The refrigerator that the university kindly gave us is the size of a large cooler. Yes, from the outside it looks like it would hold more than a gallon of milk, a handful of produce, and a selection of Indian pickles; in reality, it holds just that, but only if you put your foot on the door and really shove the thing closed after packing it full. When our grocery supplies dwindle, however, the thing begins to look like a yawning cavern, and that it is how it looks now as I type this.
Tony stepped up this evening and generously volunteered his time and energy to run to our friendly neighborhood hypermarket. "I am taking dinner requests," he announced. "This will be your one and only opportunity to dictate what you would like for dinner during the coming week. No requests will be entertained after this date."
All three kids stared at him with such dopey intensity that I expected strings of drool to swing simultaneously from their lips and connect near the floor, to complete that final jarring drop to the tiles together. "Anything special you would like?"
"Ummmm, no," and then all three scattered to the winds. This no, of course, was a complete and total lie because the minute Tony returns from the hypermarket, Silas will be pulling himself about the house moaning about our steady diet of parentally selected food, and Tehva and Tian will be seeking dietary solace with the neighbors.
Silas quite possibly will contain his dissatisfaction until tomorrow, when the neighbors begin their daily round of cooking in their "dirty kitchen". In Oman, if you are really swanky-swank, you will have two kitchens. One inside your house, where you cook yummysweet things like cakes and tea, and one outside your house where you cook yummy but stinky things like fish and onions.
We, being just one step above peasants, have only one kitchen, but the people around us all have dirty kitchens, open to the outside through generous vents and gaping windows; in Silas's opinion, those kitchens exist simply to torment him. Beginning around 10:30 a.m. and continuing until late into the night, the cooks in the dirty kitchens are cookin' dirty and he can identify every dish. "Oh, Mommy, the neighbors are cooking fried fish and chippatis. Are we having fried fish and chippatis tonight?"
"No."
Silas sounds genuinely baffled by this and asks in his best quizzical little boy voice, "Mommy, why not?"
"Because you didn't ask for those when we made the shopping list last week. Will you remember to mention it next time we make a shopping list?"
"Yes." Note the drool back there at the beginning.
Silas, having befriended so few little boys here, is really getting the short end of the stick as he cannot quickly and conveniently escape to other little boys' houses when he has a Disgusting Dinner Emergency.
Tian and Tehva, on the other hand, have befriended several little girls who all have dirty kitchens and yummy stinky smells drifting from their gardens at all hours of the day. Their parents employ Filippinas and Sri Lankans and Indians, all of who are seemingly masters at curries and soups that vent steam so thick and spicy that it seems you could linger outside their gates and eat those mouth-watering puffs. The house maids also are very good at preparing "child-friendly snacks" like french fries and chicken nuggets for poor American children who are obviously starved at the hands of their callous parents.
Tony returned from the store with the usual disgusting staples--fresh dates, milk, tea, feta cheese, rice and pasta, olives, olive oil, fish, lentils, a fat bag full of soft fresh flat bread, fresh produce, and 2 kilograms of creamy full fat yoghurt. Tomorrow all three children will crowd into the kitchen to take stock of the offerings for the week and walk out again disgusted. Tehva will go begging door to door for bags of chips and sodas--and come home well-supplied. Silas will belly ache around the house, like an overbred poodle turning its nose up at its daily ration of dog chow. And Tian will complain only to happily eat what is on offer anyhow.
And all three will resolve, "Next week I am going to tell Daddy to buy..." and drool, dopey and stunned once again, when we make the weekly list.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Monday, January 10, 2011
Doing the Hash
On Friday morning, we all piled into the car to meet the Hash Daddy, Ahmad. As we tootled along behind a Toyota Hilax (what is it with this place and large livestock in the back of a teeny tiny truck?), watching the pair of cattle periodically drop paddies, I considered the momentous nature of this occasion, our First Hash Lay. Maybe the pair of crapping cattle was a sign of...what? Maybe we were taking on too much responsibility too early in our Hashing Career and we would fail miserably and crap out. Maybe we were bound to encounter all sorts of uncomfortableness during the Hash Lay.
Our Hash Daddy, Ahmad, found us waiting for him at the airport round about, listening to a podcast on parasitic infections. Tony hit the eject button on the CD player, in the middle of a sentence about hook worms and MS sufferers, as Ahmad bounced from his car, which was stamped brightly with the Oman Air logo. "Ah, I did not see you! I was on the other side of the round about! How are you? Children? How are you?" He jammed his meaty hand through the back window and shook hands with the closest kid he could grab. "All right," he announced, smoothing his black dress pants and giving a tug at his crisp white shirt. "We will head that way. Follow me!"
