Day 303 - Ramadan - a Month of Thanksgivings

Huda and Mackawee

When Ramadan came around our first year in Abu Dhabi, I thought I knew what it was all about, having lived two plus years in Iran and then two in Qatar. I already knew that I hadn't learned much about the month in Iran, however, because the restaurants didn't all close during the day; they just pulled down the shades so that those fasting wouldn't have to see those who weren't as we ate. But in Qatar, all but the restaurants in the big hotels closed until sundown, which was announced by a canon being shot off along the corniche.

Even the Sheraton Hotel closed their ground floor restaurants during Ramadan, leaving only the roof-top restaurant open for breakfast and lunch. On Fridays (Gulf Sunday) one Ramadan, the Sheraton introduced brunch in the rooftop restaurant. When Ramadan ended, there were so many requests for Friday brunch that the Sheraton continued the tradition throughout the year, making it one of the best eating experiences in Doha.

In Abu Dhabi, the restaurants remained closed during the day during Ramadan, but it didn't seem like the dreary month I recalled in Doha. The local employees talked about Ramadan with more joy than I recalled in Qatar. Instead of focusing on all those hours when they couldn't eat, they celebrated the dishes that were most often served only during Ramadan. I began to think of Ramadan more as a month-long Thanksgiving celebration than a burden and inconvenience to have to get through.

Abu Dhabi iftar, official function-style

Our first Ramadan, we were invited to many evening iftar, or breaking of the fast, meals hosted by my contacts at the embassy. This was no different from my experiences in Qatar. But perhaps because the traditions were more familiar I learned more of what I hadn't known before, such as that the food that was prepared for these large fast-breaking meals was also distributed to those in the city who didn't have the means to provide such lavish meals for their families. With the wealth of the country being so well-known, it was a surprise for me to learn that not every Emirati was so self-sufficient. But everyone in the country had the opportunity to join in the evening meals of Ramadan.

But the main reason for the shift in my thinking came during our second Ramadan in Abu Dhabi. One afternoon, Huda, the wife of one of the local employees who worked for me, Mackawee, called me at work to tell me not to cook anything that evening because she planned to bring a typical Yemeni Ramadan meal for Alex and me. I was surprised and pleased, especially because I couldn't think of anything that I had done to deserve such treatment. I appreciated Mackawee but I don't think that I treated him with any more respect or regard than my predecessors. But Huda decided to share the joy of the holiday with us. She brought a number of typical Yemeni foods, explained what each was, and then left us to enjoy the meal so that she could spend the evening with her husband.

Setting up the iftar table

The following year, our last in Abu Dhabi, I brought up the idea of hosting an iftar at the embassy to a number of the women who worked there. We agreed it would be an excellent way to encourage more of a community feeling among the employees and their families, so we started by making a list of the foods we each thought of as typical Ramadan food. I was surprised to learn that what was typical on the Arabian peninsula wasn't necessarily typical in Jordan or Egypt or Lebanon, countries represented by some of the women who organized the meal. So coming up with the menu was not so simple. We agreed that the meal must begin with fruit juice and nuts, the items the most devout ate first to regain their strength after which they would pray and return for the rest of the meal. For the meal, we had lamb and rice and stuffed vegetables and salads and many other items I can no longer remember. For dessert, I contributed the other item I always thought of as typical of Ramadan, Oum Ali - an Egyptian dessert, the richest bread pudding in the world.

The Abu Dhabi Embassy iftar table

Most of us had to prepare the food at home and bring it back to the embassy to assemble the table. Just before sundown, the local employees began to return, with their families, and as we saw the gathering numbers, we had a moment of panic that we wouldn't have enough food. But we had more than enough. Once everyone who had returned to the embassy compound had eaten, we brought plates of food to those who never seemed to get away from their desks. And we brought plates to the Marine on duty as well as the Marines whose home was one of the adjacent buildings. And still there was food left over, so we brought plates to the police guards who were on duty outside the embassy compound walls.

The Abu Dhabi Embassy iftar table

As we cleaned up after the meal, I learned that several of the women who had helped with the meal had never before participated in hosting an iftar meal because while they were Arabs from Jordan, Lebanon, or Egypt, they were Christians. The entire event was more of an adventure than I had thought.

Two years later, I was in Yemen and the beginning of Ramadan coincided with Thanksgiving that year. Since the Muslim calendar is lunar, it is 11 or 12 days short of the solar calendar which moves Ramadan and all other Muslim holidays earlier in the solar calendar in successive years. The coincidence of Thanksgiving with what I had come to think of as a month of Thanksgivings prompted me to mention how we observed Ramadan in Abu Dhabi my last year. As soon as I mentioned it, my secretary Sumayya suggested the local employees should host a similar iftar meal in Yemen.  She brought the idea to the local employee association. They agreed. And within a week, we had plans for a Yemeni-American Iftar-Thanksgiving event on a Thursday (Gulf Saturday) evening. The local staff set up Bedouin-style tents on the grounds of the embassy compound and brought in big pillows to line the interior of the tents for casual lounging while we ate. The Americans brought foods we thought of as typical for Thanksgiving and the Yemenis brought food they typically ate for Ramadan.

