Like a Rocket to the Moon

Dubai on a rare cloudy day

Max followed me to Dubai for some library training in November. That's right, we take turns wearing the pants in this house. I didn't know what to expect and it turned out to be one of the most conflicting travel experiences I've had to date.  I was both amazed and distraught, over and underwhelmed.  

I will say this - when we got in the crowded elevator at the base of the Burj Khalifa, tallest building in the world, and the elevator ascended 124 floors to the observation deck and the lights inside the elevator blinked faster and faster and the music grew more frantic and my ears popped as we climbed higher, a bit of panic crept into my chest.  I imagined us shooting up through the top of the needle tipped structure and bursting out into the clouds - Wonkavator style.  Or a real life rocket to the moon.     

Burj Khalifa: Tallest Building in the World - 163 floors

The outer observation deck.  Clouds people - that's how high up we were

View from the inner observation area

Diver Fountain - one of many attractions inside the Dubai Mall, largest mall in the world. 
I know, yet another superlative. 

 These ships are loaded with all kinds of goods - baby play pens, tires, washing machines - bound for Iran. 

Water Taxi across the Dubai Creek. 

Water Taxi Station

 

From the Journal

11/9/2013

Today Max and I swam in the Bandar Jissah lagoon and in the afternoon, when the tide sucked back into the sea and left a shallow shelf of water I dropped my book on the chair and wandered into the warm ocean.  I lay down, face to the sky, feet to the open water and let the waves roll up and down my body.  Why I did this I am not sure.  It just felt like the right thing to do.  When I finally arose and walked back to my chair, Max told me he was seconds away from coming to see if I was still alive.

It was only when I got home that I thought of the section in Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert  by environmentalist and nature writer Terry Tempest Williams in which she climbs into a tree and spends the morning within its branches.  Trying to somehow bridge the voyeristic relationship we have with nature - we look at it, photograph it, draw it but we don't participate in something with it, two willing partners.  I often feel out of my depth in nature.  I am drawn to it and want to be in it, but I feel unequal to its realities in natural skills and general biological knowledge.  I'm growing that knowledge, but it's slow.

I certainly didn't grow up around the sea - Utah being hundreds miles from the nearest ocean and the Great Salt Lake a body of water I have only visited twice, to my great shame.  But each morning when Max gets up for work I think I'll ask him to drive himself so I can keep sleeping, but then I think of running along the beach behind the embassy with Buckley and I sit up with a grumble.  I can't stay away and without exception when I get to the beach I regret not having brought something more suitable for swimming.  I console myself by watching the dog chase seagulls into the water as far as he dares or sniff through banks of shells.


11/29/13

Last night we met the Afghany Ambassador to Oman at a publishing event.  When the discussion turned to Arabic and Max said  "You have to really feel it in your mouth" The Ambassador interrupted, flicking ash from his cigarette.  "No, you have to feel it in your belly" he said with a slight smile.

12/1/2013

Today I found myself in front of a grocery store in what I've come to call "Little Pakistan" after returning a friend to her home.  I waded through throngs of men dressed in white or light blue shalwar kameez' with my strawberry hair.  As I rounded the vegetable isle I saw a booth with a sign that read "coconut carving" trailing a line of people holding coconuts.  What  else could I do but pick up a coconut and stand in line?  As I got closer to the square opening in the box I saw husky coconuts go in and bags of milky white shavings come out.  I caught the eye of a woman holding a baby standing next to her husband in front of me.

"What do you do with it?" I said, pointing to the sack in someone's hand.

They both burst into good hearted laughter.

"We were just talking about that and wondering what you were going to do with it!"

Or, in other words  What is this American in those white jeans doing with this coconut in this line in this neighborhood?  

"You use it with vegetables or salads" they tell me and answer follow up questions about curry leaves as well.  "You can use the internet too" the husband tells me, noticing I will need much more help than their brief explanation.  But he is not unkind when faced with the gulf of things I don't know. 

Jebel Akdar: Wild Camping on the Saiq Plateau

To hear Max tell it my people crawled out of caves only a few years ago and we've just recently learned to use an indoor toilet.  That is to say, my family camped while I was growing up.  Max told me a few of his colleagues were shocked to hear that we went camping on Oman's highest mountain, Jebel Akdar, a few weeks ago and that it was by my instigation.  That's nothing,  he tells his be-suited colleagues, Brooke has been on an honest to gosh cattle drive - on the saddle, multiple days and nights, camping along the way.  While that is true, let's not explore the ways in which this event in my life was closer to a scene in City Slickers than one from the life of Calamity Jane, showing up for the cattle drive in my coolest vintage jogging jacket plucked from our local thrift store, everyone else more appropriately adorned in plaid and spurs.