He led us down a dusty road, parked at the crest of a rocky hill, and then leapt from his car once again to help unload the 25 pound bag of flour in our trunk. "Yes, this is a great place for a Hash. Yes, perfect. And...no, no, no, let me carry a bucket of flour. My pants? No, no, they are old. I have to go to my mother's this afternoon for lunch. No, no, it will be fine. Please, let me take a bucket." And with that he shoved a ladel into the grey, flour filled bucket, and strode off toward a downward slope.
Okay, so I am sensing that some of you have no clue what this Hash stuff is all about seeing as you have assumed that this would be either about A.) some sort of illicit drug trade operation out of the Middle East, or B.) a meat and potato dish served with eggs. In fact this is about a running event that happens on a weekly basis all over the world. The tradition began in Malaysia many a year ago and was originally called a Paper Chase. One person would go out and lay a trail of crumpled papers on the ground; others would follow later in the day and try to find the Lay-er based on the trail formed by the little slips of paper.
These days, a Hash begins the day before the great event, when "hares" (that's us) go out and dump little piles of flour periodically to create a trail. Every now and then the hares create a false trail off of the true trail, or drop the trail entirely for a distance. The hares can also split the trail so that those who are running (keenies) can continue on a longer route and those who are walking the trail (weenies) can head back to the party at the end.
We followed Ahmad through the scrub and rock that form the Omani landscape around Muscat. Every ten feet or so the kids dumped a ladelful of flour on the ground. At the end of two hours we had finished marking a circuit in the desert, with a number of false trails leading people off toward empty corridors. As we walked and dumped, Ahmad had filled us in on the multiple countries he had lived in since his childhood in Muscat, his job working for Oman Air as an engineer, his children who were nearly all grown and living all over the world, and his love of Hashing.
When we arrived at the actual Hash the next day, Ahmad was already there, wearing his trademark skimpy shorts and Hash Shirt. He walked from group to group, kissing each person on each cheek once and then once on the lips. He joked and shook hands and promised "the Second Best Hash ever." ("Why the second best?" he posited. "Well, the best is not so possible...but the second best? You can always argue for the second best no matter what you do.") We six who had laid the trail the day before were "smocked" with red bibs sporting the word, "Hare" and were promised a post-run beer. Then suddenly someone called "On-On" and we were off, wrapped in an enormous group of individuals from all over the world who had come to run through the desert following our flour trail.
The bugler rallied everyone by bugling every 5 minutes and crying, "On on!" The runners yelped, "On on!" everytime a new flour pile was discovered. The front runners yelled, "Are you?" every time they lost the trail, and then slowed their gaits to a walk, searching for the next flour pile. They chirped, "On on!" once they found the trail again. A well-laid Hash will find the keenies and weenies finishing at the same time because, in theory, the keenies will lose the trail and spend all their time and energy finding it again while the weenies will catch up to them just in time to continue onward upon the recently discovered trail.
An hour after we had started the Hash, we all finished back at the car park, dripping sweat. In the west, the sun was setting, shrouding the mountains around Muscat in a red glow. The Gulf of Oman to the north looked as flat and calm as a swimming pool. The Hashers all gathered round us in the rapidly falling darkness and sang the Hash Song while we guzzled a beer and poured a bit on our heads to show the true Hash Spirit.
One of the regular Hashers was getting ready to leave Oman after more than ten years in the country so had hired a catering truck to drive out into the middle of the desert and set up a meal for all of us. After we had drunk our beers, we huddled around the bonfire clutching our catered suppers, enjoying shots of liquer and plastic glasses of wine. The Little Hashers ran around trying to slip ice down one anothers' backs. There was talk of development within Oman, goats and the challenges of laying a Hash without the goats eating the flour, Afghanistan and its human rights issues, accents as they differ across the UK, and how to best obtain a liquor license in Muscat.
The Hash is the one day a week when we swim in incongruities. We, both Omanis and non-Omanis, are in a Muslim country drinking in a public place. The women wear wraps to the Hash and then, in the impromptu car park, strip them off to reveal bare legs underneath. Beer and wine sit out in the open. And although we are less than a kilometer from main roads, no one bothers us, questions us, or even looks our way. We spend an evening sweating, teasing, drinking, and chatting.
That is the Hash.