No one went away hungry.

Day 302 - Giving Thanks

Image by Celestine Chua, via Flickr.com

Thanksgiving should be more than just a day, so I'll continue with my thoughts on why it is important to give thanks even for events, misfortunes, and gifts I would rather not have received.

When Mom died, it was so sudden we had no time to prepare. On our first evening home from the hospital, I saw Dad standing at the kitchen sink with his face in his hands crying. When he realized I was in the room, he picked up something from the sink and turned around. Holding some orange peels in his hand, he said he had always left them in the sink for Mom to put down the disposal because he knew she liked the aroma. But he never told her that's why he left them. He said he hoped she didn't think he was just being lazy.

And that was a gift from Dad I will always treasure - the reminder that the reason someone acts one way or another may not be what we are often so quick to assume. I try to assume the best of everyone, even when it is difficult, like this week when my account at work, along with those of 2,300 others, was deleted, leaving me with time to work, but no access. Instead of ranting about how someone could have been so careless, I've tried to think about how that person feels, if the action was in fact initiated by a person. And I've been silently thanking all those technicians who had to develop a plan to get us all back in business again. I used the two days I had no connection to do research on problems that never seemed to get to the top of my to-do list, something worth some thanks.

When Alex asks me the same question for the 50th time, I remember that he uses questions and conversation as a way to connect with people around him. It isn't necessarily that he needs the answer to the question or that he has forgotten the answer I gave him last time. It is that he wants to have a conversation to express his connection with me, with his brother, with his son, and with colleagues he has worked with all over the world. He badgers me to call my sister, sister-in-law, and brothers more often and I try not to respond with annoyance at his not so gentle reminders. He has only one brother so I sometimes think it is easier for him. But he reminds me that he only has one brother so he must cherish his connection with him, while I have my sister, my three remaining brothers, and my sister-in-law, so it should be easy for me to pick up the phone and call one of them each day. We grew up when telephone calls were for communicating an important message, not just for keeping touch. That means I sometimes get hung up on not having anything important to say. Then I remember that just as he uses questions and answers to express a connection, he uses telephone calls for the same purpose. And he thinks I should, too.

Then there was Mom's last gift to us kids, the time and opportunity to get to know Dad because she was no longer there to be his translator and intermediary. In the last months of Dad's life, I especially enjoyed his sense of humor, something I saw often when I was much younger, when there weren't six kids to have to take care of. If Mom had survived Dad, I don't think I would have gotten so close to Dad, I wouldn't have told him as often how much I loved him and thanked him for all he did to provide all of us with the best upbringing I can imaging. And it was easier to tell Mom I loved her, so I know she heard it often from me.

I believe that saying Thank you each day makes it easier to find things to be thankful for.

So thank you for reading my thoughts today.

Day 301 - Thanksgiving

image of Thanksgiving by rfduck, via Flickr.com

At church last night, Pastor Manny reminded us that we should not just give thanks for the things that are easy to be grateful for - good health, a job, a great family. We should be thankful for even the things we at first might complain about - missed opportunities, misfortunes, missing friends - because we learn more from them than from the easy things. And each of them offers another opportunity for us to choose to be positive, to live, instead of being negative and grumbling.

So today, once again, let me give thanks for one of my missed opportunities.

Back in 1980 I had just left Carbondale, Illinois, and knew that I wanted more than anything else to be a teacher of English as a Second Language somewhere - anywhere. But I ended up in Minnesota where the opportunities were few and the pay was absolutely lousy. I worked temporary jobs while I continued to look for ESL teaching positions. After five months of looking, I was excited when I got a call from a woman I had met at the International Institute of Minnesota who told me about a school in St. Paul where the principal was desperate to interview more candidates for a vacant position there. She put me in touch with the principal and I scheduled an interview for a Friday afternoon, the last day I would be working for American Guidance Service in Circle Pines, Minnesota. My colleagues at AGS took me out for lunch that day and then I headed off to the high school in St. Paul for my 3 p.m. interview.

First I met with the principal who explained that they were very short staffed and they needed to fill the vacancy as soon as possible. He had lined up a number of others on the staff for me to meet including the head of the English Department and one of the teachers in the school's ESL program. I don't recall much of what the head of the department had to say, but I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with the teacher. She explained that the school had a large number of Vietnamese and Cambodian students as a result of refugees from those countries being brought into the U.S. after the end of our involvement in Vietnam. I already knew that churches throughout Minnesota had sponsored refugees which resulted in small numbers of students in towns and villages well outside the Minneapolis and St. Paul areas where the schools were in need of ESL teachers, but none of the small towns could afford a full-time teacher. And besides, one of the reasons I was interested in teaching ESL was that I wanted to live in a big city, not a small town.

