United Arab Emirates

Part of my job -- at least at some subtle level -- deals with international perceptions, or misconceptions, and that is a part I like very much. It is certainly human nature to see one thing on the news, other side of the world, and then to assume everything happens this way. It is human nature to apply one standard to many different places because it is just easier to understand. So I have found it the case with the United States and the Middle East, as strong and fierce as any two places in the world. People who know too little think they know too much, and have very loud voices.

I was in 7th grade on 11 September, 2001. I still remember walking into science class with the television on, a static connection blurring the screen. I arrived home later that day and watched hand-held videos of airplanes surreally crashing into towers and then those towers crashing down. A number of days later, coverage switched to al-Qaeda, and images of robed terrorist leaders in rugged mountains began spreading through the media. I see now this cues a generation brought up on said perceptions of the world, now already more than a decade in the past, and never having been intended as a true representation of a people.

But people infer a lot, and I have thought back on those days often since arriving in the Middle East. Sometimes I link it to crude jokes told by young high school seniors, and other times those shamefully much too old and powerful to make such statements. I thought about this assortment of memories in the United Arab Emirates, cruising through 21st century cities that put many in the US to shame. I think about it when remembering all the delightful well-educated Arabs I've met along the way. 

It is funny how the world is getting smaller and flatter but we continue to fall into the same traps travelers fell into passing along the Silk Road, or during the New World Expeditions, or the countless other times in history one type of a person met another type of person and did not really know how to handle themselves. Some things never really change, which must mean it is something about being human. 

I have been fortunate in that I have been able to see a lot of places, which creates less of those "shocking revelations." The more places you go the less radical everything becomes. You realize things are always changing, and you become okay with the fact that everything is bound to be something new and different and weird.

So I arrived in the United Arab Emirates on another such journey, for the sake of changing a visa, but as a great excuse to be in some place new. There I saw a country that is Qatar in ten years and the rest of the world perhaps never. Sheikh Zayed Mosque is said to rival the Taj Majal. The spectacular Emirates Palace looks out on downtown Abu Dhabi. The skyscrapers go up into the clouds. The Corniche is bordered by mangrove trees. And on and on and on. With all the talk of depressed economies and youth unemployment and the pessimistic view of government, it is refreshing to be in a part of the world that is booming and organized and thinking hard about the future and creating things like "agricultural cities" and "science and technology parks," when they could just line their pockets and export more oil.

I am one that yearns for road trips, because I think moving along an open road is just plain good for the soul. I still think back on Texas to Yellowstone National Park last October, and remember how different I felt about my life those days than I do these days. That was an uncertain stage, and all that mattered was when the next geyser would go off and how prehistoric those blue heated pools looked and how cold it got that night sleeping in the back of my car maybe 100 meters from Old Faithful. I suppose that was all fit for a different time, but it is never a bad time to get out of town awhile. With my spare afternoon, I took the hour drive alone from Abu Dhabi to Dubai across the desert and along the coast until the sand dunes turned into skyscrapers.

It is almost certain the world will be talking about what is going on here now in one hundred or two hundred years the same way we talk about turn of the century New York. Looking up at the Burj Khalifa tower -- the tallest in the world -- you get the sense this is how Romans felt seeing the Colosseum for the first time. Looking at the state of the art metro system and the reshaping of coast line into odd little islands, I could not help but drift back to notions of American exceptionalism and wonder what that even means anymore. I think every American -- all those friends that existed in past lives and foreign places -- needs a trip to Dubai to put a few things in perspective. This is the Middle East of today.

And before I knew it, two flights took me back to Qatar. Both lasted under an hour and both went opposite directions in one of those peculiar airline irregularities that seemingly would not make sense to either customer or service provider. By the time I drifted off to sleep, I was awoken by the jolt of the airplane touching down in Bahrain. Later, out my small window, I saw natural gas refineries lighting up the horizon at night guiding the plane back home in Doha.

Things I've Been Loving Recently: Part I

This Television Station

A live broadcast, 24 hours a day and seven days a week, profiling hoards of people ominously encircling the Kaaba (the cube) in Mecca. This is the most sacred site in all of Islam -- a place all Muslims are required to pilgrimage and the direction all Muslims must face during their prayers. 

