TRAVELOGUE: THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES AND OMAN; PART 1.

second draft

F i c t i o n a l i z e d.

INDEPENDENCE AS A LEVANTINE PREDICAMENT?

I need a lot of sun, both for vitamin D and to treat what I suspect is SAD —Seasonal Affective Disorder. I used to do it by shuttling to Miami Beach. But I can’t stand that place any longer. I’m forever running away from anything that compromises my independence. Call it a Levantine predicament. The Lebanese-British historian Albert Hourani knew it. He had said something along these lines: to be a Levantine is to be thoroughly familiar with two worlds, maybe three, but not to belong to any. Quite a damning predicament. Couldn’t go to Miami, a hub of Israeli and Lebanese Christian right wing expats. (Refer to the post, “Chance Encounters.”) Add to that my late mother’s sickness and dependency. And so for five years, I’ve gone nowhere but on trips by car . I tell a lie: I’ve done one three-day weekend by plane.

Albert Hourani, it’s now said, was British intelligence. I don’t know if that’s true.

I’m nursing the end of a cold, and I feel miserable.

Daniel, an international and contracts lawyer, a friend since our high-school days, has been calling and emailing. I’ve got to come to the UAE. He can’t resist wanting to show me how well he’s doing -- making as much as a partner at a large American law firm. I keep on telling him not to tell me. He tells me anyway. Good: now I won’t feel any guilt to be the beneficiary of his UAE largesse. He needs to show me. And I’m fine with that. He’s one of the best hosts I know.

On the off-chance that I may want to stay there, I check out the American law firms in Dubai. At heart I know I’m not interested. But, who knows? A friend says, “Re-write your resume; you’re a litigation lawyer.”

I buy my ticket on Delta, for less than $1100, including all taxes and fees.


AN ESCORT ALL THE WAY TO THE DUBAI FLIGHT GATE

As I rush to catch the underground tram at the Atlanta airport, to make it to my Dubai gate, I notice an Amazon standing right behind me. I see her reflection on the tram’s glass doors as it pulls up. Inside the tram, her long legs tower over me as she eyes me intently. She’s wearing shortened jeans that go all the way to below her knees, and carrying a large nap sack. She looks like she could be my friend Colin’s sister. Both of them have this Anglo colorless skin and eyes that are too round. Descendants of Sherwood Forest – Robin Hood’s people. Little sun; no color. When I had first met Colin, he was standing against a marble wall at a courthouse, wearing a light-colored suit. If it weren’t for his eyes fluttering at some moment I wouldn’t even had spotted him. He had melted away into the faux- marble. Later, together, we handled a sizeable securities fraud case and proved to all that inexperienced lawyers can bone up fast and make things right for their clients.


I leave the tram and rush to my Dubai flight gate; the Amazon is on my heels. I’m relieved that I made it. She turns back and away. She scares me; such intimidation.

Someone wants to make sure I know that I’m under surveillance. I’ve succeeded beyond my wildest imagination at creating a buzz about the newsletter. Now I’m getting an escort all the way to the departure gate out of the country. If it goes on like this, I’ll be changing the focus of the newsletter, closing shop really, away from political analysis to something else. I’m already thinking about the new direction -- away from constant surveillance. No one really gets it that at heart I’m tailored for what I do. But is that what Big Brother and its right wing Jewish imperial pillar want me to do? Close shop? I need to think this over.

CLOSING SHOP BECAUSE NO ONE LISTENS?

No one listens anyway. The country’s foreign policy is run haphazard, the product not of thinking people who can intellectually and organizationally pull it all together – financial, economic, political, and military -- the last as a last resort. A team comes into the White House representing the Jewish Right and oil interests (Cheney /Bush) which, through the President, controls the forces of the Christian Right. Ingenious link. This team wants Iraq, badly, the right wing Jews for Israel, and the oil interests for oil. The Christian Right forces: for jobs in the armed forces and as contractors.

The White House activates some “Iraq Project” collecting dust on a shelf at the Pentagon. It does so to run away from a necessity: to raise taxes and invest in energy research and development. It refuses to accept that America's strength is technology, before all others steal it. Instead it pushes the envelope on oil by seeking to control Iraq’s. Strategically, it hopes that by controlling that oil it’ll have a choking hold on China and Europe, boosting American power not by tending to one’s garden at home (too costly politically -- recall Bush-father’s promise not to raise taxes), but by stealing. It seeks domestic support for its pathetic and cowardly policy choice and finds this support in the Jewish community and among the crusading Christian Right, so pervasively present in the military-industrial complex where the jobs are, as the other jobs have moved to China. The former (the right wing Jews) is sold on the idea that Arabs should either be hung (the Jewish-American US Senator Arlen Spector lecturing the Saddam Hussein murderous Kangaroo court on speeding up the lynching of an Arab leader) or subdued by false charm after the Jewish Right realizes that the Iraqi Sunni resistance had failed its Israeli scheme (Thomas Friedman lecturing Saudi Arabia’s King Abdallah, that the Saudi King should share in Friedman’s love for Israel, as should everyone.)

