Really Officer. I Wasn’t the One Driving.

21 Dec 2011 2 Comments

by Eva the Dragon in Island Tales - Expatriate Living, When Dragons and Rabbits Make Me Laugh - Humor Tags: , , ,

Comparison of Speeding Offeces 2010 to 2011

When the Officer at the public prosecutor’s office stopped me at the door and asked me where I was going, I should have known something was up.    A young Bahraini man was peering out from a square window in the door across the room.  His forehead made a greasy spot on the window but he didn’t care.  His eyes were fixed on the guard chatting with his friend.

“Am I in the right place?” I asked the uniformed Officer who was leaving.  “I need to pay this ticket.”

The Officer pointed me towards the cashier.  I walked across the room and peeked in the window.  No one was there.  I sat down to wait.  A Bahraini man wearing a Nike shirt came in and looked toward the cashier.  I said “No one is there.”    He sat down across from me.

In the window, an older Bangladeshi man pushed into view.  He made a motion like he needed to drink and pointed to the guard.  The man in the Nike shirt stood up and in Arabic called over to the guard something to the effect,

“Excuse me, excuse me.  This man he needs to drink.”

The guard looked up and scowled.  He responded angrily in Arabic and waved off the request.  Mr. Nike Shirt sat down quickly and shut his mouth.  I knew I was where no expat woman had gone before: traffic contravention jail.

Was getting a speeding ticket a jail offense?

All my good feelings about car registration deflated.  I felt a twinge of nervousness.  Mojo did not know where I was.   Since he never answered his phone, I decided to text him where I was in the ministry building.

“I am at public prosecutor’s office paying your speeding tickets.  So far they have not locked me up like the 2 guys in the room here.  FYI I am at office on first floor to the right of reception. “

He texted back “Thank you Great Goddess of Compassion and Understanding.”

Now three guys’ foreheads were greasing up the window.  I wondered how long they had been in there.    The Officer came back into the room carrying a white plastic shopping bag.  He set the bag on the desk then walked across the room to open the door.

Eight men came stumbling out.  The Bahraini ran over to the water cooler and began slowly drinking out of the paper cup.  The Bangladeshi man did not even try to get a drink.  The Officer opened the plastic bag and pulled out handcuffs.  He cuffed the men together two at a time.

My hands shaking, I texted back to Mojo.

“If I don’t come home, please come feed me.  The guard is ignoring the men banging on the door.  They just let them out and are handcuffing now for transport.  Still waiting to see my fate.”

Mojo texted back “Tell them you are only accustomed to handcuffs made of diamonds but will accept gold ones if necessary.”

The men walked out and the three of us waiting for the cashier eyed the empty jail room nervously.  It was 1:15pm.

A man in a white thobe with gold cufflinks popped his head out an office door.  “Excuse me,” he said.  “Cashier gone home for today.  You come back tomorrow to pay.”

“I can’t pay today?  Isn’t there someone I can pay?”  I tried to look disappointed to see if that worked.

“No, you come back tomorrow.  Eight o’clock to one o’clock cashier will be here.  You come then.”

“Thank you,” I said walking out.

I texted Mojo “They let me go as jailer only here from 8 to 1.  They told to come back tomorrow for my punishment.”

“I take it you will be sending me tomorrow,” he texted back.

“I am so traumatized I am going for some retail therapy.  I will be at City Center for the next five hours,” I wrote him.

“There is a limit on the Visa card.  I will cancel your AMEX card though.”

“Haha, very funny.  They don’t call me Mrs. Claus for nothing, coal-lover.”

Avoiding Fines and Lines at the Ministry of Traffic

20 Dec 2011 6 Comments

by Eva the Dragon in Island Tales - Expatriate Living Tags: , , ,

I wonder how this guy passes inspection. Loyal camper in the desert.

“Do you need inspection? Or does your car need inspection?” the older Bahraini man asked me as he leaned against my window.

Cross-cultural flirtation was not something I engaged in as it is a perfect opportunity for cross-cultural misunderstandings.  I just smiled at the policeman and shook my head.

Once a car reached five years of age, the government required an inspection before registration.  Part of my December chores was registering two of our cars.

