ramadan ruse

Today I was talking to a guy from the Dubai office and he was asking me where I sneak off to when I want to eat or drink something. I told him that I was fasting along with everyone else in the office. He started laughing and told me most of the people in the office are having lunch while I think they're saying prayers. Don't I feel like a sucker.

I read an article in the paper yesterday that was talking about ramadan. What ends up happening here is people sleep all day because it's hot and they're tired from fasting. They wake up at night and hang out in iftar tents (tents full of food) to break fast. Then they watch TV, have the last meal before sunrise, and go to sleep. It sounds more like a night club life style than a religious event, but I'm sure some people take it seriously.

Another article talked about the top 10 bad things that people do during ramadan. Eight of the 10 things were about women. Among their list of bad things they do at ramadan:

Pretending to have the curse when they don't (women with the curse don't have to fast)
Wearing too much perfume (not sure about that one)
Talking to people at the mosque instead of, and I quote, "being silent"
Cooking too much food
Spending too much time in the kitchen cooking food and making it look nice
Claiming to be tired during fasting (while taking care of the kids, no doubt)
Not encouraging pre-teens to fast
Becoming anorexic during fasting

The bad things that men do included watching too much TV and sleeping too much.

death cab

You can always tell what the weather is like outside, A tells me, by looking at the sky. The closer the color of the sky is to the color of the desert, the hotter it's going to be.

I woke up this morning, and the sky was as blue as I've seen it. I walked outside and spent 30 minutes waiting for a cab. Just when I was thinking I would walk to the office because the weather didn't seem so bad, a cab showed up. I should note that when I got to the office everyone was talking about how it was "only 120 degrees" outside. Guess I'm getting used to the heat.

In the 30 minutes I was waiting, a cab actually did show up, but he refused to give me a ride. After the cab left I asked the bell hop why he didn't want to give me a ride, and the bell hop said "because he's Pakistani". Hm. Then I got to the office and met N, who I will be working in parallel with (he is a consultant for software that integrates with my software). It turns out N was born in Dallas, Texas but is Pakistani. When I told him what happened with the cab he laughed and said it's more likely the guy didn't want to give me a ride because I'm a woman rather than because I'm american.

N took me to get a SIM card, an arduous process involving mobs of people shoving at the phone counter and computers that kept breaking down, capped off with a lecture from a Palastinian woman about how my photocopy of my passport was "no good, no good at all". Then we found out the SIM card doesn't work in my crackberry, so I also had to buy a phone (we used to have spare phones in the office, but after my old company was taken over by my new company they got rid of the spare phones - but, they did hire a tea boy to bring everyone drinks - someone in corporate should get a huge raise for that decision).

As we were driving back to the office N told me that I was lucky to not end up in a cab with a Paki. He said they are the worst drivers in the world. I believe him after he told me that he had "only been in 2 accidents this year". Um, that's a good driving record? He was driving his mom's car because his was in the shop from his last accident. He said he was driving a little fast when "suddenly this Indian stopped rather suddenly at a red light". I was like "yeah, that happens all the time in the US too". Then I asked if, for the rest of the trip to the office, we could stop at the red lights just so we didn't get into an accident (for the record, everyone stops at red lights here, except, I guess, Pakistanis).

The guy who walks around the office parking garage cleaning cars surreptitiously made me a little hide away to smoke in by stacking up a bunch of boxes, which I found today, much to my surprise and delight (I only had two cigarettes over the course of 8 hours, so nip it). I know he's the one that did it because his cleaning supplies are in there too. As I've said before, these people are all about service. When I was asking N where I could do my laundry he looked at me as if I was right out of the trailer park and said "Do you mean, do we have laundromats like in the US? Franki, no. Here, we pay someone to do everything for us. Just send your laundry out."

N and I worked until late afternoon, and then I turned down an offer from him for a ride home, because I felt like he had already been so helpful to me (Pete, N says hi btw, you taught him DXL). I ended up in a cab with a Paki (cab drivers always tell me where they are from as soon as I get in the cab - why, I don't know) who didn't mind driving a woman around. The only problem was, he really was a bad driver.

It's the first time since being here that I actually feared for my life. He was speeding down a three lane road when suddenly traffic stopped in front of us. He slammed on the brakes and the car began turning sideways. Everyone was honking at us. Then he decided, for no reason, to cross three lanes of traffic without looking. We almost side swiped a range rover. By then I'd had enough so I yelled "HEY!" He looked in the rear view at me, and I said "You are making me VERY angry." He slowed down a little after that, and used his turn signal as he was cutting cars off. The important thing is I made it back to the hotel in one piece.