The teacher was also very pleased to speak with me since she knew that I had not only taught ESL both in the United States and overseas, but that I also had a master's degree in teaching ESL. She explained that none of the ESL teachers in the high school, and none of the candidates they had interviewed, were trained to teach ESL. They were all former teachers in the district who had been laid off from their positions as art, music, physical education, or home economics teachers as enrollments declined and budgets had to be cut. She looked forward to working with someone with training in teaching English, not just someone who spoke English.

After my interview with the teacher, I went back to see the principal. I asked him when he expected to make a decision about the position. He explained that he would be making the decision that weekend because he needed to have the teacher on board the following week. At that point, I offered to give him my home phone number because I could no longer be reached at the phone number he had used to set up the interview. He started to respond, but caught himself before he finished the sentence I heard him begin, "Oh, are you looking for a job?"

At that point, the light went on when I thought back to the precise words the woman at the International Institute of Minnesota had used - the principal of the high school was desperate to interview more candidates. He already had a candidate, but he couldn't hire that candidate until going through the motions of interviewing others.

For a few days, well months actually, I was annoyed at being pulled into this scenario, but it did make it clear to me that I was going to have to find something else I could be passionate about. At that point, I came up with a Plan A and a back-up Plan B. Plan A was to get into the Foreign Service. Plan B was to become a computer programmer to earn a living while I continued to take the annual written exam.

Plan B started looking like it would end up as my Plan A as I worked for five years for CPT Corporation in Eden Prairie during which time I took the written exam every December.  I had even started looking for a next position since moving from company to company was one of the only ways to be certain of higher salaries. In early December, I left CPT and began working for Network Systems in Brooklyn Park. Two weeks after I started there, I got a phone call offering me a position with the Department of State. All I had to do was decide if I wanted to join the class in January or in March.

I chose March, but I wouldn't have had that choice if I had gotten a job teaching ESL in that St. Paul high school. Sometimes a door has to slam shut in order for the door next to it to be seen.

And I am still a pretty decent programmer.

Day 300 - Etisalat vs Alex

image of boxing by R Schofield, via Flickr.com

While he had heard no complaints about his work, Alex just didn't fit Etisalat's expectations of an expatriate employee's personal life. In August, when we arrived, Alex told his bosses - he had two - that he would need two weeks off the following May to attend our son's graduation from college. We both thought they had agreed, but as the date of our departure approached, someone in the Human Resources section of the company pointed out that Alex hadn't worked long enough for him to have earned a return trip to the U.S. Alex pointed out that he didn't need Etisalat to pay for his ticket home. He just needed the time off.

We traveled back to Minnesota and Alex returned two weeks later, a week ahead of me. He learned on his return that some in the company were still annoyed that he left before he had been with the company a year.

A few months later, Alex was experiencing severe pains that we thought were his heart. The two nurses at the embassy contacted the regional medical officer in Yemen and got approval for Alex to travel to London to see a specialist. Medical evacuation orders were issued from Washington and Alex flew off to find out what ailed him. It turned out to be gallstones which were removed and he returned to Abu Dhabi. (It was during that trip that Violet learned to share the kitchen with Fudge and Marmelade when our neighbor Ron, who fed the cats while we were away, refused to walk up the two flights of stairs to put her dish out for her. When we returned to the house, we found all three cats sitting side by side inside the door, waiting for us.)

This time there was a bit more debate about his trip. This time Human Resources considered Alex to have been AWOL because Etisalat hadn't approved his trip to London for medical treatment. They claimed he shouldn't have left Abu Dhabi until they determined if he could be treated in Abu Dhabi. The issue again seemed to be that treatment overseas normally involved the company paying for the ticket, which Alex did not need.

Alex decided not to push his luck any further. He had been offered a job with Lucent Technologies within a day or two of arriving in Abu Dhabi, but at that point he felt responsible to follow through on Etisalat's offer. A year later, Lucent was still in business in Abu Dhabi but they could make no offer so long as he was working for Etisalat. That just left the need for a letter of resignation to Etisalat. Had someone else from the U.S. or U.K. resigned, Etisalat would have canceled the work permit and issued a one-way ticket back to the employee's home. But that also wouldn't work for Alex since he had three passports, a British passport in addition to his U.S. tourist and diplomatic passports.

Once Alex resigned, Lucent offered him the job that involved liaison with the Brit who had been given the job Alex had expected. A few months later, his father died and we traveled to England for the funeral. Alex's boss with Lucent did not hesitate to let him have the time off for the trip.

What a difference. What a relief.