“Let me see your papers.”  The policeman read my husband’s name out loud.  “Your husband?”  I nodded.  He looked disappointed but he would not bother another man’s wife.

“Go to number three,” and he waved me into the brake checking garage’s short line.  There were four cars ahead of me.

In the garage, a second, younger man had no interest in flirting.  He checked my brakes and scribbled on my form.  “Go pay in the office then get third signature.”

I drove down the garage ramp into a mess of cars trying exit the parking lot. The parking lot was completely full and the lanes were blocked as all fifteen car lanes funneled into the one exit.  The people trying to back out of their spaces could not.  I tapped two quick beeps and a man let me in.

I saw a solution.  I did the Bahraini girl thing and pulled up onto the sidewalk next to a palm tree.

Really I was not acting like a Bahraini woman since no respectable woman would ever be down at the Ministry of Traffic.  And no Bahraini woman would park at the far end of a parking lot and walk through the lot.  Their driver would drop them off at the front door.

In fact, I did not know any other expat woman who registered the cars, paid the insurance and did the inspection.  Usually the husband’s company staff took care of all that for them.

I was still wearing my tennis shoes from my morning work-out.  It was an easy dash between the cars to the check-for-fines office.

When I opened the door there was a line of twenty men waiting.  Luckily the one woman wearing her blue officer’s uniform waved me to the front of the line.  She did not want to see me waiting amongst all those men.

For the first time in seven years, I had fines.  Usually I park legally and I have never gotten a speeding ticket.  I did not bother to ask the man to translate the Arabic.  Probably they were from the protests last year when my car’s GPS guided my friend Goldie through the roundabout.   I heard all the license plate numbers were recorded.

I went back outside to the man in the center kiosk.  He was spraying the air with perfume from a purple bottle.  It did not disguise the cigarette he had just extinguished.

He stamped my form, signed it and told me “Post Office” meaning that’s where I had to go next.

Again I danced between the cars honking their impatience.  I jumped into my car, drove off the sidewalk and out the front gate.

The whole thing took twenty minutes.  It was a good day to be a woman.

On Poets, Chinook Salmon and Dahlias

19 Dec 2011 1 Comment

by Eva the Dragon in Food for the Soul - Poetry, Stories from Far Away Lands - Travel, Where the Corn Grows - Iowa Tags: , , , , ,

Returning by sea to Seattle. Mount Ranier 87km from Seattle is seen in the background.

Christopher Merrill read from his poem Pike Place Market Variations the night he visited Bahrain.

His contemporary poem captured our visit to the Pike Place Market in Seattle.   With his permission I used his words to describe my memories.

"O savor of salt and salmon--the holy and nomadic Chinook neatly filleted in ice; The King and Coho caught by a troller..."

"The fishmonger, fattened on fried clams and beer batter, brandishes his knife at the cat on the counter."

"A woman in culottes buys ferns and freesias at the flower shop,..."

"..Then roams around the crowded block, reading menus, a mark for the moneyed and the saved."

"Aboard the listing Walla Walla, the ferry stalled in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, nervous passengers scan the deep for whales, and the crew applauds the antics of the gulls and grebes."

"A drunken couple waltzes up the block, believing their good luck will never change. The sign above them--MEET THE PRODUCER--reels in the first stars."

Mr. Merrill said “how I love, and miss, Seattle.”

Quotes from Pike Place Market Variations published in Christopher Merrill’s book Watch Fire.

Let It Snow Let It Snow Let It Snow

18 Dec 2011 Leave a comment

by Eva the Dragon in Stories from Far Away Lands - Travel, When Dragons and Rabbits Make Me Laugh - Humor Tags: , , , , , ,

Google Headquarters In Seattle, Washington Summer 2011

I have to say it is much more fun being a technology engineer than a banker.  Last summer we visited Google’s Seattle HQ as Mojo’s friend (of course) is a Managing Director there.

Susan, Ace and Mark loved the black board walls and chalked their names in the reception area.  We ate lunch in the employee dining room serving dishes for carnivores to vegans to junk food addicts.  We investigated the 24/7 snack area stocked with sodas and fresh baked cookies and a whole candy store of gummy bears, ice cream, tootsie rolls and bubble gum.  There was also fruit for those who indulged in such things.