What escaped the harmful idiots was that their very policy of not taxing such staples as oil, and not investing in research and development, was such a runaway affair that it enriched China, Russia, Iran and other rivals. And, I would submit, it had weakened the federal government, a goal of these people, always. In other words, even if one were imperial and right-wing and harmfully idiotic, and wanted to conquer Iraq and control its oil, invading to achieve these goals was done at the wrong time. At a time when all rivals had been made rich in hard currency reserves by the harmful idiots’ push for “globalization” and by always running away from doing the right thing at home. A financial balance of power had been effect by the time the harmful idiots ordered the invasion. That balance was made all the more solid by the miscalculation: that the Sunnis would be dumb enough to accept defeat without resorting to igniting a civil war -- their best defense. The rivals reaped a whopper of a profit as oil prices skyrocketed. Now the rivals can fund what they please. Presently, I would add that even an intra-Shia civil war (Badr Organization AKA Iraqi army v. Mahdi), so encouraged by the harmful idiots, benefits Iran. But that’s a different subject altogether.

THE FLIGHT FROM HELL

My cold is persistent, albeit at its end. The economy seats on the Bowing 777 are awful, so narrow with hardly any leg room. The plane is full of contractors and troops in civilian clothing. The haircut gives them away. Others are muscled and tattooed beyond comprehension. These must be the security contractors -- the mercenaries. Iraq and Afghanistan. The plane is full to the brim. Not a single seat is empty. I’m in the aisle seat. I pity the guy next to me, in the middle seat. He’s a heavy-set man from the south, as are mostly all of them. It feels like the war establishment in imperial America is a southern establishment. We in the north go to law schools instead. The man is squeezed pretty bad. But he’s courteous: he’s careful not to spread his large body sideways. I’ll be giving him many breaks since I’ll be spending most of the 14-plus hours walking about.

Still, it’s really uncomfortable, and I promise myself that I will not take such long flights any longer.

The vegan food is horrific. I refuse to eat any of it. My neighbor gladly accepts my offer to take the dessert and a couple of other small things -- like the cheese wedge. As if vegans eat cheese, anyway.

My sickness catches up with me. I start to faint. I lower my head to between my knees and am able to abort passing out. But every time I start to straighten up I feel like I would be dropping to the floor, unconscious. I’ve lowered my head down so far that I’m avoiding a fall by pushing my arms against the floor. The plane is so dark. We’re flying into the night. An attendant passes by and asks me if I want “medical.” I ask for water instead. He returns soon with a glass of water. I sip it while hunched down, keeping one arm pushed tightly against the floor. I feel better.

A couple of seats in front of me is a striking woman. She can be Indian or Iranian. She’s laughing uncontrollably at some situation comedy.


AT THE DUBAI AIRPORT

We arrive in Dubai and the striking woman and I talk about situation comedies. I make it look like I can write these. The George Costanza phenomenon. She’s from Charlston and coming to visit her two brothers. Her name is Zainab Ameri , from Iran. My luggage comes first and I bid her goodbye. Her brothers, she says, will be meeting her outside.


Outside I spot Daniel. We wait for the valet to bring over his brand new Land Rover — or Range Rover? This is the UAE. Inside, I advise him to avoid driving a Porsche -- that nothing is sillier than a middle-age man driving a Porsche. He’s a tad struck; how did I guess? We’re buying a Porsche any day now. Like I’m surprised.

I tell him about Zainab Ameri, that her two brothers would be waiting for her. They work with me, he says. He recites their names. A small world.

ARABS: A CULTURE TRAIT

At home he gives me around $500 in UAE money. To get me started , he says. Arabs are nothing if not generous. This is one of the ways their society re-distributes wealth. (Another is marriage -- hence the fact that nearly every Arab movie has a wedding scene, as American movies have a peaceful house with healthy lawn and cars -- and crime; yes crime is a redistribution of wealth scheme in the US.) The worst thing you can call an Arab is “stingy.” The worst thing you can call an American is “a bum.” Can’t afford to have bums in the society of the tax base and accumulated capital. Need to contribute in taxes (e.g., work) and move that capital (e.g., personal injury law suits), always. Women in America are reluctant to reproduce with a “bum.” You can be a sleazeball; that would be okay to many American woman. They’d reproduce with you in the bathroom of a plane. But don’t you dare be a “bum.”

