How Do You Feel...You Know...As A Western Woman?

I've been asked this question a few times over the last few months.   In short my life feels very normal - I walk my dog, I go to work, I eat out.  My fears are normal - doing a good job at work, getting lost on the freeway, over pruning my tomatoes - placeless stuff that in no way comes from my environment.  This isn't to say that I'm not continually amazed by new experiences and wonderful opportunities.  But I, in this moment in this place, feel very much normal.   

It's hard for me to say if this feeling of normalcy comes from a few years spent in the Middle East now or the extraordinary nature of Oman.  Either way, it occurred to me that YOU might not understand the extent to which my experiences in no way match up to many of the sterotypes about the Middle East and Westerners and Women specifically.

So here we go.

I do not have to cover my head in Oman.   Most local women do - more than any country we've been so far - but it is not the law and Western expats do not cover.  I dress modestly (no tank tops, super short sleeves or shorts) and do not feel more uncomfortable walking down the street here than I would in D.C. or New York.  

I walk about freely by myself and there are no driving restrictions placed on women here.  I make the work commute like everybody else.  Sure there are areas of town that I wouldn't go to by myself, but that is true for almost any city.
 
I feel incredibly safe here.  There is virtually no violent crime in Oman and I hear very few stories of petty theft.  I'm not naive about some of the regional threats, but Oman has managed to maintain peace, order and safety to an incredible level.  

I am free to worship with my Christian congretation each week.  The government of Oman has given land to Christian churches throughout Muscat and, for the region, is remarkably tolerant of other faiths.  The Sultan has had some pretty inspiring things to say about tolerance and Islam.  In a Muslim country I am free to practice my religion.

I do not have to claim to be something other than American.  I have never, not once, had a bad experience in the Middle East after telling someone I was American. (I was spit on by a little boy at the Kalendia checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah once, but I could have been a moon person for all he cared - he just wanted me to buy his gum.) It usually comes out after we've talked for a little bit and by that point we've both established that we are humans first with more in common than not.  Any kind of potential political conflict is pretty much swallowed up in the person to person exchange.  I've had someone in almost every country say to me a version of "We can disagree with your government's policies and still like your people."  The first time I heard that in Jordan it kind of blew my mind.  I'd accepted the narrative that They don't like Us and perhaps We shouldn't like Them and hadn't even thought to approach politics, nationality and identity with such nuance.  It was a good lesson to learn early on.

And on to the desert...

Yes, Oman has a desert and camels are a big deal, but it also has mountains and many miles of fantastic beaches and clear springs that gush down deep canyons and through Oasis'.  White sand beaches are not what you think of when you imagine the Middle East, but that's exactly what I'm talking about.  And it's not just Oman that's different.  Every place we've been in the Middle East has defied stereotypes in some way or another. 

So that's all, I guess.  

Junn Island, part of the Dimaniyat Island chain off the coast of Oman

 

2013. Whales. Numbers. Roadtrips.

2013 was a whale of a year.  As in, at times we felt like we were inside the belly of one, perhaps stuck to its giant fleshy tongue, being shuttled from one place to another in the pitch black.

OK, so almost all of those places were our choosing and we’d planned for months before each one, but still.  

I like what numbers can say (and what they inevitably leave out) about time spent so here we go for 2013:

Miles Driven on Three Month Home Leave:  6385

Hotel Rooms: 22

Nashville Fried Pickle Plates Eaten: 1

Letters to the IRS about “Overseas Automatic Extension”: 4

Deserts Explored: 2

New Cars Purchased: 1 Letters Written To Congress: 12

Number of Sea Turtles Observed in the Wild: 10 

Food Poisoning Incidents: 1 

Number of Jobs Between Us: 5

Friends Caught Up With: Many

National & Parks Visited: 14

Writing accepted for 2014 Publication: 1 and counting

Dollars Worth of Pork Products Purchased in one trip to Dubai: 100

Cities Visited: 61 *

Giant Foam Replicas of Stonehenge Visited: 1

Journals Filled: 3 

Number of Times I Was Given a Small Treat At the Register Instead of Change: 1

Miles Flown With Dog Under Seat In Front of Me: 21,656

Gardens Grown: 2

Countries Visited: 5

Nights you had to stay alone in a murderer’s hotel when flight got delayed: 1

*We have to have eaten a meal there for it to count. 

Last summer Max and I took a 1500 mile road trip to see parts of the American Southwest we'd grown up hours away from but never seen.  We camped, we hiked, we read oodles and learned a lot about history, geology, and the Native Americans who first lived there.  When I recall what that trip sounded like my memory is filled with complete silence.  Maybe I hear the currents of the Colorado from time to time or a turkey vulture circling above, but my memories are almost completely silent.  We relearned how to be still and find happiness in the most basic things -shelter, water, food, nature, discovery.  I filled pages and pages in my journal about it and took hundreds of pictures but couldn't bring myself to blog a word of it.  Along with visitors to Morocco it was definitely the highlight of my year.   

This year I'm looking forward to 365 days of not moving.    

 

Hiking by Fisher Towers Outside Moab Utah

Leading into the La Sal Mountains, Utah

Grand Canyon, Arizona

Kodachrome State Park, Utah

Bryce Canyon, Utah

 

Bluff Utah

  

The Things We Take For Granted

"I've been in Oman for two years, Ma'am.  After three years I'll get to go home"

"And where's home?"  I ask

"Nepal.  I'm going to get married"

"That's wonderful.  Is it someone you know?"

"Yes Ma'am, I met him in school.  It is good.  How long have you been married?"

"Eight years" I tell her.  I steel my self for the next question which is always and inevitably why don't you have kids? 

But instead, this woman asks me with wide eyes "Is it a love marriage?"

"Well, yes"

"Oh, of course.  That's nice. It's nice when you know them"  she smiles back at me.

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