Christmas: in China - sadly, the shots of the cannibal penguins got lost; in the UAE times two; the sky in Ajman (UAE) on Christmas Day - and the way it looked most days.
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Ramadan ended with a week’s holiday. I’d planned a trip to Istanbul but someone bombed the British Consulate in mid-November, effectively shutting down the city during the time of my projected visit. So I stayed in Sharjah instead, where Muhammad took me on a couple of quests for undiscovered bookstores. With no success, I’m sorry to say, although his enthusiasm remained unbounded. He lived in hope of a second Furniture Foray.
“Soon you need another so many shelves book stand, Mem,” he said every time we set off.
One day we drove at a surprisingly reduced speed through clammy fog. Delighted at the eclipse of the monotonously clear and sunny heavens, I remarked, “This fog makes me feel almost like I’m at home. On Vancouver Island we often get fog. Isn’t it interesting how everything looks different?”
“Is not frog, Mem,” Muhammad replied. “Is sandstorm.”
Christmas isn’t a holiday in the UAE but, as a courtesy to foreign teachers, the school closed for the day anyway. The Wanderers’ Club put on a Christmas Eve Bash. More than a hundred people attended including lots of excited children. They, along with the decorations and lack of windows, combined to produce a convincing Yuletide atmosphere.
It was my first Christmas without Piglet and I couldn’t help but think of Guangzhou a year earlier. How we’d laughed over a display outside an upscale mall near the university where we worked. It was an automated display, with a skating pond, fir trees and a porch swing. Instead of human figures, though, it was penguins who circled the pond, enjoyed the swing and stood about singing lustily under the fir trees. In one section, a penguin in a chef’s hat vigorously turned the handle of a rotisserie on which a skinned penguin was skewered. Penguins roasting on an open fire, anyone?
My colleagues ordered me to the Wanderers’ Club on Christmas Eve, concerned that I’d stay home and mope. They needn’t have worried. I was anxious to keep as busy as possible.
And I was fine. Until, after an hour or two, everyone began singing Happy Christmas UAE, a ditty that included a verse about maybe it will snow and maybe pigs will fly. Images of Piglet inevitably arose and before I was overwhelmed by tears – raining on the parade, so to speak – I beat a strategic retreat. I called Muhammad, who appeared so quickly I think he’d been hovering nearby.
Once ensconced in the back seat, I couldn’t hold back the tears.
“You have good time, Mem?” he asked.
The tears continued streaming down my face.
“Yes,” I croaked.
“Oh my God, Mem!” Muhammad, looking seriously alarmed, started flinging handfuls of Kleenex over his shoulder. I continued to cry and he continued to say “Oh my God, Mem!” and hurl Kleenex. When we reached my apartment, I had to extricate myself as if from a puffy drift of snow.
Although it was certainly not my intention, Muhammad now felt he had to look after me.
“You cook food, Mem?” he asked shortly afterwards.
“Oh, yes, I know how to cook.”
“But do you cook food in apartment?”
“Sometimes.”
“I buy you fish from Rolla, Mem,” his worried eyes peered at me from the rear view mirror. “Very delicious. I, Muhammad, buy. You not pay money.”
I protested a bit but, despite many failings, I do know when it’s time to accept a gift. I waited in the taxi, watching the vibrant crowds and bright lights as Muhammad disappeared into a small restaurant. He reappeared ten minutes later with a package wrapped in newspaper.
“Here, Mem,” he said, presenting it to me. “You eat.”
With some difficulty, I avoided eating it in the car. Muhammad’s Kleenex supply was now non-existent and grease was already soaking through the newspaper.
“Soon you ask Muhammad go Rolla every night for fish,” he announced as he pulled up to the apartment building. “And is okay because fish cost only 5 dirham.”
I hurried inside with my treasure. Unfortunately, much as I wanted to like it and make daily trips to Rolla and buy unlimited supplies for only 5 dirham each, it was not delicious at all. It smelled lovely and had a beautiful crisp skin. When the skin was peeled off, though, the fish was mostly a network of bones with very little flesh clinging to them. Dislodging those bits was an exceedingly slow process.
The next time I saw him, Muhammad asked eagerly how I’d like the fish, “We go today for more?”
