a college classmate of my boy Seacrest had been invited to a seder that was being held in Dubai. Now, I'd never met this brother of the classmate of Seacrest, nor had I ever heard of the hosts. But when the sibling of the friend of my friend emailed us the details, of course Daddy and I quickly RSVP'd that we would attend. I mean, what are the odds that we would receive a *competing* seder invitation this year?

After overcoming just a bit of pre-holiday stress (who knew, when we accepted our assignment of bringing a dessert, that 99% of online Passover recipes would require MATZOH MEAL; thank heavens for kosher meringue) we put on our fancy clothes and Daddy pocketed his dusty old yarmulke and we headed out to an unknown address. When we arrived, Indian neighbors were standing on the sidewalk eyeing the influx of guests suspiciously (or maybe they were eyeing us completely hospitably, and this was just my paranoia talking). Either way, we hurried past with minimal eye contact, trying not to call attention to ourselves.

We entered the house and I was immediately transported back to the front reception hall of every synagogue I'd ever known: the heavily overdone jewelry, the mildly grating nasaly voices (though this time with English and South African accents, which made them vastly more alluring than annoying), the competitively over-aerobicized physiques.

In other words: MY PEEPS!

Conversation quickly turned to our collective relief in meeting one another, and our shared amazement that we had found enough Jews to fill the entire ground floor of someone's home. It felt like we were gathering in a public storm shelter during a hurricane: all of us so glad to see each other, so comforted to see that the other person had also made it through.

"I heard that there are 10,000 Jews in the UAE!" said one admirably optimistic participant. (The rest of us shook our heads and rolled our eyes discretely.) "I think it's more like 100," said a grumpy (and more realistic) skeptic. Someone else did some quick math aloud and announced, "Probably around 1500." The group accepted this number even though it seemed to me a little high, considering that none of us in the room knew any Jew who wasn't there. But okay. 1500 Jews, wow!

Then people started excitedly comparing Jewy experiences much as you would with Sasquatch sightings. "The organic cafe here has matzah!" said one yenta. "And when I went this week, there was only ONE box left." ("OOH, THAT'S A GOOD SIGN," we all chanted in robotic unison.) "MY local supermarket serves something that looks EXACTLY like challah," said a sister yenta, "but *only* on THURSDAYS!" ("OOH!" we all sighed. "THAT'S A GOOD SIGN!") Then there was some talk about the mythological secret synagogue that, according to Dubai legend, Sheikh Mohammed has set up in a private home in order to woo a prominent American businessman to come to the UAE. But alas, no one in attendance had ever seen it themselves. (Not a good sign.) The requisite jokes were further exchanged about how, at the end of the evening, we'd go to leave and the CID (Dubai police) would be patiently waiting outside to escort all of us directly to immigration. Ha ha, the subject of deportation for political insurgence never fails to get a laugh! (nervous laughter, but laughter nonetheless.)

Suddenly someone approached Daddy and said, "Over here. We need you for the minyan. Would be amazing if we could say kiddush. Can't believe we might actually have ten men." (Why ten, you say? Well, for those playing at home, and by that I mean gentiles, and sorry-ass Jews like me who had to look this up on Wikipedia, "It was the firm belief of the sages that wherever 10 Israelites are assembled, either for worship for the study of the Law, the Divine Presence dwells among them." Learn something new every day, my friends.)

So Daddy went off and stood by the front door with nine other Jewish men. Most wore yarmulkes. One wore a fedora. (And good day to you, too, sir!) One guy was very old and white-haired and reminded me of my elderly Jewish grand-uncles who are still doing the Passover thing with great gusto back in Jersey and I got a teeny bit emotional for a second. You don't see a lot of old people here in Dubai. Let alone old Jews. Made me miss my late grandfather, who really got into all this religious stuff. Ah, life.

Not sure exactly what went down during the kiddush (did I mention I'm a sorry-ass Jew? very out of practice.) but the visual was powerful. All the men faced forward and some bowed a little bit and seeing a group of them standing there in their yarmulkes (and fedoras) felt like an act of peaceful revolution.

Then it was time for the seder. I had initially been stunned to see through the open French doors that the tables and chairs were set up in the back yard: were we really going to be reciting Hebrew right out there in the open?? But then our host called everyone's attention and declared, "Let's do the seder right here in the kitchen. There's no need to do it outside."

I felt my eyeballs turn into cartoon spirals as my brain began racing to process all the possible interpretations of "There's no need to do it outside." Did he mean, there's no need to move everyone, when we're already all so comfortable standing around here? Or did he mean, THERE'S NO NEED TO RISK IT, when the neighbors are already standing out there wondering what we're up to?? I'll never know.

At that point, despite the conspicuous presence of those mass-produced paperback Haggadahs that were the cornerstone of every seder I ever attended in the USA, the host-- let's call him Dubai Moses, as he was leading us Jews through the desert-- announced, "The seder is for the children. It's not for the adults. And so, if no one objects, I'm going to do an abbreviated seder that the children will understand, hitting only the highlights. And-- since I'm the first to admit that I'm far from the most frum person here (meaning, religiously observant)-- anyone who would like to jump in is welcome to." No one jumped. So away we went.

For the next ten minutes, Dubai Moses spoke directly to the 6 tweens and 3 infants in attendance (our kids were not there; why take chances with their lives and/or mess up the bedtime schedule, thought neurotic me), flipping through the Haggadah and remarking on only the most critical aspects of the story. I'm of course paraphrasing, but in relevant part what Dubai Moses said was this:

"A long long time ago, the Jews were slaves in Egypt. They were forced to work outside in the heat from before the sun came up to after the sun went down. How do you think you would feel if you were a slave? Sad? Tired? Depressed? It's a lot like the construction workers that you see on the buses here in Dubai going back and forth between their work camps. You see? It's happening all over again."

Yikes. This made me uncomfortable. Because the ubiquitous sight of dark-skinned construction workers perpetually toiling in the half-built streets of Dubai, like ants or bees or Doozers under the blazing sun, already causes me emotional distress. And now, the analogy laid out so plainly like this-- where the Indian and Pakistani construction workers are the modern-day slaves of the Passover story-- makes *us* the heartless Egyptians who sit around in our fancy homes heartlessly reaping the benefits of their blood and sweat and labor. You know, the Bad Guys. Which of course we are but what can I do about it?? (A blog for another day, methinks.)

So anyway, Dubai Moses tells the kids that the Jews were slaves and so are the construction workers and then I zone out in self-torment and then the next thing I know someone's handing out masks. (Note to self: Research why I was wearing a cat mask and the guy next to me was wearing a Torah scroll mask with a crown on it and the guy next to him was wearing one that simply said BOILS in block letters. Was there a kitty cat plague I don't know about, or were the hosts just making due with whatever they had on hand?)

Then Dubai Moses got to the part of the story where the Jews put a mark on their door so that the Angel of Death would pass over (get it? passover?) their houses in its search for Egyptian firstborn children. He noted, "This is kind of like mezuzahs, which we don't do here in Dubai." (Second note to self: I'm pretty sure that mezuzahs have nothing to do with the Passover marks on the doors, which I think was actually blood, and that Dubai Moses was just getting in a little dig at the UAE while he had a sympathetic audience. But look into this as well.)

Finally Dubai Moses called his 9-year-old daughter to the front of the kitchen and asked her to recite the 4 questions. Which she did, eloquently and confidently and melodiously. The rest of us murmured along at the chorus (if you can call it that, not sure, no disrespect intended). Daddy later told me that for him this was the most moving part of the evening: A child, innocently leading a room full of adults, in a Hebrew prayer, on Arab soil. It's unlikely the kid had any real sense of the tiny act of heroism she was performing.

And just like that, the seder was over. There was no singing, there was no discussion of the 4 sons (cue that corny tune of "My Darlin' Clementine"), there was no plate onto which I could put 10 drops with my pinkie. But there was-- more importantly-- miniature glasses of wine passed between husbands and wives, actual matzah (brought into the country by one of the seder attendees, who is a pilot for Emirates), and a whole room of Jews. The company of whom I have missed so, so much.

The dinner experience was similarly fulfilling (especially the matzoh ball soup, yahoo!). We sat outside in Dubai Moses's back yard under a full moon and made easy conversation with complete strangers. Just as Dubai Moses had opened his home to all of us, sight unseen. And that's one of my favorite things about the Jews: even if we've never met, we're looking out for each other; we're all in the same boat so why bother with the formalities.

Most of the Jews that night were from England or South Africa. There were two other Americans besides us (my hookup included). Lots of people were talking about a dinner a bunch of them attended a few months back that was hosted at a Dubai hotel by some American Zionist organization (!!!!!). (Side note: You have to have some serious balls to show up at a pro-Israel event here. It's the inverse of laying low. I don't think I could do it.) One attendee offered to take me to the off-the-beaten path marketplaces. Another offered to give me acupuncture. Another hustled Daddy for his business card. (Hey now, networking is a valid component of the Jewish community, too.)

Then Dubai Moses, who was sitting at our table, described how his 9-year-old is dealing with some anti-Semitism at her school. Which also happens to be SUSHI'S SCHOOL, the American school, gulp. Dubai Moses said that it was just one kid spouting off some anti-Semitic remarks that he had certainly heard at home, and that while that his daughter's classmates do not know that she's Jewish, her teachers do (we have the same arrangement with Sushi's teacher) and have been consulted about the problem. I expected Dubai Moses to be more upset about it, but instead he said, "You know what? It's fine. Because now when we go back to South Africa, my daughter will be able to defend the Arab point of view." Very diplomatic of him, no? And we compared notes on how our eyes have been opened to the way that the Arab world sees Jews, and Israel, and how neither the pro-Arab world nor the pro-Israel world gets the straight story from their media.

(Was initially a little stressed about anti-Semitism at Sushi's school, where she proudly declared her allegiance to HANUKKAH! on the playground this past December, but then remembered that there were swastikas painted on lockers at my New Jersey middle school last year, and conceded that no place on earth is utterly devoid of anti-Semitism, unfortunately.)

The evening concluded with a furious exchange of mobile numbers and the promise to get together again soon. I couldn't help wonder if someone was going to initiate us into a secret Jewish handshake before we dispersed (and was a little disappointed when no one did). But even without the handshake, it was a truly memorable experience and I will be forever grateful to Dubai Moses and Dubai Moses's wife (did Moses have a wife? my sorry-ass-iness rears its ugly head again, we'll call her Mosette for now) for providing me with a night's worth of respite after a year and a half of spiritually wandering through the desert.

A final thought about my first Passover seder in Dubai. I'm not sure God was there. Or, if he was there, I didn't notice. Now, in all fairness, I'm an atheist, so maybe he was indeed hanging around, checking in with all the faithful, and just didn't reveal himself to me out of spite. And he's entitled to that, by all means, fair is fair. My point is just that there wasn't a whole lot of praying, or discussion of the Almighty, or that kind of thing. It just seemed like all of us Dubai Jews had showed up at that seder seeking not divine interaction, but human connection.

Just some confirmation that we weren't alone.

(WHICH IS WHAT *I* AM HERE FOR, YOU IDIOT!! shouts God into my deaf ears.) (But again, a blog for another day.)

The gentleman giving the farewell toast to Dubai Moses and Mosette concluded his remarks with, "Next year in Dubai!" And while I perhaps wouldn't go *that* far... the classic "Next year in Jerusalem!" has a certain enduring ring to it... suddenly I'm thinking that another Passover here in the UAE might not be *quite* so bad. :)

All Knocked Up and Nowhere to Go

2010-03-09T21:06:00.000-08:00

Dubai has a problem.

And lately, it's been appearing on the doorsteps of mosques all over the emirate.

Abandoned babies.

In a nutshell, if you should find yourself pregnant and unmarried in Dubai, you might as well get your nails done, have a nice meal, and then just stroll right on over to the jail. You'd save yourself a lot of trouble, cuz that's where you're going to end up eventually.

Let me list for you a few of the things that are illegal here in Dubai (all of which could land you behind bars):

- sex outside of marriage

- having a baby outside of marriage (supposedly, maternity wards will not treat a person who cannot produce a marriage certificate)

- abortion

- adoption (other than by Emirati families, which I guess is pretty rare, especially when it seems that most of the abandoned babies are of Filipino or Indian descent)

- abandonment of a child

- exiting the country without the consent of your sponsor

Got that? In other words, if you are, say, an unmarried Filipino housemaid who "falls pregnant," as they say round these parts, you: (a) can't keep the baby; (b) can't terminate the pregnancy; (c) can't have the baby and give it up for adoption; (d) can't have the baby and leave it on someone's doorstep (or if you do, they will hunt you down and THEN put you in jail); and (e) can't flee the country. Your only feasible option, if you want to remain out among the free world, is to fashion a time machine, go back to the night when the baby was conceived, and decide to go see a movie instead.

From recent events it looks like an awful lot of people have been choosing option (d), and taking their chances on life on the lam. In the past 10 weeks alone, 5 babies have been abandoned in Dubai, most near mosques, a few in the seasonal torrential downpours. (Some luck!, thinks the baby left in a box under the pouring rain. I live in a country where there is significant rain only 10 days a year, and TODAY they have to abandon me??)

Further illustrating Dubai's baby problem is the story presently going around about a Muslim woman of American origin who woke up to discover a Filipino baby on her doorstep a few years back. Though she already had four children of her own, she took the baby in and raised him as her son for five years (she could not technically adopt him, as only Emiratis are permitted to adopt). When the time came that she needed to travel with her family recently, she attempted to register the child for a passport... at which point she was arrested for child trafficking.

So what's up with Dubai not giving women any LEEWAY on the knocked up front?

I did a teeny bit of research and found this blurb from Gulf News:

According to Al Qubaisi, the entire system rests on the importance of the family name in the Muslim world.

"In pre-Islanic times adoption was common and the child would take the name of the new family and was considered to be a birth child," he explained.

"However, after the advent of Islam, this was abandoned as the Quran said that each child should have the name of their original father, because the main social base in Islam is the credibility of ancestry. Thus adoption was replaced by fostering a child (kafala) . . . This is considered to be a form of great worship in Islam."

Accordingly, even though the authorities will take in abandoned babies and arrange for foster care, the emphasis remains on tracking down the birth parents (who will then probably be put directly in jail, but hey, at least then we know the kid's last name).

Which reminds me, this hard-line emphasis on ancestry has recently made headline news in another context: frozen embryos.

On February 23, 2010, a front-page newspaper headline warned that, in accordance with a new law passed last year, thousands of frozen embryos are about to be destroyed. The paper urged any families with frozen embryos here (it is estimated that 10,000 have been stored in the UAE since 1995) make immediate arrangements for the relocation of their fertilized eggs.

The article explained,

"The decision to ban the use of stored embryos was made last year by the National Federal Council after concerns were raised by religious leaders that family lineage could be called into question if embryos were mixed up."

[SIDEBAR: WITH ALL DUE RESPECT, DUBAI, WHY IS IT OK TO DESTROY THOUSANDS OF FROZEN EMBRYOS (which implies that life does not begin at conception, otherwise this would be mass murder), BUT IT IS *NOT* OKAY TO GET A FIRST TRIMESTER ABORTION? Ummmm......]

Just to put a button on the grim prospects facing an unmarried woman who gets pregnant here in Dubai, check out this response I found at answers.Yahoo.com to a person asking where an unmarried friend can get an abortion in the UAE:

"OH GOD,

Becoming pregnant in the UAE unmarried is ILLEGAL! She will end up in jail after she gives birth. Her baby will be taken away from her. She will go to jail without a trial and will spend 3-6 year in prison and then be deported. She will also not have access to her child. I don't know what will happen to her baby but she won't be able to see it ever again. I know this sounds sick, but this is only in the UAE. Other Arab countries allow abortion up to the third trimester, just like in the West, except for the UAE.

My advice? Let your friend IMMEDIATELY contact her country's consulate in Dubai or go to her country's embassy in Abu Dhabi and seek protection. If it happened recently, then she should definitely get the hell out of Dubai before she goes to jail. She should just give birth to her child in her country and then she can go back to Dubai, although they might ask her how she has a baby and she's no married, might cause more trouble.

Want the best advice? She should leave the UAE immediately and stay in her country until she gives birth. If she plans on returning to the UAE, then she should contact the UAE embassy in her country and ask them with regards to their interior ministry's rules on living and working in the UAE with a child who has no father.

Tell her to get out now!

PS: If all fails, and she cannot leave the UAE, then I would suggest she gets married to a friend until she gives birth and then she could seek divorce from her friend. I hope this helps, please understand that what she has done is a serious crime! I wish her all the best, email me if you need more help."

Talk about being screwed.

"Forbidden Love"... and Other Unpleasant Euphemisms for Gay

2010-02-12T04:27:00.000-08:00

Ok, forget for a minute the unintentional Danny Gokey reference with the heart hands.

This is the front page of a tabloid-y newspaper that appears on our doorstep every weekend.

It bummed me out. With all due respect.

Here are a few excerpts from the accompanying article:

"A shocking trend is sweeping across educational institutions in the UAE. It's called same-sex relationships and it's worrying officials and parents to no end."

"[An] Emirati woman . . . had to deal with the demon on a personal level . . . when her 16-year-old daughter fell for an Indian girl . . . . 'I feared that my kids would become homosexual so I gave them in the custody of their father,' she recalls."

"[A young woman] shocked television audiences across the nation when she openly spoke of her relationship with another girl . . . and expressed the desire to marry her and have children with her through artificial insemination. 'I love my girlfriend and I want to have children with her.'"

"Homosexuality is prohibited in the UAE and violators face stiff punishment. Authorities are trying to curb deviant behavior, to better reflect traditional conservative laws of the UAE. Last year the Ministry of Social Affairs launched an awareness campaign called Excuse Me, I Am A Girl . . . . Meant to tackle lesbian-related issues, the campaign included a series of workshops, TV programs and lectures at universities and schools . . . . "

"Dr. X said there were several factors responsible for the upswing in same-sex relationships. 'Some theories suggest that gender identity disorder, often overlooked by parents and sometimes promoted by discriminating between genders within the family, is a key factor.' Other possible contributing factors, she said, could include being the only girl among male siblings, absence of a father figure and sexual assault."

The article went on to blurb some "case studies," all of which concluded with something like, "X is receiving treatment" or "X refused treatment":

"X, 23, . . . married after having several relationships with girls at the university. X could not prevent her marriage from collapsing as she continued lusting after women. She still visits her girlfriends at the university and is not seeking treatment."

"X, 16, started lesbian relations at age 14, lost her virginity with her girlfriend at age 16. She wants to receive treatment, but is afraid her family and other people will find out about her. She described how they used instruments and watched pornographic films bought from Chinese vendors."

"X [male, no age given] sexually harassed by his housemaid turns to other boys to satisfy his desire that was turned on at a very young age."

"X suffers hormone disorder due to neglect by family, which leads her towards same-sex activities."

There was virtually no mention of sexual orientation as being something that a person is perhaps born with, apart from this one sideways reference:

"[A psychiatrist] contended that some girls need a specialist therapist and that the issue falls under the purview of medical science and therefore does not need interference from religious scholars."

And I'd be remiss if I didn't detail the main graphic of the article, which depicts the 3 supposed "types" of lesbians (brace yourself, it's a little SNL-skit-y):

(1) "The Boya": the "sexual delinquent" who takes on "the boy's role";

(2) "The Tomboy": the boyish female who does not act on her impulses; and

(3) "The Weaker Girl": "the weaker, beautiful girl who gets lured by the first type."

(It really says that. She may be weak and susceptible to deviant sexual advances, but at least she's pretty. In every instance. Otherwise, why would a sexual deviant bother making a move on her?)

The article then ends with the editor's note: "Tell us what you think. How can parents protect their daughters from falling prey to this trend?"

So. Hmmm. Where do I go with this.

Well let me say at the outset that I respect the UAE, I am immensely grateful to be allowed to reside here for however long we do, and I am absolutely not suggesting that the Western outlook is universally the superior way of viewing the world. I do not believe in a normative morality and I am not trying to condemn a group of people who are just trying, in earnest, to honor their religious beliefs.

But. I also happen to believe that being gay is not a choice.

Therefore, to see homosexuality described in the year 2010 as "a demon," or as "deviant behavior" that requires "treatment," makes me cringe. And the amount of sheer misinformation makes me sad. Because an article like this only gives new life to the ancient notion that gays should be burned at the stake, lest their malignant condition spread to other, healthy people. NOT that these attitudes are without a voice in my own country; I would never be so ignorant as to suggest that the USA is all that more evolved in its acceptance of gay relationships (see, i.e., Prop 8). Having spent most of my life in the neighborhoods of New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, however, it still surprises me to see gay people being publicly disparaged in such express and unapologetic terms.

One silver lining is that, while technically homosexuality is illegal, I have heard from numerous sources that there is a lively underground gay scene in Dubai. Which encourages me, because it means that the government has not completely silenced the community here. I am further comforted whenever I am out and about and have observed a male (non-Arab) couple who are obviously in a romantic relationship with each other: it suggests that perhaps the UAE's bark is worse than its bite... ?

You gotta hand it to those guys, and the lesbians in the article above who "refuse treatment," and any gay people who voluntarily spend time in the UAE. I mean, I may be a Jew in a Muslim country (yes, I think I'm using the word now, throwing caution to the wind!, thank you for your concern), but at least I can and do keep my religious identity a secret from people on the street.

To the effeminate tourist who is boldly sashaying through the Mall of the Emirates, however: I tip my hat to you, sir. May you go in peace. And impeccable style.

* * * *

Post Script. PopPop got hit on at the mall today by a guy in full Muslim dress. So there you are. :)

Flat Stanley Comes to Dubai!

2010-02-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

Hi there.

First, let's just pretend you're not mad at me, and allow me get this little piece of business out of the way:

We have had a Flat Stanley come visit us here in Dubai! If you're unfamiliar with the concept: Flat Stanley is a popular elementary school project in which a "flattened" little boy gets mailed around the world taking pictures of his adventures. This Stanley comes to us courtesy of the child of my own best friend from when I was seven years old, which amuses me to no end. It's been a hoot showing him around (please note, however, I am not hereby issuing an open invitation for all other Flat Stanleys in the world to come visit me; it requires a lot of driving around to entertain him properly and I'm not sure that my enthusiasm could be sustained for a second or third tour of duty). Above are a few of my favorite pics so far:

(1) Stanley in front of the tallest building in the world (Burj Khalifa, formerly known as Burj Dubai) (a month ago I wanted to blog about the travesty of that name change, but was and still am afraid that doing so might get me kicked out of the country);

(2) Stanley posing with some Dubai residents who expressed interest in his escapades;

(3) Stanley pretending he's a part of Sheikh Mohammed's portrait (and probably risking jail time for the prank);

(4) Stanley and a snowman at Ski Dubai; and

(5) Stanely with some oversize Middle Eastern cartoon characters at the toy store. You won't see those guys at Disney. Fun!

Ok... now for the less fun part...

I'm really sorry that I have allowed this blog to fall into disrepair. To tell you that I feel guilty about it, every day, is an understatement. It's like I invited you to a party and then left halfway through.

I can only make these arguments in my defense. One: Three times in the past month I have tried to upload homemade videos only to find that the files were too large or something like that. After a few attempts I got frustrated and logged off. Two: I have been experimenting with channeling my creative energies into making an account of my mothering experience, so any free time I've had has been going there. Three: I bought the first season of Nurse Jackie on DVD. It's good tv, people. And lastly, four: There's just not all that much to talk about right now.

Maybe I made the scope of this blog too narrow, too expat-in-Dubai-specific. Or maybe I've just finally gotten acclimated, so that few things strike me as particularly blog-worthy these days. Or, maybe I'm just afraid of boring you.