Tomorrow I'm doing my first training class for the air force here. It should be exciting, since the training material did not show up today. It will be there for class tomorrow, inshallah.

quitter

The second day at work during Ramadan was really hard. I'm not surprised that, as I read in the paper, people just stop showing up to work. It took forever to get a taxi this morning (30 minutes) and the whole time we were driving I saw taxis, empty, parked on the side of the road. People are too tired to work, especially in this heat.

Even though I ate two things of oatmeal this morning, I was really hungry around lunch time. I'm sure some of my clients may be a little shocked that I wanted to eat something during the day...I guess not drinking tea and not smoking gives me an appetite. I found myself staring at the Wahoo's web site, contemplating how many fish tacos I thought I might be able to eat. It was kind of sad.

Worse, though, happened this afternoon. I was ready to knock off around 3 (our quitting time during Ramadan), head back to the hotel, chain smoke a billion cigarettes, and then work out. But N, one of my colleagues, called and asked that I stay in the office for 40 minutes and wait for him. I was like "but with this nicotine headache I might beat you up when you finally show up". Instead I said I would wait.

So, not being able to smoke on the streets (you get arrested - ask me how I know that), and not being able to go home and smoke, I decided to sneak down to the bottom floor of the building, a parking garage. As soon as I walked off the elevator I could smell smoke. I snuck off behind this huge metal structure and was happily smoking when suddenly a car started coming down the parking lot ramp. I quickly killed my cigarette and ran back over to the elevator. I was panicking that who ever was in the car was going to yell at me, but then realized that HE was smoking in the garage.

Quitting smoking, while also quitting eating and drinking, sucks.

When I got back to the office I waited 45 minutes and then N called to say he wasn't coming. Traffic was bad heading back to the hotel because everyone leaves work early during Ramadan. But I'm not mad at N, that was the lack of nicotine talking.

The good thing is the gym hasn't been crowded at all.

UAE cacti

Here's a picture of my two cacti. The little one is the one A originally gave me. The bigger one is the one he gave me after I said I liked succulents.



I think I'll name the small one Poke Istan and the tall one Ali bin Stickers.








And this is Ireland's cactus. It has fungus.

cakes, and other things I can't eat

Today is the second day of Ramadan. The whole purpose of Ramadan is to fast from sun up (around 630 am) to sun down (around 630 pm) to teach muslims patience, modesty, and spirituality. Fasting means no eating, drinking, smoking, or chewing of gum, and you aren’t supposed to have any evil thoughts. At the end of Ramadan every muslim is supposed to give a month’s worth of expenses to someone who is poor, though this distribution of charity appears to be ongoing throughout Ramadan.

It’s a lot harder than it might seem at first to go 12 hours not eating or drinking anything. It’s especially true of Ramadan this year, because it has fallen during the summer months (Ramadan falls at a different time every year because it isn’t based on the solar calendar) and it seems like it will be very easy to get dehydrated during the day.

Most muslims break fast as soon as the sun goes down, and they stay up all night eating and drinking until the sun comes up. Then they have a nap for a few hours and get up and go to work. Ramadan, as reported by my colleagues here and in the paper, is the most dangerous time to be on the road, especially in the hours before the fast is broken, as people are trying to rush home and are tired from being up all night as well as light headed from fasting.

Technically I don’t have to fast, but there’s not really a way around it. Some offices curtain off an area for non-muslims to eat or drink but we haven’t done that in our office. All the restaurants and food places are closed until sundown. There isn’t a place to sneak off and smoke. It’s considered very rude to eat or drink in front of people fasting (for obvious reasons). I think I better get up super early tomorrow and drink as much water as humanly possible. I didn’t eat anything before I left the hotel today, which was another tactical error. I’m teaching class all day Wednesday and Thursday, which could get interesting on an empty stomach.

As a side note, I read in the paper last night that there is a panic over the availability of cakes and other baked sweets in Abu Dhabi. It seems that people are buying more confections this year than last, and bakers are working over time to keep up. There was also a helpful chart in the paper on how to break fast in a healthy way (e.g. don’t eat cakes first, eat fruit).

A cake would be nice to eat right now. I have a low grade headache from lack of water and nicotine. Oh well. Only 29 more days and then fasting is over…