Ramadan Week One

I received this message via email a week ago:

“Beware those of you who will stay in Oman for Ramadan. If you are a woman, you must cover everything, from your ankles to your wrists, or risk flogging. DO NOT eat or drink in public at any time or you will be arrested.”

Yikes.

So naturally, with this type of fear mongering crowding my inbox, I was very eager to see what Ramadan would be like here. Based on the above message, my neurotic side, developed carefully and over many years through such venerable news outlets as CNN and FoxNews, was expecting a month of surreptitious sustenance seeking and sweatiness. The rest of me couldn't wait to see what would happen next. So here is what did happen.

In the expat community, the days leading up to Ramadan felt like an enormous hurricane churning off of the American East Coast. The dread amongst some was nearly palatable. Would we lose power? Would groceries be available? Would restaurants ever be open? OMG…would the windows break? What if I were to have my car break down? Or have a medical emergency? How earth shaking would this all be?

In fact, the days leading up to Ramadan in the local community were matter of fact. The landlord finally harvested the dates that have been ripening on the palm trees out front. Paper suddenly appeared over the windows and doors of food outlets that would stay open during the month. People started buying enormous quantities of yogurt drink. Pretty mundane stuff. None of it suggested impending imprisonment.

The night before day 1, we went out to do a bit of grocery shopping since rumors abounded as to when food and grocery outlets would not be open during the holy month. Imagine Black Friday bundled with the crowds that come out for the returns and sales of Boxing Day/December 26. Then infuse the situation with the panic of the approach of a major blizzard and mix in some uppers for good measure. 

That was pre-Ramadan shopping. To say the shops bustled would be an understatement. They nearly burst with the pre-Ramadan shopping.

So you're probably thinking that this was in the busy part of the store?
No, it was just the store. The whole store. Wall to wall people.

And everyone was buying like crazy. Of course there were dates (you need dates to break the fast at sundown), but there were also piles and piles of frozen chickens. People were walking off with two and three 25-kilo bags of rice. Fruit and veggies galore. I was endlessly impressed. 

But the the next day the unthinkable happened. I realized that I was out of vinegar and would have to go back to the store during Ramadan. I feared for my liberty. After all, that email had said! Remember? No ankles, no wrists, no food. Whatever would I do? 

I grabbed my camera of course! And here is what met me at 1:00 p.m.

It was like the zombie apocalypse had hit the mall and left me behind as the sole survivor. Of course the utter lack of people allowed me to see all sorts of decorations that were up for Ramadan all over the mall. 

The toy store had this promotion going on. 

Marks and Spencer had beautiful Arabic script painted across their windows, wishing me a "Generous Ramadan". 

Without three bazillion people at the mall with me, I could see all of this. And I could also see that no one was out to arrest me. In fact, during the first week of Ramadan I have been most impressed with how calm and quiet everything is. People are keeping their energy levels very low and are making extra efforts to avoid anything that requires putting out any extra effort beyond praying, fasting, and breathing. Perfect serenity.

I like it. But I still have all of my joints covered all of the time, even if the mannequins don't. More to report next week, at the end of week two of Ramadan.

Dear Alex, Homeowner and Philanthropist

On the road to "the place"

Dear Alex,

We have arrived!

I am standing on your third floor (that is the third floor only for Americans. It is the second floor for my British friends...I know y'all have a hard time counting floors in a building) of your home. You know, it is the house that we are borrowing while we are staying spitting distance from Spain--not one of the other homes that you own. 

I figure that the likelihood of anyone else being this high this early in the morning is pretty slim, since this seems to be a town whose population is mostly too old to climb too high this early in the day. You guys are excluded from this qualification, of course, but your neighbors by and large seem to fit this generalization. This actually works out well for the fam and me because the older generation is incredibly patient with our lame French and always takes the time to listen hard, finish our sentences, and then respond very slowly and clearly. I am in love. 

The balcony...a good place to
stand and watch the world go by
sans clothes.