The truth of it is this: We are doing well here in Dubai. On all levels, really: On a material level, I've got my minivan of choice, the kids finally have the outdoor trampoline they've been drooling over, and heck-- we've even got our USA Tivo working here (thank you, brilliant Slingbox invention, for routing it through our internet connection!!). On a logistical level, all 3 girls are happy in their schools (knock wood), Daddy remains busy and challenged by his job (as I write this, he's somewhere in Russia), and PopPop and I have figured out how to take shifts with the car so that neither of us gets stranded anywhere (him: the gym or the beach, me: the mall or the supermarket). And on an emotional level, I think all six of us have come to feel like this is, albeit temporarily, our home. Which is saying a lot, considering the depths and nature of my preconceptions about this place.

I suppose another compelling reason for my silence is that, much to my own surprise, it has become entirely possible to close my eyes and pretend that I'm back in the United States. If I want TGI Fridays, or Borders books, or heaven knows, Starbucks, I now know where each of them is. If I want to see a movie, the major ones come to our theaters. If Sushi misses her nursery school boyfriend, we Skype him (although Skype is supposedly illegal here, yikes). Furthermore, I can no longer deny how truly segregated the population really is here, as between the locals and the expats. More so than I even *wanted* it to be: I had certainly hoped that, after a year here, I would have made at least one Emirati friend-- someone who could provide me with the honest scoop about Muslim culture, and its treatment of women, and whether I actually have anything to be afraid of as a you-know-what. But no. The closest thing I have to a Muslim friend is Baby's teacher, who wears a headscarf along with her ripped jeans, and she's hardly an Emirati. The reality is that the expats are strongly encouraged to stay in our little expat universe of Brits and Americans and Germans and Italians and Australians... where we eat at our familiar chain restaurants and shop at our familiar chain stores... whilst the local Arab population does its own familiar things. Which makes for ease of relocation but not so much for good blogging.

So if you were worrying about us, please don't. I mean, I know I kicked and screamed about coming here, and I thought I would be counting down the days until our return to the USA... but I was wrong about a lot of things. I am enjoying our adventure here much, much more than I'd planned (I promise by that I am not referring ONLY to the joys of a nanny/housekeeper living with us, though having Alice around truly is a ridiculous luxury and I am grateful for every single minute of her time), and I have been genuinely inspired by our current membership in an authentic international community (in Sushi's pre-K class of 20 students, there are 14 different countries represented). Also, for all the noise I constantly make about being kicked out of the country or feeling like we are living in hiding, the fact remains that, to date, not one of us has ever felt legitimately threatened here, either by the authorities *or* the locals (knock wood, again) (and make that a big knock, wouldja?).

And so, provided that the region continues to enjoy relative peace (PLEASE don't do anything stupid, Iran!!!), I think we will just keep on living our quiet little existence. Our quiet little existence in a mansion. In the Middle East. As Jews. On Muslim turf. That's right: Home. :)

I leave you with a YouTube video of the Burj Khalifa's opening ceremony. We were there; it was rad. Skip to minute 9 if you're the instant gratification type.

xo.

Fantastic video!

2010-01-25T08:43:00.000-08:00

Room with a view: Dubai timelapse tests from Atlantis hotel from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Dubai: Still Standing!

2009-12-13T10:35:00.000-08:00

First off, did this magazine cover give anyone-- OTHER THAN ME-- a freaking heart attack???

(Thankfully, the story was about someone else, meaning that the anonymity of yours truly is still intact... for now... !)

Second, I'm genuinely sorry that I haven't written in so long. It's not that I don't think about you-- I do!-- it's just that I've made the scope of this blog so limited (i.e., our family's "adventures" in Dubai) that it doesn't lend itself to philosophical diatribes about our rather boring daily existence. This realization has inspired me to perhaps start *another* blog, the focus of which would be our rather boring daily existence... but in the meantime, I apologize again for the lack of Dubai updates. If nothing else, you can take comfort in the fact that no news is good news (cuz lord knows if there was any trouble brewing, I'd be whining to you guys about it).

Third... heard anything about Dubai lately?

Lots of friends have been emailing to ask whether the recently sensationalized Dubai debt situation is affecting us, and how it is being spun over here.

Well, I can’t speak for Daddy, and I’m sure he could explain more eloquently the impact that the Dubai World debt "restructuring" is having on his business prospects, if any. But as far as I can tell, the impact has been minimal on us, for two reasons. One, Daddy’s job is based not out of Dubai, but Abu Dhabi, which has a far more stable financial foundation; and two, the news as it has been described in our local newspapers presents a slightly more ambiguous-- or even optimistic?-- picture than what has been presented to the world at large. Not only is the restructuring being couched in less certain terms (as in, "we as UAE journalists don't know whether Dubai World actually *cannot* pay its debt at this time, or is merely *postponing* debt repayment in order to ultimately make a greater return on the investment"), but also, we are being reminded that it is not the government *itself* which is ostensibly out of money, but merely one huge project in which the government is a part-owner.

That said, if it’s even partly true that Dubai has run out of money, and that at least for now the fairy tale has come to an end, then it’s very bad news indeed for the already-fractured skyline of this city. Everywhere you look, there are half-built skyscrapers and inanimate cranes and enormous craters that have been dug out of the sides of highways, all of which could very well remain frozen in time like this... forever? The omnipresent construction zones and orange cones and scaffolding and affiliated chaos is one of my least favorite things about living here, and the idea that the city might be paralyzed in this half-formed state is downright depressing. Driving on the disjointed roads is perilous to say the least, and at this point, I have given up on hoping for street signs and just hope for pavement instead. So in this regard, yes, I guess the debt "crisis" is impacting us, but thankfully, in only superficial ways as far as I can tell.

[Note to Daddy: It's entirely possible that the Dubai debt crisis is having a huge impact on us financially, and that you have told me about it at length. If this is the case, I'm sorry, I don't think I retained any of that information, I blame the children, any conversations that take place after 8pm are likely to result in your simply talking to yourself while my eyes glaze over and my thoughts drift to some version of "Where did it all go wrong?" as I mentally inventory the children's various misdeeds of the concluding day. Apologies all around. Do tell me again, but preferably not in the comments section of the blog. Email would be best, as I could then reread it in the freshness of morning, and I will amend the blog accordingly.]

What else has been happening. Well, a couple of people asked me about the recently celebrated Eid holiday, but I don’t really have much to say about that, because it only substantively manifested itself in our world insofar as the schools were closed for a week (the Eid holiday coincided with UAE’s National Day, so in total the kids were home for 10 days, woohoo). Well wait, we did traipse out to the Marina Walk to check out the National Day activities one night, but it was so crowded in the temporary "Heritage Village" construct that we just took a few pictures of a growly camel and left. PopPop and I also took Sushi and Screamer to a National Day parade, but again, it was only minimally noteworthy (Sushi saw her life flash before her eyes when we realized—too late—that we were standing right next to the pyrotechnic tent; poor skittish little thing that she is, I fear that from this day forward, the mere sight of a bandleader baton will trigger her PTSD).

One nice recent event was Thanksgiving: unlike last year, when at the end of November we were only 1 week into our Dubai adventure and were far too overwhelmed to be bothered with a turkey dinner, this year we properly celebrated at our house with The Australian and her gorgeous family (her idea! otherwise we might have just ignored it for a second year in a row). It was particularly lovely because, as I explained to Mr. & Mrs. Australian and their two angelic daughters in a toast, we didn’t do Thanksgiving last year because it is a holiday meant to be shared with extended family; and whereas last year we had no extended family in Dubai, this year, thanks to them, we do. Mr. Australian did a stunning job with his very first turkey, and Daddy single-handedly cooked just about everything else, so cheers to both men. (Hey, I was responsible for decorations and general ambience, which is no small feat. Have you ever tried to iTunes-ify an entire holiday event from scratch? These playlists don’t write themselves, people!)

What else. Well, we were exceedingly proud that Sushi was selected by her teacher to be one of only three presenters at their "Winter Performance," and even though she was literally trembling with nerves at the time (she later said, "I knew I was scared because I had goosebumps"), she delivered her line perfectly. If she’s inherited any of her parents’ overly-theatrical DNA, it will hopefully be the first in a long line of starring roles. J

[A note about the Winter Performance: Boy, they’re not kidding around with this Christmas thing at the American school. I mean, thankfully, I didn't hear any discussion of Jesus himself in the lessons, but wow, they really hammered the kids with Christmas trees and Christmas carols and Santa Claus (they even visited a PTA-sponsored "Santa’s Grotto" in the front lobby, where kids had the option of having their photo taken with Santa) (Sushi didn't, and yet I still saw her eyes light up with glee when all the teachers started screaming, "Santa's here!" like groupies, which broke my heart for the kid a little bit). The three songs Sushi’s class sang at the performance were "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "Jingle Bells," and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." And even though I privately mentioned to Sushi’s teacher that we aren't, ahem, Christian—and she received the news with respectful passivity ("That *shouldn’t* be a problem here in the American school..."), I also haven’t heard any overly inclusive messages yet. It's ok, though; Sushi and Screamer seem to be fine with the idea that Christmas is a holiday celebrated by other people just like Ramadan and Eid are... and with Alice and Z-Man in the house, we have built-in recipients for all such holiday-specific school-sponsored crafts. Still, I never expected that a Christmas onslaught would be a problem I'd face here in Dubai...!]

Finally, if anyone's wondering why I am not posting anything specifically about the Festival of Tights (shout out to those of you who were reading this a year ago!), it's because it hasn't really gotten started yet. I mean, sure, the holiday has already come and gone in the real world, but here in Dubai, where I think we're just about the only News (second shout out!), we can set the Newish calendar however we like. And Mommy? She likes the Festival of Tights to take place smack dab in the middle of school break, and for the schmandle lighting to be a sunrise ritual instead of a sunset one (all the better for toy-enjoyment, methinks). So check back in a few days to see how the all the latke-induced shenanigans all went down... xoxo!

The Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi

2009-11-18T01:05:00.001-08:00

Just went on a tour of the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi with some fabulous visiting friends (holla, J & J!). Above are my photos (which of course don't do the breathtaking architecture justice), and below are some blurbs about the mosque that I am lifting from www.VisitAbuDhabi.ae. Enjoy!

"The Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Mosque, popularly called Grand Mosque by local residents, is seen as a “globally unifying” landmark from its conception to completion, bringing together designers, features, materials and suppliers from nearly every corner of the globe: Italy, Germany, Morocco, India, Turkey, Iran, China, Greece and the UAE.

"The Mosque’s initial architectural design was Moroccan, but it evolved to include many global features, including exterior walls that are of traditional Turkish design. Natural materials were chosen for its design and construction, which include marble, stone, gold, semi-precious stones, crystals and ceramics.

"The Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Mosque features 80 domes all decorated with white marble. The main dome’s outer shell measures 32.7 metres in diameter and stands 70 metres high from the inside and 85 metres from the outside - the largest of its kind, according to the Turkey Research Centre for Islamic History and Culture.

"The Mosque has 1,096 columns in its exterior and 96 columns in the main prayer hall which are embedded with more than 20,000 handmade marble panels encrusted with semi-precious stones, including lapis lazuli, red agate, amethyst, abalone shell and mother of pearl. Furthermore, beautiful minarets standing 107 metres are built on the four corners of the Mosque.

"Artifical lakes, totaling 7,874 square metres and laden with dark tiles, surround the Mosque, whilst coloured floral marble and mosaics pave the 17,000 square metre courtyard. The pools reflect the Mosque’s spectacular image, which becomes even more resplendent at night.

"An equally impressive interior design complements the Mosque’s awesome exterior. Italian white marble and inlaid floral designs adorn the prayer halls and the Mosque’s interior walls have decorative 24 carat gold-glass mosaic features. The main prayer hall also features the world’s largest hand-woven Persian carpet (7,119 square metres).

"Furthermore the Mosque features seven 24-carat gold-plated chandeliers which were imported from Germany, all designed with thousands of Swarovski crystals. The largest of these chandeliers, which hangs from the main dome of the Mosque, is considered the biggest in the world; it measures 10 metres in diameter, 15 metres in height, and eight-to-nine tonnes in weight.

"The Qibla wall, on the other hand, is 23 metres high and 50 metres wide, and is subtly decorated so as not to distract worshippers from prayer. The 99 names (qualities) of Allah are featured on the Qibla wall using traditional Kufi calligraphy and are subtly back-illuminated using fibre-optic lighting. Twenty-four carat gold, gold leaf and gold glass mosaic were also used in the mehrab (the niche found in the middle of the Qibla wall) and the crescents topping the domes.

"The Mosque has 80 Iznikpanels - highly decorated ceramic tiles popular in the 16th century - which feature distinctly in Istanbul’s imperial and religious buildings. Traditionally hand-crafted, each tile was designed by Turkish calligrapher Othman Agha. Three calligraphy styles - Naskhi, Thuloth and Kufi – are used throughout the mosque and were drafted by Mohammed Mendi (UAE), Farouk Haddad (Syria) and Mohammed Allam (Jordan). The Mosque can accommodate up to 40,960 worshippers from its prayer halls and courtyard."

Movies, as The Good Lord Intended Them.

2009-11-09T08:45:00.000-08:00

So after being a loyal patron of movies for about 35 years now, I finally figured out how films are *supposed* to be watched:

in GOLD CLASS, of course! (I now shudder to think of the cumulative years I have wasted sitting in fold-up, craptastic, traditional movie theater seats with my feet stuck to the soda on the floor, ick.)

Yes, folks, the local film establishments can kiss me and my semi-steady business goodbye: I have been indoctrinated into a higher level of moviegoing experience, and this popcorn-lovin' girl ain't ever going back.

Welcome to GOLD CLASS seating, courtesy of Dubai's Mall of the Emirates. Last night Daddy and I escaped (the near-constant din of some child or other's discontent) to catch a showing of Michael Jackson's "This Is It," and while the movie itself was excellent, I might have been able to sit through 2 hours of test pattern and still emerge just as exuberant.

Picture it:

Separate entrance (automatic glass doors, boldly announcing the crossover into GOLD CLASS to keep any riffraff at bay);

Pre-movie foyer (much like the first class lounge at an airport, where perhaps one can discuss one's expectations for the upcoming film) (or, in my case, go to my "happy place" and try to stave off the onset of a tantrum-induced headache) (yeah, it was MY tantrum, so what);

Smartly attired attendants at the private concession stand (though it can hardly be described as a "concession stand," due to the...)

Full dinner menu (!!!) (I ordered a chicken caesar salad, which was served to me in the movie theater);

Assigned seats (yet with only 40 chairs in the full-size cinema, it was impossible to have a less-than-perfect view of the screen);

Oversized, individual, leather reclining sofas (full range of movement from upright to bed-like) (yes, someone too-predictably fell asleep and was loudly snoring in the second row, the seats were *that* comfortable);

Blankets (I suspect that they intentionally made it chilly in there, just so they could show off the amenities);

And-- the pièce de résistance-- a private call button to summon the waitstaff for any and all unmet movie-related needs during the show.

Seriously, it was cinematic *heaven*.

And no matter that it cost more than triple a standard ticket (100 AED versus 30 AED, which is about $28 vs. $8). Can you even *put* a price on 2 hours of uninterrupted escapism in a giant La-Z-Boy chair?

So you can have your day spas, your facials, your yoga... Mommy has found a new way to pamper herself. And with Baby becoming more opinionated every minute, Sushi regressing into tears every time things don't go her way, and Screamer taking it upon herself to unapologetically swipe any item of interest from any unsuspecting sibling, it couldn't have happened to me at a better time. xo.

p.s. A gratuitous note about "This Is It": I never considered myself a *huge* Michael Jackson fan, and kinda wrote him off as just another tabloid casualty after the horrible molestation allegations eclipsed his existence for a while. But I have to say, I sobbed intermittently throughout this entire movie. The combination of Michael's still-spectacular musical gift (I can no longer squeak out the tunes I sang in college, whereas here's this 50-year-old guy doing pitch-perfect, brilliantly choreographed renditions of songs spanning his entire lifetime)... plus the jaw-dropping spectacle of his concert's planned theatrical and special effects... plus the audience's knowledge that this man only had 9 weeks, 8 weeks... 2 weeks left to live-- while he himself had no idea-- put a lump in my throat that just wouldn't quit. Michael Jackson still had so much life to deliver unto his audiences, and this world is a little less magical due to his untimely death. If you haven't seen this film already, please do.

I promise you won't need a Gold Class ticket to leave the theater feeling inspired. :)

Post Script to Obama Entry

2009-11-08T21:27:00.000-08:00

A family friend sent me this in response to my recent Obama blog entry. It's a short video clip of a decorated colonel testifying last month before the United Nations on the subject of Israel's alleged warcrimes against Palestinian civilians during the Gaza conflict.

Worth checking out.

http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1313923&ct=7536409

Consider Me Culturally Understood.

2009-11-03T23:10:00.000-08:00

Recently I visited the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding. During our nearly two-hour session, about 20 of us sat on the floor sampling traditional Arabic foods while an Emirati woman (meaning, she is native to this region and enjoys certain privileges reserved for nationals) answered our questions. We were not given any guidelines and therefore no subjects were off-limits.

Here I will do my best to recreate some of the dialogue. I must say at the outset, however, that I was not taking notes during the actual session, and I'm assuming these answers represent the viewpoints of just one Emirati woman (albeit one who has been given authority to speak on behalf of Arab culture!), so please don't quote me or take any of this as definitive gospel. Just trying to give you a sense of my experience.

[See if you can guess which questions *I* asked. Hint: it will be obvious.]

Q: What do we need to know in terms of etiquette?

A: It is very important never to take anything using your left hand. Always use your right hand to give and receive things. Even if you are left-handed, you take with your right, and then transfer to your left.

Also, it is considered impolite not to eat what is put in front of you. We believe that any gift or food that is presented to you was predetermined as yours from the moment that it was created or grown. So, for example, if someone pours you a cup of coffee, you should drink it, because the coffee beans used to make it were intended for you from the time of their creation. Similarly, we do not send each other thank you notes for gifts, since it is God whom we should be thanking for creating that gift for us.

Q: Why offer this forum?

A: This type of question-and-answer forum is nothing new; in fact, by law the Sheikhs are required to have an open forum once a month in which all Emirati citizens are invited to come and ask questions and present their concerns. There is one Sheikh who uses a retina-scanning machine for his visitors and will reject anyone who has asked him a question within the past 6 months. Technically, this is improper.

Q: What percentage of marriages are arranged in the UAE?

A: Let me say the answer and then quickly clarify it. One hundred percent of marriages here are arranged. But wait! Proposed arrangements can be rejected. There is one woman here at the Centre who has many men wanting to marry her, but she has rejected them all, usually on the basis that they are not yet financially secure. Oftentimes, though, parents strongly encourage their children to heed their suggestions of whom to marry; parents know children better than children know themselves. Also we tend to marry at a young age. If you are a woman and not married by 27, men will just assume you are too high-maintenance.

A: Is dating allowed?

Q: No, we do not date romantically before marriage. If you like someone, you marry that person. If it does not work out, you get divorced. It is no big deal to get divorced; there is no stigma here in the UAE. Many divorces occur right after the honeymoon, even if the marriage was consummated, which is fine. We would much rather that young people get married and then divorce instead of having relations before marriage. If a man and a woman are caught in a car together doing something inappropriate, then they will be married.

But by the way, this is not to suggest that we are opposed to sex. Once you are married, anything goes!--with the exception of necrophilia and anal sex. You are married, after all, you should enjoy this person! There is a store here that sells sex toys and lingerie, go ahead and buy them!

A: What happens if you get pregnant outside of marriage?

Q: This would be a very big problem. If you get pregnant, you had better get married right away. If you are pregnant and unmarried, you could go to jail for 10 years. Sure, this sounds harsh, but it is not difficult to avoid getting pregnant when you are not married.

Q: Is birth control permitted?

A: Within marriage, yes, although only insofar as you are attempting to space out your children. Large families are encouraged, and most Emirati women have 5 to 8 kids. We believe that it is best for the health of the mother to allow for 2 years between births, however, so we encourage birth control for this purpose.

A: Are men allowed to have more than one wife?

Q: Yes, technically a man is allowed to have up to 4 wives, but the vast majority of them have only one wife. Imagine how you'd feel if your husband came home and said he wanted another wife; we feel the same way. Really, the idea of multiple wives is most useful for motivating women to treat their husbands in the way they should be treated, it keeps us on our toes. Sometimes we are amazed by the way Western women treat their husbands: they don't even bother to stand up to greet them when they enter the room. How could you not stand up to greet him? He is your husband!

[Editorial Note: (laughing).]

Q: Does the culture promote the subordination of women, both in attitude and in dress?

A: No. First of all, we choose to wear the abaya (black robe) and headscarf. We feel that we have been instructed by God to cover ourselves, and it is between us and God to honor that instruction. Now, there is disagreement among Muslims as to how much of our faces are required to be covered, if any; this is why you will see some women with only their head and neck wrapped in a scarf, whereas other women cover everything but their eyes, and other women put their entire face behind a veil. Sure, covering our heads and bodies is a bit uncomfortable at first, especially in the summer heat, but you get used to it, just in the same way that you get used to the discomfort of wearing a bra. And no, it doesn't always have to be a black robe; you will sometimes see other colors worn in other regions. It's just a matter of tradition.

Second, we believe that men were put on this earth, whereas women are being borrowed from God. So in that sense, we are more valuable than men. It is why sometimes you see a woman following behind her husband; he is protecting her.

[Editorial Note: Not entirely sold on that last part, based on some couples I've observed.]

Q: Do Muslim men really believe that when they die, they will be presented with 72 virgins in heaven?

A: The 72 "virgin" thing is a bit misleading; it suggests a sexual nature when none is intended. The idea is that a man who goes to heaven is rewarded with 72 *perfect beings*. Women, on the other hand, are simply reunited with God when we go to heaven.

Q: I'm Jewish. How scared should I be living here?

A: [chuckles] Not scared at all! We believe that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God, and that our religious texts are just 3 volumes of the same book. That said, you will certainly find people here who are willing to argue with you on the topic of Israel; for many people this is an emotional subject. When we hear someone declare that they are Jewish, we usually brace ourselves for an argument about Israel. Otherwise, we assume, why would they be telling us of their religion? We consider religion a subject that is most appropriate for the home. But no, you shouldn't be scared. In fact, sometimes Islam hardly feels like the predominant religion in the UAE; have you seen the way Christmas decorations take over the shopping malls? And if you encounter an occasional person here who expresses prejudice about your religion, there are prejudiced people everywhere, even in your own country.

Q: So then why are there no synagogues in the UAE?

A: If there are enough Jewish people here, then it can be assumed that the Sheikh would grant them land for a synagogue, just as he has done for the Christian people and the Hindu people.

[Editorial Note: Very encouraging, but too good to be true? Hmmm....]

[Editorial Note to the Editorial Note: According to Wikipedia, 96% of the UAE population practices Islam; there are 31 Christian churches and 1 Hindu temple here.]

* * * *

All in all, the Centre was a totally interesting experience. I plan to go again soon; have any questions you'd like me to ask? xo.

p.s. If you're in the mood for even more cultural understanding, you can check out a little blurb about each of the Five Pillars of Islam at

http://www.islam101.com/dawah/pillars.html

Barack Obama, as Viewed by the Middle East

2009-10-26T22:19:00.001-07:00

This is the front page of our Sunday newspaper. The magnified excerpt reads, in its entirety:

"Letter to Barack Obama

Dear Mr. President,

In just over a month, you will receive the world's most prestigious honour, the Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian committee made it very clear that it was hoping the prize would encourage you to fulfill your promise of promoting multilateralism and peace.

You have a historic opportunity today to make your mark, bring justice to the long-suffering people of Palestine and pave the way for a real and enduring peace in the Middle East. An internationally acclaimed jurist has placed in your hands what can be considered a key to finally deliver to the Palestinians "dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own", which you promised in your historic Cairo speech. It is called the Goldstone Gaza Report.

The report has been endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council, which has referred it to the Security Council. But your administration has for the past few weeks been lobbying to bury the report. Today, the future of peace in the region rests on the willingness of your administration to declare that Israel must be held accountable for its crimes in Gaza. Today you have a chance to right a wrong, pave the way towards peace and actually earn the Nobel."