Day 299 - Sleeping Policemen

Image of the Abu Dhabi corniche by Visit Abu Dhabi, via Flickr.com

Our house was just a block away from the corniche, the beautiful drive along the beach front of Abu Dhabi city. Every city in every country on the southern side of the Gulf that has two names had a coast-side road called the corniche, named after The Corniche leading from the south of France to Monaco. The name didn't really fit the Gulf roads since a corniche is a road at the top of a ledge that falls away quickly. The Lower Corniche, the road most often referred to as The Corniche and one of the three corniches leading into Monaco, just happens to fall away quickly to the Mediterranean Sea. The Gulf countries figured out that being next to the sea was a factor, so they used that as the basis for naming their roads by the sea. One thing the Abu Dhabi corniche had in common with The Corniche of southern France was that young men wanted to drive their sports cars very fast along it.

Image of Moyenne Corniche in the south of France
by unertlkm, via Flickr.com

While the Abu Dhabi corniche did not pose the danger of falling off the side of a cliff in a fiery crash, it did pose some significant dangers to the people frequenting the shops that lined the non-Gulf side of the road and the residents of nearby homes. Our house was located one block away, but it was a very significant one block. It was positioned at the end of the portion of the road that the sportscar loving drivers raced, and that meant they had to go around the block -  our block - to get back to the road for the return leg of the race. And many didn't slow down during that drive around the block.

In addition to all those cats, there were children living along our street. Small children. Children who could easily find their way into the streets when chasing after a ball or a kitten. And Alex decided something needed to be done.

Image of a sleeping policeman by | Kenneth |,
via Flickr.com

There were speed bumps, devices the Brits like Alex refer to as sleeping policemen, all over the United Arab Emirates - even on the highway between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Speed bumps were the only way to get drivers to slow down. It was a little disconcerting to be on a highway, driving at a reasonable highway speed, and then run into the speed bumps. But it was even more disconcerting to come across a car that had crashed at high speed - something we saw all too often. So those sleeping policemen were essential, even though annoying, on the highway.

And they were not just little bumps on the road. They were big enough to do some damage to a vehicle if the driver failed to slow down. There were even tales of an Emirati who bought a Lamborghini that he could never get off the island of Abu Dhabi because the speed bumps at the bridge were too high for his car to clear.

Most people hated all the speed bumps, even while recognizing that they were necessary so long as the drivers did not exercise self control on the roads. So the city of Abu Dhabi got lots of complaints about them, many attached to requests - written or spoken loudly - to remove them. So when Alex appeared at the traffic department to talk about sleeping policemen, they thought he was going to request one or more be removed. When he explained that he wanted two of them installed on our street, it caught them by surprise and they agreed.

Word got around the neighborhood that Alex was the one behind the installation of the sleeping policemen and we became the most popular people on the street. We met nearly every neighbor as they brought gifts - usually in the shape of bottles - to thank him for getting the speed bumps.

Even better, the sportscar loving drivers realized it wasn't fun to drive down our street any longer, so they started making their trip around the block to get back to the corniche a block sooner.

Day 298 - Herding Cats

Marmelade and the peacock
on the balcony

Violet was not our only cat in Abu Dhabi. It wasn't our desire to add more cats to our family. And Violet wasn't thrilled about sharing the space with other cats, either. But we really didn't have a choice. And it was all Violet's fault!

Violet was a small long-haired adult female cat who wouldn't take "no" for an answer, but she was happy to hand that answer out.

For example, Violet got what she wanted by refusing what we offered. She wouldn't eat dry food, so we had to buy canned food. But she also wouldn't eat anything from a can that had been opened before. If the food was cold, she wouldn't eat it. I tried warming it up in the microwave, but that didn't fool her. Unless her food was freshly dispensed from a new can, she wouldn't have it. Since Fancy Feast didn't appear on the grocery store shelves very often in Abu Dhabi, we had to buy big cans of cat food from which Violet would eat one large spoonful, leaving us with leftover cat food - leftover smelly cat food - every day.

We tried just throwing the cans away with our trash. But if we didn't put the trash out just as it was being collected, the feral cats in the neighborhood would dig through the bags, spreading our garbage evereywhere. And whose fault was it? Violet's.

Next we decided we would use the leftover food to feed selected feral cats since they were going to get the food anyway. We noticed a beautiful gray cat that Alex named Mosby, for John S. Mosby, the Confederate cavalryman of the Civil War referred to as the Gray Ghost. Mosby used to follow us along the sidewalk as we walked to visit neighbors. He didn't seem all that wild, so we fed Mosby, until he disappeared.

There were so many feral cats in Abu Dhabi that the city made the rounds at night collecting them. The only cats they didn't collect were those wearing collars or those that had been collected previously by an organization that paid to have them neutered and then resettled them in colonies where they also fed them. To make those cats identifiable, a small nick was cut in the side of one of their ears. Mosby did not have a nick in either of his ears. So he disappeared. But we didn't know the importance of the nick in the ear at that point.

