Roses of Araby

Until recently, I must confess, I knew nothing at all about the Middle East. I’d read Exodus, which gave me sympathy for Israel. My exposure to the Quran consisted of hearing Salutation of the Dawn each morning at church camp when I was a child. It’s a lovely piece. I followed the stories of bombed airliners and hostage-takings, looked with horror at pictures of masked gunmen toting Kalashnikovs, and generally regarded “terrorists” and “terrorism” with uninformed but definite distaste. The shocking events of 9/11 certainly reinforced that distaste, but I still didn’t understand the political background or the history of the Middle East. In short, I was ignorant and abysmally so – as are most average Westerners, I suspect.

Then, in the summer of 2003, I responded to a newspaper ad that asked “Looking for adventure?” and, two weeks later, found myself a resident of the United Arab Emirates, Islam for Dummies clutched in my perspiring palms. I joined the staff of a private Islamic school in the most conservative of the Emirates. Billed as an American International School, it was sponsored by the local sheikh. His various children plus those of his many hangers-on made up a sizable portion of the student body.

There were so many things to get used to. The year before, in July of 2002, I’d dived into China with almost as little preparation. Throughout my year there, I’d often marvelled and thought that a place more different than Canada couldn’t be found. Well, arriving in the UAE was like landing on a completely new planet once again.

The first thing that hits you – if you arrive in August, as I did – is the intense heat. It’s a dry, blasting, radiant heat that makes you feel as if you’ve just been dumped into an oven, surrounded by an alien element not akin to air at all. Between late April and October, the temperature never dips below 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and from June to September rarely falls below 46 (115 Fahrenheit). The Persian Gulf is too hot to swim in during much of this time.

Most international flights arrive at 3:00 a.m. so the streets were deserted as the school driver sped away from the airport on the half hour drive to the school and nearby teachers’ apartment building. I sat with a lap full of red roses given to me by the Marhaba (welcome) lady and gazed at the beauty of the ubiquitous mosques, their slender floodlit minarets stained blue and green and gold. It was my first indication that the sea of faith has not sounded its melancholy, long withdrawing roar from these shores.

I got the second indication when I was awakened, at 5:30 a.m. – having just fallen asleep – by the pre-dawn call to prayer. A mosque stood just outside my bedroom window, so close that I had to crane my neck to see the delicate stone latticework at the top of the minaret. Over the months that followed, the call to prayer became a comforting part of my existence. I learned to recognize the muezzin’s voice and worried when he had a cold. The gentle ululations of his call blended with those from the next mosque and the next and rolled across the desert in joyful waves of sound. God is Great!

People live in concrete houses nestled behind concrete walls, with access gained through ornate wrought-iron gates covered in gold filigree. The patterns on the gates are rarely the same and I considered making a photo journal of their beauty but gave up on the idea because of the fierce heat.

Over the next couple of days, before classes started, I ventured out to shop for basic necessities. It didn’t take long to get used to women in black hijab and abbayas – the folds often embroidered or studded with rhinestones so they sparkled as they glided along – but I never became completely accustomed to men marching about in long, crisply white dishdashas, especially since they usually also wore sunglasses, had cell phones glued to their ears and could be observed leaping into the high front seats of 4-wheel drive trucks.

The malls had prayer rooms and women-only checkout stations. Even the most ordinary all-purpose stores like the French Carrefour had displays of gold and precious oils. Book sections always included a few shelves surmounted by the stern warning: Non-Muslims are forbidden to touch the Holy Quran.

And outdoors, everywhere, the enveloping heat, the glare from the sand and the glitter from the golden gates, the perpetually blue sky and the desert wind.

...more to follow...