Gabriel Gárcia Márquez

What my reading list has lacked in terms of quantity for the first half of 2013, it has certainly made up for in quality. Includes two masterpieces of literature by this Colombian author: 100 Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. While both very different, they portray some of the most isolated, sad, and haunting characters I can remember reading. Beautiful books that have been a joy to make my way through.

Mosques

After a long time in Europe, sampling every kind of gaudy Christian architecture across the centuries, there is something beautifully simplistic about Islamic style. Since the Prophet cannot be portrayed, and since I am not allowed to enter the mosques, perhaps it is the general mystic aura of forbiddances. But the crescent moon atop a dome around every corner and the occasional bursts of prayer from loudspeakers serve as a reminder of where in the world I am. It really never feels intimidating.

Hummus

This Middle Eastern dish goes back centuries and is connected to famous historical figures such as Saladin. Made by a simple blend of chickpeas, sesame, lemon, garlic. I have been eating it every day and cannot get enough. 

This View

I have had many mesmerizing views in my life. This general theme continues each morning out my 14th story window, the Persian Gulf glittering below. If I wake up early enough -- which in this part of the world means around 4:15am -- I can lay in bed and catch the sun peaking just above the clouds.

This Map

Socialized by American education and local news, you are taught that this general area is a scary, savage, and lawless place. It has its challenges -- some parts more than others -- but people are inherently good and I have met many of them from all across the region. I will always be glad to have been here and put a face to a name.

This Look

The Gulf Region is absolutely stunning, but never have cultural differences been so apparent. Muslim women can only marry a Muslim man (though Muslim men can marry whomever they want). The Hijab that covers a woman's face is meant to protect her from the view, touch, and violation of other men, leaving what is underneath only for a husband. An interesting metaphor illustrated this to me recently. "Would you prefer to eat a caramel out of someone's hand, or one that is in a wrapper," a very modernized woman from Saudi Arabia asked me. It seems fairly ridiculous -- and oddly sexual -- to compare a human being to the eating of a caramel, but it is where this stems from.

Corniche

The Corniche has become a sort of saving grace for me in Doha. It is 8 kilometers of sea-lined park, separating the Persian Gulf from the busy streets, chaotic roundabouts, and skyscrapers stretching from the diplomatic district to the airport. Traditional boats periodically dock and depart, as do airplanes that take off directly over the water. Ocean washes up on shore. Yachts drift by on weekends, overtaken by jet skis. In the distance lay man-made sandbars that will in the future be developed shoreline and land on an updated map.

While at night the walkways and grassy knolls are crowded with families and lovers and friends, around noon the Corniche is practically deserted. This is my favorite time to set out for a run, baking in the heat that will soon be hotter and drier as we move deeper into the middle of the year. This time of day separates the men from the boys -- a silly mind game I often play in my head on runs -- when in reality it probably just keeps away those in search of a more pleasant stroll where they can hold someone's hand without them sticking together. In either case, it is nice to have the place to myself and get away from all that has become a daily grind. It has been nice, and necessary, to sweat a few things out. 

My Dream Last Night

I dreamt curiously of Buenos Aires last night. I was en route to the city and came over top of some tall mountain and saw this delightful place spreading out to the coast. I have never been to Buenos Aires, so I do not know if it looks anything like I pictured in my dream. I do not think there are even mountains. But it was one of those dreams that felt so real and created so much fullness, as if all roads were leading there. I carried on about my day thinking back on a place I visited the night prior, hoping I might see it again soon.

Into the Desert

I arrived in Qatar on a Turkish plane one evening after midnight. I was greeted by an Indian cab driver who took me to my Islamic hotel where I slept next to a Quran written only in Arabic. First impressions were the warm and dry air at night, a soft breeze from the gulf, and another impressive skyline dominated by cranes and lights and other strange super structures. I knew little about Qatar then, and still do not know enough now, but this odd peninsula supported by hydrocarbons and expatriote labor has since turned into an equally odd sort of makeshift home.

Qatar itself has a uninteresting history, notable only for fishing and pearls until recent memory. But with the discovery of obscene quantities of natural gas in the latter half of the 20th century, the last ten years especially have taken it from a splotch of desert to hosting the World Trade Organization, the World Cup 2022, and US Central Command for the Middle East.