The letter continues on pages 12-13; here are some other noteworthy passages:

"As you rightly and 'humbly' commented after the Nobel committee's announcement, there are in fact people more deserving. By your own admittance, you have yet to achieve something that could warrant such an award."

"Just a reminder, Mr. President, this promise [to promote multilateralism and peace] was made by you on your first day in office-- it was prominent in your inaugural speech. You said, 'America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity.'

"One need not have actually been there to speak of the relief the Palestinians must have felt as they listened to that speech in their besieged homes in the West Bank and Gaza. They probably felt, for the first time in a very long and bloody six decades, a glimmer of hope. A flicker at the end of the tunnel.

"To be honest, the majority of Arabs experienced a similar feeling. . . . We still cherish your words in Cairo, when you addressed the Arab and Muslim nations. 'So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achiever justice and prosperity. This cycle of suspicion and discord must end,' you proclaimed.

"But what really defined that moment for this region, troubled and stressed by six decades of wars and tension, was when you declared that 'America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.'"

"Judge Goldstone has understandably come under attack by the Israeli government [for the Goldstone Gaza Report], which had refused to cooperate with the UN team from the outset. But what is perplexing is the scathing attack that came from your administration, which called the report 'deeply flawed.' A few days ago, Judge Goldstone said he was shocked by this comment and challenged you, Mr. President, to identify the 'flaws.' . . . By the way, Judge Goldstone, who has been called in your country a 'Jew-hater' and an 'anti-Semite,' is a Jew and a self-proclaimed Zionist. Thus, he cannot be accused of bias."

"Today, the future of peace in the region rests not on the much-appreciated and well-intentioned efforts of your envoy, Senator George Mitchell, but on the willingness of your administration to declare that war crimes will not stand; to declare that oppressive occupation must not be tolerated; and Israel, which has enjoyed international impunity, must be held accountable for its crimes in Gaza."

"Your moral responsibility compels you to put the Goldstone report on the table, to debate it and act on it. This is the justice the Palestinians have long been waiting for.

"Today you have a chance to right a wrong. This is your chance to pave the way for peace in the Middle East. This is your chance to address the long-entrenched Arab belief that America is just as guilty of atrocities in Palestine as Israel."

* * * *

In reading this op-ed piece, I was once again struck by the editor's suggestion that the prospect of peace in this entire region hinges upon an age-old dispute over a parcel of land about the size of New Jersey. Particularly because I am 99% atheist, I find the idea that so many thousands of people are driven to kill-- or willfully die-- in the name of this theological dispute utterly confounding.

Living here for almost a year now has certainly been an education in my own prejudices. When we first arrived, I was astonished to hear people casually referring to themselves as "Palestinian," or to see a Palestinian flag being marched in the elementary schools' International Day events... just as I was taken aback to realize that on the majority of maps here, "Palestine" is labeled in the space where I had instinctively assumed I would see Israel's name. And it still leaves PopPop gobsmacked (to borrow an expression from our Supernanny) when he reads a newspaper article that states, as its origin, "Occupied Jerusalem."

But over time, the shock has worn off. I have stopped unconsciously scanning the lineup for an Israeli flag during the kids' International Day festivities, just as I have stopped doing the reflexive double-take when a mother at school says that her family is from Palestine. Of course living in this region has made me more sympathetic to the "Palestinian" point of view; the gory newspaper images published here during the Gaza conflict will probably cause me to forever second-guess the integrity of both the American and the Israeli media machines. Why is it that, before we moved here, I had been programmed to always take the Israelis' side? And why, before we moved here, had I never been substantively exposed to the very real suffering endured by Palestinian mothers, fathers, and children?

Surely my own ignorance is partly to blame. Being Jewish, I took it as a given that I was always supposed to defend Israel's actions, regardless of the circumstance: If Israel attacked, I believed, then it went without saying that someone else had attacked it first, and it was simply acting in self-defense. So I never truly educated myself as to the Palestinian cause, and to this day I remain largely uneducated in this regard (though I intend to change that, because what good are political views if they have no foundation other than an emotional one).

But now, I am finding it harder to convince myself that Israel is, in every instance, the white knight, the hero. I read UAE newspaper articles on a regular basis describing what appears to be Israel's disproportionate military response to unsophisticated Arab uprisings; for example, yesterday the front page reported that Israeli soldiers "stormed" a holy Muslim site with tear gas after some Arabs had thrown rocks at them. Even if this journalism is overtly biased against Israel and doesn't at all reflect what actually took place that day, is there really any doubt that this *could* have happened? Isn't it true that Israel rarely shies away from an opportunity to showcase its military prowess? Does my growing distaste for Israel's military conduct make me a bad Jew??

I hope not; for anyone who knows me will tell you that being Jewish is a big part of my identity, and that passing this cultural and historical legacy on to my daughters is of utmost importance to me. And yet I am coming to see that taking pride in my Jewishness does not necessarily equate to Zionism, nor does it mean I think that Israel is always in the right. Families are families, and children are children, and at the very minimum, all of them (American, Israeli, Palestinian, whatever) *deserve* to lay down their heads at night knowing that it is safe to close their eyes. That's not too much to ask, is it?

[Coincidentally, today's paper ran a piece on Amnesty International's report, "Thirsting for Justice: Palestinian Access to Water Restricted," in which it is alleged that Israel's water policies have deprived Palestinian families of "an adequate standard of living" while Israeli colonies boast swimming pools and well-watered lawns.]

Of course I don't know the answer to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis; if I did, surely I would be hosting an all-hands meeting with President Obama right now instead of sitting here at the dining room table in my pajamas. But I believe that each of us needs to put our religious and emotional reflexes aside just for a moment and remember that we are ostensibly rational adults, not tempestuous children who cannot control our impulses. It seems obvious to me that if Israel misbehaved, as the Goldstone report alleges, then Israel should be punished. And if the Palestinians are laying claim to the same stretch of land as the Israelis are, then we must figure out a way to divide the space so that both sides get a little of what they want and lose a little of what they want. Because even if you believe that your personal politics are dictated by the Divine, I'm relatively certain that, if there is a God, he would not want for innocent children to die, regardless of their ethnicity.

And so, President Obama, it's time for you to embody fairness and objectivity, even if it means defying the all-powerful Israeli lobby. You have been handed what is likely a once-in-a-generation opportunity and you are intelligent and driven enough not to squander it. The whole world truly wants you to succeed; now put your Harvard smarts to use and go make history, wouldja?

On behalf of all of us living here in the Middle East: Thanks.

A Familiar Holiday

2009-10-22T00:40:00.000-07:00

For those who asked whether the kids will be able to trick-or-treat here in Dubai, here's a glimpse into the aisles of our local supermarket...

(The racks are full of wicked witches and spooky goblins and plastic pumpkins galore, in case you can't tell from the pic.)

Supposedly our neighborhood is THE place to be for going door-to-door and, in another happy surprise, Sushi's school is even importing giant pumpkins for purchase.

So please don't bother with that care package of candy for the girls: I have a feeling that between the girls' costume parties at school, and the trick-or-treating, and the ADULT Halloween party that Daddy and I are even planning to attend, we'll have more than enough so-called "sweeties" to placate the masses. Which can only benefit our reputation of keeping pediatric dentistry in business since 2004. xo.

Family Update.

2009-10-17T09:30:00.000-07:00

Hi... it's been a while since I've just updated you on the family's whereabouts, so even though I have plenty of heady stuff that I want to share with you (i.e., my recent visit to the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding, among other things), I'm too tired to do that now (you'll see why, in a minute), so I'll just keep this light and easy. Here's our stats:

Daddy- Currently on a business trip to Cambodia. Was already in Hong Kong earlier this week. Will stop by Thailand before heading home. Was probably enjoying a nice stretch of uninterrupted slumber in a king size bed of a 5-star hotel last night when I inadvertently (or intentionally??) called him and woke him up (I stand by my story that his text message saying "Getting ready for bed, call if you can" arrived, for some reason, 2 hours after he sent it). Oh well, at least he has several more nights of uninterrupted slumber in a king size bed of a 5-star hotel to make up for it. ;)

(Side note: In fairness I must say that the insanely generous, IMPOSSIBLY hardworking Daddy *did* invite me to go with him to Hong Kong for a few days, and would have absolutely treated me to whatever room service meals and spa treatments my little heart desired. But, alas, I turned it down. You know, because Screamer had a stomach ache that day! And what kind of mother would I be if I didn't stick around to make sure it wasn't the first sign of swine flu!)

PopPop- Still going to the gym, still subverting the laws of nature. I sometimes find myself doing a double-take when he walks in the room-- seriously!-- because between the Ray-Bans and the tank top and the deep tan and the slicked-back hair, there are moments when it's as if a teen heartthrob, and not my dear old dad, has just shown up. But don't hate him because he's beautiful! He defied ALL the odds to get to this point in his life, and he deserves every single moment in the (literal and figurative) sun. Go get 'em, Dad! I only pray that your fountain-of-youth genes were passed on to me wholly intact.

Sushi- Thriving at the American school, hooray. Wanted so badly to show off to her new friends the trophy she was temporarily awarded in her weekly playball class (a "floating trophy" that needs to be returned? what new age child educator came up with that strange concept?) that we had to slightly bend the rules for her Show and Tell item, which this week was supposed to begin with the letter "G": 'twas a trophy representing GREATNESS, of course! (Could have gone either way with the no-nonsense teacher; fortunately, she took the bait, and even commented to me that it was a clever idea. Whew.) Brought home a class photo in which she undeniably resembles a flight attendant, but because we all assured her that she looks VERY GROWN UP in her "formal" school uniform, she now has it hanging in her room so she can gaze lovingly at it as often as humanly possible.

Screamer- Turned 3 last week, which was bittersweet because 2 was so totally HER year. Everything that is incredibly endearing about Screamer right now is so connected to her 2-year-old-ness: her tiny physique, all tiptoes and wiry musculature; her almost indiscernible lisp, noticeable mostly when she sings "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star;" her stories that begin with a meaningful plot and end unsatisfyingly--about 9 minutes later-- with whatever she happens to be looking at in the room or overhearing someone talking about nearby; her desperate desire to do whatever her big sister is doing, only better; her utter lack of self-consciousness as she is talking to her dolls or making up a song or concentratedly putting on her shoes. As she inevitably becomes more self-aware with every passing day, I am sure we will see less and less of this magical little sprite who is our Screamer. Sniff!

Baby- Apparently showed up at nursery school with one goal and one goal only: WORLD DOMINATION. Would you believe that this little kid, who is technically still not even old enough to enroll (the cutoff is 18 months by September 1; she won't be 18 months until November, but thankfully we had some sibling goodwill on our side), is the class RINGLEADER? Was sent to the "time out" corner (technically, a crib, which I fear only fortifies her strength) 3 days in a row last week because she refused to stop banging on the lunch table until all the other sheep/classmates were banging on the table, too. Teacher says it's disruptive? I say it's initiative! In fact, we ENCOURAGE that kind of behavior in my house. If there's table banging to be done, goshdarnit, my kid had BETTER be the lead banger! (One thing that does risk ruining her street cred, however-- her insistence, when asked, that her name actually is "BABY." Then again, if it worked for Dirty Dancing...)

ALICE- Was not at all attached to Julia, it appears. Is perfectly fine, and has effortlessly absorbed the few duties that Julia was responsible for. In fact, she even has a bit more of a spring in her step (though this may be the result of the pop music radio station that I now have constantly playing in the kitchen; I think of it as the soundtrack of my independence from the undercurrent of tension that came to define our relationship with Julia).

HARRY- Pass. No news. It's a cat.

Z-MAN- Have to pass again. Not a cat, but only slightly more forthcoming than the cat is. Will assume he is well. (Seems particularly pleased when the kids run into his massive arms, though, which is often.)

ME- Oh so tired. And so relieved that this weekend without Daddy around is over. Fridays are Alice and Z-Man's day off, so there was an interminable 24-hour stretch this weekend in which it was Mommy + PopPop + 3 kids under the age of 5. Add to that 1 bloody lip (Sushi's) and 1 dramatic fall off a swing (Screamer's) and 1 extremely bad attitude due to a headcold (Baby's) and you've got 2 completely spent grown-ups. Now I realize that 2 adults adequately care for 3 children all over the world, every day, without incident... but you must remember that PopPop and I have become terribly spoiled. Usually on a weekend, if the noise level is approaching Chaos, the adults can take turns with the kids so that each of us can momentarily step away from the insanity to catch our breath. But for that one (LONG) day and night, my dad and I had only ourselves to rely on, and I'm thrilled to report that all the kids are sleeping soundly as we speak, with nary a permanent physical or psychological scar to show for it. When all is said and done, my father and I make one helluva team; always have.

You know, for as much as I sometimes have mixed feelings about how long I want our Dubai experience to last, I have never wavered as to the joy it brings me to have PopPop living in this house and helping us raise the girls. And if moving back to the USA would mean that he would get his own place somewhere else and not be a part of our day-to-day life anymore, well, then, I guess I'm not ready to leave here anytime soon. I love you, Dad. xo.

Julia = History.

2009-10-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

Well, this was a long time coming. In fact, it was probably written in the stars about 4 months ago, when she defiantly *insisted* that, in her village, a baby had been turned into a serpent (which scared the HELL out of Sushi and caused smoke to come out of my ears). Yes, folks, we had to let Julia go.

It is both a sad and a happy development. On the one hand, Julia was committed and eager, and did occasionally work miracles with Baby when I had my hands full with the other two rugrats. On the other hand, she was moody, needy, and heck, not even that good a cook (we hired her in part to help out in the kitchen, a place where I've never been). At the end of the day, however, it all came down to one thing: her visa.

I tried to research this and am not coming up with much... but I'm pretty sure that, in the UAE, an individual family can't sponsor the visa of someone from Nigeria, as Julia was. This is probably why, out of the hundreds of housemaids I've probably encountered here in Dubai, the VAST majority of them are either Filipino (as Alice is) or Sri Lankan. Not sure if I've ever even met another housemaid from Nigeria. Rather, only a company can sponsor the visa for a Nigerian passport holder, which caused all sorts of headaches for Daddy right from the start (when you employ a housemaid, it is expected that you will provide her with a residence visa and full-time accommodation; this is the justification for the much lower salary than a nanny/housekeeper would get, for example, in the USA) (that said, we still consider the going rate unconscionable and pay more, despite ongoing passive-aggressive insinuations from the people down the street that we are upsetting the delicate equilibrium of the entire community by doing so) (don't even get me started on the dirty looks we began receiving once word got out that Julia was living in the master guest room-- complete with king size bed and flat screen plasma tv!-- instead of some "maid's quarters").

Anyway, the logistics of the whole thing started getting too complicated, not to mention expensive (even in the most straightforward instance, it costs the domestic employer around US$1,700 to sponsor a visa). And it certainly didn't help matters that, by this point, Julia's moping and sighing and obvious discontentment with what she perceived to be an insufficient amount of responsibility had gotten on my last nerve (hey, lady, what do you want from me, I'm a glutton for punishment, I choose to take care of my rotten kids even when someone is literally standing around waiting to take them off my hands).

Letting her go was nothing short of dramatic. She cried, she raised her voice, and, in a surprising move that ruffled even the feathers of the unruffleable Daddy, she accused us of firing her because she is black. (What? You're black??)

We arranged to have her come and clean out her room yesterday when the kids were at school (her decision to throw the race card at a Newish American who has a Christian Filipina, a Muslim Pakistani, and, until recently, a Born-again Nigerian living under his roof pretty much ruined her chances of a star-studded farewell bash). Interestingly, I started blubbering like a baby when I saw her coming up the walkway... For as much as she has rubbed me the WRONG way over the past several months, I suddenly found myself envisioning the children running joyfully into her arms (which-- trust me-- was discouragingly rare, but still), and the baby giggling at her bird calls, and Alice humming a happy little song as she loaded the dishwasher and Julia swept the floor nearby. We may have been a dysfunctional family, but we *were* a family for a while, and the time had come to say goodbye to one of our own.

Thankfully, such sappiness was short-lived, and we have resumed a Julia-free life with nary a hiccup. The kids only briefly asked about her whereabouts (I explained that we were unable to get her a "ticket to stay in Dubai," so she'd probably be going home to Nigeria for a while) and Alice seems utterly unfazed at the prospect of once again handling this (humungous) house on her own. If anything, the attitude around here is noticeably lighter: it's liberating to be able to walk around in your own house minus the eggshells.

And so another chapter of our Dubai adventure has ended. Not sure if we'll revisit the idea of a second housemaid (again, we originally explored the option only because it was actually more cost-efficient that the occasional babysitter). Right now, I'm just trying to focus on the positives: we have our guest room back, so plan a trip to come visit us already! :) xo.

Our Toybox Goes International: It's Barbie, UAE style

2009-10-03T02:43:00.000-07:00

The box for the male doll, Jamil.

The box for the female doll, Jamila. I have to admit that I've seen no pink sports cars around here, but I appreciate the statement she's making.

The female doll right out of the box.

Her hands have henna...

as do her feet. Rad!

Under her abaya, she's wearing this sensible outfit...

and under her clothes, she's permanently modest.

(Are those Spanx?)

Compare her to trampy American Barbie... Where are your undergarments, young lady?

The male doll right out of the box.

Dig the goatee!

Under his robe, he wears only his undershirt and shorts...

which are removable. Nice six-pack!

Hey Ken, get thee to a gym.

ESSAY: What I Did Over My Summer Vacation (a.k.a., The Long Road to Lambert)

2009-09-25T03:34:00.000-07:00

So this part of the blog will have nothing to do with Dubai—aside from the fact that the story I am about to tell would not have been possible but for the fact that I LEFT Dubai in order to chase down a dream (literally—I dreamed about it, a lot; however the specifics of such dreams shall remain ambiguous for the purposes of this family-friendly blog, ahem).

Now if you (A) only read the blog to find out dirt about the UAE; (B) think that the study of and salivation over celebrity heartthrobs is a juvenile waste of time (Editorial note: it IS); or (C) have anything even REMOTELY more important to be doing right now, then I urge you to stop reading. Because I will not be able to give you these minutes of your life back.

IF, on the other hand, you (A) are a fellow devotee of American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert (or, are not a fan, but can concede that his expertly choreographed sex appeal transcends his own personal orientation and could, theoretically, make him IMPOSSIBLY attractive to both gay men and straight women); (B) ever stalked (did I say stalked? I meant “made yourself generally available for becoming acquaintances with”) some other celebrity with a passion usually reserved for first crushes and unrequited love; or (C) are sitting at your desk desperately avoiding some hideous work project, then I offer you this painstakingly chronicled tale of Hollywood romance, heartbreak, and suspense.

Those who know me personally have observed a disturbing transformation taking place in me over the past 8 months: I morphed from a relatively level-headed (ha!) full-time mother of three to an absolutely obsessed-to-the-point-of-distraction (“Leave me alone, kid, I’m watching YouTube!”) fan of Adam Lambert’s. Not sure exactly when I went off the deep end; probably somewhere between “Ring of Fire” and “Mad World” (non-Idol watchers, all you need to know is that there were tight leather pants and a smoke machine involved). Once I was hooked, I was a goner… in fact, I hadn’t been this gaga over a celebrity since I’d slept alongside a t-shirt autographed just for me by Richard Grieco of 21 Jump Street “fame” back in the tenth grade.

The fact that Adam ultimately lost the Idol crown did nothing to temper my adoration: it was clear to me and everyone else who had a head that the reason the gay, Jewish, occasionally flamboyant contestant was defeated by the wholesome, married, flannel-uniformed Christian prayer-leader had very little to do with talent. To the contrary, the defeat only made him *more* desirable: now not only was he sexy, gifted, and gorgeous, he was also the victim of a grave injustice. Poor baby! Mama kiss it and make it better!

So by the time we were preparing for our summer visit to the USA I was spending as much time daydreaming about Adam as I was about my packing strategy (again, for those who know me, this is saying a great deal). I had planned my entire May 8th around the time of day that tickets went on sale for American Idols Live! (punctuation intended), and could now board the plane safe in the knowledge that my center section floor seats had been secured. (Surely it was fate, and not mere coincidence, which situated our visit back to the US smack dab in the middle of the Idol tour schedule, not to mention that there was a concert venue a mere 15 minutes from our house.) Getting the plumb seats was the easy part, though; anyone (with way too much time on her hands) could do that. No, the bounty I was after would require intervention far more divine than the good folks at Ticketmaster could provide.

I HAD TO MEET HIM!!!

Now, this woman who stands before you is no stranger to the art of staging “chance” celebrity encounters; over the years I have learned how to plot an effective hunting strategy and then pick the lamest gazelles (read: most sympathetic security guards) from the pack. But Adam presented a unique challenge: whereas my other targets had usually just passed (or long passed, in some cases) their celebrity peaks, Adam’s star was on the rise, and, I learned from hours of diligent YouTube research, with every tour date the fans were becoming more crazed (those savages!) and the bodyguards were becoming less amused. Not a promising combination.

So I began with the obvious resource: Facebook. (Side note: How did I exist on the planet before Google and Facebook? Was I stupid and friendless?) There I recalled seeing the wife of an old middle school (middle school!!) friend of mine in a series of pictures wherein she was posing with most (though not all—curiously, not Adam) of the American Idol contestants from this season. Well clearly SHE knew someone! I nonchalantly contacted the old middle school friend (Hi, what’s new, have I missed anything over the past 23 YEARS?) and asked if he might be able to pass along a letter to whomever had so royally hooked up his wife. My theory was that on paper, I could craft a sob story to melt the hardest corporate heart. All those years of creative writing classes were about to pay off, baby!

But middle school friend (“MSF”) explained that, unfortunately, the bigwig connection was too tenuous for passing letters along… and gee, it was too bad that I was planning to go see the show in State A at the end of JULY, because his wife was probably going to get hooked up AGAIN with aftershow meet and greet credentials (some people have all the luck!) in State B in the middle of AUGUST. Well here’s where fate stepped in AGAIN. Seriously: our LONG-ago-booked travel itinerary HAPPENED to have us flying into STATE B to visit some family on the VERY SAME DAY AS THAT CONCERT in mid-August!! I mean, come on, people, you can’t make this stuff up. The cosmos agreed that Adam and I were meant to be together. Obviously.

So I delicately BEGGED and PLEADED for MSF’s wife to include me in the hookup and, a mere 75 dollars’ worth of flowers to her law office cubicle later (a small price to pay, in my deranged rationale), I was graciously assured by MSF that his wife “would push for more tickets, and has no reason to think that she would not get the amount she asks for.”

I WAS IN!!!

This was too fantastic. And, even though MSF warned me that he wouldn’t know for sure about the credentials until the end of July, “we have no reason to think otherwise” sounded pretty good to me. I WAS GOING TO MEET ADAM!

Over the next couple of weeks, however, my confidence in “we have no reason to think otherwise” began to wane in the face of “we won’t know for sure until the end of July” and I started to worry. If middle school hookup failed, then I was going to be OUT OF TIME: we were scheduled to return to Dubai just 5 days after the August concert. I needed a backup plan.

Enter my most famous real friend (not to be confused with my other, less authentic celebrity friendships, which typically start off with a bang and then come to an abrupt end when the celebrity suddenly gets a strong—misplaced!—stalker vibe from me at some point). This friend has appeared here previously as “Seacrest,” and he masterminds a celebrity blog that has rightfully earned him all kinds of tv airtime.

So after about a nanosecond of brainstorming, Seacrest gets the brilliant idea to make me an HONORARY REPORTER for his website, and gives me his blessing to seek access to the Idols as a member of the press corps. YAY! and THANK YOU!! And also: easier said than done. It took me a few days just to figure out the right PR contact, and even then, all my charming overtures were met with the steely rejection of people’s voicemailboxes. And neither the starkly professional approach nor the sickeningly sweet approach was garnering any response to my messages.