My closest friends’ neighbor in Bethesda still visits a serial killer serving a life sentence in jail. The man had murdered three immigrants, including the George Washington professor in the parking lot of NIH. My friends’ neighbor had dated him. She cries when she talks about him. She misses the serial killer. After all, he moved capital, didn’t he -- what with funeral services for his victims, police work, transporting the bodies of his victims to their home countries? He even told her that on her birthday, after they had split, he had broken into her house and sat crying in her daughter's empty room as his ex-girlfriend was having sex in her own bedroom. That he considered killing her that night. My friends, her neighbors, are understanding and full of sympathy. The serial killer had been their painter and his work had been impeccable. I want to kill myself.


DUBAI: WHAT’S THERE TO TELL?

I spend the weekend (Friday and Saturday) with Daniel and his wife. Dubai, it turns out, is just another city. From a touristic perspective, there’s nothing to recommend it. To me at least. There’s no question that its ruler Sheikh Muhammed bin Rashed Aal Maktoum is a genius. He had caught on to a way to enrich his people beyond their wildest imagination. To draw in “smart money.” He had opted for total openness, economic and social. He knew he needed not worry about socially disturbing the Dubai natives, his subjects, since these had such a tight social structure that little could pierce it. Even their “villas” were so surrounded by high walls that no foreign influence could find its way to within their grounds.

By the way, Dubai can’t be half-open, as Stuart Levy the terrorism finance guy at Treasury would like it to be. I get out from its airport faster than fast. In contrast, when back in Atlanta, I almost miss my connecting flight. The immigration queue is endless. The security via the short immigration interview (When did you leave the country? Do you have any food on you? Were you by yourself? Always by yourself? What countries did you visit? What was the purpose of your visit?) , the re-checking for security to board the connecting flight, weighs so heavy. The dogs circulate about sniffing our luggage. The customs agent asks me to take my bag off my shoulders and place it on the floor so the beagle can sniff it.

Dubai can’t be like that. If it apes Atlanta, it’ll die a natural and not-so-slow death. You cannot be half-open, or a half-virgin. If you do that, the Dubai phenomenon will move to another place. It already had moved from Lebanon to Jordan to Cyprus and now to Dubai. Levy wants to squeeze the air out of Iran’s financial lungs, which are the UAE. But Iran can retaliate with bombings, or with stirring of Shia sentiment, both of which are certain to move the Dubai phenomenon to another place.

It’s a precarious balancing act. Extremely precarious. No beagles for the Dubai airport. People (Russians and Iranians, I heard) are welcome to come in with millions of dollars and Euros in cash and buy real estate.


Brad is right. An old friend who I could trust about my upcoming foreign trip laughs when I say I’m heading to Dubai. “Is there something old,” I ask him, “where I can hang out?” He laughs again. I had bought the ticket and he isn’t about to disturb my construct of a desert place, the romantic I am, always with Wilfred Thesiger on my mind.

We head to the impressive Mall of the Emirates, another mall, to buy a Rolex. Not for me. For Daniel’s wife. A priority, Daniel says; you’re not married, you don’t understand, he repeats. He’s trying to pre-empt what he thinks is my view that the entire thing is superfluous. He doesn’t know me. I think the entire thing is superfluous, including my existence and his. Anyway, the word has spread that the price for Rolex watches is going up this Sunday, by as much as fifteen percent. Strangely, that doesn’t motivate me at all. But it certainly puts the fire under the feet of Daniel and his wife -- and all Emirati and the upper classes among the large Arab and other expatriate community. Inflation is hitting a product that’s dear to these people. The phones are at work throughout Dubai, I imagine. Buy the Rolex for $60,000 and you make a profit of over $8,000 overnight. And you’d be wearing a Rolex to boot. In Oman I buy a watch for $20, pure gold...plated! Even Daniel notices it and thinks it’s pretty; I tell him it’s for $20; he dismisses the watch.

I shouldn’t frown on the luxury purchases of the Emiratis and the expatriates. There’s wisdom to it. Arabs have always bought gold, not trusting paper money nor the stability of their states. They’re right, aren’t they? If the harmful idiots wage war on Iran, paper currency should plummet and the expat community should return home. Real estate values and prices should evaporate. What are they gonna have as security but movables, such as gold and Rolex watches?

I, member of the tax base, like the struggling masses the world over, am more concerned (mildly) about the prices of wheat and Thai brown rice, my main food staples. And about health care cost.

By the way, before I forget, Arabic in the UAE is nearly useless to you. Daniel had assured me that English is way more useful. You’re more likely to deal with people from the Indian subcontinent than with Arabs, Emiratis or others. My later forays outside Daniel’s villa confirmed it.