“Um...yes...it was very good. Maybe not today. I have other food I must use up before I buy fish.”
Muhammad did not lack perception. “You not like,” he said sadly.
“No, no. I like very much. I just don’t want any today.”
But it was impossible to fool him and I felt badly. Luckily, a three-week holiday was about to intervene, in which the fish could die a decent death and be forgotten with dignity.
My itinerary included Egypt, Jordan and Istanbul but millions of others around the Middle East were heading for Mecca, making the Hajj, as it’s called, the Fifth Pillar of Islam. Muhammad was going and very excited about it indeed. With a large group of fellow countrymen, he’d take a bus from Dubai to Abu Dhabi and then across the Saudi desert.
This meant he wouldn’t be able to ferry me to the airport for the Istanbul leg of my journey – which had been divided into two parts because of the Travel Agent Fiasco.
When I switched from Bashir to the female rep, only Egypt and Jordan were organized. Bashir dragged the process out so I’d be forced to pay multiple visits to his office. Even with the female, I risked a chance encounter with him every time I appeared – the humiliation never ended, really – so I polled my students, one of whose fathers fortuitously owned a travel agency in Dubai, then had my Istanbul trek booked from there.
The disadvantage, of course, was that I had to fly home from Jordan, spend one night in Sharjah, then fly out again from Dubai to Turkey. Even this rigmarole was worth being shot of Bashir, however.
As I said, Muhammad could take me to the airport the first time but after that he’d be in Mecca. He was leaving his cab with a trusted friend and promised me this friend would pick me up. We agreed on a price as there are no meters in most UAE cabs. Rather cannily, I thought, I requested his presence an hour earlier than necessary. I trusted Muhammad absolutely but wasn’t so sure about the hitherto unseen friend.
Canniness proved prescient. Zero hour, 10:30 a.m., came and went with no driver. I called the number Muhammad left me “in case problem; of course no problem, Inshallah, but in case.”
After a dozen rings, a sleepy voice said something in Urdu and hung up. I re-dialled immediately and ordered they guy to “Listen!” I told him I was going to miss my plane and he had to leave at once.
“Okay, okay,” he said.
I waited another ten minutes then called to ask if he was en route. “Yes! Yes!” he shouted but it sounded like I’d woken him up again and I was not reassured.
At 11:30, I had to admit he’d failed me. In the UAE, you can’t look up a taxi in the phone book and summon a ride. Even if you could, I didn’t know how to explain where I lived – no house numbers, remember – sometimes not even any street names. I never did learn the name of the street where I lived – if it had one.
Refusing to be daunted – and determined to get to the airport – I had a sudden inspiration. I locked up my flat and pulled my suitcase through the sand, past the mosque and into the little convenience store that stood adjacent.
I have to digress here, I’m afraid. First to say that, for the longest time, the young Pakistani men who ran the store didn’t seem to like me. I didn’t – and don’t – have any idea why. I was always polite and decently clad. Then, late one evening, I realized I was nearly out of cigarettes (my main and hitherto hidden vice – rejoice! you can now blame me for all the evils that plague the planet). I was already attired for bed and had no energy to re-dress myself.
Now I must talk about nightwear. There’s a whole global culture involved and I haven’t quite figured it out. In Guangzhou I often saw women of every age traipsing through the streets wearing silk – or sometimes polyester or cotton - pyjamas in the middle of the afternoon, with no one batting an eye. When was this acceptable and when not? I have no clue.
Based on this lack of knowledge, I decided I’d just go to the store in my nightgown. It was a cotton affair, shot through with gold thread, not a Canadian west coast flannel sack, but I guess I was still taking a risk.
Lo and behold! Huge smiles and friendly greetings poured forth as I crossed the threshold and continued ever afterward, whether I wore a nightgown or not.
When I arrived with my suitcase, I was greeted like a long-lost relative. It took only moments before they’d grasped my dilemma, phoned an acquaintance and tucked me into a dilapidated vehicle which whisked me to the airport in no time flat. And for 10 dirham less than I’d agreed to pay Muhammad’s friend, I might add.
I may never sort out the Pyjama Protocol, but I’ve definitely reaped some of its rewards.
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