Because of the town's predominant demographic, and because I can do it, I am starkers on the black iron-wrought balcony that juts off of the home, which also happens to hang over the town’s main road. As an added bonus for someone who is lacking clothing, this home also looks down a side street that sports a now-abandoned hotel, ensuring that there will be no one looking back at me.

We have all of the windows open and the shutters pulled back so that we can take advantage of the breezes that roll down the foothills of the Pyrenees and curl over the valley’s grape vines on their way into this house. The breezes are so intense that, just like you requested, Alex, we have posted heavy objects in front of all of the propped-open, glass-plated doors so that the breezes don’t force the doors shut and shatter the glass.

Please note, Alex, that we have placed the required heavy things in front of the doors.

I figure that should earn us a few good house guest points--propping the doors, I mean--not strolling buff.

People with too many children don't have libraries
that are this cool--shoot we don't even have a library.
We just have bookshelves.

While we have been at your place, we have decided that we need to continue to befriend people with fewer children and more class and money than we have, because that is the reason that I can stand here right now with all of my parts hanging out. And you can't imagine how much I appreciate taking in a view in the early morning in the state that I am in.

The new patio

According to the propaganda distributed by the wine-making cooperative of your tiny hamlet, this place only gets 45 days of rain a year, and we have been fortunate enough to be here for two of those days (or unfortunate, depending on where in the world you are coming from--but since we are coming from the Middle East, just as you will be soon, we consider ourselves fortunate that it has rained) . 

But today, on our third day, the skies are bright blue. Instead of the air feeling muggy and sluggish, it is crisp and cool and enjoyable. This is what your patio looked like early early this morning, Alex!

As I finish this up, I notice that the guy who lives across the way thinks it is a beautiful day, too. He is also naked and standing on his balcony. I wave. He waves back. Vive la France.

We have the place ready for you when you arrive, Alex (don't worry, we'll wash the sheets!). See you guys soon!

Rachel, Tony, and Offspring

How to Eat in France

How to eat in France.

First, go way back in time and agree to host Couchsurfers who are older, well-established financially, and from Toulouse. Make sure one of them is from the Flemish area of France and insure that he despises sweets, much preferring good cheeses and wine to anything that even suggests that it contains added sugar.

Make sure the other is local and a mother herself who likes to make sure that people eat well on her watch. That point is key.

Then arrive at their home having eaten little other than the odd baguette, a smear of butter, a chunk of dried pork sausage, and Chevre. Or Brie.  Or whatever else looked good in the store. Sometimes the pick-a-cheese-any-cheese method of buying worked, but sometimes we needed a splash of wine to go with that cheese to make it go down with any gastronomic appreciation.

Now sit. 

Sitting at the table in the garden is very important since the fragrance of the flowers blooming all around contribute to the enjoyment of the food. Lilacs are up at this time of year, and so are lavender. Irises have just finished and their dried husks lay wilting around the bright green fans. The cherry tree in the backyard has finished for the year as well, but that is okay since that means the melons are at their best—orange and fleshy and juicy.

Now that you are sitting, rip a chunk of bread and wonder that it is not yet another baguette. At first it is a sourdough sort of loaf. Then it is a loaf riddled with different seeds—poppy seeds and millet and sunflower. Then it is a heavy cereal loaf.

Don’t forget to smear that bread with a pâte—which literally means paste—and this one is literally a paste of duck liver and mushrooms. Make Tehva stop eating it all because without some serious parental controls she will not stop. You are also welcome to sample the blood pudding or the thinly sliced chorizo, but none of these chunks is too big and there are six other people enjoying this aperitif with you, so lentement!

Breathe. Don’t forget to breathe.

After a long linger over the aperitif, sit back and ready yourself for the local sausage that appears, grilled and seeping juices, in one small coil on a simple white plate. Have some bread. Take a section of the meat. Drink some more wine, but never too much in your glass in one go. It seems to be there just to make everything else taste nicer. 

And it works.

Now come to a casserole dish of curly buttered pasta topped with a generous layer of melted Emanthâl cheese. You will appreciate its simplicity, even after the children have tried to snake the brown, crispy cheese off of the top, and you will eat it with some more red wine from the vineyard near the city.