We saw a couple of kittens that also took to following us along the sidewalk. We thought they looked like good prospects for eating up the food Violet wouldn't eat. We began feeding them at the front of the house each morning, but it didn't take too long for the larger cats to begin attacking the kittens to get at the food. One morning we were awakened by cat fight noises at the front door. That was the clue that we were going to have to let the kittens into the house.

Now Violet had companions, though very much unwelcome ones.

Marmelade and Fudge

The two kittens were both males. One was an orange and white tabby and the other completely orange, with a misshapen tail. The orange and white kitten ended up with the name Fudge. The all orange one, Marmelade. While it was clear the two were on their own, Fudge didn't have the characteristic wildness of a feral cat. He settled down right away as a domestic cat. Marmelade on the other hand was not comfortable around people. Fudge would climb into my lap. Marmelade wouldn't let me get near him unless he was eating and I approached him from behind. Then I could grab him around his belly and move him somewhere else. But that didn't make him willing to put up with any human attention.

Marmelade also had his own jealousies over food. He used to position himself in front of both his and Fudge's food dishes so that Fudge would have to wait to eat, that is if Marmelade left anything for him. Sometimes I had to pick him up and move him into a bathroom where I could close the door to keep him in so Fudge could eat.

The day after Fudge and Marmelade moved in, we realized they had a sister. She was a calico with exactly the same face as the boys. She started hanging around our house, but we just couldn't let one more kitten move into our space. Instead, we started feeding her at the back door, just outside the kitchen.

And Violet? She wouldn't allow the boys near her food dish. When the boys moved in, she was still considerably larger than they were, so she was effective at blocking their access to their food. I tried putting her dish at the other side of the kitchen, but she just parked herself at the entrance to the kitchen and kept the boys out, so we resorted to putting Violet's food on the top floor of the house. That kept two floors between her and the boys. So at this point, we were putting one dish on the third floor, two in the kitchen, and one in the back yard.

The cats at nap time

Meanwhile, Missy had kittens, one male and one female. Two more dishes in the back yard at feeding time. The kittens got pretty independent, and then the female disappeared. Maybe she just wandered to a new area. We still didn't know about the organization that collected feral cats and had them neutered. We just knew she disappeared. The male cat, Eddy, stopped spending much time in the back of our house, although we saw him now and then.

With time, Marmelade warmed up to us and began hanging around with us, even more than Fudge. He used to jump up on the sofa and then push his body right up to mine, not leaving a space between us big enough to slip a piece of paper into. By then, all three of the cats spent the nights on our bed. Well, sort of. Violet still didn't want to see the boys, so she slept under the duvet. The boys slept wherever they wanted to.

A few months later, Missy had a second litter of kittens, four cats, two calicos and two tabbies. Eddy started coming around much more often after the kittens were born and often managed to suckle from Missy along side his siblings. Four more dishes in the back yard.

Missy in front with her kittens at dinner time,
with Fudge wearing his collar at the right

Fudge and Marmelade weren't happy staying indoors all of time, so we tried to keep collars on them. But they would work themselves out of them while they were outside. One night, Marmelade didn't come home. He didn't show up the next day either. The vet confirmed our worst fears - Marmelade got caught up in a feral cat sweep. That is when we learned about the nick in the ear being a mark that cats had been neutered. The vet didn't think we would want the nick in the ears of Fudge and Marmelade when he fixed them because they were our cats, not cats on the street. If only the boys had kept their collars on.

Once Missy's second batch of kittens were no longer nursing, we brought her to the vet for some fixing and this time we insisted her ear be nicked. The kittens might not need her much longer, but we didn't want her to disappear, too. The nick on Missy's ear was so small it was almost invisible.

One day after Marmelade's disappearance, I was at the vet's when I noticed a kitten that looked just like Fudge in a pen in the waiting room. He had been picked out by someone and then returned when the prospective owner realized she couldn't take him back to the U.S. with her. He just had to come home with me. Alex named him RF for Rocket Fuel because he ran around the house so fast. When I took him in to be neutered, I insisted that his ear be nicked so we wouldn't have to worry about losing him. But instead of the tiny nick like the one in Missy's ear, RF's ear looked like someone had taken a bite out of it. RF's arrival brought us back to three indoor cats and five - and sometimes six, when Eddy came around - outdoor cats.

And that's how we herded cats in Abu Dhabi.

Day 297 - Our Town House

As an employee of Etisalat, Alex was given a place to live, even though we already had a house through the embassy. Alex pointed out that he didn't need a place to live, suggesting the company could save the money by not renting anything for him. He also said he would be happy to receive part of the rent as salary, since the company would save it. Etisalat wasn't convinced.

So in addition to the fully furnished lovely house the embassy provided us one block from the corniche, we had a partially furnished apartment near Abu Dhabi town center. We called it our town house, in contrast to our corniche house.