At its core, Doha is about money. Everyone from oil executives to high level escorts are here for it, and they have it in large quantities -- amongst the highest in the world -- only leaving them bored without enough ways to spend it. Then there is the other end of the spectrum, where thousands of blue collar workers from Ethiopia to Nepal have flooded the country to support the exploding economy, only to be exploited on a employer sponsorship system that leaves them stuck in a modernized form of 21st century slavery. As I sit somewhere in the middle, gazing out pensively at both sides, I realize neither side is really me so I am probably best set as I am.

There are other facts too that have their implications. A country 75% men and 80% Muslim is a tough world that lends itself to a general aura of peculiar masculine frustration. We are indeed in the conservative Islamic world, but I will not be in Qatar forever, or even six months, so it seems silly to miss other places and not take it in as another place that exists, another reality that people live.

I recently went out into the desert -- the most authentic and natural part of Qatar. It is a barren landscape that spans hundreds of miles into Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Iran, and Iraq, supported by sand dunes that roll continuously on unchanged. It is rough country, occasionally spotted by refineries and gas flames, but one that has always resonated well with me at other periods in my life I needed to get away and look panoramically at nothing in particular. I laid down in the sand, looking out on the Persian Gulf while keeping a careful eye for scorpions, and felt the hot sun on my neck and back. The quiet is calming -- a welcomed change from Doha -- and so the vastness let the last few weeks settle in.

Brussels to Doha

On airplanes, while many watch movies and television on their personalized screens, I almost always resort to the interactive map. I probably spend hours staring at it, watching it change viewpoints and the plane itself weave in and out of its predetermined course. You can see the sun -- where in the world it is light and where dark -- and other places you have been sometime before. The obsession with maps goes back a long ways.

The interactive map was especially interesting on my flight from Brussels to Doha. From Istanbul we seemingly went out of our way to avoid Syrian airspace, which put us right over Baghdad, Iran looming off to the left. Then it was Kuwait, the beaches of the Persian Gulf, and finally the peninsular state of Qatar. There were certainly a lot of tough things going on 35,000 feet below, but life was peaceful and smooth up in the cabin.

There has, of course, been a lot of other plane rides recently. A month ago I watched volcanoes outside my window, saying goodbye to Guatemala and Central America. I flew into Dallas and picked out landmarks deeply routed in my suburban childhood. A few weeks later I saw Manhattan and that impressive skyline for the first time. Then I flew right over Seville and Madrid where memories are still so vivid I get anxious every time I think about the possibility of going back.

I do enjoy these maps, because most of the time the cabin is dark and everything outside the window is dark too. It is worth imagining what is going on below, filling in blank space, thinking how massive and impossible the world is to see. With the Middle East glittering in the distance, expansive deserts sprawling out below, sometimes I think about just how far away some very special people are, and that is a little sad, because they really are far in more ways than one when Mesopotamia is outside your window.

Tomorrow

The past few weeks are difficult to categorize, but they involve Presidential meetings and ambassadorial visits and that is never a bad piece of experience for someone my age. I drove by the European Union Parliament and navigated the ins and outs of Brussels and had runs under windmills and along bike paths cutting through flat Belgium farmland. It was a successful few weeks indeed, and the future promises to bring more like them. From laying concrete on the Honduras border with a lovely mason who had spent years in the US before being deported, to shaking hands, formally dressed, with that same country’s ambassador an ocean away, these changes do not get much more drastic. 

It was a strange few weeks too, living in a house with ten other people of all ages and backgrounds. It felt fit for a reality show, and as you got to know the various players, all the necessary characters for good television stand out and do the work themselves. All you really need in the end is a good cameraman that does not miss the good stuff. I would not have been surprised to find a few hidden behind clocks and atop doorknobs. 

Part of me felt off in the situation: its isolation, its lack of autonomy, and a few of the odd encounters along the way. Part of me recognizes this new job follows no normal format, and so no normal mind-set will do. One night only a few nights ago, a guy walked into our house and told me I would be moving to Qatar by the end of the week. This piece of news, which for many might define a period of their life, feels second nature now. It came with good timing, and tomorrow I will wake up feeling excited and ready to get on a plane; This is not new, and I have a hard time remembering a time that I didn't.