Now sit back and smile because you are starting to understand this style of eating that your fellow countrymen have glorified in diet magazines since you were younger. Wonder why it has never caught on in your own country, but then remember that nine days out of ten, dinner has to be a rushed affair in your home anyhow. And, realistically speaking, good bread and wine are too expensive to make it a feasible eating style.

Put this thought aside and be thankful that you are getting this experience here and now as the salad approaches. It is full of spring greens and artichoke hearts. Tehva has never seen an artichoke heart in her life, but rapidly goes from “I am not eating that” to “You can’t have any of those because they are mine”.

Think to yourself that that salad rocked your world and accept another splash of wine in your glass because that has to be the end of things…but no. 

The dates you dragged from the Middle East, along with one of those bright orange melons and a raft of cheese have just appeared on the table. There is no Brie, which makes you breathe a sigh of relief (but makes your boy child pout). There is, however, a Roquefort with a cauliflower bouquet, a small circle of Chevre, and a chunk of soft, two-toned cheese—one color on the outside ring with a lighter, creamier center.

The person from the Flemish area chooses another wine from his collection, a red something or other, and suggests having this with the Roquefort, which is like mouth fireworks.

Close your eyes and think, “Ah yes…this is how to eat in France”.

                                                                                                                   

I Am So Not Complaining

I walked into the Pharmacy with Tian in tow because learning to communicate a yeast infection to a pharmacist in a language you don't really speak is an important life skill. However, Tian was so disgusted by the thought of watching her mother communicate said thought that she flew from the shop before I could start pantomiming "itchy crotch".

TMI? I think not, for it was the yeast infection that should have stood as a warning for the rest of the day--a day for which Mastercard is made, if you can find a place that will accept a Mastercard that is not EuroMastercard.

But I am not complaining.

We took the tram to Parc Fleur de la Source, exiting at the end of the line instead of at that stop that said "Parc Fleur". Two hours of towing our luggage around behind us later, we found the park.

Look who was waiting for us in the park.

No complaints. It was cold and the roads were not built for rolly bags but the clouds eventually passed and the park, once we got there, was grassy, with a train and water features everywhere. And there were free toilets that didn't smell too yucky. Yup. No whining here.

And the peacock was waiting, too!

We caught the tram back into the city in the evening and found a Korean restaurant where the kimchee chigae was made with sugar and the pho (in a Korean restaurant?) lacked the mandatory basil leaves as well as the jalapenos.

But I am not whinging. It was food and it was hot, and I didn't have to clean up after us.

We got to the train station at 10:30 p.m., ready to board our overnight train to Toulouse at 11:55 p.m. I took Tehva to the station toilet where she managed to catch the door as another passenger exited. But the minute Tehva closed the door the room went dark and the floor erupted in a geyser. That sign that said, "Toilet cleaned after every customer" was totally true.

But no complaints. Our ankles were very clean and Tehva catching that door saved us 30 cents.

As I exited the toilet, I saw a scrolling message. In effect, it translated as, "There are no trains tonight because of the French strike. Thank you for your understanding, suckers." That explained the fact that we could not find our train on the marquis when we walked in.

But I am so not bitching about this. I booked the tickets in April, talked up the whole sleeper car thing for weeks, and suddenly found myself stuck in Orleans, France. But of course I was not alone in this endeavor--all of France knew not to be there, but Tony was there. And so were the three children who proceeded in the next hour to get wobbly lower lips and then confess all their troubles to a random Londoner in the Ibis Hotel lobby (where there were no rooms available at 11 p.m. by the way) while Tony and I, thanks to the kindness of Claude the night manager, tried to rearrange our train tickets via the internet.

Nope...no train

That didn't work out since our ticket did not register as ever having been purchased.

Claude sneered at us for reproducing too many times but did call over to the Best Western around the corner, explaining that they might be able to accommodate a party of our enormous size. For the right price.

We peeled the kids from the Ibis Hotel's lobby, where they had all sat drooling patiently on the plastic furniture, watching bad French TV. We led them to the Best Western, where we paid the right price for a tiny but tastefully decorated room that would allow too many children to sleep on various surfaces not really meant for sleeping.