Allan and Alex

The only advantage having the town house gave us is that it was close to the apartment of our friends Allan and Janis. When we spent time with them, we didn't have to worry about driving home at the end of the evening. We could just make our way to the building next door and walk up the stairs to the apartment. It was minimally furnished, and we had no plans to personalize it with our own items, so spending minimal time there was all that we aspired to. We had a couple of cups and saucers, a couple of spoons, a kettle to boil water, and a box of tea bags in the cupboard.

We spent a good amount of time with Allan and Janis, just as we had when we all lived in Doha. Allan had worked with Alex and had arranged for Alex to be hired by Etisalat. They also invited us to join the British Club where we had dinner most Monday evenings and spent all day Friday either at the beach or around the swimming pool.

Sandra and Janis

We had dinner on Mondays because that was Accumulator night. Each Monday, a card with the membership number of each member was placed into a jar and one was drawn out. That number was written on a board that was then carried throughout the restaurants. If the member with that number was present, he or she could claim the prize, an amount that would be increased, or accumulated, each week that no one claimed it. Allan and Janis were determined they would not miss their opportunity to claim the prize. Once we joined the club, we also attended every Monday. And one Monday evening, my membership number was on the board being circulated throughout the restaurant. I claimed the accumulator prize that evening and then spent that amount about three times. Did I really win anything?

Day 296 - Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz

Image of a Diplomatic license plate from an Arab country
(see the "CD" in the license - the Arabic letters are the same)
by woody1778a, via Flickr.com

We had our five-year-old Plymouth shipped to Abu Dhabi. Unleaded gasoline was available in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, although not always in the more out-of-the-way places or in neighboring Oman. But we figured we could get by without risking damage to the catalytic converter so long as we stayed close to the two main cities.

But Alex knew he would likely end up having to travel to those out-of-the-way places for work, so we started looking for a second car. And that's when we started facing the differences between our life in Abu Dhabi and our expectations based on previous experience in Doha. The biggest difference was that Alex had been hired and brought into Doha as an employee of Qatar National Telecommunications. That meant that he had a work permit, but no diplomatic status. In Abu Dhabi, on the other hand, he had been recruited to come into Abu Dhabi as an employee, but he didn't need a work permit to arrive. He had a diplomatic visa in his diplomatic passport. And the Emiratis had trouble figuring out just how to deal with him.

The first issue came up with his new job. When he showed up in Abu Dhabi without needing Etisalat, the telecommunications company of the United Arab Emirates, to buy a ticket for him and sponsor his work permit, they decided to give him a different job than they had at first planned. The job he understood he would have involved liaison between Lucent Technologies and Etisalat as Lucent installed telecommunications lines and equipment for the Emirati military. Etisalat were concerned that Alex's connection with the embassy would result in him being pressured to provide their military secrets to the embassy. The face-saving explanation for the switch was that it would be difficult for Alex to get around to all the sites since he wasn't familiar with the country. They assigned another Brit who had been in the country for several years to the job Alex had expected.

In the end, Etisalat insisted that Alex enter the country on his tourist passport so that they could issue a work permit for him in that passport. So Alex flew out of Abu Dhabi and into Doha where he applied for a visa in his tourist passport and returned the same day. In the end, Etisalat managers learned that this extra step didn't give them the control over Alex they had expected, but that's a later story.

When we began looking for a car, the issue of Alex's status came up. As a married diplomat with the embassy, I had the right to register two vehicles with diplomatic plates, but again Etisalat was not comfortable with the idea that Alex would drive onto work sites in a car with diplomatic plates. They had official vehicles he could use once he arrived at work each day, but those vehicles couldn't be driven home at the end of each day. And it was always possible that Alex would have to drive directly to a site at the beginning or the end of the day.

We had to find a solution that wouldn't upset Etisalat management without jeopardizing ownership of the vehicle.

Alex began looking at old cars, cars that we wouldn't have much invested in if it became necessary for us to leave it behind. He could then get it registered with his status as an employee with a work visa in a tourist passport. It looked like he had found a great deal on a 20-year-old Mercedes Benz.

Image of Mercedes Benz by datenhamster.org,
via Flickr.com

And it was a great deal - if cost was the only factor. In fact, the car was in such bad shape that Alex decided right away that only he would drive it. He wanted to have a second car for the following summer when our son would be visiting us, but he also declared that our son would not be allowed to drive it.

When I was in Stuttgart, many of my colleagues bought used Mercedeses. But each of them who did had arrived in Stuttgart after having served a tour in a hardship post where they were able to put away a good amount of cash. Stuttgart was my first assignment and I arrived with money I had to borrow from a friend. I had to pass up that easy access to Mercedes Benzes. And now, in Abu Dhabi, where both Alex and I were working, getting good salaries, with housing provided, we ended up with a Mercedes Benz that I couldn't even drive.