THE MATING DANCE

Daniel and his wife are inside the Rolex store. For a very long time. To Daniel’s credit, he’s always understood that I’ve forever been spartan and have never had any interest in such symbols as Porsche and Rolex. So he doesn’t insist that I partake in picking the watch. Instead, I stand outside the store with a tea. (The Mall of the Emirates doesn’t like benches.) For a while, I don’t notice. Then I do. There’s a mating dance happening right under my nose.

Emirati men in groups of three or four, and Emirati women in groups of the same size, donning the national dress, white for men, black for women, are circulating about the floor where the Rolex store stands and where I stand. They pass by me again and again. They never talk to each other. The women’s faces look light-skinned Semetic; they can be Lebanese. The men too, though they look more Arab, with darker skin, than the women. The difference in skin hue likely is due to the use of cosmetics by the women. All are of reproductive age, in their late teens and early twenties. Again, I never see them talk to each other, men to women or vice versa. Their politeness and dignity are pronounced. There’s no doubt that they’re checking each other out. Yet they’re doing it in accordance with a code which requires silence. This mating dance is made attractive by the dress code and the total absence of communication. I notice that they seem proud of their Semetic noses. Sadly I predict that Lebanese cosmetic surgeons with tons of experience should be flooding Dubai to change the Emiratis’ mind about their proud features.

The mating dance continues: I suspect that if a woman is drawn to a man, or vice versa, that she or he will know through the network of friends and friends-of-friends who he or she is. I suspect they already know who’s who. She or he can use an intermediary, as would the Samoans in Margaret Mead’s days -- Coming of Age in Samoa. But in Dubai, as in the rest of the Arab World, the guy’s mother usually goes at it head on, no intermediaries necessary. All that would be needed is a smile by the young woman at the Mall of the Emirates, and the young man can activate his mother. She will lay the groundwork. Then the Rolex and the gold, then marriage. Then the villa.

An ex-girlfriend and ex-fiancee, half-Arab , used to comment that the old Arab system of mating (still in use in many parts of the Arab world) was so much less exhausting than the American. She would mention her mother on a plane to the home country being approached by the mother of a young man in medical school to strike a marriage deal. It all looks good until you find out how much neurosis this creates to the Arab parents. Arabs say “we’ve married him off,” or “we’ve married her off,” referring to their son or daughter. The parents use the active tense. In essence that means that they played an active role in getting their daughter or son married.

Jennifer Smith, a close friend in D.C. and a well-published clinical psychologist, sees her fair share of Arab clients. I’m her “informant,” anthropologically-speaking, about Arab culture. I remind her often about the neurosis created when the parents fail to marry off their offsprings. Or when they choose the wrong mate for them. I became aware of this when I noticed my parents talk about someone’s marriage by referring to the parents of the married person and using an active tense in describing the parents’ role.

That neurosis is made all the worse in the severe social vacuum that is the West when compared to the tight social network present in the Arab World. (To each its advantages and disadvantanges, by the way.) Daniel, for instance, hardly sleeps. He works until late at night, then he either has Arab and other friends over for dinner or has to attend one himself. I repeatedly turn down his pestering invites; I prefer to watch concerts of old Arab music -- Abdel-Halim al-Hafiz, Umm Kalthoum, and Muhammad Abdel Wahab, on Rotana Tarab, owned by Waleed bin Talal -- than to swim in a social scene of fixed noses, bleached hair, and Rolex watches. The Arab social network needs constant upkeep and finessing: Daniel’s wife is on the phone so much of her time, arranging and responding to social invites. The social network is tight and busy. There’s no room for depression or neurosis. But, in the West, in the great social vacuum, when Arab immigrant parents “fail,” they and their children end up at Jennifer’s office.

Jennifer and her husband have cats and dogs. No children. The cats and dogs are neutered and spayed.

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(To be continued, if allowed by Big Brother and its right- wing Jewish pillar of imperial aggression against Arabs and Muslims; the civilizers who dispatched Arlen Spector to lecture the kangaroo court set up by sadistic harmful idiot “consultants” with no conscience, Nazi sadomasochists “doing their job,” mandarins running after an income, little capitalists consumed by financial security -- on how to speed up the hanging of Arab leaders. Their next target: Moqtadha al-Sadr. I suspect they have serious regrets for not having finished him earlier. The guy just doesn’t want his country occupied or broken apart. Hence he’s a “radical.” Where’s the logic? What I see: the harmful idiots are once again shooting themselves in the foot and breeding reactive and new “spiritually”-inspired secret Shia terror networks. )