The highlight was the game room.  It was equipped with bean bag chairs, video games, electric guitars, a pool table and air hockey.  After Mark crashed the electric scooter into the pinball machine and did not get kicked out, the children decided right then and there when they grow up they want to work at Google.

The engineers have had a little creative fun this holiday.

Do a Google Search on Let It Snow, wait a minute and see what happens.

I want to Pimp My Mini Van

17 Dec 2011 4 Comments

by Eva the Dragon in Island Tales - Expatriate Living Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Designer Abaya from Saudi Arabia

In a culture where individuality is drowned out in a sea of white thobes and black abayas how does one express their individuality?

To stand out in public, Gulf Arab women carry designer bags and wear oversized sunglasses. In the last few years, abayas are bedazzled with crystals and embroidered with colorful fabrics.

Arab women express their hidden selves under their abayas and only in front of women.

For instance, a Bahraini woman I saw at school covered every day from head to toe in plain black made her appearance at a ladies’ only coffee morning.  She wore a light pink, bustier dress that accentuated her mermaid curves.  Compared to the Westerners’ garden style dresses, she looked ready for New Year’s Eve with her silver heels and diamond chandelier earrings.  When the Bahrain This Month photographer started snapping photos, she covered her face with her hands and ran to throw her abaya over her dress.

Arab men in the Gulf make their public statement by painting their cars a custom color and tinting the windows.

Blue Porsche Cayman with Bahraini Flag

The Lebanese TV station MBC copied MTV’s Pimp My Ride.   In Arabic, the show is named Spoil Your Car.  I watch it because I love seeing what the boys in Riyadh are doing to their cars.  Their creativity inspires me.  I tell Mojo, “Someday, I am going to transform the mini-van with lavender and add silver flames.”

Blue Porsche with Kings

Former Kings on Black SUV

In this time of turmoil what better way to express your loyalty than to adorn your car with your favorite royalty?

Baby It’s Cold Outside

16 Dec 2011 4 Comments

by Eva the Dragon in Island Tales - Expatriate Living, Stories from Far Away Lands - Travel Tags: , , , , , ,

60 Degrees. Baby It's Cold Outside

As I put up the Christmas decorations (by myself) I clicked the CHRISTMAS playlist on my Ipod for the first time this year.  Bing Crosby reminisced “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas just like the ones I used to know.”

Although I was born in Colorado, having lived in the Middle East and California most of my life, I am more accustomed to Christmas where “the sun is shining, the grass is green, the orange and palm trees sway.”

UGGs

My family in Iowa and Colorado can hardly believe 60 degree weather means it’s time to pull out my UGGs and wrap a scarf around my neck.  But I’m not the only one wrapping up.  The men have pulled out their dark winter thobes and leather jackets.  The Nepalese guard is wearing ear muffs.  All the ladies are wearing knee high boots and long sweaters.

It’s all relative.

The desert temperature has dropped 70 degrees from last summer’s high of 130 degrees.  Our cinder block houses with tile floors do not have heat or insulation.  Once the sun stops shining the cold concrete freezes my feet.  On a sunny day, it’s colder in the house than outside.  To me, it still feels like the Christmas season has arrived even though we don’t have rain or snow.

It had to have been the Christian Europeans who decided Christmas should be white.  Jesus, Mary and Joseph came from the Palestinian desert, present-day Jordan, where the average rainfall is less than 8 inches a year.  Although I’ve been in Jordan when it snowed, the icy snow barely lasted a day and everyone agreed it was quite a phenomenon.

Palm Tree with Snow. Amman Jordan December 2006.

I saw my Mexican friend in the grocery store the other day.  She was feeling blue because they were spending their first December holiday in Bahrain.  She said her daughters were wondering how can it be Christmas without snow?

“But you are from Mexico City, it doesn’t snow there.”

“That’s true,” she mused.  “But the girls were not born there.  We have always spent Christmas in France with my family.”

So really my friend was missing her family during this Christmas season.  That I could understand.  That was universal.

A Day in the Life of Unexpected Coincidences

11 Dec 2011 Leave a comment

by Eva the Dragon in Island Tales - Expatriate Living, The Most Interesting Roosters - People, Where the Corn Grows - Iowa Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Sketch of Old Manama in 1977 taken from the alley we turned left down. La Fontaine is white building on the left in the distance. It has a round balcony. All the other buildings have been torn down now.