Two weeks later, I was just about to give up (Seacreast had matter-of-factly informed me that No Return Phone Call = No Dice) when I decided to give it just ONE last try… and this time, I was ACCIDENTALLY transferred to some assistant named ERICA. And, being that she was just a lowly assistant, she actually ANSWERED HER PHONE. Oh HELLOOOO, ERICA! Surely you have heard of me, I’m VERY important! And I just wanted to CONFIRM that I am on the press list for the Idol concert at the end of July, oh I’m SURE my name is there, but you know me, can never be too careful…. WHAT? My name is not there? Well I was ASSURED that I would be issued the appropriate credentials… This MUST be a mistake… Would you be a dear and just follow up on this MINOR oversight? I promise I won’t hold it against your firm in the future! After all, I was once just an assistant JUST LIKE YOU, and I KNOW how much work they heap upon you, SO UNFAIR! Thanks, lovely… See you at the next big industry event!

And, sonofabitch!!, wouldn’tcha know that the very next day, I got a breathless phone call from Seacrest in which he uttered these glorious words, “You’re not going to believe the email I just got... ”

It began,

"We have received your request to attend the American Idols Live! Tour 2009 press opportunities… I can confirm for you the following credentials..."

I WAS IN!!!

In a rising plume of dust I was off to the mall, intent on arming myself with the calling cards of every respectable journalist: Mini cassette recorder complete with full size microphone attachment? Check. Handheld video camera complete with fold-away tripod? Check. Flirty sundress complete with hint of cleavage and a LOOK AT ME! beaded necklace? Check! Fine print of the credential letter be damned (“STILL PHOTOGRAPHY IS NOT PERMITTED DURING THE PRESS HOUR”), I was gonna get my picture with Adam!!

I tossed a short list of questions carelessly into my canary yellow purse/equipment bag (after all, if it got to the point where I was actually INTERVIEWING someone, then something had gone horribly wrong), charged the hell out of my digital camera and, two short (interminable) days later, headed off to the concert venue. Press hour was at 3pm, and the concert didn’t start until 7, which gave me plenty of time to hide out in a bathroom stall and wait for my man if necessary. I packed some emergency provisions just in case.

So what if I parked in the absolute wrong lot and had to jog, barefoot in the rain (hard to run through tall grass in heels), about half a mile around the arena until I found the correct security entrance. So what if some of the other journalists (all women, hmmm) showed up with camera guys and stage lights. So what if, when the Idol tour manager went around the room introducing herself to the 8 of us press people awaiting entry, they all offered their business cards and I offered a bashful smile. ALL THAT MATTERED WAS THAT I WAS MERE MOMENTS AWAY FROM MEETING MY IDOL. Just be cool, I reminded myself.

“Alright, everyone,” said the tour manager woman, her long, ratty braid the perfect complement to her sourpuss facial expression, “I’m sure I don’t have to say this, but I will say it anyway: No photographs, no autographs, no ‘Will you call my grandmother and say happy birthday?’ We are all professionals here and I’m sure you will act like it.”

Wait, did she say something? I’m sorry, I was contemplating my astrological chart. Rising moon… venus… Oh well, certainly it was nothing I can’t figure out on my own.

“And without further ado,” she continued, “here is the list of the five performers who will be doing press interviews today. Matt. Danny. Lil. Megan. Kris. Ok, please gather your things and follow me.”

I wish I could tell you what happened next, but I think I blacked out. Somehow I moved one foot in front of the other, ascended an elevator to a conference room that had been set up with several little cocktail tables and chairs, and stumbled through 5—no wait, 6! (“Reporters, we have a BONUS Idol for you today: I am bringing up Scott MacIntyre!) (SHOOT ME NOW)—interviews (INTERVIEWS!!) of People Who Were Not Adam Lambert. At some point I regained consciousness long enough to bat my eyelashes at the blatantly flirtatious Matt and even slip him my cellphone number after he suggested he might be able to get me into the meet and greet after the show (Editorial note: He never called or texted, don’t buy his album), but mostly I was just staggering through the motions like a zombie. HOW COULD I BE SO CLOSE AND YET SO FAR?

At last the unspeakable torment was over (as an aside, Kris was an absolute sweetheart and very cute in person and I almost—ALMOST!—decided to forgive him for using his vast Christian minions to subvert the natural order of the universe). Just as I was packing up my things, I overheard one “Idol” comment to another “Idol” that the PRE-show meet and greet was about to take place in this very room… and I turned around in slow motion only to see ADAM WALKING IN THE DOOR… JUST AS WE “JOURNALISTS” WERE BEING USHERED OUT.

On pure animal instinct, I tried to make a mad dash for him: I needed to make SOME contact, even if it was just a word of sloppy groupie adoration, but that tour manager woman—let’s just call her DREAM CRUSHER for short—wow, she had my number. “EXCUSE ME, YOU ARE DONE HERE,” she announced, not only getting the attention of everyone in the room (Adam included!) but utterly mortifying me in the process. “I’M ALLOWED TO LOOK, AREN'T I?” I weakly shot back. And with that, I was herded out of the room… and straight out of the building. (The security person who was leading the group of us “journalists” outside didn’t even slightly fall for my “You know, I think I left my wallet upstairs, be right back!” routine. Very savvy, these security types.)

And just like that, it was over. I was kicked to the curb, in the rain, with no photo and no interview and only a mini cassette tape of meaningless blathering to show for myself. Needless to say, I sat in my car and cried. And cried. And fashioned a voodoo doll in Dream Crusher’s likeness out of the used tissues and stale Doritos I found in the kids’ car seats. Good luck recovering from THIS headache / backache / broken leg / severed ovary, Dream Crusher!!

It took me a couple of hours to regain my composure. I didn’t even want to go to the concert anymore. But Daddy insisted; being ever the optimist, he assured me that I could still have a good time (foolish man!). So I put on some tight black jeans and a sparkly black top and soldiered on, outwardly intact but inwardly shattered.

Truth be told, the concert wasn’t a total loss: I ditched the impossibly supportive Daddy at intermission so that I could wriggle my way all the way up to the FRONT ROW of the 20,000-seat arena in time for Adam’s set. Yet somehow, the fact that I was standing a mere 2 feet away from the object of my lusty affection while he crooned and wailed and gyrated his otherworldly sex appeal only made me feel worse.

When the show was over, I gathered what was left of my wits and contemplated whether there was any way to salvage this endeavor. Ok, the aftershow meet and greet Matt had told me about. It wasn’t much, and I had neither a credential nor a will to live at that point, but it was something.

So I casually asked a security guard, “Hello, where do we go for the meet and greet?” Giving me a quick once-over, he muttered, “You have your credential? Go to Section 104 and they’ll take you from there.”

Again, did he say something? Sorry, I was doing some quick tax planning in my head, you never want to miss a deduction! I heard something about Section 104, though. Great!

As I found a seat in Section 104, awash in a sea of about 40 people displaying their triangular stick-on credentials so proud and high on their chests that they might as well have been on their foreheads, I plotted my next move. “If you don’t have a sticker,” bellowed one security guard to the group, “don’t bother hanging around.” Hmm, could’a sworn I heard something? Nope. Wind in the trees.

A woman sat down in the empty seat next to me. There was a sudden commotion between the mother and daughter sitting in front of us. Then the woman turned around and said to my new neighbor, “Excuse me, but aren't you ALLISON’s mom?” (For those who are playing at home, Allison is one of the Idols, and Adam’s closest female friend on the tour.) Through a contented smile, and with a Spanish accent, the squinty-eyed woman said, “Yes…”

There was no time to process this information; my mouth was on autopilot. “Oh, wow,” I unknowingly sighed, “I am a HUGE fan of your daughter’s. In fact, you may not believe this, but I flew all the way from DUBAI to meet her!” The lady’s eyes widened. “Goodness, thank you! Are you coming upstairs? Do you have a credential?” I puppy dogged my eyes: “No, I don’t have a credential. But I am planning on staying here until they kick me out. I traveled so far to meet Allison, I’m not giving up without a fight!” The woman patted my hand and said, “You wait here, honey, I’ll get you a credential.” And she got up and walked away.

I WAS IN!!!

And then, I wasn’t. “I’m so sorry, dear,” said the Mother Who Clearly Hadn’t Tried Hard Enough as she sat back down next to me a few minutes later, “but the man who is issuing the credentials has already closed up his desk.” “But! But!” I stammered. “Surely they can’t throw me out if I’m with YOU.” She shook her head. “No, even my immediate family needs to have credentials. I’m sorry. They won’t let you in without one. It’s too bad.” Aw, lady, good luck getting rid of me that easily. “No problem,” I said defiantly, “I’ll just stick with you as long as I can.”

When the scary-looking head of security guy made the announcement that we should stand up, follow him, and make sure that our stickers were visibly placed on our persons, I ignored the unmistakable leave-me-alone vibes that were suddenly emanating from Allison’s mother, and followed close behind her. And when it came time for us to be spot checked by scary-looking head of security at the doorway to the VIP room, I conveniently folded my arms across my chest (Oops! Am I covering up my sticker! Silly me!) and planted myself so firmly in an intense (one-sided) conversation with Allison’s mom that I was practically daring the security guy to interrupt our emotional heart-to-heart. And you know what? He didn’t!

I WAS IN!!!

The first Idol I spotted was Allison, and so, in keeping with the good karma that her mother had unwillingly bestowed upon me, I rushed up to her, delivered the same line of BS about coming from Dubai just to see her, and got our photo taken together. Once that little item of business was out of the way, I started furiously searching the room for Adam. Adam?... ADAM? WHERE ARE YOU, LOVER??

My pulse quickened as I realized that he hadn’t arrived yet. WHERE WAS HE, I DIDN’T HAVE MUCH TIME! I was just checking my watch when my eyes happened upon a sight that, to this very day, sends a cold shudder down my spine:

THE PIERCING EYES OF DREAM CRUSHER, SET FIRMLY ON ME.

I instantly averted my gaze, down to the floor, up to the ceiling, anywhere but towards the laser beams coming forth from her head. Dum, de dum dum dum… just standing around, taking in the scenery… what a neat light fixture! antique?

In a superhuman flash, Dream Crusher was standing right next to me. “DON’T I KNOW YOU FROM THE PRESS HOUR TODAY?” she sputtered. “Nope,” I said cheerfully, turning away from her and hoping like hell that my witness-protection-program disguise (a change of eyeglass frames) would confuse her. I actually thought I had DODGED THE BULLET as she wandered away… yet my relief was not only unfounded, but terribly short-lived.

“CAN I SEE YOUR CREDENTIAL?” boomed the voice of the surly head of security guy.

“I’m a guest of Allison’s family!” (lie.)

“Come with me please.”

“No, wait, I was personally invited here by Allison’s mother!” (lie.)

“Come with me please.”

“I can’t leave now, she wouldn’t know how to find me!” (she'd be thrilled to see me kicked out.)

“I’ll tell her where you are. Are you coming with me or am I calling for someone to remove you?”

This man never smiled. In fact, he never blinked. And he didn’t at all appreciate that hey! I’m no criminal, I’m a fan! This is fun stuff, music, concerts, autographs! Let’s have a good time! Woohoooo! No, he didn’t see it that way at all.

Before I knew it, I had been physically delivered by this man—this monster!—let’s call him THE HENCHMAN—out of the VIP room and into the hallway. HOW COULD IT BE OVER FOR ME ALREADY—WHEN ADAM HADN’T EVEN ENTERED THE ROOM YET?

I pulled out EVERY weapon in my arsenal: I begged (“Please, I need to see Allison’s mom, she would be so offended if I didn’t at least say thank you”); I wept (“You have no idea how far I have traveled for this!”); and, in what turned out to be a fantastically WRONG move, I name-dropped: “Ask [DREAM CRUSHER]! She knows me!”

The Henchman’s eyes settled into a cold stare. “She’s the one who sent me. IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO LEAVE.” He turned to a nearby security lackey. “Bob, take this young lady out of the building.”

The Henchman went back into the VIP room. I promptly attempted all the same tricks on Bob (minus the tragic name-dropping). He frowned sympathetically, but said, “Miss. I’m sorry. But that’s the boss. If he says you leave, then you leave. Don’t make me get a policeman up here.”

I cried all the way down the elevator, hoping that SOMEONE would take pity on me. And then… someone did!

When the doors opened, I was deposited squarely in front of two twenty-something girls walking by. I guess they overheard a snipet of my sob story, because one said to me charitably, “Hey, you need a credential? Here, take mine, we’re leaving.” Then she effortlessly peeled the sticker off her shirt and, as she extended her hand to me in a ray of light that was breaking forth from the heavens, I couldn’t help but think

I WAS IN!!!

Well, as you might have guessed, The Henchman wasn’t exactly waiting for me with open arms and a congratulatory “You did it, kid!” In fact, when Bob alerted him that I was back—WITH a credential this time!—he apparently responded with an unambiguous directive. Said Bob: “There’s no WAY you’re getting back in there, Miss. It’s time for you to leave.”

A new, even less well humored security guard had been called to take me downstairs, and this time, with nothing left to lose, I allowed my sobbing to get louder and more dramatic. Right before we reached the double doors leading out of the building and into the MASSES of fans standing behind barricades (hoping to catch a glimpse of Adam, no doubt), I played my very last hand: “Ok, ok, you win: I’ll just sit here and wait for my party.” And I sat, pathetically, on the floor amongst the row of dumpsters near the exit. “Sorry, Miss, you need to go outside.” “I’M SITTING WITH THE GARBAGE CANS FOR CHRISSAKES. HAVEN’T YOU HUMILIATED ME ENOUGH??”

They hadn’t. For a second time in one day, I was dumped on the curb outside the arena. I couldn’t tell if it was my time amongst the garbage bins or the stench of my own failure, but something was making me feel a bit ill.

It goes without saying that I cried the whole way home.

[Editor’s note: If there was any consolation to that disappointing night, it was that Adam never DID appear at the meet and greet, nor did he go out to the barricades to wave to fans and sign autographs. Something about a stalker.] [WHICH WAS NOT ME, thank you very much.]

Well, after this EPIC FAIL of a day, all of my Adam eggs were now in the middle school friend basket. Hey, I love my middle school! Remind me to send them a check!

And then, three days before the August show (and after I had sent MSF several increasingly urgent messages asking whether my beloved meet and greet credential had arrived yet), THIS bombshell of an email landed on my virtual doorstep:

“RE: BAD NEWS.

[My wife] just heard back from her contact and I am afraid I have bad news. Long story short, he told her that there are a bunch of new "procedures" in place and because of that, he cant get her any tickets for the show and meet and greet so she wont be going. She is really really bummed about it and all I can say is how SORRY I am that we weren’t able to make this happen for you. I know what a huge fan you are and how disappointed you must be. I am SO SORRY!”

This time, I was absolutely, positively NOT. IN.

Where did this leave me? Did I board the plane back to Dubai in 8 days, a FAILURE? Or did I up the ante, pull out all the stops, and, to borrow a mantra from everyone’s favorite fashion cheerleader, MAKE IT WORK?

If you know anything about our heroine, you know the answer. At this point, it wasn’t just about meeting my Idol (THOUGH IT WAS CERTAINLY STILL ABOUT THAT); my personal integrity was also very much at stake. I had promised myself that I would make this happen (every time Daddy asked me what I wanted for my 35th birthday, which was only 2 days away, my perpetual reply was MY PICTURE WITH ADAM), and I wasn’t giving up until I was literally airborne, en route back to Dubai.

Delicately managing me in the way that I imagine sane people manage the insane, Daddy made the reasonable argument that, between grade school and high school and college and graduate school and our gainful employment experiences in Los Angeles, we must know *SOMEONE* with the “IN” I was looking for. It was just a matter of figuring out who, in a vast sea of friends and acquaintances and spouses and dentists and in-laws, was holding my golden ticket. As in, the most inane brain teaser ever.

And so, casting off whatever shred of dignity that remained, I sent out a slew of groveling emails that went something like this: HAVE LOST MY MIND. PLEASE HELP ME MEET ADAM LAMBERT. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME. But alas, each and every single message was returned with an apology and a “Good luck!” And time was running out. (In fairness, I must say that dear, dear Seacrest did suggest that I use his good name AGAIN and try to get ANOTHER press pass as a representative of his website… but my love for him is far too great to risk any [further?] damage to his professional reputation.) Thus, like a warrior on a solo mission, it had come down to ME and ME alone. I was going to GO to that August performance, damnit, and THIS TIME, I was not coming back empty-handed.

So great was my fear of another run-in with Dream Crusher and The Henchman that I promptly ruled out the postshow meet and greet as an option. Nay, my new strategy was OPERATION BARRICADE: despite the countless YouTube videos showing that whenever Adam appeared outside these arenas, the mob turned absolutely barbaric, my plan was to SO STAND OUT in the crowd that Adam would have NO CHOICE but to give me a heartfelt hug and take a well-lit photo with me. My mission: be utterly irresistible!

I went straight to my trusty computer and custom ordered a one-of-a-kind tank top that screamed, in all caps, “I KISSED ADAM LAMBERT!!”— assuming that, if I cleverly put it in the past tense, Adam would have no choice (barring some gross violation of the rules of logic) but to oblige. Additionally, I was already in fortunate possession of this incredible vinyl purse that some poor sap had handmade out of Adam’s Rolling Stone cover (thank you, ebay!). Thus, the shirt + the bag + my UNCONTROLLED PASSION surely = MY PHOTO WITH ADAM!!!

Having learned a while back that even my backup plan needed a backup plan, however, against my better judgment I revisited the meet and greet credential one last time.

Now let me tell you a little bit about this sticker. Made of cloth, it originally boasted a shiny veneer and crisp triangular edges. Several weeks later, it was not quite as crisp; in fact the only thing that retained its initial vibrancy was the ORIGINAL FREAKING DATE, which BOLDLY DECLARED, in BLACK PERMANENT MARKER, “ 7 / 29 ” (!!!!). Houston, we have a problem.

I tried my damnest to obliterate that godforsaken 7/29 (or was it 666?), knowing that I was going to have to SOMEHOW seamlessly convert it to a NOT-AT-ALL-similarly-shaped 8/11. I tried soap. I tried bleach. I tried nail polish remover. At my wits’ end, I tried White-Out. But instead of returning the sticker to its pre-Sharpie state, all I did was MUTILATE THE HELL out of this otherwise innocent piece of fabric. By the time I “finished,” what was left was a barely recognizable triangle and a VERY OBVIOUS expanse of White-Out. Even Daddy had to shake his head skeptically when I showed him the final product, which of course gave me reason to instigate a big, irrational fight with him. (Daddy! How dare you tell me the truth! Don’t you know loonies like to be LIED to?)

Ok, so the sticker was now officially crap. But I had my t-shirt and I had my purse and I had an indefatigable WILL TO SUCCEED! So I bought a ticket for the August 11 show (Hey kids! Come quick to watch another $90 swirling down the drain!) and tried so SO hard not to visualize the infinite possible scenarios in which this was NOT going to work out in my favor.

Show day. Daddy and I have an absolutely miserable flight transporting the rugrats from State A to State B. Screamer lives up to her name and, from the airport to the hotel and beyond, throws a top-tier tantrum that lasts about, oh, 2 hours and ends up with me physically restraining her in the hotel parking lot much to the horror of a bevy of geriatric onlookers who SHOULD HAVE BEEN MINDING THEIR OWN DAMN BUSINESS. Good times! When the hour arrives for me to get in my rental car and begin the 2-hour drive to the concert venue (go ahead, judge me, I can take it), I am already SHATTERED. I can’t find my concert clothes in any of our fourteen (14!!) suitcases, I can’t get the kids to go to bed, and, most critically, I CAN’T FIND MY I KISSED ADAM T-SHIRT! (and I’m too embarrassed to tell Daddy about it, so he can’t even help me look for it.)

FINALLY, FINALLY, twenty minutes after I’d planned to be on the road, I find the t-shirt and grab the Adam purse and thank Daddy for his unending patience and get in the car. It’s GO time.

Unexpectedly, the drive transforms me. The woman who climbed into that dingy gold-colored Buick—harried, strung out, beaten down—was not the woman who climbed out: refreshed, determined, and, damn it, happy! I had loved cruising down familiar highways listening to familiar radio stations and watching the sunset over familiar skylines. I had so enjoyed the break from the rugrats, who had been MAKING. ME. SUPER. CRAZY. for the past several weeks (years). And I had recaptured the gumption that had been drained out of me over the course of my many near-misses to date: TONIGHT I WAS GOING TO MEET ADAM!!

I pulled into the parking lot of the arena with my heart in my throat and my mangled credential stuffed deep into my purse. And not a moment too soon: the clothing fiasco had burned up so much time that it was already INTERMISSION when I swung open the hockey-sweat-covered glass doors. As usual, I had to move fast.

“Excuse me,” I said sweetly to a group of unkempt, oversized ticket-punchers manning the turnstiles, all of whom were better suited to a macho sporting event than a girly tv-show-inspired musicale. “Can you tell me where the barricades will be set up after the show for the autograph signing?” Cue the winning smile.

A craggy white-haired guy pulled a folded-up piece of paper out of his pocket, scanned it, and unceremoniously declared, “You missed it. Happened at 4:30 this afternoon.” Then he resumed his conversation elsewhere.

I shook my head politely, feeling sorry for this guy that he was so clearly misinformed. “Excuse me, no, I mean, after the shows, the performers always come out to meet the fans. Always. So how can I find out where that will be?”

Exasperatedly, he reviewed the paper again, and I could see that it was, indeed, a timetable of events. He shook his head. “No, there’s NOTHING going on after the show. The autographs ALREADY HAPPENED. Sorry.” (he was so clearly not.)

Suddenly, my head started spinning. Before I could edit them, the following unplanned words spewed forth from my lips: “BUT I HAVE A CREDENTIAL FOR THE MEET AND GREET!” At which point, the vision of my demented sticker presented itself to me and laughed its ass off.

The ticket-puncher checked his paper for a third time. He was getting annoyed. “NO, you missed that, too. It was a PRE-show meet and greet, and it happened at 4 pm.”

Now I was actually frozen. Someone was playing a joke on me. Without my participation, the lies started coming fast and furious: “BUT I DROVE UP HERE FROM GEORGIA FOR THIS. I HAVE BEEN ON THE ROAD FOR DAYS. I WAS TOLD IT WAS AN AFTERSHOW MEET AND GREET…”

And just like that, the curtain fell on my charade, and my eyes began overflowing with big, fat, REAL tears. Even if I hadn’t driven up from Georgia (WTF? Georgia??), I HAD devoted hours and hours on this ridiculous project and spent plenty of the money Daddy and I were supposed to be saving (video camera, cassette recorder, personalized t-shirt, second concert ticket, etc., etc., etc.) AND stripped myself of every shred of dignity before my family and friends… and it was all going to end like THIS?

“If you don’t mind,” I said quietly to the heartless ticket puncher man, “I’m just going to stand here and cry.”

Which is exactly what I did. I put my head up against the clammy tile wall of the sports arena and I wept stupid, defeated tears.

Moments later, I heard the ticket puncher’s voice behind me, but this time, it had lost its edge. “Ok, you’re in.”

“What?”

“You’re in. I spoke to the head of security and explained your mistake and he said you could go to some aftershow meet and greet in Section 102, although I don’t know anything about it and don’t know how many people will be there.”

I forgot to breathe.

“But wait.” The edge in his voice was back. “There are different color credentials for the different nights. To get in tonight, you need a GREEN STICKER.”

At which point I reached into my tacky Adam Lambert Rolling Stone vinyl purse and, with trembling hand,

PULLED

OUT

A

GREEN

STICKER

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The angels sang, the sun exploded in the sky, a grinning unicorn danced gaily past.

I WAS IN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The next hour was a blur of racing thoughts and semi-enjoyable musical performances (Adam’s excepted, of course; it goes without saying that his songs were exuberant)—my emotions were fluctuating between unadulterated joy and utter terror (I was actually going to have to let my tattered, fraudulent “credential” see the light of day??). I kept reminding myself, however, that the fact that it was GREEN sticker night HAD to be more than just coincidence, and was instead some sign from the universe that THIS WAS REALLY, TRULY, FINALLY GOING TO HAPPEN. Screw the knot in my stomach, I was going to see this through to the bitter end. It was my only. chance. left.

