Ramadan Kareem

In Arabic, that means “Happy Ramadan.” But it should translate to “Here are all the things you cannot do during Ramadan.” I was over Ramadan at Day 6 and now cannot wait ‘til it’s over. We’re in the home stretch….Ramadan ends sometime between Thursday and Saturday. Then comes Eid – my first public holiday in Dubai. I hear we get a couple days off, unfortunately, I am without passport while my Residence Visa is being processed so I am limited to exploration within the UAE.

I’m finding exploration is a very difficult thing to do in Dubai without your own car. Over the weekend, we attempted to explore a little of Dubai. Basically, what that amounted to was a lot of taxis going nowhere. It took us three taxis to get to food…..which, in case you didn’t know, 3 girls who were out late the night before and haven’t yet eaten at 3pm is not a pretty sight. After touring through Satwa, which appears to be a “old” part of Dubai, going to yet another mall, the Mercato Mall – which is Dubai’s somewhat gaudy version of Italy – we ended up back at Madinat Jumeirah, the touristy “souk” – or market. After devouring burgers with beef bacon, pork is pretty rare in these parts, we decided to check out an art gallery in Al Quoz.

For you city folk, don’t you generally expect that a cab driver will know where you’re going? What I’ve learned here is that not only do cab drivers generally NOT know where you’d like to go, they also don’t really feel the need to TELL you that they don’t know how to get where you want to go. So, you spend a lot of time hoping you’ll get home/work/some villa you’re trying to see, etc. Being the impatient person that I am, this does not bode well. So, we get into cab #4 of the day and head for Al Quoz. A very common practice when getting into cabs is to call the place you’re headed and then pass your phone to the cab driver to get directions. Since there are very few street names and no one refers to locations by addresses, this is the best way to get around. Today, I had to get directions to a villa in Jumeira that I’m hoping will be sufficient to live in for the next three years and the directions were “you know Beach Road (which I don’t think is the actual name of the road)…follow that towards Dubai (my mind races thinking, “aren’t we in Dubai?” – and the answer is yes, but no ones uses directions here either, i.e. north/south/east/west, it’s just towards Dubai which we’re already in, or towards Abu Dhabi), you know the Spinney’s (a local supermarket)? When you see that go past 2 roundabouts, to the 2nd light, turn left. Then when you see the Limetree Café, take your first right and first left. Our villa is the one with the Nissan out front.” Anyhow, so back to Al Quoz. We ask this cab driver to take us to The Third Line Art Gallery. The “address” in the “Time Out Dubai” (our handy guide to Dubai magazine) says Al Quoz 3, between Spinney’s and Marlin Furniture. Now, we have no idea if Al Quoz is an area, a street, what? The driver tells us he doesn’t really know Al Quoz. We end up driving around Al Quoz 1 and Al Quoz 4, but cannot seem to find Al Quoz 3. Now Al Quoz, turns out is a bunch of warehouses on dirt and gravel roads. Our cab driver attempts to get the attention of a fellow driver to ask directions (all whilst driving) who says, yeah, I know Al Quoz 4, and waves his arm in the general forward direction. That seems to be the way cab drivers communication directions – a simple wave of the hand – which is probably why they then need to pull over about 3 other drivers before getting close to your destination. We finally ask a driving school instructor who rattles off a long list of directions and then says “if you don’t find, come back and follow me.” People here are very friendly in that way. They’ll meet you anywhere and have you follow them….I assume because directions are just a waste of time. We miraculously find the Spinney’s referenced in the “Time Out” magazine and end up at Progressive Art Gallery. Now if you remember, we were trying to get to The Third Line Art Gallery. However, our driver, whose English is seriously lacking sees the letters A-R-T on the gallery placard and says “here…yes, you wanted art. Here we are…A-R-T” We spend several minutes trying to explain that yes, we wanted art, but we were in search of a specific art gallery, not this one. After a few u-turns and we finally find the right place. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but coming from Chicago, I expected the art gallery to have more than a dozen pieces. That was a lofty expectation. Luckily, we’ve also learned to ask cab drivers to leave the meter running and wait for fear that we’d get stranded without a cab. The meter only went up about 7 Dirhams while waiting for us (the $2USD spent….ever).

