spaghetti western

R has been asking me for the past two weeks to have dinner at his house and meet his family. I don't know why my customers always want to have me over for dinner. My list of foods I can't eat, or won't eat, would be daunting to anyone. Throw into the mix my lack of social skills in family settings, and my dread of meeting "the wife" who normally suspects I'm having an affair with her (always) unattractive husband.

I figured that was why R's wife wanted to meet me. When we worked together on the weekends she would call every half hour curious as to what we were up to. While I can understand someone doubting that I would want to work on the weekend and must have some other plot in mind, this is Abu Dhabi, and what else is there to do...

And lately, R has been acting a bit strangely towards me. When I came into work sick, and was sweating even though I never sweat and was sitting directly under the air conditioning unit, R suggested I had a fever (I did) and that he could tell me accurately how bad the fever was if I would just let him put his lips on my forehead. I was like, um, thanks, I'll just take a double dose of panadol instead.

Then he told me that he'd finally figured out that enterprise architecture is not sexy, but I make it sexy. I was a bit puzzled by this comment as it was 7 oclock in the morning, I had arrived in the office with unwashed hair (5 days) and wearing the same outfit I had worn the past two days because I didn't have time due to the hours I was working to go to the laundry and collect the rest of my clothes (this is the problem with packing light and bringing only 5 work outfits).

In any case, we finished work yesterday at 1:30, and then went to Spinney's to get some salad and bread for the upcoming dinner at R's house that I had finally agreed to attend. The maid was currently cleaning his place and wouldn't be done until 3, so after 15 minutes of shopping we still had time to kill. As it's ramadan, that time goes by very, very slowly. We drove around to a few hotels looking for a place where we could get an alcoholic drink. Nothing. So R proposed that we get a bottle of wine and drink it somewhere, that somewhere of course being my hotel room although he was too polite to ask.

We grabbed a bottle of wine from the A&E and headed to my hotel. 1 hour until dinner. I was actually looking forward to it because I had requested spaghetti with real tomato sauce since no one here puts tomato sauce on anything (they use ketchup even on pizza) and tomato sauce is a major staple of my non-UAE diet. R's wife had commented that I have a 5 year old's preferences for food. Like I care what anyone thinks as long as I get spaghetti.


We sat in my room sharing a bottle of Trapiche. It turns out R's family owns a bunch of night clubs in Canada and that's where he gets his money (it turns out, just like everyone else here, he's super rich). He wanted to start a consulting company with me. Then he told me that he's an alcoholic (after he chugged two glasses of wine in the time I was pouring us both a bottle of water). Luckily, he said as I was encouraging him to drink an entire bottle of water, alcohol has little effect on him (he's a large man, 6'2" and 250 lbs). Around that time his wife called and said the maid was done and so was dinner. R told her we were at Spinney's still and would head home shortly. As he talked to her he waved for me to chug my glass of wine. When I said I couldn't (hadn't eaten or had anything to drink all day because of ramadan) he called me a pussy so I chugged it and immediately felt dizzy and giggly.


We got in the car and R said "don't tell my wife I was drinking because she'll kill you". Then he started talking about how nice it would be if he was married to me and how we would be like the couples in the 1960s movies. Luckily I was buzzed so I just stared out the window and pretended I was in the car alone.


After an initial half hour of total awkwardness where I tried to act sober and at the same time control my nicotine withdrawal symptoms in the face of a screaming infant and two year old, I got into the swing of things and R's wife started to like me and realize that I wasn't sleeping with her husband. I was so happy when she brought the spaghetti out that she started to like me even more.

By the time my buzz wore off and a few hours had past we were both making fun of R, who decided it was time to play with the kids and ignore us. I did my imitation of him talking to the indians at work (he has a tendency to mimic people's accent without realizing he's doing it) and she told me how he almost drown the second day of their honeymoon because he ate too much and got a cramp while swimming. The story was even funnier as she played out her confronting R's mom to say "sorry your son died while we were on our honeymoon". She was even interested in black holes, or pretended to be interested.


At the end of the evening I told her I was really sorry we hadn't met earlier. They are going to move to Canada in a year or two and I hope she stays in touch with me so we can visit each other someplace where we can have a glass of wine and be normal human beings.

After the almost year I've spent here I think the best people are the Lebanese (at least the ones I've met). They aren't radical or crazy religious. They like to have fun and laugh. They don't take themselves too seriously and even though they can be materialistic they are generous. And even if R said some inappropriate things on occasion, we were a great team and he's probably my most successful mentoring project. And he introduced me to The Big Bang Theory, and gave me a pirated copy of the first three seasons (as well as Buckaroo Banzai and Up In The Air).


Nice kid. I admit I'm going to miss him.