But it was red!

Within a year, Alex was no longer working for Etisalat. He was working instead for Lucent Technologies, overseeing the communications installations at Emirati military bases, the work that Etisalat was not willing to have him oversee from the Etisalat side of the relationship. And Lucent provided him with a vehicle that he could take home at the end of each day. That meant we no longer needed the Mercedes.

Getting rid of it was not easy. For some time it looked like we might have to pay someone to take it away.

But I'll always be able to say we owned a Mercedes once.

Day 295 - Good Morning, Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi Corniche

Flights from the west arrive in Abu Dhabi in the evening, when it is cooler, but not cool. But we were prepared for that. We had lived in Doha. I wasn't surprised that it felt like the oven door had been left open when we arrived. And this time we were picked up by someone we knew. Jeff, one of four Jeffs at the embassy, who had also been with us in Doha, was our sponsor. He picked us up from the airport, delivered us to our house, and arranged to drive us around the city as our orientation the following day.

There were others from our Doha days in Abu Dhabi as well. Michelle B. had been in Doha, but we only had one day in Abu Dhabi together, just long enough for her to pass on ownership of Violet, a very prissy little kitty who always got her way. Frank, the Deputy Chief of Mission, and his wife, another Michelle, were also in Abu Dhabi. I had a lot to thank Frank for because he arranged my medical evacuation from Doha when the pressure of working for the ambassador there aggravated a sinus infection and bronchitis which kept me from getting healthy. The ambassador seemed to think that medical evacuations reflected poorly on his reputation, evidence of some weakness. So Frank contacted the regional medical officer in Riyadh to suggest he order me to travel to Riyadh for treatment and rest.

So far, everything seemed better than life in Doha. We already had a cat. We lived on a street where most of the other Americans at the embassy lived. We could walk to the homes of nearly everyone we knew. Those who didn't live on that street lived within walking distance of the embassy. And Alex had a job in his field. Life was good.

But then folks in Washington finally caught up with the impact of the Khobar Towers attack. August was traditionally a slow month overseas, especially in the Middle East where it was too hot for much activity. But this August was different.

Violet

Military personnel from a temporary U.S. airbase in Saudi Arabia were relocated to the United Arab Emirates. The personnel were housed in a hotel downtown and traveled to and from that temporary airbase in the middle of the U.A.E. desert by bus. The regional security officer in Abu Dhabi, another Jeff, was concerned those buses were a target, so he welcomed the renewed emphasis on assessments of how to improve our security posture.

But the rest of us were caught in a time-zone loop. We worked Saturdays through Wednesdays. Washington worked Mondays through Fridays. We were eight hours ahead of Washington. That meant even on the days we were both open, Washington woke up just as we were going home. Every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at 5 p.m. Abu Dhabi time, a phone call or an email message would arrive asking us to provide the answer to a question. The first one asked us to identify how many people - employees and family members - were in country. The next morning we sent the answer. That day, at 5 p.m., we got the improved question, how many of those people were civilians and how many were military. The next day, we sent that answer. And again at 5 p.m., another refinement of the question arrived: what they REALLY wanted to know was how many of the total number were dependents under school age and how many were dependents of school age or older and how many were employees.

All of those questions were part of negotiations between State and Defense to develop a memorandum of understanding regarding which agency has responsibility for the security of which Americans in country. At an embassy, multiple military organizations represent DoD interests, but they are not subject to the military command structure. Military members within an embassy fall under the chief of mission's authority. In a crisis, the lines of authority must be clear even though the U.S. military often provides the evacuation vehicles for everyone - military, civilian, and resident Americans who didn't get out by commercial means earlier (note: this does not mean their ride out is free, just in case you were thinking of doing some adventure touring in an international hotspot). Working out the MOU involved big issues which probably made the questions being sent via email seem small. In the rush to get answers, the questions went out informally. Had the questions been routed through the many offices that clear on formal messages, it would likely have been clear just what information was needed, but it would also likely have taken too much time. Perhaps the multiple rounds of refined questions resulted in the right information being collected in Washington more quickly than would have been possible with a formal message. But I felt like Chicken Little with his head cut off as I tried to gather the information.

Day 294 - Travel Preparations

In 1996, Alex and I were looking forward to moving to Abu Dhabi for three years. I would be the administrative officer (the title management officer didn't start being used until later), I had worked with the Deputy Chief of Mission twice before and respected him very much, I knew the ambassador and looked forward to working with him, and Alex had a job in his field lined up through the efforts of a good friend and colleague from Doha who had moved to Abu Dhabi a year before. We thought everything was set. We would leave in August so we could attend my 30^th class reunion. I had missed my 10^th (I was in Iran) and my 20^th (I was in Germany) so attending my 30^th was important. And somehow I convinced Alex to come with me, even though he had no idea what a high school reunion was about. Those Brits rarely leave home so they have no need for reunions.