The show ended (much to closing act Kris Allen’s relief, I’m sure; who in his right mind would elect to follow the hair-raising “Whole Lotta Love” with a down-tempo “Hey Jude” sing-a-long simultaneously being broadcast in sleepaway camps round the world?). But I was in no rush to head over to section 102: I needed to survey the scene and determine just how risky this was going to be. Hey, maybe, in another incredible stroke of luck, EVERYONE’s credentials would have a patch of White-Out?? (no.)

Ok, so the number of people assembling in the designated area was pretty large, which was good because I could potentially blend in, but bad because it might mean having to knock people over to get to my man (though I was ruling nothing out). My next assignment was finding a wingman who could envelop me in a protective shield of friendly chit-chat as needed (and it WOULD, I was positive, be needed).

Strategically positioning my purse strap across my chest in an attempt to hide the fluorescent patch of white on my sticker (not an easy task when said strap is made of CHAIN LINK), I took a seat in the third row. I tried chatting up the lady to my right, a bored-looking thirtysomething friend of one of the backup singers who said she’d never watched the show on tv. She didn’t qualify for the position because her lack of interest meant she might leave at any time, and oh—because she insisted on taking my PHOTO (“I told my friend that I would document this for her”) which suggested that she was probably an undercover American Idol cop gathering evidence against me. Bye!

So I turned to the girls on my left: two pimply teenagers in the midst of their orthodontic crises. They were yammering and texting incessantly and one was shivering like a Chihuahua with uncontrollable excitement. Noticing my Adam purse set her off on an 8-minute run-on sentence regarding her own Adam obsession: i.e., Adam’s shoe size, the fact that she had recently thrown a party to commemorate Adam’s HALF birthday, how she and a friend became a YouTube sensation when a video of them going postal while watching Adam lose the title garnered over 70,000 hits. While not ideal by any stretch—I didn’t need this freakshow passing out or throwing up at a critical moment—the teenagers were going to have to suffice. “Listen,” I told them firmly, in the same tone I use to speak to my unruly 4-year-old, “we need each other. I need you to take my photo, and you guys need me to take yours. If one of you will operate my digital camera and one of you will operate my video camera, I will not only take your picture with Adam, but I will also videotape it and send it to you via YouTube. Deal?” They dreamily agreed, with visions of their next viral video dancing in their heads.

So there we sat, waiting… waiting… waiting. People were beginning to get restless. And then I witnessed this depressing exchange: a security guard who was making small talk with some people in the front row muttered, “I don’t even know why you people stick around for these meet and greet things. I mean, they’re purely optional—the performers are under no obligation to attend—so why waste your time hoping to get four or five autographs?”

My stomach dropped. This sad piece of information explained Adam’s non-appearance at my first meet and greet attempt: why WOULD he show up for this fanfest if he didn’t HAVE to? Why NOT preserve his voice and his mysteriousness? Further complicating things, earlier that night I had spotted Adam’s new boyfriend in the VIP section of the arena (I recognized him from the tabloids, natch), giving Adam yet another legitimate reason to bail. I turned to Chihuahua, trying to disguise my own disappointment: “Look, that guy just said that the Idols are not obligated to attend these things. And I have a friend who went to a meet and greet a few weeks ago, and Adam didn’t show up there, either. So I just want you to know it’s possible that we won’t see him tonight, k?” The girl looked horrified. “But if I don’t meet Adam I WILL DIE!” I let her wallow in her panic for a minute; better here than in the VIP room.

At last a security guard addressed the group. “Folks, sorry for the delay. Please stand up and follow me in an orderly manner. Make sure your green stickers are visible. We will be checking them at the door.” Not unlike a somber congregation on the high holidays, we silently rose. I held that freaking chain strap so firmly in place over the White-Out on my sticker that I almost cracked my sternum. The line began inching slowly past a security guy checking stickers at the door… and when it was our turn to be evaluated, I used my best giddy teenager voice to engage my accomplices in vapid conversation (here’s when I’m actually grateful that my elfin stature and baby face have seemingly frozen me in the 11th grade) and made no eye contact with anyone. A few E X C R U C I A T I N G moments later, and

I WAS IN!!!!

There was no time to waste; was it just me, or in this room had the White-Out taken on the obnoxious glow of a lightstick at a rave?? I rapidly surveyed the crowded VIP room like a cyborg with built-in retina scanning technology. No Adam. NO ADAM! Other Idols were there in abundance: my good friend Allison… there was Kris Allen milling about… (and, if you watched the show, you’ll join me in taking a moment to feel sad for poor, bohunky Michael Sarver, who was standing in a corner with pen in hand and absolutely no one approaching him for an autograph). My heart began its slow, familiar descent from my chest into my stomach as the reality set in: he wasn’t going to show. Again. I was in my own personal, nightmarish, Groundhog’s Day. And just as I turned to my fragile companions to break the bad news, my gaze happened to fall upon some shimmery blue eye shadow…

ADAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At 6’1”, he towered over the dense, bustling crowd that swarmed madly around him, his smile beaming good-naturedly as they all clamored to touch him. And just as the crowd parted slightly to allow me to drink in the glorious sight of him, a sudden black cloud eclipsed the sunshine radiating from Adam’s aura, and an ominous darkness filled the room. Standing to his right, I noticed, stood Adam’s own personal security detail:

THE
HENCHMAN.

Attention heart: Go directly back to stomach. Do not pass GO, do not collect $200. In fact, GAME OVER.

I tried to swallow but my mouth was a desert. Please, universe, not AGAIN! The Henchman was going to recognize me, he was going to throw me out; in fact, he was probably going to call the cops (not only was I a repeat offender, but now I had the added allure of surfacing in two different, non-contiguous states; maybe I WAS the stalker!). And, ONCE MORE, it was all going to go down IN FRONT OF ADAM. There would be no picture (AND HERE I WAS, LITERALLY SO CLOSE!!!), and furthermore, I was now destined to become the laughingstock of the entire Idol tour. Could this really be happening to our heroine, who had endured so much? Was this truly how the story was going to end??

Deciding it would be appropriate to play my violin on the upper deck of the Titanic as it sank (ADAM OR BUST!!), I ignored the forceful animal instinct to flee, and turned to my teenage compatriots and said, in an overly-controlled voice, “Ok. HE IS HERE. Stay calm, and follow me.” We took our places at the end (ok, middle, sue me, I was about to go to jail) of the vaguely formed line as I frantically attempted to somehow FURTHER alter my appearance from the last time The Henchman tossed my ass to the street. I removed my glasses (no glasses at all this time, that'll throw him!) and my beloved necklace bearing the names of the kids (who knows? maybe he is so highly trained in security measures that he inventories such minute details when faced with an imposter!) and tied my hair into a tiny knot (try to look bald!). Vanity be damned—all that mattered was that one flash of the camera. I could always photoshop glamour into my appearance later.

With every fraction of every minute that passed, the odds of my trespass being discovered exponentially increased. There was my Adam, pleasantly posing for pictures, signing autographs, receiving garishly homemade manifestos of devotion; and all the while The Henchman was methodically giving each person in the room a wary, dirty look. He barked out instructions to the masses: “Stand back!” “One at a time!” “Step aside!” “No, Adam cannot talk to anyone on the phone for you!” as I was trying to make myself as physically small as possible. Exacerbating my growing nausea was the sudden DISTRESSING realization that, if The Henchman was here, and accompanied the Idols on every stop of the tour—oh LORD—so, TOO, probably was DREAM CRUSHER….!!

I aggressively willed the line to move faster. At any moment, I was certain, SHE would appear in my peripheral vision, identifying me to the federal authorities with a bony finger and cackling like the Wicked Witch… or HE would have a little lightbulb appear over his head (of graying, longish, can’t-let-go-of-my-youth hair) and lick his lips like a carnivore closing in on his next meal. TICK, TICK, TICK went the seconds… THUD, THUD, THUD went the blood rushing past my ears…

And then. It was time. I was two feet away from Adam. The entire summer—hell, my entire life!—had led me to this moment.

At which point, OH NO!!!, The Henchman laid his beady eyes squarely on me and opened his chapped lips and

through the deafening drumbeat of my rapidly pounding heart

I was just barely able to make out the following words as they fell heavily from his mouth:

“YOUR TURN, SWEETHEART.”

Whereupon he kinda smiled.

There are no words to adequately describe the next 29 seconds of my life (thank goodness the teenagers semi-captured them on video, otherwise I would be chalking the whole thing up to a wishful hallucination). Without dragging you through the smarmy details, about which I could go on for ANOTHER 20 screens (i.e., the brilliantly intuitive placement of my hand on Adam’s broad chest, the dewy contact that my forehead made with his heavily pancaked cheek as we leaned against each other, the delicious smack that my lips made against the side of his face as I kissed him, etc.), suffice it to say that, after all this,

MOMMY

GOT

EXACTLY

WHAT

SHE

WANTED

FOR

HER

35th

BIRTHDAY.

Hey, I may be an atheist, but even *I* know a damn miracle when I see it! ☺☺☺

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

p.s. Endless thanks to Daddy and Seacrest for actively enabling my mental illness, and to PopPop for giving me the firm instruction NOT TO COME BACK WITHOUT THAT PICTURE, EVEN IF IT INVOLVES SPENDING A COUPLA NIGHTS IN THE CLINK. I love you men more than words can say. xoxoxoxoxo.

p.p.s. In response to some inquiries, I can't post the climactic photo, silly: on this blog I'm "anonymous"!

p.p.s. To the haters who read this post and are suggesting that I should *actually* be locked up: lighten up, please. You clearly don't know dramatic embellishment when you see it, and also, who invited you, anyway?

Eid Mubarak! (May You Enjoy a Blessed Festival)

2009-09-20T11:56:00.000-07:00

It's official: I survived 4 weeks without Starbucks! I feel like I just completed rehab!

Hooray for the Little Moon Committee (alright, technically the "Shawwal Crescent Committee") who, last night at around 8:15pm, looked up at the sky, saw what they perceived to be a new moon, and officially declared the month of fasting to be over (respectfully, it felt a little like waiting for the groundhog to see his shadow, but with an awful lot more at stake). Now the UAE and all the other Arab nations launch into 3 days of national holiday ("Eid al Fitr") wherein Muslims spend time with family, exchange gifts, and, you gotta assume, eat til they can't eat no more. I honestly don't know how Ramadan-observers do it; the closest I've ever come to such a marathon accomplishment is ONE annual day fasting on Dome Slippur (if you know what I mean), and even then, I'm usually entering light delusion by 4pm.

So this is great news, not only because it means that restaurants are open again during daylight hours, but also because I assume that the general mood around here will lighten up (as an example, whilst recently browsing the polyester-laden racks of my local "Forever 21," I asked a salesperson about the notable absence of hard-core gangsta rap that typically graces the speakers there; the lady looked at me like *I* had just used the n-word and replied, "Madam, we don't PLAY music during Ramadan!"). Now if only I could get these rascally kids out of the house again (curiously, the neighborhood nursery is only closed for 2 days, while Sushi's AMERICAN academy is closed for an entire week), I could get back to my regularly scheduled life. Between our summer travel and the start of classes and the wonky Ramadan-related hours of everything (this month the schools all opened later and closed earlier than usual, a gut-wrenching combination for a permanently sleep-deprived mother whose heart soars at the sight of a miniature backpack disappearing around a corner), it feels like AGES since we've been in a normal routine. (Sadly, Daddy and I never did make it to an after-sundown iftar celebration, though not for lack of trying: we finally managed to sneak out one night only to find that we were too late for dinner and too early for drinks. Thus, the best I can provide you with is a snapshot of the girls peering into an empty iftar courtyard set up at the mall... too bad I don't have the sufficient technological skills or else I would have photoshopped in some henna painters and masked falcons and food-fetishy debauchery.)

Also in the good news category is that the long-dreaded weather situation has very suddenly improved: several times over the past 2 days I have actually been able to open the door WITHOUT my glasses becoming instantly opaque with condensation. In fact, this evening the kids even spent some time *outside* for the first time since May; I can't tell you what joy filled my heart as Alice filled our kiddie pool. Hey, kids, Mommy has an idea: RUN ALONG AND PLAY.

I'd write more, but I'm utterly drained from yet another tedious bedtime battle (eventually Daddy and I are going to have to once-and-for-all choose between competing strategies when it comes to Screamer: No nap + soul-sucking evening meltdowns + delightfully early bedtime? *OR* Nap + pleasant disposition + she wants to stay up to watch Leno?) (Editor's Note: No child of MINE will ever watch Leno, dammit!). Just wanted to let you know that this era of pitifully sub-par homemade coffee beverages is, thankfully, over, and wish you and yours a happy Eid al Fitr... or Hosh Mashmanah, as the case may be. ;) xo.

Ramadan Kareem

2009-09-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

... Or, a generous Ramadan to you all.

We are halfway through the month of Ramadan (I think the approximate dates are August 22 - September 20, but don't quote me on that) and thus far the extent of my spiritual awakening has been the realization of just how CRITICAL that inevitable stop for a Starbucks (nonfat no-whip three-pump shot-of-peppermint) mocha apparently is to my overall shopping happiness. O what I wouldn't give for a midday scone!

The gist of Ramadan's impact on us expats is this: Muslims are required to fast from dawn to dusk. Consequently, virtually ALL eating and drinking establishments are fully CLOSED until nightfall (the occasional maverick coffee shop is open-- see the rebel Costa Coffee photos above-- but you are required to duck shamefully behind tightly-thatched screens and only then, they serve nothing but "take away"). Furthermore, public eating or drinking by ANY adult is prohibited, and this includes gum chewing and furtive bites of a sandwich in one's car. The upshot of all this? We are now the proud owners of an espresso machine, and I have learned how to efficiently shovel an entire bag of the children's goldfish crackers into my mouth while bending down to the floor of the car at a stop light.

Now, there are supposedly less oppressive elements of Ramadan: specifically, grand fetes on a nightly basis that extend into the wee hours of the morning. Many are open to the public, and I will do my best to attend one if for no other reason than to share the details with you, my faithful reader.

In the meantime, think of me next time you stop off for Dunkin Donuts on your way to work... mmmm, toasted coconut on a chocolate donut...

What else. Well, Sushi started at the American school last week, and YAY!, so far it's been a wonderful experience. She loves the teacher (and tolerates the slightly awkward male teaching assistant, who, in a demonstration of dubious judgment, informed me on the first day that he is both dyslexic AND suffering from short-term memory loss, what?) and she has become fast friends with the only kid in the class who speaks NO ENGLISH (PopPop's theory is that Sushi arrived, sized up the joint, and seized upon the one kid whom she could immediately boss around). She is also excited to wear the (absolutely schlumpy) daily uniform (we told her that only BIG KIDS get to wear uniforms to school!-- magic words to any 4-year-old), and she permanently accessorizes her look with cockeyed braids (I'm usually in a rush) and a silly headband with an oversized bow. Hey, anything to distract her from the fact that she's wearing-- gasp!-- shorts! Like a BOY!

[Side note: The German just pulled her kids out of the international school. How NOT. FUNNY. AT. ALL. would it have been if I'd allowed myself to be peer pressured into sending my child there against my will????]

In other news, BABY is scheduled to start school tomorrow (!!!), and Screamer would be going, too, but for the fact that she conveniently waited until the LAST DAY OF SUMMER BREAK to contract a stomach virus. The only good news on that front is that the world's most darling little 2-year-old sprite has now taken it upon herself to throw up in private; she'll wander over to me and say to my hipbone, in the smallest voice, "I puked in your potty. But I flushed." As my Australian friend would say, BLESS HER.

As for the rest of the gang: Harry is still alive (he has a new playmate, in fact: a grotesquely thin stray who comes around for food and whom we have very sensitively named Scrawny); PopPop was stopped on the street today by a total stranger who declared, "Hey, I know you, you're the fittest grandpa in Dubai!"; Alice can do no wrong; Julia can ONLY do wrong (oh yes, the honeymoon of our return is over); Z-Man has lost his sense of humor (it's only appropriate, during his fast); and Daddy continues to kick ass and take names at work.

And Mommy? Well Mommy just can't wait for all the kids to get back to school... mostly just so that she can blog in peace. :) More soon... xo.

Yay! and Boo!

2009-08-20T10:27:00.001-07:00

Something great to come home to:

6 weeks of tabloid magazines piling up and waiting for me to return!

Something less great to come home to:

If I never see another orange cone or red & white ribbon again, it will be too soon...

Wake Me When It's Over.

2009-08-19T11:37:00.000-07:00

I am in jet lag hell.

Thanks to 3 small children.

Am writing to you from the couch in our tv hallway. (Whatever, I don’t know what to call this room, it’s a little rest area en route from the spiral staircase to the children’s wing, where Daddy thoughtfully installed an entertainment center, tv, and some couches, I guess this is how people who live in big houses roll.)

It’s my 4^th night of no sleep.

Ok, that is a SLIGHT exaggeration—for the past 4 nights, I have slept an average of 1.5 hours during the night, and then another couple of hours during the daytime. But let me tell you, there are few miseries in the world quite like the one I just experienced when, after spending almost 4 hours with jetlagged Baby (10pm-2am), I finally get her to sleep and put my weary head on the pillow only to hear Sushi calling me at 2:15am and then Screamer calling me at 3am. So now it’s 5:20 am and both older girls are watching movies in their beds on portable DVD players and I have just about given up any hope of going to bed at all tonight (they are constantly needing me to come in and adjust the volume, bring them a banana, etc., etc., etc.). Which wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that I MIGHT BE LOSING MY EVERLOVING MIND.

(Note: Usually, Daddy would be helping me with the kids, and lord knows he has made himself available to be woken up, but he had to go straight back to the office as soon as we arrived in the UAE and has had important meetings scheduled all week and I just can’t bring myself to deprive him of rest. After all, if Daddy stops bringing home the bacon, then we are out on the streets, and since I’m pretty sure it is illegal to be homeless in Dubai, I’d like to avoid that situation if at all possible.)

So what’s it like to be back, you’re wondering, after we spent about 6 weeks in the USA? Well, here are my initial thoughts:

THE BAD NEWS.

(1) Boy, the construction hasn’t improved at all. In fact, in many places it looks like it’s gotten worse. The roads are as much a mess as ever, which is really depressing. Everywhere you look is an eyesore. In fact, it’s more unusual to see a completed road/building/intersection than one that is incomplete. Chaos! And not the kind of anti-establishment chaos that makes me happy!

(2) It is indeed hot, and this is even AFTER the worst, I think, has already passed. It’s the kind of hot where you walk outside after spending 24 hours in the air conditioning and your skin is still temporarily holding onto that coolness and you think, “Hey, this isn’t so bad out here, what’s with all the drama” and then about 2 seconds later that coolness starts to evaporate off your skin and you think, “URGENT: NEED AC” and you zoom back into the house faster than you can express your silent gratitude to the heavens that you are not currently employed as one of Dubai’s kajillion construction workers, landscapers, or residential gate attendants. Whatever those guys are being paid, it should be tripled.

(3) I miss my friends and family!! And so does Sushi. Which makes me sad for her. (Screamer is only 2 and has a limited understanding of time and space so she thinks that all her friends in the world are living down the street, hence her absence of sentimentality at our return.)

(4) I have been instantly reminded of how IMPOSSIBLE it is to get around Dubai. Not only do I know how to get to a vast three (3) destinations in the entire Dubai universe (mall + mall + school), but the CRAPTASTIC orange-cone-overrun roads are often not even MARKED, which precludes any possibility of my ever venturing out beyond my self-imposed electric fence. (One literally memorizes landmarks to find one’s way around; witnessing an actual street sign with words on it as opposed to numbers is a conversation topic suitable for the dinner table.) Not to mention that the roads keep CHANGING: today, for example, the road that I USED to take to get to the mall was suddenly a dead end! I heart street barricades! One thing that surprised me about my time in the States is that I had forgotten how much I LOVE driving… alone… and over the speed limit… on familiar highways… with my Sirius cranked way up… (Note: Yes, I know I can technically get satellite radio here, via the internet… but let me tell you, sitting at the dining room table staring at the ceiling and listening to Howard Stern over my laptop while hoping like heck that the maid doesn’t walk in and hear the word PENIS is not exactly my idea of relaxation.)

THE GOOD NEWS.

(1) Wow, it’s nice to have Alice around again!! At first I thought Baby was going to need a few days to get used to her, but thankfully those two were back to being thick as thieves within an hour. Yay for a person to dump a fussy baby on!

(2) I’m not QUITE as annoyed by Julia as I expected to be upon seeing her. Does that sound mean or WHAT. But truthfully, over the summer I’d decided that she was causing more trouble than she was worth—she’s much more emotionally needy than Alice, and before we left I had found myself wasting a lot of energy navigating her mood swings— and yet she was so overtly thrilled to see our car pulling into the driveway when we were coming home from the airport that I have decided to give her another chance. Maybe we can find a way to coexist so that she is NOT incessantly following me around the house theoretically helping me but in reality causing me to break out in itchy hives.

(3) It’s nice to be back in our borrowed mansion and living under the same roof as PopPop. And hey, Harry didn’t succumb to loneliness during our holiday! Hello, furry friend, I’m so happy to see you still alive! And glad to hear that your bulimia hasn’t improved one bit! No, don’t bother puking on the tile floor—go ahead and help yourself to the fancy rugs! Knock yourself out! We're renting!

(4) Can't wait for Sushi to start at the American Academy, and for Baby to start at the nursery school, and for Screamer to move into Sushi's old classroom.

(5) Am very much looking forward to seeing The Australian, Friend Who Makes Pillows Out of Placemats (memo to self: she needs a better blog name), Bonnie and Clyde...

Ugh, I can’t think of anything else because I’ve unwittingly moved into heavy planning mode for the pity party I’m about to throw for myself. Coming up on 6 am now and the sky is just starting to lighten and my eyes are painfully dry and—OH WAIT, Baby is suddenly SCREAMING and Screamer is simultaneously demanding a new DVD…. GOTTA GO….

p.s. The month of Ramadan is about to start. I’m sure there will be much to report. Stay tuned, miss you… xo.

Yay, It's Over.

2009-07-24T19:00:00.000-07:00

Alright, well, if yesterday's low point was assisting in the physical restraint of Screamer so that a medieval contraption could be elbowed into her mouth, today's was holding a weak, pale little Sushi in my arms post-anesthesia while she puked. But you know what? Relatively speaking, it was a cake walk. (That is, aside from the psychological agony of an unexpected 3rd hour being somehow tacked on to Sushi's operating room experience... the dentist later told us that some of the cavities were deeper than she'd thought, and that the white fillings leave no margin for error... meanwhile, because I'm a jerk I simply assume that the dentist and the hospital are in cahoots to needlessly draw out every procedure and thus earn themselves an additional hour of "O.R. time" at our literal expense) (have I mentioned that I'm a jerk?). Meanwhile the kid, I'm happy to report, uncharacteristically kept all drama to a minimum (it might have had something to do with the unprecedented number of well-intentioned lies she was told by her father and me; example: "NO, honey, of course this is not a HOSPITAL, it's a dental office that happens to share work space with the people who do boob jobs!") and shed not a single tear over being cruelly deprived food and water all morning. In fact, a mere 4 hours after she was wheeled out of the operating room, wouldn'tcha know that she was jumping up and down on our sofa firmly requesting that I replay for the millionth time the one and only episode of "Toddlers & Tiaras" she's ever seen (her sudden obsession with child exploitation is certain to yield *either* a future interest in women's studies *or* an imminent demand for a miniature Vegas showgirl getup, there's no telling which) (who are we kidding, I've already checked out the dress selection on ebay). THANK YOU to everyone for the good wishes (and, in the case of my dear friend "Paris," the very fancy Barbie dolls that were left on our doorstep!!). I would love to write more, but I just fell asleep.

Free at last, free at last, thank god almighty I am free at last. (Of the pediatric dentist.) xo.