I suspect that Claude got a kickback but at least we were not sleeping in the cold train station with the homeless woman whom Tehva inexplicably had named "Sex Worms".

On the way to our room in the Best Western, Tehva managed to break their classy throwback elevator. Fortunately they did not charge us for this infraction, but they did suggest that we might want to pay another $100 US for breakfast the next morning. In response we wearily asked how long we could stay in the room before they would evict us the next morning and then, like a couple of cheap whores, calculated how much money we were paying an hour for the room. It made us feel a little bit better.

But I am so not complaining because in the end we got where we wanted to go, and we got to ride the train first class, "JUST LIKE HARRY POTTER!"

But that is something else to celebrate entirely.

First class!

The Danger of Diversity...and the Joy

We are chronic Couchsurfers.

This means that we look for people who like to stay with and host perfect strangers in their homes at www.couchsurfing.org, and then we stay with them. Or, if need be, we host them. But now we are on the surfing end of things, which means we are putting ourselves out there to stay in people's homes.

As an American, this is sometimes incredibly painful. Americans are not very gracious guests because we struggle with receiving things. We much prefer to give things and have them accepted, but accepting things ourselves is sometimes difficult.

However, accepting things has opened us up to all sorts of experiences. Here is what accepting hospitality has looked like today in France:

Picnic in the park, which has been built as urban green space on top of a parking garage

The Car Rally in the town center--we went for a spin in the James Bond car!

Outside the Farmer's Market in Ormes. Tian rode on the
back rack.

The boulangerie's offerings

And the local butcher with the itchy nose

Learning how to light a candle like a real Catholic in the Orleans Cathedral

So when we are Couchsurfing, our sanity sometimes is questioned, but so is the sanity of our hosts, and that somehow feels nicer than being all alone in the loony bin. The neighbors here in Ormes think that our hosts are insane for having us, perfect strangers, stay. At the same time, some tell us that we are loons for placing our children in grave danger by sleeping in perfect strangers' homes, eating perfect strangers' food, sharing a laugh with perfect strangers, and letting them all gallivant around foreign places with the offspring of perfect strangers.

Why do it?

Because the world is a big place filled with billions of diverse yet kind strangers. And gosh darn I really want to meet them all.

I was raised in a culture that simultaneously glorifies and demonizes diversity. Diversity is glorified so long as it occurs in a controlled setting--books, school presentations, and antiseptic encounters all count as healthy ways to experience and deal with diversity.

Experiences where diversity is more up-close and personal are potentially laden with danger. Staying with strangers in a private home in a foreign country goes outside the boundaries of controlled. At the point when we enter into that stranger's home, diversity potentially becomes something dangerous, threatening and untrustworthy. But it rarely works out that way. Instead we find commonalities and go from there.

True enough, if we seek out and experience that diversity deeply, the potential to offend becomes much greater, but so does the potential to learn and experience a truly different point of view while discovering that we are not really as diverse as we thought we were in the most important ways.

And so, while we are in France, we are endangering our children's lives and potentially being very offensive. But, man, it sure is fun.

The Best Lesbian

Silas hangs with the British Scouts Overseas on Tuesday nights and generally, since he is flaky, he has nothing to say upon pick up other than, “It was good.”

Because of the homeschooling thing and the apparent risk that all of my children will become unsocialized idjits (or already are), I like to do lots of follow-up questioning in a motherly sort of voice so that they can develop their floundering conversational skills. No need for the children to become statitics, right? “So what did you do tonight?” always comes next.

They always do boy-scouty things like pitch tents, light things on fire, play hiding games, learn to use compasses and tie knots, and Silas will explain these things in as much detail as the boy can muster. After a quick description of the evening is off of his chest, Silas likes to turn on 97.0 FM and listen to classical music all the way home.

But tonight I did not have to ask Silas anything. He got in the car with a grave expression on his sweaty little face (sweaty because I had left him to bake in the 100-degree-at-8:15-PM heat while I sat in Muscat’s ridiculous traffic) and grave because he had just received a head lamp as an award.

He went right to the point and, in a somber voice, declared, “I got a headlamp.”