Bahrain is filled with the unexpected.  I never know what might happen or who I might meet.

Yesterday after yoga, I picked up Susan and drove across the island to the smaller, Amwaj Island for the market.  When I asked the guard for directions, he told me,

“Two roundabouts drive straight.  Left at three roundabout.”

After two roundabouts I came to a real intersection and saw umbrellas to my left.  The guard must have meant for me to turn at the third intersection.

We parked at The Lagoon where umbrellas were set up along the water’s edge.  As the DJ played Chammak Challo, Susan and I danced around the mostly Bahraini vendors selling mini-cupcakes, personalized towels embroidered with Fatima and Ahmed, Manchester United shirts, bedazzled abayas, plants, Lebanese costume jewelry and paraphernalia featuring the Bahraini flag and the Prime Minister.  We never found the photographer Mairi Thomas’ table and I wondered if something happened to her.

Susan and I only had 30 minutes to shop because we were supposed to meet Sensai Amr and Debbie for a Bahrain Karate Association photo shoot with local magazine, Woman This Month.  I understood the magazine was going to take photos of our karate class.

It was only after we exited the elevator at the Intercontinental Hotel’s rooftop health club that I realized our class was doing an exhibition for a women’s health expo.  Dressed in my Gi, I passed my friend Shandra who was there for socializing.  She kissed me and for some reason wished me luck.  I slid in the door just in time to bow to Sensai Amr.

Sensai Amr split us into two groups – the white robed BKA members and the Others, a rag-tag army of leotard wearing initiates.  As the TV camera focused on the anticipated action, my opponent, who was much bigger than my regular classmates, attacked me like she was on Survivor.  Despite defending myself against her flailing arms, I got voted off BKA’s debut production.

When our hour was over, Susan and I zoomed home so I could get ready for an event where I knew I would shine – the Bahrain Writer’s Circle dinner.

A holiday party should be easy, but I worried about the journey to my favorite Bahraini venue – La Fontaine Centre for Contemporary Art.   Located in the heart of old Manama, it is one of the most difficult places to get to even in normal circumstances.

My friend said “trust me, I know an easier way,” and navigated me between the new concrete barriers behind the British Embassy.  I wove through a series of dark, narrow alleys where there was only room for one car to shimmy between the parked cars on both sides.  In front of a cold store, a man waiting for his wife halted our progress.   Bumper to bumper, I tapped – beep, beep – and like a typical Bahraini, he kindly backed up.  After an unexpected left turn, we ended up right at the front door where a parking spot was waiting for us.  Amazing!

Our good fortune continued.

Visiting Poet Christopher Merrill

Visiting American Christopher Merrill stepped off his plane and arrived on time to read from two books of his poetry and his 2011 non-fiction work The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War.  Mr. Merrill is the Director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.  A very generous man, he spoke with nearly every writer at the meeting.

Gulf Daily News - Visiting poet Christoper Merrill and Oud player Hasan Hujairi

Like Mr. Merrill, my family was from Iowa.

Hasan Hujairi at La Fontaine Centre for Contemporary Art

Next, experimental musician Hasan Hujairi played the oud for us.  He described Cherry Blossoms as a fusion between a traditional Japanese song and a well-loved Iraqi tune.  He got the idea while studying in Japan and playing with Japanese guitarists.

That was interesting.  My sister lives in Japan.  And her Japanese husband played guitar with a girls’ band who sang traditional Japanese songs.

Afterwards I chatted with this talented – and charming – Bahraini musician.  Not only did he speak perfect English and Arabic, but he also spoke Japanese.  And he studied in Iowa!

December Moon over La Fontaine Centre, Manama Bahrain

I don’t know whether the eclipse last night played a part in this mysterious night of coincidences but under the December moon in Bahrain,  we proved there were less than six degrees of separation between people.  Thanks to my friend, the writer/bouncer Robin Barrett, it was a night of unexpected pleasures.

Later I read an email from Mairi Thomas.  She wrote two markets were held in Amwaj on the same day demonstrating once again I never know what to expect in Bahrain.

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