I Went to the USA for My Summer Vacation and All I Got Were These Lousy Cavities

2009-07-23T19:53:00.000-07:00

You know what really stinks? When you think something is going to be terrible and people tell you that it's *not* going to be terrible but you're still planning on it being terrible mostly because you are looking forward to being pleasantly surprised when it turns out not to be terrible at all, and then it turns out that it was INDEED totally terrible and you were right all along to worry and you wish you could find every single person who said It Will Be Fine! and tell them I Told You So! and then go home and have a pity party complete with paper hats... but you can't. That stinks. And that was my day today.

I don't have much time to write (because more terribleness is likely to befall me in approximately 10 hours, more on that later, and I need to go to sleep now so I can dream about how terrible it's going to be), but the long and the short of it is this:

Screamer needed to have some cavities filled, and I let myself be talked into doing the fillings in the dentist's office with only laughing gas to sedate her, and the dentist was running so behind schedule that the procedure ended up taking place right in the middle of Screamer's naptime (which, as you parents out there know, is like handling a grenade with the pin pulled out), and by the time we finally got her into the chair she was already falling apart, and by the time the party got into full swing she was absolutely beside herself, and then the party came to a rather abrupt end when Screamer started to lose her mind and then I started to lose my mind (I don't know if you've ever had the pleasure of watching your sweet, defenseless 2-year-old being HELD DOWN so that a metal brace can be wedged into her mouth to hold it open, but let me tell you, it's about as much fun as it sounds) and I caused a scene because Screamer was causing a scene and we more or less stormed out of there without really knowing if the dentist was done with what she was doing. You know, because it was the dentist's fault that my children are HUGE WIMPS and that I apparently have the THINNEST SKIN of any mother on planet Earth. So yeah, she fully deserved the bad press that she got today in her waiting room when I charged past about 5 families and announced, with all the eloquence of a frustrated adolescent and even a waving index finger: "*THIS* is NOT COOL." Brava, Mommy! Another command performance!

The good news is that Screamer has already forgotten the whole thing, it seems; when asked at dinner what she did today, she replied, "Went to camp this morning.... Oh, and I went shopping with Mommy." The bad news is that I am mentally reliving on a loop the image of the metal mouth-holder-opener (because, as you know by know, I just can't torture myself enough). And then there's also this minor detail: Did I mention that the same dentist I publicly insulted today is going to be performing a similar dental procedure on Sushi-- only this time in a *hospital* setting and with the use of general anesthesia due to the greater extent of repair work needed-- TOMORROW MORNING? Good times!

[NOTE: If you're wondering what the heck is wrong with my kids-- or, more appropriately, some grossly negligent caregiver, whomever SHE might be-- that they need so much dental work done at 2 and 4 years old... trust me, so am I. The dentist first looked at both kids' mouths and asked (with a tone that suggested that she already knew the answer) whether we let them drink soda all day. WHICH WE DO NOT. In fact, not only has such demon brew never touched their angelic lips, but Sushi, who has significantly more cavities than Screamer, drinks almost exclusively WATER, and these are two kids who think that "dessert" means FRUIT. I mean, sure, I let them have some sweets, but we are NOT a junk food family. (IT IS ONLY THE MOTHER WHO EXISTS SOLELY ON JUNK FOOD, though I look forward to some know-it-all writing in the comments section that the repercussions of my own bad habits have been directly transferred to my offspring through DNA and have caused actual physical damage to their persons. I won't believe you!) (slash, I will totally believe you, and sink deeper into my shame spiral.) The competing theories at this point are these: (1) Because tap water in Dubai is not, as far as I know, safe for drinking, we and everyone else we've met consume only bottled water, which has resulted in the kids' teeth being tragically deprived of fluoride; and (2) It was genetically predetermined at the dawn of time that the children's teeth would be SUPERcrowded in their little tiny mouths, and the fact that their mini chompers have come in so tight-tight-tight up against each other means that we never really stood a chance against these insidious between-the-teeth cavities that are now ruining all of our lives. (or at least, a significant part of our USA visit.) Whichever theory proves correct, however, my maternal guilt will remain gloriously intact (CAVITIES ARE PREVENTABLE + MOMMY IS THE PRIMARY CAREGIVER = MOMMY IS A FAILURE) and will likely one day lead me to pen a shame-driven parenting book entitled, "YES, You DO Have To Floss Your Infant's Teeth Every Day, Even Though OUR Parents Never Flossed OUR Freaking Infant Teeth and Somehow We Survived."]

Ok, I could go on forever about my maternal shortcomings and my consequent self-loathing, but it's now 9 hours to hospital check-in, so I should try and get some sleep. Wish us luck... xo!

A Lambertastic USA Homecoming

2009-07-13T09:06:00.000-07:00

Alright, even *I* can't believe that it's been a whole month, I've set a new blog inactivity record. But if it makes you feel any better, please know that I am racked with guilt on a daily basis over how I've been neglecting you. Thank you to my friend, the impossibly beautiful Hillary, for finally forcing my [pen] to [paper] and making me do this post!

So Daddy and I take the 3 rugrats and travel halfway around the world and suffer through literally 24 HOURS of travel, door to door, and, just when I am preparing to collapse in a defeated, lifeless heap on my USA doorstep, WHO should be waiting there to greet me? None other than my gay soulmate, Adam Lambert!! (Well, a giant Xerox copy of his Rolling Stone cover, but the surprise was almost as good as if he were there in the flesh.) And he was ALSO there on the fridge... and in the utensil drawer... and on the tv... and *in* the toilet (I spared you that photo)... and, of course, sprawled invitingly on my bed. I love the fact that my magnificent friend Wendy (wait, does she want an alias? if so, she can be "Hot Pam Anderson Pre-Hepatitis C") didn't give a moment's pause to whether *DADDY* would want to come home after 24 hours of grueling travel to find Adam Lambert sprawled invitingly on *HIS* bed. (For those who are wondering: Nope.) This, people, is what defines a TRUE friend. HOT PAM ANDERSON PRE-HEPATITIS C, I WORSHIP YOU!! I WILL BE FOREVER INDEBTED TO YOU FOR THE BEST. HOMECOMING. EVER!

(Editor's Note: If someone can possibly arrange for the *real* Adam Lambert to be waiting for me in my house the next time we visit the USA, then Hot Pam Anderson Pre-Hepatitis C, I will need to retract the previous declaration. You understand.)

So we're really here: I am writing to you direct from our house in the USA (which, I believe, could fit in its entirety into the living and dining rooms of the Dubai house). Aside from the filthy, repulsive, bloodsucking mosquito creatures that lurk in the bushes here, plotting their vicious attacks on my poor, unsuspecting toddlers, this place is treating us well so far. (And it doesn't hurt that, due to the COLOSSAL FAILURE of my packing efforts back in November, there is enough of our junk here in the house that it feels as if we never left. Kids' cups still in the dishwasher, 8 months later? Check! Fermenting food still in the fridge, 8 months later? You betcha! There was even stuff in the clothes dryer-- how considerate of me to prepare clean clothes for our arrival!) Even the time change was-- just as smarty pants Daddy cleverly predicted-- not NEARLY the hell it was for us when we traveled TO Dubai. (Something about how, when you travel to Dubai, you sleep on the plane and then arrive at nightfall and are unable to go to sleep again; whereas when you travel to the USA, you sleep on the plane and then arrive at daybreak, which means that you're not swimming frantically against the current for survival.) Within a mere 2 nights, all 3 kids were back on a normal sleep schedule. If I hadn't seen it myself, I would not have believed it. Yay!!

What's it like being back? Well, when we were getting ready to leave Dubai, I prepared a list of things I thought I would miss, and things I thought I would be happy to see again. Here are those lists (in their original, unedited form):

I WILL MISS:

* having PopPop living with us

* The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf

* no rain

* no mosquitos

* having the big kids' rooms in a separate wing from the baby's

* 24-hour childcare

* 24-hour housekeeping

* our Nestle watercooler

* the bagel delivery guy

* The Australian

I WILL NOT MISS:

* the oppressive heat

* the omnipresent construction

* feeling nervous about our Newishness

* having to repeatedly explain to Sushi why some women's faces are all covered up (guess I haven't yet figured out an explanation that makes sense to a 4-year-old)

I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO:

* Newish people, in general

* old friends

* watching The View & What Not to Wear

As to the accuracy of these predictions: well, of course it's been spectacular to see old friends. And fun to watch my old tv shows (though both The View and What Not to Wear are not nearly as good as I remember them; when did Stacy London get so annoying?). And I definitely do miss PopPop and The Australian. And the bagel guy. (Who EVER could have guessed that I would prefer the bagels found in the United Arab Emirates.) And sure, I miss Alice and Julia when the kids are crabbing out and I want to leave some (read: all) of them at home while I run errands or something.

But the strangest thing for me, being home, is the realization that, not only do I not MIND this small house, but I'm kinda loving it: the way that the ground floor is really just one big room, oriented around the television (as the good lord intended it; our house in Dubai with its lack of a real family/tv room now seems like an abomination against nature); the way the kids are more or less always in sight; and the way the bedrooms, all jumbled up against each other on the second floor, give me a sense of security in knowing that the girls are just a few steps away.

And even more than that-- and mark your calendars, people, because one day I'm pretty sure I'm going to be eating these words-- I've been surprised by how much I am NOT missing having the two housemaids around. I mean, sure, Daddy is walking around in a shirt so wrinkled that I pretend I'm not his wife when we're out together... and the kids are back to eating pre-packaged dinners I only need heat for 30 seconds in the microwave... and I now have to wrangle away from Baby the food she picks up off the floor (whereas in Dubai, she happily eats floor crud with my blessing; after all, it is safe to assume that the floors were just mopped moments earlier). But overall, I've been hit with this-- dare I say-- relief, in just having the house to ourselves again. It's only now that I see how much work (!) it actually is having Alice and Julia around-- whether it's because I'm mediating their quiet disagreements or burning their American Idol DVDs (yes, I do that; still competing in an imaginary race to be named Coolest Domestic Employer) or making sure I'm always dressed appropriately (it's a real bummer having to wear a bra with my pajamas when I come down for breakfast). Yes, I expect that the novelty of doing it all myself again (and when I say "doing it all," I mean, "doing the absolute minimum") will wear off and that I will do the slow-motion run into Alice's arms when we return to Dubai in mid-August... but for now, it's just nice to sit here, ALL ALONE in the house, at the computer, in only a towel. Truth! :)

So where's the rest of the family, you ask? The big kids are at Newish day camp ("SOAK IT ALL IN, PAY CLOSE ATTENTION, TAKE GOOD NOTES," I tell them every single morning as they go out the door) and the little one is at Supernanny's home day care. (Hey, parents who live in my area: Supernanny has a few spots left, contact me if you or someone you know wants to enroll, she's the world's BEST childcare provider.) Meanwhile, Daddy is at some local Starbucks doing work on his laptop (I was going to wonder aloud why he doesn't just work from home, but then I realized that my newfound tendency to blog in only a towel might have something to do with his need to go elsewhere). And PopPop and Harry-- poor, sweaty PopPop and Harry!-- are still in Dubai, intent on finding out the hard way just HOW HOT the Dubai summers are. (Actually, Harry was not consulted, but he didn't object when I told him we were leaving, so...) At PopPop's last check, it was 114 degrees there and climbing. Good luck, men! Drink a lot of water!! (from my awesome Nestle watercooler). We miss you!

In other news, Baby has just turned 14 months and is still refusing to walk unless she's holding someone's hand (we will let this poor performance slide, though, because she's just SO. DAMN. CUTE. doing her baby sign language)... Screamer has developed an endearing habit of inflicting some injury upon herself and then concocting an elaborate lie incriminating her older sister as the perpetrator... and Sushi, much to my parental HORROR, is apparently in need of a whole mess of dental work to the tune of FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS. (Please don't remind me that baby teeth just fall out anyway. You KNOW that if there was any way for me to avoid fixing the kid, I would.) But I guess I should just be glad that we found this out now and can have the work done in the USA... I still haven't been won over by the medical and dental services in Dubai. (Case in point: our Dubai dentist examined Sushi 3 months ago and sent her away with only a lollipop! Thanks, doc!) Think of us on July 24, when both Sushi and Mommy will be under heavy sedation...

Ok, I've been rambling for a while, and now it's time for me to get dressed and pick up the rugrats from camp ("Shalom and l'chaim, kids!"). Sorry again for being gone so long... I won't let it happen again. xo.

Underpants Beach, and Other Things You Won't Find in Dubai

2009-06-12T10:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm a slacker. And to the 3 people who check in regularly to see if I've posted anything new, I offer my most heartfelt apologies (and urge you, again, to sign up for the email notification on the left, because I can't give you back the innumerable seconds of your life you might frequently waste while loading my unaltered page). You are good people. I, meanwhile, am a lowly jester who has run out of jokes.

No, I take that back; the jokes are still there, but the new material isn't. There's not much to write about when life is just plodding along at a normal pace. And so, I am silent. But I guess if there's a silver lining to my recent web absence, it's that no news is good news... heaven knows you would have heard about it (IN CAPS, PROBABLY) if anyone was sick, saddened, or incarcerated (equal probability, all).

So what's been going on, let's see. Well, I went AWOL for a few precious days and escaped from witch mountain ALL BY MYSELF, believe it or not. In order to attend a beloved childhood friend's wedding, I ditched the desert and spent about 48 glorious hours back in the contiguous United States. (No, I didn't tell you in advance that I was coming, but please don't take it personally, I just knew I wouldn't have time to make the rounds, I had heartsick toddlers to rush back to) (or so I thought, more on that later). Here are a few things about the USA that I suddenly realized I'd been desperately missing:

(1) electrical sockets in the bathroom (Why, oh WHY, Dubai, do you make me flat iron my hair on the bedroom floor?);

(2) Target ($9.99 swimsuits!);

(3) CVS (children's Tylenol, all forms!);

(4) squirrels (so cute and fluffy!);

(5) green grass, green treetops, green shrubs (sure, there are green things here, but they all seem so... master planned);

(6) Starbucks barristas who shoot the sh*t with you while brewing (it makes me feel so empty inside when they just look like they're there to do a *job*... don't they also want to be my FRIENDS?);

(7) fully paved roads, with nary an orange cone in sight (good LORD I am tired of road construction!!!!!);

(8) fellow News;

and of course

(9) gays (at one point I happened onto a park literally littered with semi-nude gay men, sunbathing like penguins on rocks, see photo above. Made me giddy as a schoolgirl. Dubai may have Jumeirah Beach, but what I really crave is Underpants Beach. Boys, how I've missed you!!!).

Overall, the trip was a smashing success: the wedding was delightful (Mazel tov, M & J!!), the weather was perfect, and apparently, the children undergo head transplants for the exact duration of my travels because my stealth reporters tell me that the kids might as well have hailed from Stepford, they were so well-behaved and well-adjusted while I was away. (Let it surprise no one, however, that within 10 minutes of my return, one screaming banshee was being dragged outside onto the sidewalk by her ear. Come on, little people, is it ME that drives you to the brink of toddler insanity?? You can tell me, I can handle it. And trust me, I can EASILY arrange to be out of town more often, if that's what you NEED me to do...)

Other quick family updates: Daddy is in Greece on business; PopPop has vowed to hit the gym on a daily basis for the rest of his natural-born life (Wolverine, watch your back!); Sushi now presents us with weekly "art shows" of surprisingly impressive quality; Screamer has finally mastered the letter "C" (Princeton Admissions office, we're back on track); and Baby will be taking her first steps any day now.

And staff updates: Z-Man continues to worry about his family, who are among the millions fleeing the Taliban in the Swat Valley of Pakistan (yikes); Alice is gearing up to go home next month and visit her young 2 sons; and Julia may, or may not, be coming to the end of her brief employ with us (at some point, the aggravation of diffusing the children's misplaced aggression towards her outweighs her overall usefulness, ya know?). Stay tuned...

So thanks again for popping by. Even though I don't write as often as I should, you're always on my mind. ;) xo.

No Children + Idyllic Beaches + Perfect Weather... Need I Say More?

2009-05-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

Hello, how are you, I'm sorry it's been so long. This time, however, I actually have a semi-legitimate excuse: Daddy and I were on VAY. CAY. SHON. Our first!! vacation in more than 4 years. And there were nooooooooooooo children in attendance. So, as you can imagine, we could have vacationed in our local Starbucks and I probably would have been just as ecstatic at the prospect.

But instead of Starbucks, Daddy delivered something much, MUCH better-- he whisked me away to what *must* be one of the most visually spectacular locations on earth: the Maldives islands (where, come to think of it, there actually was no Starbucks at our resort, proving that even heaven could stand some improvements). He and I did just about *nothing* for THREE WHOLE DAYS and it was the most glorious boredom ever. Long live the overpriced cocktail and the perfectly-temperatured infinity pool!

I owe a tremendous portion of the thanks for the vacation to PopPop, who, with his self-annotated, seven-page, single-spaced handbook of Mommy-drafted instructions, held down the fort with magnificent ease (surely, the substantial pile of presents also helped; what toddler in her right mind can resist a good bribe when it's wrapped in shiny princess paper?). PopPop navigated sports classes, swimming lessons, and even the unheard-of event of a kid having to stay home sick from school... all without breaking a (visible) sweat. The daily reports he would send us over email were full of not only laugh-out-loud highlights from the children's day, but also, incredibly, assurances of order and tranquility that were believable enough to put my mind at ease. Thus, to the extent that my sanity has been restored (or, more realistically, returned to a temporarily functional state), it's all the work of Daddy with his masterful planning, unparalleled companionship, and boundless generosity; and PopPop with his even-keeled grandfathering style and selfless commitment to ensuring that his daughter and son enjoyed a few days of uninterrupted blissful rejuvenation. THANKS TO YOU BOTH FOR MY BEST VACATION EVER!!!

And now back to your regularly scheduled program: what else is new? Well, Baby has suddenly taken to her infant sign language DVD like a duck to water, and is delighting us all with her increasingly effective communication skills. Sushi's artwork has similarly been a source of great pride: even though she's only just turned 4, she can already sketch an entire scene complete with fully accessorized characters (the exaggerated eyelashes and the vertical hairdos get me every time) and surprisingly well-thought-out floor plans (ah, she might follow in Daddy's professional footsteps after all). Screamer has been making terrific progress with identifying all the letters of the alphabet (curiously, she is often stumped by the letter "C," what's up with that?) and has developed a melt-your-heart manner of telling you a story that has no discernible plot or ending (but one HECK of a lot of animation and enthusiasm!).

Alice and Julia's unlikely friendship is continuing to progress, which pleases me to no end... though I am embarrassed to admit that I am still, 6 weeks after poor Julia's arrival, having to openly discipline both Sushi and Screamer for giving her the cold shoulder-- or worse. Sometimes even Baby starts belligerently flapping her arms when she sees Julia on the approach, which is beyond mortifying for me. I only hope that my endless stream of positive reinforcement is doing *something* to mitigate the inevitable damage that the children's resistance must be having on her self-esteem.... yikes. (Which reminds me, if anyone has any advice as to how I can speed up the toddler-acclamation-to-a-new-nanny process, I'm all ears.)

Finally, The German is pretty much out of my life entirely-- I avoid her whenever possible and I respond to her ongoing text advances as politely but succinctly as I can-- and I become more enamored with The Australian at every playdate (my infatuation is tempered only by the recent news that her husband's job may require them to relocate to Abu Dhabi, which is an hour away... Curses!!)

Overall, we have few complaints, other than (1) the heat, which is spiking so dramatically that it's almost comical; (2) the American Idol finale (DON'T GET ME STARTED, unless your intent is to get me crying onto my computer keyboard); and (3) the fact that all good things-- or in this case, all good vacations-- must come to an end. Hey Daddy, let's not wait another 4 years before we plan our next escape. ;) xo

Better Late Than Never, Passover Edition

2009-05-10T01:03:00.000-07:00

So it all started with this "LIVESTRONG" type wristband that PopPop picked up somewhere. Without quoting it directly, let's just say that its message was something along the lines of "Support the Newish state." And let's just say that PopPop was wearing it around the house one day, and while it made me a little bit nervous, it turns out that it made Daddy a lot bit nervous.

The next day, when I commented to Daddy about the fact that PopPop had taken it off, Daddy expressed great relief. What do you care?, I said, defensively and looking-for-a-fight-ing-ly. And he went off about how PopPop really shouldn't even joke about wearing something like that out in public, because he's on Daddy's sponsorship, and if PopPop gets in trouble, then Daddy gets in trouble, and it's not like we're living in a country with freedom of speech or expression...

Suddenly I found myself in a panic. No freedom of speech... No freedom of expression... You can't even wear an inconspicuous wristband with a potentially controversial message on it? Things became clear in a way they hadn't before. Whereas at home in the US, my minivan bore a NOW bumper sticker that read, "Keep Abortion Legal", NOW, I was in a country where abortions *were* illegal. Illegal! And where it is technically against the law to be gay. And where you can't even joke about letting it be known that you are Newish. I started to sweat.

Daddy and I didn't speak to each other for the rest of the night: he was angry because I was acting as if this was news to me, how could I be so naive, why do I always have to rock the boat?; and I was angry because Daddy wasn't angry that our Newishness is something that-- in all seriousness, and not just for purposes of making the blog entertaining-- we have to actively hide here. I mean, I knew when I signed up for this that there aren't any synagogues in the UAE, but I didn't take into account that over time, being forced to conceal our identities would get harder instead of easier. I was getting sick of keeping this part of our family a secret, even in my own home.

So I festered and I sulked and I longed for the days when I could drag my kids to Friday night services even though I knew they were just going to goof off the whole time. It was still goofing off in the company of the News. I missed having a community that I could take for granted.

When I finally tried to break the ice with Daddy, what began as an apology for my hotheadedness turned into an outpouring of emotion... culminating in my unintentionally hurling this somewhat ill-conceived accusation: "And because we have to be here, this is the first year of my entire life that I didn't go to a Passover seder!"

And just like that, someone get a memo to Elijah, it was Passover in Dubai.

Daddy and PopPop and the girls all quickly got on board (the girls, perhaps under a bit of false pretense: I took out the calendar and said, "Look, kids, we didn't even realize that tonight is Passover! We have to hurry and get ready!") and we began scurrying about. While Daddy and PopPop went to the store for various ingredients and the girls began coloring Passover decorations that I downloaded from the internet, I officially cut the inaugural ribbon of my Cooking Experience and walked into the kitchen-- alone and with a culinary purpose-- for the very first time. Homemade matzah! (I agree with you that it didn't sound appealing but really, what were our other options, people.)

PopPop swore that I couldn't screw this up (flour + water = matzah) but he might have been giving me too much credit. I had no rolling pin (something tells me that this is not what the Crayola people had in mind when they invented washable markers, see first photo above) and my test matzah almost burned the house down (it seemed to me that the recipe called for the parchment paper to go into the oven, too, but maybe I was wrong? still unclear, see second photo). Eventually, I got the visuals somewhat right (third photo!), and after Daddy worked his magic in the kitchen (um, this was not *his* first attempt at cooking, so he had an unfair advantage, I believe), we were ready to sit down.

So what if our seder plate was a 4-year-old's computer-printed worksheet (fourth photo)... and the background music was a "Taste of Passover" album that I hurriedly purchased from iTunes (and which, it turns out, was just 14 different versions of the song "Dayenu")... and the kids both absentmindedly wandered out of the room while PopPop was doing his best to tell them a very G-rated version of the Passover exodus from Egypt. All that mattered was that we were sitting together, as a Newish family, dining on "matzah" under the dim light of the candles (giant, canary-colored, lemon-scented monstrosities, but whatever) and remembering to pause and appreciate our freedom as News in a way we never had before. And it was kinda cool to say "Next year in Jerusalem" and have the Promised Land be only a couple hundred miles away. News huddling in the desert. Like the good lord intended it! PopPop even said it was his best seder he's ever had... and I absolutely believed him. It was mine, too.