“Oh, another one?” As we pack up, we have been finding headlamps and pieces of headlamps in our house almost as often as we have been finding roaches. “Well that’s pretty cool.”

“Mom, what’s a lesbian?”

Non sequitor anyone?

I scraped around for the names of some people we know who are lesbians but being Silas he couldn’t remember any of the people whose names I came up with. “It’s a woman who prefers to marry a woman,” I finally explained.

“Oh. That’s weird. I just got the best lesbian award. That’s what the headlamp is for. Because I am the best lesbian.”

Now it was my turn. “Oh. That’s weird. I don’t really think you would qualify as a lesbian since you are missing the required equipment. Was this an award from the other kids in your group?”

“No, it’s from one of the leaders.”

Stranger still since I would think that the leaders would know that a vagina is required in order to be a lesbian. “Well, did they tell you why you are the best lesbian?” Best to remain matter of fact about this.

“Yes. At the camp we played a drama game where I had to pretend I was a TV. And I was the funniest. So they told me that I am the best lesbian. Am I a lesbian?”

“I don’t think so. Are you? Do you have something you have been hiding since the last time I saw you naked?”

“No! Mom!”

He remained perplexed. I remained perplexed. The headlamp remained unopened. And I remained unclear as to how to proceed.

There are countless different flavors of English that fly here in Muscat. English is the lingua franca, but when it comes to the nitty gritty, there are plenty of places where the Englishes collide. Is it a fork in the road or a bifurcation? Is it tea you wanted me to give to your child or supper? And then there is double fisting—dangerous stuff.

To the Americans it means walking around with a drink in each hand. Observe: “Wow! Double fisting it! What a party!” To the Australians and Kiwis, it means masturbating. Observe: “Wow! Double fisting it? Sorry dude—didn’t mean to walk in on you. Maybe you should come join the party instead.”

So maybe this was an English collision. Maybe there is some really charming double meaning for lesbian in the UK, especially when it is used in reference to a scout camp out. Or maybe when you put “lesbian” with “best” it means “funny clever guy who is good at drama games.”

Or maybe we have just run into overt homophobia. Or bullying and humiliation. Or perhaps, oh my, this honestly just occurred to me…perhaps he was declared the best thespian.

Whoa. Now the question becomes how many of those little boys walked out of that scout meeting tonight secretly thinking that Silas is a lesbian? 

My son the lesbian. I am so proud.

Shipping Cats from Oman to the USA--Step 3

Step 3 is involving getting the cats booked on an airline. Let me tell you, getting a straight answer out of the airlines regarding whether or not they ship cats as hand luggage, checked luggage, or manifest cargo only is like trying to get a cat to roll over and play dead on command.

Our first forays into this part of cat export were ridiculous. Etihad and British Air both swear up and down on their websites that they love animals and take the greatest care in shipping them, but when push comes to shove they really want nothing to do with the family pet. Or at least that has been our experience.

And since we are flying those airlines, that is where we put our initial forays into information gathering. Etihad's pet representative hung up on us after spitting, "NO! NO PETS!"

British Air gave a long convoluted answer, the end of which was, "Even though we representatives sound like we are British, and even though your ticket says you are flying British Air, you are actually flying American Airlines. And they don't fly pets through London. Have a lovely day."

And how can you be angry at someone who wishes you a lovely anything?

After much pursuing, calling, and actively seeking answers, we have discovered that in our haste to leave Muscat at the end of the summer, we booked ourselves on the wrong airlines.

KLM and Lufthansa are the way to go when it comes to flying with cats. Anybody else is not.

So since Etihad and BA/AA apparently hate us because we have cats and want to take them when we go, we had to go outside our booked routes to find someone who will ship our cats as manifest cargo.

Cost: Just the cost of sitting on hold on the phone, only to be snapped at. Let's call it 2 OMR, because it never took anyone too long to say NO CATS.

Hassles?: Yes. See above.

What to expect?: Expect to have to do a lot of leg work to get answers. Or just let it go and book Lufthansa or KLM.

Timeline: 2.5 months prior to departure