But anyways, a few weeks ago Max and I scaled the nearly 10,000 feet of Jebel Akdar to explore the Saiq Plateau and hunker down for the night.  As we ascended miles and miles of switchbacks the temperature dropped 20 degrees.  We rolled down sleeves and opened windows to feel the fresh air.  The roads were lined with dozens of pomegranate sellers boasting crates of pinky fruit just picked from the orchards.  Jebel Akdar's moderate temperatures have allowed fruit to grow that could never survive in the lower, harsher desert climate: peaches, pomegranates, grapes, pears, apples.

Al Ayn

Mostly by accident we arrived at the lovely village of Al Ayn, formed on the edge of a rock-spur exploding into the empty space of a giant gorge below.  The village is built on a very steep incline and as I walked deeper into the village I descended below fruit trees and stone water troughs carrying water along the mountainside throughout the village called Falaj.         

We built a fire (for the record MAX built the fire) cooked a meal of kefta in our little grill and settled into complete silence.  Everything was lovely and picturesque, like we'd been re-inacting a scene from an American Eagle campaign (minus the trendy clothes, plus a normal body weight) until we extinguished the fire and zipped ourselves in the tent for the night.

The terror.  The donkey induced terror.  After dozing for a few minutes Buckley started to grumble - that strange, hesitant dog grumble when they think something is near but aren't quite sure.  Then we heard wild donkeys braying and racing past our tent.  Donkeys on their own aren't very scary, but then I started to wonder what else was out there.  No one knows where we are.  A friendly park ranger hasn't checked us into our campsite and noted our license plate number I began to think.  The rules for camping in Oman are simple:  If it isn't someone's private property or restricted by a sign, you can throw a tent down and camp.  It makes for some pretty great wild camping, but also a wee bit of a fright when you find yourself alone in the wild, in a foreign country with only limited camping knowledge.  I don't even have a pocket knife!  My mind raced with how I would defend my family should worse come to worse, how I would navigate by the stars and find my way down the mountain and back home - a feat I in NO way could actually have performed.  We slept on and off, being awoken by donkeys, quiet dog noises and wind scuffles that sounded suspiciously like footsteps.  Despite a crap night, Max assured me that he had fun and we will, indeed, go camping again.  The mountain was beautiful and it certainly felt like a getaway.

My family has been urbanized for generations Max tells his friends at work the next day, to contrast the vast difference in our upbringing and approach to the outdoors.  It is true my people were farmers but I grew up in a very suburban suburb of Salt Lake City.  Where, wouldn't you know it, gosh darn, I met the urbanized young man I now share a life with.  Who lived in my same county, had the same number of children in his family, attended the same church and worked an after school job just like me.  It's amazing how different two people from almost exactly identical childhood circumstances can turn out - He, sophisticated and worldy,  Me, gap toothed and wide eyed.  Shucks.

If you can't tell, this has become a running joke at our house.  I have exaggerated the extent to which Max thinks of my people as ruffians because it gets his goat.  Every time :)     

Al Ayn

Al Ayn

When in...

A few days ago I went with a girlfriend to a Persian rug showroom*.  We inspected nap and asked cotton or wool.  Afterwards we walked across the street to the Muscat Bakery and were overwhelmed with sugary treats formed into shapes and painted bright colors, pastries and breads I'd never seen and what I can now identify as a Panipuri station.  We made our way around the pastry displays and ended up in front of a cart loaded with hollow ball shaped crisps, a hole punched in the top and at least a dozen sauces and toppings arranged like a salad bar.  One of the two men behind the counter plucked a crisp from the pile and filled it with spicy potatoes before layering green flavored broth, plain yogurt, pomegranate seeds and tamarind chutney.  He handed over a small plate with two panipuri and my eyes met my friend's for just a moment before lifting my eyebrows and popping one into my mouth.

When in Rome  I thought.  Or Oman....Or India...or Pakistan...or...Sri Lanka...or...Iran...

I've had several moments like this over the past few weeks.  Moments when my nose expected the tangy lemon and thyme of Za'atar, a common spice in the Middle East, and smelled, instead, Curry, Masala and Ginger.  Times when we ate Chapati instead of Flatbread and passed by grocery store isles stacked temporarily with decorations for Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.  When the local English radio station made the drive to work seem like a jaunt through the commonwealth instead of a dash along freeways cut into Arabian dunes.  We went out to dinner with some friends the other night and among the four couples, five nationalities were represented.  

I did not expect to find such a diversity of people and cultures here in Oman.  Perhaps I should have anticipated it considering Oman's 30-40% expat population, but anyway it's been a delightful surprise.  Indians, Philippinos, Pakistanis, Americans, Kiwis, Iranians, Turks, Malaysians, Thai, Australians, South Africans, Arabs from the Gulf and beyond, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis - they are all here eating their traditional foods and reconstructing their local culture.