By the time the girls were ready to cover their eyes for the hiding of the Afikomen (photo five), we were one big pile of mushy, sentimental goop. Daddy laughed that this was probably the first time in history that the Afikomen was traded for dirhams. We took a family photo with Sushi holding a sign that read, "Passover in Dubai 2009," and I have a feeling it's a picture that will always make us smile.

It's still not easy to be Newish here. But because Daddy is the most wonderful husband in the world, for at least one night this place felt 100% like home. xo.

What's In, What's Out

2009-05-04T09:07:00.000-07:00

IN: The Australian!! (trust me, she's wonderful)

OUT: The German

IN: The American school

OUT: The international school

IN: eating dinners as a family in the dining room (thanks, Julia!)

OUT: breakfast cereal at the kitchen counter after the kids go to bed (though that does have its own irresistible charm, you have to admit)

IN: taking the car to pick up the kids after school (it's ALREADY over 100 degrees most afternoons, and it's barely May, heaven help us)

OUT: the adorable little red wagon

IN: watching entire seasons of shows in rapid succession on iTunes

OUT: reading books (come on, you knew it couldn't last)

IN: temporarily confiscating toddlers' precious loveys

OUT: time-out corners (it just wasn't working for us, Jo Frost, but we hella tried)

IN: stalking an American Idol contestant from afar (GO ADAM!!!)

OUT: acting like an adult

IN: swimming lessons, soccer lessons, playball lessons, ballet lessons

OUT: lethargy

IN: The Wizard of Oz, Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

OUT: Playhouse Disney (adios, Handy Manny, and your godforsaken talking toolbox)

IN: GOING HOME TO THE STATES FOR THE MONTH OF JULY!

OUT: abject terror at the thought of *voluntarily* taking 3 small children on a 20-HOUR flight (well, it's not OUT yet, but I'm optimistic that the sedatives-- mine-- will take effect soon...)

Hoping to see you then, U.S.-based friends!! xoxo

Breaking Up Via Text Message

2009-04-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

Ugh, I am really sorry. Have been getting emails from people asking what the HELL ever happened with The German and the party. And I'm so embarrassed that I didn't follow up on my last post in a timely fashion. I mean, there are acceptable cliffhangers, and then there are blatant attempts to drive people away from the blog by author inactivity. Apologies! Please come back!

So here's what happened. The day before the German party, I texted the husband: sorry to bother you, it appears your wife is not speaking to me, am wondering if we are we still invited? He, in what I took to be a cowardly move, did not reply. Then the next morning (party day!), I received the following text from The German herself:

"First of all, not smart move contacting [Husband]. He would never discuss my issues with somebody else! Second, I just realized that we are living in too different worlds, so I think it's better to stop this texting relationship and this being involved like before. That doesn't mean that I am not talking to you anymore... Third, the girls are still invited, sure. But if [Screamer] is still on [restricted] diet it will be difficult for her, there will be lots of candies all over the place."

From this I took the message that the *girls* were invited, but the girls only. So I did what any spineless combatant would do: I sent the kids to the party with Daddy, and then sat upstairs and watched the whole celebration unfold through my bedroom window. Daddy returned to report that, while The German went out of her way to say hello to the children standing at his side, she never uttered a single word to him. Aargh!

I was surprised when, the next day, I received this text from The German:

"Thanks for joining the party and thanks a lot for the great coloring books, the girls love them much, we already started today!"

I didn't know how to respond (an exclamation point??) so I didn't (good thing, too, as I later realized that this was her version of a thank you note). But I hoped she was waiting by the phone for a buzz that never came.

One week later it was time for Sushi's party in *our* backyard, to which The German's kids had been invited long ago. I started to sweat; would SHE show up at MY party?

Nope. She followed suit and sent *her* girls with *her* husband. In fact, I was shocked when she made a momentary appearance at the end of the party to collect the kids; I said nothing to her (but made sure she saw me in my fabulous hostess dress; she has otherwise only known me in some version of pajamas, I think).

Awkwardly, the present that she gave to Sushi was a bookbag from the international school that her kids attend; I quickly confiscated it, lest Sushi get confused about the likely change in enrollment plans. Then The German sent me this text the next day:

"Thanks for the party. I kept the invoice, just in case you need to change something. Maybe the girls can meet at the clubhouse pool some day?"

Was the ice thawing? I didn't care. At that point, I had gotten over feeling hurt and betrayed and had moved into feeling angry. PopPop had given me the great suggestion to start wearing my (prescription) sunglasses to the clubhouse, which made my frequent close encounters with The German there a lot easier to endure (for the most part, I pretended not to see her, despite the fact that behind the dark lenses, I was performing an endless and comprehensive scan of the entire property for any sign of her). Once she and I even bumped into each other while exiting adjoining bathroom stalls-- yikes!!-- good thing I was wearing my sunglasses even in there (and suffering near-blindness as a result, but sooo worth the inane fumbling around in the darkness).

Then yesterday, I almost fell off my chair when I received this final missive:

"Hi [Mommy], can't help it, I still care a lot for you... If you are still interested in nursery school for [Baby], it could be good timing to go to main school campus asap as they are filling the toddler classes. I got a spot... Good luck for you!"

So now the question: HOW DO I REPLY, IF AT ALL? I'm awaiting your sage advice... xo

I Should Be Sleeping Right Now BUT...!

2009-04-10T10:30:00.001-07:00

Family update post! Family update post! Are you as excited as I am? (Actually, I'm really so very tired. Made the mistake of taking some Tylenol PM last night *before* I checked with the kids to see if they were planning to wake me up 3 times during the night. They were. Do you have any idea how hard it is to repeatedly pull yourself out of a Tylenol PM coma??)

So ok, here we go. In no particular order...

SCREAMER - is potty trained! And has been for 2 weeks now. She put it off a bit longer than I had expected (Sushi was out of diapers at 27 months, whereas Screamer is 29 months, and it makes perfect sense to me that the children would hit all of their developmental milestones on the exact same dates) (you know, because I gave them Filofaxes at birth) (ahaha Filofaxes no one uses those anymore) but she really hit the road running. Hardly any accidents, yay!

SCREAMER Part II - spent 2 days in the hospital this week for dehydration. Picked up a stomach bug and absolutely couldn't shake it. Puked for so many days that her little frame seemed to be shrinking before our eyes, and when she lay down on the floor, I couldn't help but think of E.T. in that part of the movie where they found him all white and shriveled in the woods (see? I am still scarred by that movie to this day) (and to think that Daddy *dared* suggest we name one of our daughters Elliot) ("Ellllliiiiooooot"). The whole hospital experience was pretty miserable, even aside from the obvious misery of having a kid in a hospital bed trying to pull out her IV; I learned the hard way that

(a) there are very few actual American people in the "American Hospital" (uncomfortable moment: Mommy says to familiar-looking woman behind check-in desk, "Have to say I thought there'd be more Americans here." Woman who is clearly from New York or Connecticut responds, "Nope, not too many." Mommy smiles affectionately and says, "So it's just us, huh?" Woman raises eyebrows and replies, "Um, I'm from Palestine.");

(b) it is possible to receive completely contradictory medical advice from the doctors in the ER and the doctors who admit you to the hospital, which is not great for bolstering confidence in the medical care about to be administered; and

(c) I have the potential to transform into a raging lunatic when unable to track down a doctor-- ANY DOCTOR!!-- over the course of a 4-hour period (suffice to say that, at one point, I was standing at the nurses' station, Screamer limply on one arm and the IV stand in the other, loudly demanding that SOMEONE get the PRESIDENT of this HOSPITAL on the phone for me right NOW!!!). Thankfully, apart from the occasional mood swing (which I may indefinitely continue to attribute to imbalanced salt and sugar levels, just to give her the benefit of the doubt), as of today the Screamer is fully recovered. PHEW.

SUSHI - is very proud because she has just begun writing her name in both capital and lower case letters, having been previously *ruined* by a mother who first taught her how to write her name in ALL CAPS (this is her teacher speaking here, not me). Also, she is beginning to read-- really READ!-- simple words, which pleases me to no end. I am going to hammer her like crazy over these next 8 days before her birthday, just so that I can say with authority that "my daughter was reading at 3 years old!", an accolade that surely serves no purpose on this planet whatsoever other than making me feel like my stay-at-homing-ness has yielded some tangible reward.

BABY - *finally* started crawling a couple of weeks ago, after giving me fair reason to suspect that she might be happy just sitting on the floor for her entire life (then again, maybe her slight delay suggests intelligence instead of lethargy: after all, why waste energy crawling when you have Alice to carry you around 14 hours of the day?). Is also sleeping through the night. And thinks that a person jumping rope is cause for spastic fits of laughter. In case you were wondering what her comedy weakness is.

DADDY - is in Paris! On business. Because we can't all be globetrotters like he is. But if the kids are good, he is likely to "surprise" them with the "presents" of whatever schlock he can hurriedly gather from his first class airplane seat as he deplanes (last time, Sushi was ceremoniously presented with a United Airlines eye mask and tube socks). (Can't blame him for not spending actual money on presents, though, as Sushi is still talking about that ridiculous faux-satin eye mask long after I threw it out on principle.)

POPPOP - continues to put men half his age to shame with his muscled physique. Wears his iPod as habitually as a teenager. Lives in sunglasses reminiscent of Top Gun. I actually can't remember the last time I saw him wearing a shirt that did *not* have cut-off sleeves. But more power to him; the last time I exercised was September 18, 2007. For reals.

Z-MAN - celebrated his birthday this week. The kids and I made him a cake. He told us that this is the first time in his life-- !!!-- that anyone has formally acknowledged his birthday. So we all felt pretty good about the mini party we threw him in the kitchen... the guy could not have been smiling any more broadly than when the girls presented him with the big chocolate pile of frosting that boldly bore his name across the top.

And then there are a couple items of current events...

THE BAD NEWS - My friendship with our next-door neighbor, The German, has gone up in flames. IN FLAMES!! Here are the highlights of the story.

(1) Screamer is released from the hospital.

(2) Two hours later, the kids and I are playing quietly in our open-air garage.

(3) The German's children come tearing in, wielding chocolate bars and shoving them into my kids' hands. [NOTE: This happens with significant frequency. And it is not unheard of that they would just stroll into my house and begin rifling through my cabinets for snacks. THIS MAKES ME CRAZY. MOMMY DOES NOT LIKE UNINVITED VISITORS.]

(4) I pry the chocolate bar away from Restricted-Diet-Screamer, and then cheerfully go on to entertain The German's kids for the next 20 minutes by allowing them to draw all over my body with face paint.

(5) After the impromptu playdate ends (due to Sushi throwing an unholy fit over something or other and my having to drag her screaming up to her room), I send The German a text message to this effect, "Hi there, hey, could you or [your housemaid] just give me a heads-up before the kids come over? Sometimes it's not a good time and I feel bad sending them away." [NOTE: This is really the gist of what I wrote. I even rewrote it a few times to make sure it did not come off as overly inflammatory.]

(6) I then receive the following text message from The German (AND I QUOTE): "Don't worry they will not be coming over again ever. Sorry if you can't control your kids. I am not making calls to playdates on my street."

(7) My stomach lurches.

(8) I frantically send her a series of messages attempting to backtrack, making vague apologies, and generally trying to avoid incurring the wrath of this enormous person who is uncomfortably well-connected among the Important Moms To Know in Dubai and who lives a REALLY uncomfortable stone's throw from where I lay my head at night (and who ADMITS that she watches us through our windows!!!). She promptly replies (AGAIN, I QUOTE), "You stay in your place and there will be no need for fighting. You are way too hysterical. Do I need to change my phone number? I was always a friend and always defending you. But not any more, you crossed a line too much. Focus on your kids, that is all you are interested in." [NOTE: Is that supposed to be an insult?]

(9) Panicking (while at the same time FUMING), I make a last-ditch attempt to salvage the relationship by texting the suggestion that we stop writing for now, we're both getting carried away, let's try to work this out for the sake of our kids, who enjoy playing together. She then launches the final missle: "Backyard is big and kids are busy- they were happy before you moved here and they will be happy without your kids. Same to me."

(9) HOLY SH*T!!!

And if that wasn't bad enough, her kids' joint birthday party bonanza is TOMORROW in her BACK YARD. A few hours ago I sent a text to Mr. German, who we *thought* was a pretty level-headed and reasonable guy, asking if we are still invited. As of press time, there has been no reply....

[Postscript to The-German-Hates-Me Story: You know how I'd kinda resigned myself to sending Sushi and Screamer to the international school, even though I kinda really got a better vibe from the American school? Well maybe this is the sign I'd been waiting for; maybe we will end up sending Sushi to the American school just so I don't have to deal with seeing The German every day at dropoff and pickup; and maybe that will turn out to be the Best. Decision. Ever. and I will look back on this unpleasant incident and thank my lucky stars. Maybe.] [Or, maybe I will become a social pariah and wear dark shades and duck into my car whenever I absolutely have to leave the house. You know, like I did this morning.]

And now... THE GOOD NEWS! - It seems that we have FOUND A SECOND HOUSEMAID!! (Cue the stream of disgruntled expletives from all of my overworked and underappreciated stay-at-home-mom friends back in the USA.) We specifically chose her to interview because her classified ad declared her a good cook-- hence, I will refer to her as Julia (Child) unless a more nickname-worthy event takes place-- and she has been with us for a week now. I'm THRILLED to report that so far, Julia has been truly fantastic: she has been working overtime to earn the affection of Sushi and Screamer (not an easy thing to do); she hardly batted an eye at the unusual series of challenges presented by Spring Break + Screamer Illness; and she has just been generally lovely to be around (we even caught her and Alice sharing a giggle in the kitchen one evening, and our hearts were collectively warmed!). So this is the best best best news, because it opens up the possibility that I will be able to actually explore Dubai for a few hours a day without the kids in tow, perhaps even do some volunteer work somewhere, and not let this whole whirlwind experience pass me by in a haze of repetitive park visits and frozen dinners and bedtime rituals, all of which I will have plenty of time to do when we get back to the States. Hooray!

Alright, since Daddy is away I have no one to proofread this for me. Thus, I apologize in advance for any typos or disjointed sentences; am gonna post it anyway. And if there are any parts that don't make sense, just blame the Tylenol PM. xo.

She's a Mommy, Too.

2009-04-02T10:45:00.001-07:00

Uuuuugh, something kinda sad just happened.

All day long, Alice has been walking around with this pouty face on. And of course, because I am a neurotic narcissist, I assume that it's because of something I did. (This is not entirely unfounded: she got really pissed at me last week for requesting that she come back to the house after she mistakenly thought I'd given her an extra day off, and she sent me a text that literally said the following: "Mam, if you think that I made mistake b'coz of this you can cut my job. I have nothing to do if [Daddy] get upset to me. Maybe I'm not the right one that you need inside the house. I do everything my best already. Thanks." I almost fell over upon receiving it; who knew that mild-mannered Alice had it in her?) So anyway, she's moping around and I'm feeling worse and worse about it and I keep asking her what's wrong and she keeps saying nothing. And I have to tell you, it began to feel like true family dysfunction. When we first moved here I had no idea-- no idea!!-- that having "domestic help" live with us would be SO. MUCH. WORK. I mean, emotionally, it's suuuuuuper draining. And maybe it's just me-- I admit that I'm pretty thin-skinned when it comes to interpersonal dynamics-- but seriously, in these 4+ months since our arrival, I've already expended an inordinate amount of energy (a) worrying about whether the "staff" is happy here; (b) contemplating whether I am a cool enough "madam;" and (c) mediating the staff's relationship with one another. In fact, it often feels like I have 5 kids instead of 3 that I'm responsible for tucking into bed at night, and I mean that in the least condescending, most maternal-instinct-y way possible.

So anyway, I keep asking and Alice keeps blowing me off and then finally the day is over and, just as I'm about to check if she needs me to drive her to the supermarket for some food, she goes into her bedroom (depressingly located right off the laundry room, though it should be noted that I did once offer her a larger room upstairs near ours) and she pretty much closes the door in my face. So I knock and she opens it a crack and I hear her crying and I stand out there and ask, about 6 times, if she will please open the door. She eventually does, and I beg her to tell me what's wrong, saying that whether she likes it or not she's my closest friend here and it breaks my heart to see her this way. After much sniffling and stalling she finally starts talking...... though about what, I unfortunately cannot say. See, when Alice gets emotional, her English gets even more broken... so when, at one point, she said to me through a blur or tears, "Do you understand?", I had to shake my head regretfully and say, "No." Awkward.

But I did ultimately get the gist of it (I *think*), which is that she suspects that her husband back in the Philippines is screwing around on her, and that he is also frivolously spending the money that she sends home every month for their two sons. I didn't know WHAT the hell to say to that ("Men are jerks!" ? or "I'm sure you're wrong!" ? or "Here's a loan!" ?) so I just went with, "If you need to go back to the Philippines for a few days and deal with stuff, just tell me and I will arrange it" (even though I was screaming at her with my eyes, "PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME HERE WITH THESE CHILDREN, I DON'T KNOW HOW TO TAKE CARE OF THEM"). But what really got me was the end of the conversation: she wiped her cheeks and quietly said, "Sometimes I see you with your family and you are so happy and I think, 'I am so jealous of that.'" And suddenly I was keenly aware of how incredibly blessed I am to be able to kiss my children goodnight and watch them taking their very first steps and help them prepare for their first days of school... whereas poor Alice is missing out on ALL of that with her two children. For YEARS and YEARS at a time. Instead, she has to watch *my* kids take their first steps and get ready for school and get kissed goodnight by *their* mommy. Which pains me to imagine, and makes me realize that the world can be a very cold place, for an awful lot of people.

As PopPop says at times like these, "Obviously housemaids and drivers are people just like us-- the difference is, we were born lucky."

Ok, so what are you waiting for, lucky person? Go and kiss your kids. xo.

We Can Kiss, But Only If My Lawyer Is Present.

2009-03-31T10:12:00.000-07:00

Hi! Sorry I have been out of touch; we have been busy serving as seriously lousy hosts to some visiting friends (other than washing my hair before their arrival-- which is something!--I'm not sure I put any significant effort into making their visit more enjoyable; I blame the children's spring break from school for sapping me of my energy and inspiration!). But I have been meaning to follow up on my previous “law and order” post; you would not *believe* what happened to some friends of mine here. This story is entitled, “There But For the Grace of God Go I.”

So this couple I know, they got into a little bit of trouble with the law. Thus, by the powers vested in me by the state of Blog, I hereby pronounce them "Bonnie and Clyde."

(Note: This story was told to me personally by Clyde; however, my ears were hearing it through the haze of a deceptively potent Cosmopolitan. So apologies in advance to Bonnie and Clyde—who are readers of the blog!—if I miss or screw up important details. Here’s the story as well as I remember it, now that the hangover has worn off.)

Ok. So Bonnie and Clyde go out with their friends, whom we will call Loverboy (a Canadian) and Lovergirl (an American), for drinks one night. Many drinks. Loverboy and Lovergirl are dating; Bonnie and Clyde are married. At some point, the couples part ways. Loverboy and Lovergirl get into a cab. Bonnie and Clyde get into another cab. Clyde sends Loverboy a text message to the effect of, “Let’s now go to X party.” Loverboy responds with this text message: “Love to. But I’ve just been arrested.” And he punctuates it with a sad face emoticon, you know, because he just wanted to make clear that this was an unhappy development.

Several more text messages are exchanged, during which Clyde learns that the following events took place: Loverboy and Lovergirl may or may not have been canoodling in the back of the taxi. The taxi cab is pulled over. NOT by a policeman. But by a UAE CITIZEN—an all-powerful Emirati (whom Clyde refers to as a “National”). Emirati families make up only a small percentage of the population here relative to the kajillions of expatriates, but they are afforded all sorts of privileges simply by virtue of the fact that they are natives to this country (for example, a law was recently passed declaring that Emiratis cannot lose their jobs in a financially-driven employee layoff; Emiratis can only be fired for cause). Furthermore, Emiratis can legendarily get away with almost anything on the roads-- speeding, cutting people off, etc.-- and are conveniently identifiable by their license plates: Emiratis have single, double, or triple digit license plate numbers (i.e., A 26) whereas mine, by contrast, has a letter and 5 digits (translation: go ahead, run me off the road, I’m a nobody here, I have no connections!).

Ok, so back to the story. An Emirati man waves the taxi over to the side of the road. He then opens the door of the taxi and starts yelling at the couple something like, “You are disgusting! Do that in your own country! You have offended me and my wife! I have called the police!” Soonafter, the police show up, and the couple is arrested.

Not sure about Lovergirl, but Loverboy is charged with the following 3 offenses:

(1) Public Drunkenness (You are legally allowed to consume alcohol in hotel-affiliated bars, but the minute you step outside the establishment, you are now technically in violation of the public drunkenness law. Nice!)

(2) Inappropriate Public Display (canoodling, which Loverboy denies took place; he is sticking to the story that he was merely “smelling her hair”) (ahaha)

and here’s the crazy one:

(3) Adultery, even though NEITHER PERSON WAS MARRIED. Here in the UAE, it is considered “adultery” for a man and a woman who are not married TO EACH OTHER to be found alone in a secluded area. As Paris would say, Loves it!

Ok, so at this point in the story, it's pretty late and Loverboy is in the clink. Clyde says, sit tight, I will figure out how to spring you in the morning. (Long night for Loverboy ensues, I would imagine.)

Next day, Clyde prepares to orchestrate Operation Smooch. He dresses up in a fancy sportsjacket and grabs his fancy briefcase. He and Bonnie hop in the car to take a morning drive to jail.

Pulling up to the jailhouse, Clyde wonders aloud whether Bonnie should stay in the car. She is agreeable to staying put. Clyde goes into the jail and takes a seat at a counter not unlike the DMV.

Speaking to the guy behind the counter, Clyde is given a bit of a runaround regarding Loverboy’s likelihood of getting out that day—something about the magistrate not being in the office over the weekend, and how it would be at least 2 days until Loverboy could be sprung. “Go speak to the guy in Office 12,” says desk guy to Clyde. So Clyde gets up and goes into a crowded room looking for Office 12, at which point he is confronted by an angry guy with a Breathalyzer. “Blow into this,” says Breathalyzer officer. Panic!, says Clyde's internal monologue, wondering if there could possibly be any alcohol remaining in Clyde's system from the previous night. He attempts to blow into the device but can't get it on the first few tries, having had no previous Breathalyzer experience (you'd think this would be a plus, but instead the officer warns, “Stop messing around or I will arrest you.” Yikes!). Clyde finally gets the machine to register: 0.02%. At which point the officer says politely, “Would you like us to take care of your car for you?””

And just like that:

CLYDE

PUT

JAIL,

TOO.

Can you stand it??

Meanwhile poor Bonnie, sitting out in the car-- in her words: “playing with the windows, trying to get the cross-breeze right”-- gets this text from Clyde: “In jail.” (No accompanying sad face emoticon, which I think only goes to support the case for Clyde's sobriety.)

Long story short(er), Clyde pretends he took a cab to the station and by text message, sends Bonnie home (presumptively, in the hopes of avoiding a Seinfeld-finale-type scenario in which everyone they know ends up behind bars). Bonnie begins frantically calling everyone she knows, desperate to find someone—anyone!—who has not had a drop to drink in the past 2 days and can go surrender his or her passport to the jail as Clyde’s bond. She finds a stone sober friend, that guy goes to the jail, and minutes later, Clyde is a free man. Clyde later said that his half-day behind bars was more than a little bit scary: instead of even a semi-private jail cell, he was tossed into a jam-packed room of about 40 possibly violent criminals-- at which point Clyde tried to stay out of further trouble by fastidiously reading the newspaper and sending text messages (not unlike my own mornings, come to think of it.)

Sadly, the story did not come so quickly to an end for Loverboy, who ended up spending more than 48 hours in jail... all for kissing his date! Both Loverboy and Clyde have future “court dates,” however, so this sordid tale of international intrigue may not be over yet. Stay tuned…

(And for heaven's sake, if you have the freedom to do it, go make out with your sweetheart in public. Do it for us. Do it for Loverboy!)

