"on traditions, gatherings, mournings, and celebrations"

(This is a month old, but I'm sticking it in here anyway!)

The food. It’s so good, I can’t handle it. Seriously, hummus used to be a dietary staple. Not a hint of mold in my plastic tubs. I was devout. But, wow, it’s so rich and creamy here, I can only eat it on special occasions. Same with the eggplant hummus that I can’t quite catch the name of. Fresh juices with mint, pastries with thyme and olive oil (my new favorite), or with onion and spinach, stuffed grape leaves, kibbeh (like a meat version of falafel), samosas, saffron rice, cofffee with cardamom. I’m not positive what is Bedouin and what is another culture’s contribution. Even the the “traditional” desserts have a grain of some sort, sugar, rose, cinnamon. None of which grows here. Maybe it’s all traditional, in that it’s all nomadic. The spice routes have been around for a heck of a long time. The tradition of sharing.

Like today, a local colleague has gotten her master’s degree, a very rare thing in the community I’m teaching in. I think it might be a first for my school’s Arabic teachers. When we greeted her with our congratulations and mabrooks, she told us in that joking/not really joking way, that no one would be excited for her, so she had a caterer come in to feed us all so we could all be excited for her. We chuckled with her, but there’s a deeper truth in that, I suppose. Education doesn’t mean the same thing for a woman here as it does in the states. It means putting off marriage and children. It means possibly educating yourself out of a husband, since fewer men than women go for advance degrees. But, she’s lucky. After turning down marriage proposals during school, she has one now. She doesn’t know him yet. Some newlyweds won’t meet their new husbands until after they sign the papers and the ceremony has already occured. Then, everyone gets fed. (Hope I get invited to that wedding! I hear the women’s dresses under the abaya are outrageous in their opulence.)

It is a tradition, however old, I don’t know, to share food to celebrate a milestone in your life. We see that in our western weddings. Here, it is more pervasive. Gifts are not given by guests. Except perhaps dates and chocolate. Three dates, I was told by a colleague from Oman as she held a plate out to me, when I ventured into the Arabic teacher’s lounge to say hello. Three dates for health or luck or welcome. (Hey, there’s a local food - dates! I’ll let you know about seasons of the date when I move into my apartment. My kitchen and living room windows overlook a date palm plantation. And a future mall. And an amusement park. And the Omani border with Buraimi.)

I’ve been watching the farming progress from my kitchen window. I don’t know, beside the dates, what they are growing. Here’s what I can gather: first they scrape the dust, then they lay down some gauze, and *POOF!* plants appear! A lot of irrigation, of course. I have no idea what they do for nutrients. Maybe it’s in the water. Nothing starts from seed, by the looks of it. It’s less fertile than Tucson, but they manage to grow things here.

Eventually, I’ll start my window boxes. The usual staples: tomatoes, mint, raddish, greens. I need to order some heirloom seeds, but, in my mom’s fashion, all sorts of napkin scraps with cast-off seeds are laying about, waiting to be stuck in a little planter. A little tradition of our own easily carried across the globe.

In the meantime, I’m full of good food tonight, and a promise of a special digestive tea herb tomorrow to help digest. (Can’t wait to learn “traditional” herbal medicine here!) I heard the master’s recipient might be providing breakfast tomorrow as well! I wonder, is the amount of food shared directly linked to the importance that the provider wants attached to the event? Certainly seems so.

The other weekend in Dubai, as I was waiting patiently for my tango fix, I was lucky enough to watch the meeting portion of the wedding. Bride, in all white with what looked like a hand-crocheted kerchief on her head, I wondered what of the ceremony was truly Bedouin and what was adopted from other cultures. In my fantasy, the kerchief, at least, was an heirloom from someone’s great grandmother, from before the times of hotel steps and elevators, from before the time of the adopted black abaya and shayla, and from before the time of so many of us, western onlookers. The music definitely was traditional. That’s what caught my attention first. I heard drums blending into the sounds of recorded tango, a live reggae band and another live Irish band. Quite a combo. The drums didn’t seem to fit and seemed to get louder. Looking over the balcony, I saw two column of men with drums strapped to them, dressed not in the flowing kandoura, but in cloth pants the color of the desert and some sort of shirt that seemed to wrap all around them. They started to sing. Chant, really. It’s quite amazing to hear. Nothing like the Arabic music on the radio. There are canes that they beat. It’s feels ancient, at least to my modern brain. Like the grito, every once in awhile, one of the musicians who is good at it let’s out a high-pitched tongue-flappin’ yell. I’m sure it has a name. You’d know what I’m talking about if you heard it. Fantastic! One of those experiences that makes every cell of your body respond with “wow, this is real, this is new to me, I’m alive!” Fantastic, indeed. I joined in the rhythmic clapping. How could I not? Not much of a tango night for me, but worth the visit to the hotel.

One of my students is a drummer. I asked if her family were all musicians, and she shrugged it off with a nod. Of course they are, what else would they be? She’s a natural. She has no idea how hard it is to do what she does, since she’s done it for as long as she can remember. And, the morning assembly music for the national anthem is sounding and better and better everyday thanks to her.

The morning assembly. (They do that in Mexican schools, too. I’m sure other places, but I’m still working the parallel here.) My girls line up. They recite some things. They have their nails checked. (For cleanliness? I asked. Apparently, it’s to prevent injury from scratching at each other.) They sing their new anthem in alliegance their infant nation. They hear a morning prayer. They talk into microphones that are more static than amplification. They might watch a skit or compete to answer a question. They flap their hands all about while jumping up and down for a handful of seconds. Hysterical! What they heck is up with the hand-flapping, I have no clue. I’d love to think of it as an attempt at exercise, but, yeah, really, it has no resemblance. Resemblance to a bug in diress on its back as it struggles to upright itself, maybe, yeah. As musical a people as they are, so far, I haven’t witnessed a lick of dancer’s rhythm. (Come to think of it, drummers and dancers really do have very different experiences of rhythm. Do you not agree?)

Right now, we are still in the mourning period for Sheikh Saqr of Ras Al Kaimah, one of the other emirates. He was ninety. His youngest son, who has been acting on his behalf for years, has taken over. There was a mass exodus to that emirate, but there is no viewing of the body. No one will make pilgrimages to visit his grave. It isn’t done here. Not even the late, great Sheikh Zayed who made the country what it is today is visited, although his tomb lies at the Sheikh Zayed mosque. The family have access, but they have no need to go.

In some locales, a week or more of mourning means no work. Abu Dhabi is not taking part in that. Here, we are still showing respect by not playing music. No morning assembly, just straight to class. Not that I’m complaining. I can leave my balcony door open to the night, because the bands in the club downstairs are on hiatus. No Christmas musak in the hotel at breakfast. A blessing, as you might imagine, in more ways than one.

Soon, it will be Eid, and there will be more gatherings and more food. I’ll have to plan my own, on that eventful day when I actually receive my furniture allowance. Until then, I’ll keep chipping away at getting settled in the ways I can. Finding conversational Arabic classes, getting my UAE ID card, getting my driver’s license, going to yoga, and buying a bed for starters. That way maybe my apartment and I can have a celebratory overnight visit together soon.