Smolens of Arabia Reporting In - March '09

Dateline Abu Dhabi

It’s not too hot yet. I’m buying a car with good AC (2006 Toyota Fortuner, 4.0 4wd (newest vehicle I’ll ever have owned ), looking ahead to the heat, which starts next month. Today it was only 100F. That said,  Abu Dhabi is a pretty pleasant place to live, I’m finding.

 Especially if you’re white, western and working – maybe not so great if you’re a cab driver or construction worker or a housecleaner. The discrepancy between rich and poor is even more pronounced here than in the states, or at least more visible. Cab drivers, for example, earn about $275/month, work 16 hours a day, often 7 days a week with no vacation or health benefits, living in eight-in-a-room compounds where beds are shared in shifts and one has no choice in roommates. Their ranks are filled by an eager crush of workers from much poorer countries (Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Sudan, Somalia, etc), so there is no real possibility for an idea like “solidarity” to take hold. If you don’t like conditions here you are more than welcome to go home – and no one even considers that an option. The drivers I’ve talked to (dozens by now, since cabs are the main form of public transit), are mostly not happy with their situation (the job title “Taxi Driver in the UAE” is much glorified in its presentation overseas – I think most of them have been just short of Shanghaied, by ruthless recruiters), but seem mostly fatalistic about it. I’ve been encouraging them start a Union. Don’t think I’m making much headway.

 FLASH: This just in – I heard from a colleague today that the royals are working on meeting UN human rights standards, and in fact are working out the details of how to create a Taxi Driver’s Union! This place is full of surprises.  

But that’s the “downside”. On the other side, and for me (thankfully NOT a cab driver at the moment) the biggest side is the other side, the place is great. I’m falling in love with this city! You can go out any time of day or night in any neighborhood and never feel worried (as long as you watch the traffic when crossing streets). People seem to be pretty relaxed. It’s easy to get a smile. Folks take off their shoes and plop down just anywhere, and sit on their heels, or stretch out, and chat in little clusters. In front of the gas station, on any little chunk of comfortable looking landscaping… Construction workers stop at the sound of the muezzin, take off their shoes, face Mecca, prostrate themselves and pray.  

There’s no graffiti in the pedestrian tunnels. Or anywhere else, for that matter. It’s very clean, for a big city. It’s also a little crazy, which adds to the charm. You can’t drive your car nose-first to the curb; all the curbs are like a foot and a half high. I’m told this was because anything lower would be an encouragement to drive on the sidewalk – which people certainly would do if they could. Traffic rules, signs, limits – all are regarded as loose guidelines left to the interpretation of each driver, it seems.

Food is marvelous, and as various as anywhere I’ve been. The population is enormously international, and the cuisine keeps up. My favorite food now is Lebanese. I LOVE Lebanese food. I am going to Lebanon, soon – count on it. I sit down at my favorite Lebanese restaurant and before I can blink they’ve brought a big plate of fresh sliced up raw veggies, a variety of fresh dips – tabouleh, hummous, babaganoush (my favorite), Labneh, a pile of flat bread and a big bottle of water. This stuff is not even on the bill – it’s the equivalent of the little breadbasket they bring in the US. Then one orders. Eventually. Meals eaten out are meant to take a while. So you hang out and enjoy the scene, sip and munch. If you’re me – check your email. Not saying the service is slow, mind you – it’s not. When it’s time to order the Lebanese seem to make it a point of honor to get it done – NOW. My favorite is a ground lamb dish on a bed of the most amazing tomatoey sauce, with some spiced rice. God.

 Of course for a quick bite, my favorite shop is the shwarma place right across the street. Shwarma is the Arabian version of gyros – rotisserie roasted meat, sliced off the spit while you watch and bundled up in a pita bread with tomatoes, lettuce and some garlicy yoghurt cream sauce. About $1.25 each. Two is plenty for dinner. LOVE IT.

The shwarma shop is next to my tailor. Yep – you heard right. I’m going on Friday to have the two Italian wool suits I ordered a week ago fitted. They will cost around $575 all in. For both.

No ads for alcohol. Anywhere (except maybe in hotel bars). You need a license to buy it, and only special state controlled stores sell it. There’s a limit to how much you can buy in a month. The limit is tied to your salary – if you make more money, you can buy more booze. I can only dimly imagine the logic that put that one on the books.

 If you are caught while driving drunk you lose your license forever – no recourse, and if you’re not a citizen, you’re deported. On the other hand , if you kill a pedestrian while driving, you get 12 points on your license and must pay (I kid you not) “the blood money” – which amounts to about $65K, paid by your insurance to the surviving family members. Oh, and according to anecdotal reports (maybe urban legend, but I wouldn’t assume so), if you merely INJURE a pedestrian, you should probably make sure you go back and finish the job, since you will then have your license besmirched, have to pay a fine, and you will go to jail until the patient recovers or dies. They don’t want you slipping out of town while you wait to find out what the final disposition of your case will be. So the legend is told of an Emirati who hit a pedestrian  with his Hummer, and went back and drove over the person a couple times just to make sure. Hearsay – but it makes one cautious on the streets, which have, incidentally NOT been designed with pedestrians in mind, except as an afterthought. (That’s a whole other subject which I will save for another time)

 There are no drunken people in the streets, except perhaps the odd westerner, crawling home from aforementioned hotel bar – which is the only place one gets alcohol without a license. Restaurants don’t serve alcohol. It’s just not part of the culture. How odd. Also odd is that tobacco IS such a part of the culture. At almost any restaurant (many have non-smoking sections now), one can order shisha. When one does so, a waiter appears momentarily, carrying a shisha pipe – essentially a hookah (the original bong) and puffing on the smoking tube to get the thing going (second-hand smoke hasn’t been invented here yet). On delivery to one’s table, one is given a plastic mouthpiece wrapped securely in cellophane, and left to one’s own devices. The smoking mixture is tobacco with your choice of flavoring – usually apple or mint. One puffs (generally not inhaling, from what I can see), one is relaxed. This goes on all during the meal. A waiter, serving as a sort of priest, occasionally wanders about with a sensor full of hot coals which are used to re-light any failing shisha pipes. This is enjoyed equally by men and by women, of all ages.

Except that there are very few older people here. At least not out on the streets. Maybe for their own protection against mad (as opposed to angry – no one seems very angry, even while leaning for long moments on horns) drivers they are kept indoors. At any rate, the population is, understandably, mainly a working-age population. Which brings me to my one serious complaint about Abu Dhabi: There is a scarcity of women. There are definitely many more men here than women. Lots more. Unless the women are all kept at home too, but I don’t believe this is the case. I get the very strong feeling that here in the UAE women are NOT told what they should or shouldn’t do. I’ve NEVER seen a place where women are so universally respected. The Emirati woman does pretty much what she pleases, it seems to me. She dresses as she pleases, she goes and does as she pleases, and brooks no nonsense. The ones who come out in the black abaya and burkha are especially revered, it seems. They move as though the place belongs to them. They are mysterious and beautiful (the more so, perhaps for being partially or mostly unseen).  Side note: I hear from several independent sources that the population in Lebanon (my next vacation destination, remember) is about 70% women. Now I know why – the guys are all over here. I’m DEFINITELY going to Lebanon. SOON.

 Meanwhile, Margit is in India, taking part in a ten day silent meditation retreat. My stock line is that I am waiting to hear a loud noise from the east attended by a mushroom cloud of letters, words, sentences and paragraphs.