Our Hash Daddy, Ahmad, found us waiting for him at the airport round about, listening to a podcast on parasitic infections. Tony hit the eject button on the CD player, in the middle of a sentence about hook worms and MS sufferers, as Ahmad bounced from his car, which was stamped brightly with the Oman Air logo. "Ah, I did not see you! I was on the other side of the round about! How are you? Children? How are you?" He jammed his meaty hand through the back window and shook hands with the closest kid he could grab. "All right," he announced, smoothing his black dress pants and giving a tug at his crisp white shirt. "We will head that way. Follow me!"
He led us down a dusty road, parked at the crest of a rocky hill, and then leapt from his car once again to help unload the 25 pound bag of flour in our trunk. "Yes, this is a great place for a Hash. Yes, perfect. And...no, no, no, let me carry a bucket of flour. My pants? No, no, they are old. I have to go to my mother's this afternoon for lunch. No, no, it will be fine. Please, let me take a bucket." And with that he shoved a ladel into the grey, flour filled bucket, and strode off toward a downward slope.
Okay, so I am sensing that some of you have no clue what this Hash stuff is all about seeing as you have assumed that this would be either about A.) some sort of illicit drug trade operation out of the Middle East, or B.) a meat and potato dish served with eggs. In fact this is about a running event that happens on a weekly basis all over the world. The tradition began in Malaysia many a year ago and was originally called a Paper Chase. One person would go out and lay a trail of crumpled papers on the ground; others would follow later in the day and try to find the Lay-er based on the trail formed by the little slips of paper.
These days, a Hash begins the day before the great event, when "hares" (that's us) go out and dump little piles of flour periodically to create a trail. Every now and then the hares create a false trail off of the true trail, or drop the trail entirely for a distance. The hares can also split the trail so that those who are running (keenies) can continue on a longer route and those who are walking the trail (weenies) can head back to the party at the end.
We followed Ahmad through the scrub and rock that form the Omani landscape around Muscat. Every ten feet or so the kids dumped a ladelful of flour on the ground. At the end of two hours we had finished marking a circuit in the desert, with a number of false trails leading people off toward empty corridors. As we walked and dumped, Ahmad had filled us in on the multiple countries he had lived in since his childhood in Muscat, his job working for Oman Air as an engineer, his children who were nearly all grown and living all over the world, and his love of Hashing.
When we arrived at the actual Hash the next day, Ahmad was already there, wearing his trademark skimpy shorts and Hash Shirt. He walked from group to group, kissing each person on each cheek once and then once on the lips. He joked and shook hands and promised "the Second Best Hash ever." ("Why the second best?" he posited. "Well, the best is not so possible...but the second best? You can always argue for the second best no matter what you do.") We six who had laid the trail the day before were "smocked" with red bibs sporting the word, "Hare" and were promised a post-run beer. Then suddenly someone called "On-On" and we were off, wrapped in an enormous group of individuals from all over the world who had come to run through the desert following our flour trail.
The bugler rallied everyone by bugling every 5 minutes and crying, "On on!" The runners yelped, "On on!" everytime a new flour pile was discovered. The front runners yelled, "Are you?" every time they lost the trail, and then slowed their gaits to a walk, searching for the next flour pile. They chirped, "On on!" once they found the trail again. A well-laid Hash will find the keenies and weenies finishing at the same time because, in theory, the keenies will lose the trail and spend all their time and energy finding it again while the weenies will catch up to them just in time to continue onward upon the recently discovered trail.
An hour after we had started the Hash, we all finished back at the car park, dripping sweat. In the west, the sun was setting, shrouding the mountains around Muscat in a red glow. The Gulf of Oman to the north looked as flat and calm as a swimming pool. The Hashers all gathered round us in the rapidly falling darkness and sang the Hash Song while we guzzled a beer and poured a bit on our heads to show the true Hash Spirit.
One of the regular Hashers was getting ready to leave Oman after more than ten years in the country so had hired a catering truck to drive out into the middle of the desert and set up a meal for all of us. After we had drunk our beers, we huddled around the bonfire clutching our catered suppers, enjoying shots of liquer and plastic glasses of wine. The Little Hashers ran around trying to slip ice down one anothers' backs. There was talk of development within Oman, goats and the challenges of laying a Hash without the goats eating the flour, Afghanistan and its human rights issues, accents as they differ across the UK, and how to best obtain a liquor license in Muscat.
The Hash is the one day a week when we swim in incongruities. We, both Omanis and non-Omanis, are in a Muslim country drinking in a public place. The women wear wraps to the Hash and then, in the impromptu car park, strip them off to reveal bare legs underneath. Beer and wine sit out in the open. And although we are less than a kilometer from main roads, no one bothers us, questions us, or even looks our way. We spend an evening sweating, teasing, drinking, and chatting.
That is the Hash.
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