Law and Order, Dubai Style

2009-03-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

A tabloid-y newspaper here called "7 Days" recently ran a story entitled, "Top 10 Laws to Remember." Here they are, some more interesting than others, reproduced in part by little old transcriber moi...

#1 - "License to Imbibe" - "We all know about those places you can go to buy alcohol if you don't have a liquor license, but the fact of the matter is that, if you want to enjoy a few drinks in Dubai, you should really have a 'red card.'"

(Editorial note: Daddy is currently in the process of trying to get us a liquor license so that we can legally have wine at the house if/when we have to entertain work people, but it's such a production; just today I got a call from the liquor authorities saying that Daddy's application has been rejected because it is missing a signature from his company representative. Sheesh, Daddy, hurry up: THESE CHILDREN ARE DRIVING ME TO DRINK.)

#2 - "Crimes of Cohabitation" - "It's one that is not often enforced, but since we're talking about laws to remember, it seems fitting to mention the one that outlaws unmarried couples living together . . . . If you are worried about the risk, . . . the choice is to go and get married, or live apart."

(Editorial note: Sucks for college kids.)

#3 - "Illegitimate Bumps" - "Getting pregnant if you are not married is a big no-no here. If you are having your prenatal checkups at a government hospital, you will be asked for your marriage certificate when you register. If you are at a private clinic, you won't have to show your marriage certificate until the baby is born. Either way, you need to have that crucial piece of paper before giving birth here, or you could end up with more than sleepless nights."

(Editorial note: SERIOUSLY?? What if the guy knocks you up but won't marry you?)

#4 - "Remain Orderly" - "Drinking in public view (unless you are at a licensed venue or event) is illegal, so don't take your six-pack down to the creek for a sundowner. Being drunk and disorderly in public is against the law no matter where you are."

(Editorial note: Just ask those Brits who were famously drunk and hooking up on the beach.)

#5 - "Keep the Loving in Check" - "Holding hands is nice and won't land you in any trouble, but think twice before kissing, hugging and other displays of affection. It may be acceptable in some places (like in airport lounges), but it has known to get people into bother, particularly if the hugging and kissing is on the more amorous side. Beware in nightclubs: a seemingly innocent kiss, even between married couples, can result in a bouncer giving you a warning."

(Editorial note: Hugging??)

#6 - "Bounce into Jail" - "Whereas in other countries, bouncing a check is usually seen as a civil offense (unless you are found to be doing it frequently and fraudulently), here in the UAE it is a criminal offense and can result in jail time."

(Editorial note: This doesn't worry me as much, seeing as we don't have a bank account here yet. In fact, I haven't handled a check since November '08.)

#7 - "Don't Have One for the Road" - "It goes without saying that drinking and driving is illegal. But what many people fail to understand is that there is no such thing as a safe, legal limit when it comes to drinking and driving here. Even a sip of wine or a strong brandy pudding can put you over the limit, because the limit is zero. If you are driving, you should stick to soft drinks."

(Editorial note: "Hello, Dad? I am in jail. When they pulled me over, my blood / brandy pudding level was 0.8%.")

#8 - "Over the Counter but Outside the Law" - "Codeine is widely available in over the counter medications in countries like the UK, and Temazepam is a commonly prescribed sleep aid. However, they are illegal substances in the UAE, and possessing them could result in arrest. You can't buy them here, but it's a good idea to tell your overseas visitors not to stock up . . . before they arrive. If they do need these medications, they should carry a doctor's prescription, translated into Arabic if possible."

(Editorial note: I will go to prison before I unhand my TylenolPM!!)

#9 - "Respect Ramadan" - "In the UAE, it is illegal to eat, drink, or smoke in public view during Ramadan fasting hours. 'In public view' includes your car, the beach, and even the gym. You should not chew gum either. Many restaurants have closed off sections where you can eat lunch out of sight, and most offices set up an area where non-Muslims can eat and drink during the day."

(Editorial note: Unlawful gum chewing??)

#10 - "Look Mum, No Hands"- "It's one of the most widely flouted laws in the history of the legal system, but it is absolutely illegal to drive while talking on your mobile."

(Editorial note: Oops.)

So there they are... did any of them surprise you?

I Never Knew I Could Hate a Grape

2009-03-18T10:17:00.000-07:00

So this post might not have much to do with Dubai, but something affected me today and I wanted to share it.

This morning I attended the first session of a pediatric first aid course. The training took place in the living room of a friend's friend. All of us there were the mothers of young children. All of us appeared to be in our early thirties. For what it's worth, all of us were white (not sure what that has to do with our first aid aptitude, but it struck me as interesting; draw your own conclusions, if any, as to the sociological significance therein). All of us, as evidenced by the rapt attention displayed on our faces, were familiar with the nagging parental refrain: What if?, and What would I do?

As the instructor, a local paramedic, was setting up the powerpoint projector, she raised her eyes momentarily and asked, "Which one of you recently had the choking child?" A woman sitting across from me, attractive, well-dressed, and holding a baby boy on her lap, sheepishly gestured with her hand. "Well everyone in Dubai is talking about it," said the paramedic matter-of-factly. "So can you tell us a little bit about what happened?" And then she went right back to connecting extension cords and rebooting her computer, oblivious to the way she had just left this poor woman dreadfully exposed in front of all of us strangers.

The story began casually enough: Her 3-year-old son was eating some grapes before dinner. It was a Friday (which is a weekend day here), so her husband was home (thank goodness, she said). She left the kitchen momentarily, and when she returned, she saw the boy struggling to swallow. "But you never know how serious they are..." she explained tentatively. [My brow furrowed in empathy, and I felt a flash of shame in realizing that I now routinely dismiss Sushi's daily pseudo-medical complaints as frivolous ploys for attention.] The woman tried banging the little boy on the back but it wasn't working. Ok, this was no joke. She screamed for her husband, and his banging on the back wasn't working, either. The little boy continued to struggle. She frantically called for an ambulance. The person on the phone was asking for directions. ASKING FOR DIRECTIONS. They tried the Heimlich Maneuver but didn't know how to administer it to a child. The boy was turning blue. AND THE AMBULANCE DID NOT COME. The woman started pounding on neighbor's doors, begging for help. The boy was now bleeding from the mouth. Still there was no ambulance. At this point, the husband managed to dislodge the grape enough that the boy was beginning to make some groaning sounds, but the grape remained in the boy's mouth, as he was clenching his jaw. Fifteen minutes later, the ambulance arrived. The driver asked the woman which hospital she wanted them to drive to. Tests were done at the hospital. The diagnosis: brain damage. But the doctors would not know the extent of the brain damage until further tests could be performed.

As I sat there listening to the story, I wept, and I wept. To the point where I was a little bit embarrassed. And I am not a person who gets all mushy and emotional at the slightest thing; in fact I pride myself on my cynicism. Yet this woman was tearing my heart out. Because christ, how many times have I turned my back on the children while they were eating. And hell, I stopped cutting Sushi's grapes in half ages ago; at 3 years old, she just seems so... grown up, relatively speaking... and it doesn't even *occur* to me to treat her like a little kid anymore. This could have been *my* story. The woman was just like me. This could have been *my* kid. Turning blue. Christ. I was terrified.

By the time the woman finished the story, she, too, was crying, as were a few of the other moms. Apparently there is a happy ending: the boy seems to have fully recovered, and the brain damage, I guess, never materialized.

But I was shattered. Aside from the obvious cautionary aspect of the story, there were so many realizations in her tale that unnerved me: Hello, I live in a country where the ambulance DOES NOT COME. I live in a country where you have to have enough wits about you, while watching your child turning BLUE, to give someone on the phone DIRECTIONS. I live in a country where the emergency operator takes your street address but can offer you no medical assistance, does not make any effort to walk you through a layperson's rescue whilst you wait for help to arrive.

Meanwhile, the paramedic was doing little to allay my fears: It's true, she said, that you cannot necessarily rely on the ambulance. It's not like other countries, where an ambulance is dispatched from the closest hospital; here, you get an ambulance from one of the main public hospitals, regardless of how far away, unless you specifically call the direct phone number of a closer clinic. She even recommended that, if there is someone else at home during the emergency, that person should stand outside the house and attract as much attention as possible to assist the ambulance driver in finding the house. Like, jump up and down. And she warned that often, the drive to the hospital, especially in rush hour traffic, can take an hour at least.

I felt overwhelmed and defeated. In the States, all my life I had just taken for granted that, in an emergency, qualified help would be at my doorstep within minutes. And now? All that security had been taken away. The chill crept up my spine: In an emergency, we could be on our own. *I* could be on my own.

In spite of myself, I kept sneaking occasional glances at the woman throughout the 3 hour lesson. How was she able to regain her composure, after what she had most recently been through? And didn't it freak her out to hear from the instructor that "everyone in Dubai" was talking about her crisis? Did she feel like we were all watching her, evaluating her? And was it just my imagination, or did the paramedic take particular care in walking this woman through the practical portion of the lesson, as in-- I'd better make sure she gets it; this lady has already failed as a parent once... ?

It bothered me throughout the entire class that this woman had involuntarily been put on the spot to discuss such a private ordeal. Especially because we all know how mothers just LOVE to judge one other. So when the class was over, I made a point of approaching her. "Excuse me," I said, "but I just wanted to say that I think you're a real hero. Saving your child like that, without help... No mother should have to see what you saw, and you should be so proud of yourself for holding it together." The woman's eyes welled with tears. "It was all my husband's doing," she said. "No," I assured her, "you're a hero in my book." She smiled appreciatively and said, "You wonder, if something *had* happened, and he had not made it, would I have spent the rest of my life saying, 'I should have...' and 'I shouldn't have...'?" And I strongly felt, from the look in her eyes, that the rest of that thought was, "And for the rest of my life, would people have been looking at me like, there's the woman who let her son choke to death?" I didn't know what to say. Because we both knew that the answer to both questions was yes.

And you wanna know one last crummy thing? Tonight, at dinner, I left the kids alone while they were eating their chicken. I wandered in and out of the room, listening to them goofing around, checking my email, texting the neighbor. I wasn't watching them. The paramedic said that children don't thoroughly chew their food until age FIVE. And yet there were my 2- and 3-year-olds, jumping around unattended with food in their mouths and making each other laugh. It's as if the complacency had already crept right back in and reclaimed the comfy spot where it's been living these past 4 years since I became a parent.

In my defense, I will venture this one theory: Maybe I didn't retain the full traumatic impact of that woman's story because I simply... couldn't. Maybe, in the same way that they say you "forget" the pain of childbirth (or so I hear-- I'm a 3-time c-section champion, myself), maybe mothers have to "forget" the vivid fantasy that a fatal accident could happen to their own children, or else they would be unable to parent. Maybe, if you let the choking stories and the drowning stories and the car crash stories run too many circles around your head, you lose the ability to live in the everyday world-- maybe you become so morbidly fixated on the "What if?"s that you become ineffective in processing the "What next?"s and the "I love you!"s and the "Hurry up and get in the bath!"s. I don't know how else to explain why I wandered in and out of the room while the kids were eating tonight.

But I'm sure as hell going to pay attention in class again tomorrow. I do know that.

I Have a Headache THIS BIG...

2009-03-13T10:43:00.001-07:00

Ok, first I just have to vent for a minute. Because I have been doing "bedtime" with the kids for over TWO HOURS now. And the best part is, every night, it's something different, a different kid, a different issue. Tonight it was the baby. Screaming whenever I even tried to bring her up to her room. As soon as I took her out of her room, it was all coos and smiles and laughter. I offered her food, I offered her drink, I offered her Tylenol, I offered her play, I offered her cuddles, but she would not go to sleep. I have no idea why this time-- the 73rd attempt, probably-- worked. She is quiet, my head is pounding, and I am asking myself once *again* WHY oh WHY did you have SO MANY CHILDREN SO CLOSE TOGETHER. (For those who are keeping track, the eldest kid is turning 4 next month... I have been away from the children for a total of 6 days over those 4 years... this means that I am more-or-less coming up on my *1,460th* consecutive day of having between 1 and 3 children howling directly into my ear at alarmingly close range and in an impossibly high pitch. And if you don't think that's enough to drive a sane person slowly but surely insane, then I invite you to come over to my house and stay for a while.)

Alright. Now I feel at least a little better (though apparently blogging about aggravation does little to ease the physical manifestations thereof; my shoulder is pinched so tight at this moment that I can hardly turn my head). On to bigger and better things.

Well, Daddy returned from his trip. Obvious revelry ensued. (Mostly because now I have another set of hands around the house into which to shove a child and bark, "TAKE THIS OUTSIDE.") Sushi greeted him with her usual tactless "What did you bring me?", but when she followed it up with, "I was sooo good while you were away!", I could not help but break out into maniacal laughter. (My favorite episode during his absence: Sushi was throwing a colossal fit. The baby was asleep. I dumped the writhing, screeching Sushi in her room and, after about 7 unsuccessful attempts to get her to stay put so that I could get poor Screamer into bed, I locked Sushi's door from the outside [a curious feature of the middle eastern architecture that is near-impossible to resist at desperate moments like these] and said I would be back in five minutes if she would JUST. STOP. CRYING. Always the resourceful one [read: manipulative liar], Sushi opened her second-story bedroom window, leaned OUT of it, and screamed down to Z-Man's ground floor bedroom, "HELP! I need HELP! I accidentally locked myself in my room! Please come up here! QUICK!" Which of course sent him tearing up the stairs in a sweaty panic, only to be stopped firmly in his tracks at the top of the staircase by the death rays shooting out of my eyes. Good times.)

What else. Well, I went on a tour of the American school where Sushi was accepted (Screamer's application would not even be considered there, due to the birthdate issue), JUST to be sure that the international school for both of them was the way to go. And I have to say, I was momentarily comforted by the apple pie names punctuating the artwork in *this* hallway: "Ethan," "Madison," "Jeanne," and "Taylor," to name a few. That said, the tour guide told me that even the American schools teach Arabic (the Ministry of Education apparently *requires* that both Arabic and "Islamic culture" be taught to all students over a certain age), and I reminded myself that my kids will have plenty of time to hang with white kids whenever we return to the US. Thus, barring some upset regarding the baby's nursery school prospects (there's a chance that in the fall she could *squeeze* off the waitlist at the conveniently located nursery where Screamer and Sushi presently attend, but only if Screamer stays there another year and maintains Baby's "sibling priority"), I'm thinking that we're heading into an "international" school experience. (Go on, tell me what a big person I am!) (No, really, tell me, so I don't chicken out.)

Other things. Today we had a "trial day" with a second housemaid candidate, whom I will refer to as "Lucille." She was far from an unknown quantity, as we usually have to contend with during these interviews; rather, Lucille works at the house right across the street from us, but her employer guy just lost his job and is taking his family home to Japan. Lucille wants to stay in this neighborhood and so has been lobbying us aggressively for the second maid position. My problems with Lucille, now confirmed after having spent the day with her, are these: (1) She is bossy; (2) She is old (love me, love my ageism); (3) She is insensitive (when Baby took a faceplant while sitting on the carpet amongst her toys, Lucille reluctantly picked her up and mumbled, "She'll just have to learn"); and (4) She is too alpha female to play second fiddle to Alice, who was here first and should be allowed, I believe, to remain the dominant housemaid. (ahaha who ever could have guessed I'd find myself in a position where I would have to oversee the delicate interpersonal dynamics of a "primary" housemaid and "secondary" housemaid.) This means, of course, that it's back to the drawing board (or bulletin board, as the classified ad case may be) for me. (CONFIDENTIAL NOTE TO THE UNIVERSE: PLEASE SEND ME A SUITABLE SECOND HOUSEMAID SOON. IF I HAVE TO TAKE THESE KIDS TO THE SAME BORING SANDBOX PARK ONE MORE TIME, I MAY RESORT TO EATING A BUCKET OF SAND JUST TO BREAK UP THE MONOTONY.)

Ok, well, I can't think of anything else of interest, and I should probably get some sleep while it's still quiet around here (heaven only knows how long this precarious truce between the children and me will last). So I wish you good evening, and hope that, wherever you are in the world, *your* little rugrats aren't also giving you The Treatment. Sweet dreams...

School Update...

2009-03-10T10:02:00.001-07:00

The girls were both accepted to the international school! This, despite Screamer's non-qualifying birthdate, and the fact that there were apparently only 10 available spots in Sushi's entire grade level! They got in!!

Gulp.

World Issues, Nursery Schools, Same Difference.

2009-03-08T22:38:00.000-07:00

So the kids have been going to these school interviews. Because Sushi is about to outgrow the nursery that she and Screamer presently attend, and I would like to keep them together if possible. But where to send them? There are a kajillion schools around here, but most of them boast long waitlists and competitive assessment processes. Also, there's a whole bevy of international flavors to choose from-- do you want your kids to go to a British school? French school? International school? American school?

When we first contemplated the move to the UAE, I took it as a foregone conclusion that the girls would attend an American school. My instinct was to keep them as insulated as possible and to surround them with only familiar things and people. Then we got in with The German, and PopPop became best friends with a Muslim from Pakistan, and I began to think that we had spoken too soon. Maybe the international school was a better choice for us-- even putting aside the fact that it is located a very convenient 15 minutes away (as opposed to many of the other schools, which require at least 30-45 minutes in the car each way). Perhaps we should embrace this opportunity, I reasoned with myself, and set an early precedent with the kids that all people are created equal. 'Cuz lord knows, if I've learned one thing from being here, it's that prejudices are learned early and then, once situated, they are awfully hard to rid oneself of. On both sides of the fence, so to speak.

With this logic in mind, I launched an aggressive campaign to get the girls into the international school where The German sends her kids. It was going to take a little bit of romancing, because Screamer's birthday falls just short of the age cutoff and the vast majority of schools wouldn't even entertain the conversation. But fortunately, the principal of the international school agreed to meet with us (I'm sure it had *nothing* to do with the obnoxious number of times I dropped the name of an Ivy League alma matter into the letter that I wrote her in advance.)

To my immense relief, during their interviews both kids performed like the well-rehearsed show ponies that they are, and the principal was visibly impressed. Yay!!! I was just about to kick off my high heels (that morning my feet had kinda looked at me, after about 4 straight years in sneakers, like, Dude.) and skip wildly out onto the playground in celebration... when.

Passing through the corridor, I ignored the colorful artwork that would usually preoccupy me so that I could focus on the children's names adorning one of the classroom doors. Gone were the "Billy" and "Jane" of yesteryear (or, more accurately, "Moishe" and "Rebecca"-- we had sent the girls to a Newish nursery back in the States), and in their places were the following (see photo above):

Wedad

Hessa

Shayan

Sam

Ali

Jomana

Nour

Syeda

Malak

Shaliz

Mazen

Saqr

Khalil

Nasser

Elaia

Hazem

Fatima

Stuart (!! Stuart! Stuart Goldstein, is that you??) (no. but I'll take it.)

Suddenly the school didn't seem so much "international" as it did "middle eastern." And it *certainly* didn't help that, as I happened to be standing there taking these unauthorized pictures, the teacher behind the door was loudly conducting an apparent lesson in Arabic. Now, Daddy had advised me that most of the schools here taught a little bit of Arabic, as is certainly their right (this news had initially reduced me to instantaneous tears-- if you're not Newish I don't think you could fully understand my visceral reaction-- my children had just gotten to the point where some Hebrew words were becoming second nature to them, and now not only would their burgeoning Hebrew vocabulary fall heavily into disuse, but it would be replaced by a language that I had previously only known as the language of my ancestral enemies), but even with the warning I don't think I was prepared for what I was hearing. It wasn't, "Ok, class, the word for 'dog' in Arabic is ___. Can you repeat ___?" No, it was an entire fluid conversation in Arabic, the likes of which I had honestly only heard before from passersby in the malls and when flipping through the Arabic channels on tv. My heart leapt into my throat. How could I preserve my daughters' fledgling Newish identities when they would be learning Arabic in school, there is nary a single synagogue in the entire country, and even in our own home I felt stifled in doing Newish things, lest we be discovered by the driver or the housemaid?

It was a long drive home (no, wait, I just told you that it was only a 15 minute drive. but it felt much longer). I felt a tug of war taking place between my heart-- which warned me that being Newish is a delicate gift, especially in a world in which so many, many hateful people would be more than happy to stomp all over it-- and my head-- which reprimanded me for being so closed-minded as to assume that the children's Arab classmates might wish them harm, or that a few words learned in Arabic would have any lasting effect. (Hell, I only remember about 6 words in French, and I took 4 years of it in high school.) It was the exact inner collision that I experienced when The German asked me, a few months ago, if I had any baby clothes to donate to the school's Gaza relief effort. On the one hand, yes! goodness! of *course* I wanted to help out all the innocent children who were affected by the Israeli military operation! And I really did! I found the whole saga to be utterly heartbreaking! But on the other hand, it gave me a momentary feeling of ick to imagine one of my daughters' sweet little miniature pink teddy bear onesies being worn by a kid who could possibly grow up actively hating the News just as her parents did and maybe their parents before them. I wondered, would those Gazans even *want* to put their baby in the hand-me-down clothes of a Newish kid? I honestly wasn't sure.

(Side note: I never did make the donation, despite my sincere intentions to do so. The German had only given me one day's notice, and I had not had the time to open up the boxes and dig for the clothes that the baby had outgrown. Now certainly one could ask, might I have *made* the time, had the relief effort been for Israeli children?? I truly, *truly* don't know the answer to that question. Or maybe I just don't want to know.)

Which brings me to today: I am waiting to hear if the girls were accepted to the international school. And you know what? If they get in, I believe we're going to send them there. At least to try it. I think it would be good for us-- all of us, Daddy and PopPop and me included-- to experience it. If the kids feel uncomfortable or we feel uncomfortable (or if we make others feel uncomfortable!) then we can always change course. Nothing is forever. Hopefully not even the centuries-old stalemate between the Arabs and the News. Hey, it's gotta start somewhere. Man in the mirror, people! ahaha that guy on American Idol sucked. ahaha a little levity to wrap this up. Ok, gotta go. Wish us luck. More soon. xo.

The Kids Want a Camel

*EPILOGUE*

Searching for the Bright Side.

Spoiler Alert! Stop Reading If You Don't Want to Know How It Ends.

Happy New Year.

A Welcome Reassurance.

Little Miss Unpopular.

Sex and The City 2: An Insider's Take.

The Silver Linings.

Rock On, Kinokuniya Book Store

Update to the Update.

Blaming the Victim.

This School Exercise is Rated PG-13.

A Slight Contradiction...

South African Safari Photos

FAMILY UPDATE.

Passover Follow-Up.

And They Said It Couldn't Be Done (And By "They" I Mean "I")

All Knocked Up and Nowhere to Go

"Forbidden Love"... and Other Unpleasant Euphemisms for Gay

Flat Stanley Comes to Dubai!

Fantastic video!

Dubai: Still Standing!

The Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi

Movies, as The Good Lord Intended Them.

Post Script to Obama Entry

Consider Me Culturally Understood.

Barack Obama, as Viewed by the Middle East

A Familiar Holiday

Family Update.

Julia = History.

Our Toybox Goes International: It's Barbie, UAE style

ESSAY: What I Did Over My Summer Vacation (a.k.a., The Long Road to Lambert)

Eid Mubarak! (May You Enjoy a Blessed Festival)

Ramadan Kareem

Yay! and Boo!

Wake Me When It's Over.

Yay, It's Over.

I Went to the USA for My Summer Vacation and All I Got Were These Lousy Cavities

A Lambertastic USA Homecoming

Underpants Beach, and Other Things You Won't Find in Dubai

No Children + Idyllic Beaches + Perfect Weather... Need I Say More?

Better Late Than Never, Passover Edition

What's In, What's Out

Breaking Up Via Text Message

I Should Be Sleeping Right Now BUT...!

She's a Mommy, Too.

We Can Kiss, But Only If My Lawyer Is Present.

Law and Order, Dubai Style

I Never Knew I Could Hate a Grape

I Have a Headache THIS BIG...

School Update...

World Issues, Nursery Schools, Same Difference.

EPILOGUE