Lately I have been finding it difficult to get a hold of what this place IS.  What it sounds like or looks like or feels like.  Of course the response to that is - it is what it is, duh - but it's sometimes hard for my librarian brain to resist the urge to catalog, to put things in boxes that make knowing easier.  But that's what I love about new places - it shakes up my catalog and makes me figure out new labels or toss them out entirely.  It reminds me that people, places and cultures can't be put in boxes - they are too complex and multifaceted to be penned in by my limited perspective.  Even though accessibility and consumption and are  my constant professional pursuit; they are horrible ways to greet the world and its people.    

The other day I caught a whiff of curry and inhaled deeply with a smile instead of making a puzzled face.  I've eaten Panipuri and learned to say Thank You in Hindi and Bangla but that doesn't quite seem like enough.  I guess we've got quite a bit more time to dig in.  


*And didn't buy a THING I'll have you know

Car Go Fast

(I actually wrote this last week...and then promptly forgot about it...)

Today I think I found more evidence that DMVs everywhere feel and even partially look the same.  Same chairs, same listless stares, same paint peeling walls.  BUT, getting my Omani license today went much smoother than I could have hoped.  They corralled a herd of new Embassy peopled into a waiting room then called us out one by one to take an eye test in a mostly empty yellow room with an eye chart at the end.  Perhaps it's a residual of my High School please the teacher days, but eye tests give me a bit of anxiety.  The possibility of immediate negative feedback?  Your very freedom of movement depending on the outcome of a jumble of letters? ..........  It's hard to say.

But in the end I read a few letters, only guessed at one and got it right, and picked up my shiney Omani drivers' license later that day.  

And you know what else feels the same as back home?  Getting pulled over by the police without said license because it's being processed by said police.    

Boo.  

But I wasn't taken to prison or anything and I am now a full fledged driver.  I keep looking down at the thermometer hovering somewhere between 96 and 100 and thinking I really have to get that fixed but then I remember that it is actually almost October and somewhere between 96 and 100 degrees.  Good think my AC is boss.  And yes, I know that words like "boss" age me but working in a school makes one well aware of how old they are and I feel just fine about it.  

Relax Your Stroke

A Little shipwreck on one of the beaches I frequent with the Dog

My car clock said 8:20 and the temperature read 105.  After dousing my hair with clean water, gulping down handfuls of pomegranate seeds, climbing into the car and driving for a few minutes the digital display had worked its way down to 96. 

Since moving to Oman I have wanted to start open water swimming in the warm Arabian Sea and last week was the first time I felt like it wasn’t too hot.  That’s right, it’s finally cooled off enough to ocean swim in the wee hours of the morning. 

I’ve been lap swimming for years, but plunging into the salty sea, critters abounding and searing water creeping into your nose, is a different feeling.  I spent most of my first swim trying to push out thoughts of zebra sharks and sea snakes that might slowly creep into my field of vision, thus causing panic verging on freak out.  Not that I don’t want to see them in the right context, but mid stroke I was afraid I would splash about and become tangled up with something slimy.  Oman has fantastic sea life and snorkeling, but honestly, in this particular spot my fears were pretty unrealistic.  I saw a few sardines and crabs crawling about on the rocks that dotted the cove, but it’s a pretty coral-less beach. 

Yesterday we headed for a wilder beach without protection from man made jetties.  The rocking waves are both fantastic and frustrating.  We started against the current and when you’ve been paddling for what feels like hours and look to the shoreline to discover you’ve only gone a few meters its kind of a bummer.  But after my first open water swim I came home and googled “open water swimming” because I’m nerdy like that.  One of the tips I came to again and again was relax your stroke.  The first instinct when a particularly strong current sweeps across you is to swim faster, kick harder, work your way through it and stay on course.  But I found that if I let it move me a bit farther out to sea or towards the shore instead of fighting, I can maintain momentum and save energy – putting me back on course faster and with less effort.     

I swim with a few older women and when we pause to catch our breath or stretch our arms on the sand we talk about Islam, Architecture, Politics, The new Opera house in Muscat and gardening.   I usually have little to contribute to the conversation, but I listen and ask questions of women who have lived here far longer and seen much more than I have.  I’ve swapped out my sleek black swimmers cap for a bright pink one in order to identify myself to fishing boats that zip along the coast and I wear tight pants to my calves so as not to offend the locals who troll the beach each morning.  Yesterday I saw a spikey sea urchin and a few fusiliers who had momentarily abandoned their schools.   

It takes all morning to drive out to the beach, stretch, swim, wash off, dry, kick sand away and navigate my car back across the beach and onto the paved road again.  But I’ve got things to do and meals to cook and a house to clean and library lessons to prepare for and plants that need repotting - do I really have time for this?     

Relax your stroke I think to myself.