Our original plan was to then head to Irish Village (this cluster of “Irish” pubs over by the tennis center) to watch the rugby quarterfinals. Instead, we went over to a new friend’s place to watch. Now, I use the term “friend” loosely as I’ve only been in Dubai for 2 ½ weeks now. Anyhow, we met these guys at a BBQ when we first arrived. Somehow, started e-mailing with them and ended up hanging out at their place last weekend too. In the course of the evening last weekend, things got a little rowdy and I ended up getting thrown in the pool….fully clothed and with my phone in my back pocket. Some of you have heard the mobile perils I’ve been having so that was a very unwelcome turn of events. Anyhow, long story short, “nu-friend” very kindly lent me a spare mobile that he had (apparently, many a phone has met an untimely end in this pool.) Anyhow, so my attempt to simply return the borrowed mobile turned into 8 hours of rugby watching with these 4 British boys who thought it fun to take the piss out of all things American. Made me feel at home to hang with people making fun of me! ;-) How I’ve missed the teasing!

Anyhow, trying to think of other observations I’ve made since arriving. Dubai itself is a really strange place – and by strange, I mean it requires a lot of patience. People are all very friendly - I can only assume this is because almost everyone you’ll meet here has been in my shoes. They were the newcomer who knew no one and were welcomed into the fold by fellow expats. Everyone here is a transient. Nobody’s really from Dubai, or even the UAE for that matter and no one really has any intention of staying in Dubai forever. Some people have been really enchanted by Dubai and others are completely put-off by the place. I think the best explanation of Dubai I’ve heard so far is that it’s a third-world city pretending to be first-world. That pretty much sums it up – there’s lots of fancy architecture and massive skyscrapers, lots of glitz and fancy cars, yet the conveniences and freedom of living somewhere, say like, America, are somehow hard to come by here. (yes, the xenophile in me is dying little by little…I’m slowly becoming very pro-American, not to worry though, still enchanted by all the fun accents I’ve been hearing!). Everything takes a little longer and there seems to be no rhyme or reason for anything. The Arabs/Muslims don’t like to say “no” to you so when you ask questions, they ALWAYS say yes. You have to probe to get a true answer – which is annoying when you’re trying to get actual information. For example, “you know how to get to Number One Tower (that’s where I live)?” and the answer is “yes” – but then they overshoot your exit by about 4 miles and don’t understand why you’re frustrated that you’re halfway to Sharjah. (the very conservative Emirate next to Dubai). Speaking of Sharjah – rumor has it that in Sharjah, if girls are not covered up properly, i.e. covered shoulders, knee-length or longer skirts, the “wardrobe police” will paint your legs/knees until you’re sporting the “appropriate” length. Drinking is prohibited in Sharjah as well. Although, speaking of drinking, unless you’re at a bar/hotel that serves, one cannot just buy liquor at a grocery store…even in Dubai. You have to have your employer sponsor you to get a liquor license in order to purchase liquor for personal consumption. Yeah…remember those “freedoms” I was talking about? It’s a lot harder than you’d think to come up with proper “host” gifts when one cannot just grab a bottle of wine at the grocery store. 30-something-ish guys don’t really know how to respond when being brought pastries or ingredients for ice cream sundaes!

Another weird thing here is the highway/road system. This all goes back to the “no addresses, no directions” bit. You can only go one-way on what seems to be about 90% of roads here. Sheik Zayed is the major highway and while there are places of interest across the way from our hotel, we can’t seem to figure out a way to get there. It’s kind of the reverse of car mirrors that say “objects may be closer than they appear.” Everything seems just within arms reach yet sooo far in reality. In order to get to places, you have to turn in the opposite direction, drive several km until the next intersection/roundabout/acceptable place for a u-turn and backtrack. Also frustrating but I’ll get used to it.

Anyhow, enough ranting from me….while this may seem like one long bitch-session, Dubai is actually quite nice. The weather is turning just perfect. I actually uttered the words “I’m cold” on Friday night. I think it was about 70 degrees out. (I'm not sure if Chicago winters are every going to be in my future after this stint!) Weekend days have been spent lounging by the beach and meeting new people. Work is proving to be quite the challenge….in a good way. I tried local shisha the other night which was quite good. Shisha is generally fruit-flavored tobacco that you smoke through a big hookah. (I know this is supposed to be “parentally acceptable blog” – I made the judgment call that shisha is acceptable because I’m experiencing the local culture ;-)

Well…I’ll release anyone who ventured to read this far into my stream-of-consciousness writing. Thanks for reading…..til the next entry…Ramadan kareem.