Khobar Towers Building #131 after the blast in June 1996

Then, in June, suicide car bombers attacked Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, just down the road from Abu Dhabi. We realized then that we needed to have wills drawn up, and we didn't have a lot of time. Fortunately, I inherited my dad's organizational and archiving genes. The lawyer we contacted provided us with a worksheet that he recommended we fill out ahead of our meeting. I did. Apparently not many of his clients get around to that before the first meeting. With the completed worksheet in hand, he had only a few more questions before he produced our wills.

Because England is about half way between Washington and Abu Dhabi, we made travel arrangements for Alex to spend two weeks in England with his family ahead of my leaving. But because of  government-funded travel regulations, it was cheaper for us to have Alex fly to England and back on a charter flight, and then leave for Abu Dhabi from Washington with me the following day. It would have cost us more than twice the charter flight for him to interrupt the city-pair ticket to allow the stop. It was going to mean twice as much time in the air just to get back to where he started, but the alternative was Alex not seeing his family for another year. So we stuck with the plan and Alex flew to England just after we returned from the reunion in Minnesota.

Image of reconstruction of TWA flight 800 July 1996

Then, on July 17, 1996, Trans World Airlines Flight 800 exploded 12 minutes after takeoff and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, New York. There were rumors of something sinister that caused the crash, but that wasn't what was important to us. We believed the cause was mechanical failure, and that was enough for Alex to decide he wanted to skip that extra round trip between England and the U.S. and just meet me in London for the rest of the trip. He had his ticket from Washington to Abu Dhabi with him, so he checked out whether he could skip the Washington to London segment. Everywhere he went, he was told to go somewhere else. He even traveled to London to go into the American Airlines office. No one could guarantee him he would be allowed to get on the plane in London. So he called and asked me to get my orders amended.

He really had no idea why that was impossible. It meant getting many people, each of whom had the power to say "no," to agree that changing my orders would be to the benefit of the government. Explaining that it would cost the government less wasn't persuasive. Explaining that he was already in England wasn't persuasive. Explaining that he was in England to see his father who had been diagnosed with liver cancer wasn't persuasive. All those explanations fell under the description of "for the convenience of the traveler." And orders are never amended for the convenience of the traveler (unless the traveler is very, very important, that is).

During my final week in the U.S., there was an explosion in Atlanta, Georgia, during the Olympics. Things were beginning to look grim. But in early August, I left Washington for Abu Dhabi, with a stop in London on the way. I didn't know if Alex would be there. He was. Things started looking up.

We expected that having lived in Doha before our move to Abu Dhabi would mean we wouldn't be surprised by much. But Abu Dhabi had plenty to teach us.

Days 274-293 - National Novel Writing Month

Image from NaNoWriMo by hoosadork
(I didn't make that up), via Flickr.com

OK, so National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) isn't over yet for everyone, but I have decided I have learned enough and I need to get back to my regular project writing. I have missed the pleasure of writing about something new each day. There are still so many pieces I need to write down with so little time left within the 365 days of this project.

My NaNoWriMo project title is A Paper Doll World. I wrote the title and a very brief overview, but I never completed the summary. The same title just might be my project next year, too. I wrote about 30,000 words which will give me much to edit between now and next November.

As a transition, here are the lessons I learned from my 20 days with NaNoWriMo:

• It isn't necessary to have the whole idea for a story in order to get started, although perhaps I should wait until I have succeeded at writing the whole story to make that statement. A more accurate lesson is that it is possible to let inspiration take its course based on the characters already described.

• It isn't necessary to do all the research before beginning to write. As I thought of the places I could place my characters, I looked up reference material, but I didn't spend time reading it all. I just kept track of where I could get the material again and kept writing.

• It isn't necessary to be strict about chronology when beginning to write. I couldn't decide if I wanted to tell the story as it would have been during my childhood or as it would be now. Eventually it seemed clear that I needed to tell the story of my character as an adult with flashbacks to childhood. That made it necessary to develop a timeline so I could keep track of what would have been going on in the world at each of the points in time of the story. But if someone ended up the wrong age on this timeline, I could change the year of their birth to adjust. It is, after all, my story, not a history lesson.

• It is much easier to write straight narrative than dialog. It is even more difficult to balance the text between the two. I will likely write two versions of much of my story, one with dialog and one without and then work on integrating the two.

• Writing something every day is easier than I thought, especially when I didn't let chronology or history or details of the location interfere, but setting a word deadline for each day was more of a stretch than I could keep up. Writing at least 500 words each day for this project is possible because the pieces don't have to connect from one day to the next. Writing at least 1500 words per day on the same story every day is much more challenging.

• Next time I need to begin planning earlier. Next time I want to have an outline and a timeline complete before NaNoWriMo begins.