JP in Q8

Almost Time to Leave Kuwait

2009-05-23T00:46:00.000-07:00

I have not written anything on this blog site since October of last year. I apologize to people who had gotten used to checking it out to see how I was doing. I went through a complicated period, I didn’t feel able to write about what was really going on. I’m not good at writing cutesy bullshit when major shifts are taking place in my life. But time has zipped by, and now I’m getting ready to leave Kuwait. It’s time to write something and put it in perspective a bit. Where to start?

Well, since you’re probably wondering, let me tell you about the dog in the photo. It’s the last picture I took before I lost my camera, but I’ll explain that later. I found the dog lying on the sidewalk about three weeks ago, about a block away from my apartment building. The Kuwait heat had already surpassed the comfort level, and the dog was in distress. She didn’t want to lift her head, but I saw that she was still alive. Dogs are unclean animals in Islamic culture. People don’t have much sympathy for them. I took her some water. She lifted her head, drank a sip, and gratefully leaned her head against my hand. She was too weak to stand. I had asked Chinta, the Nepalese security guard who was working at my building, if he had noticed the dog. He didn’t know about it, and came behind to see how I was doing with it. He doesn’t understand English very well, and when I said, “What do you think, Chinta, should I take her to my place?” he thought I was asking him to carry her for me. He tried to pick her up, but she growled weakly. She would only let me pick her up. I picked her up and carried her back to my building. People on the street looked at me carrying the dog and shook their heads in disapproval. Chinta carried the water bottle and held the doors for me. I took the dog straight to the shower to wash her and cool her down. She spend the night in the bathroom. The picture you see is the last one I took with my camera before I lost it on the way home from school. I wanted to take the dog to an Indian vet who is known for helping people who rescue animals, and charges lower fees. I was concerned that cabdrivers would not want to transport a dog. I asked my Egyptian friend Waleed to help me. He said that he would give me a ride there, but I would need to find my own way back home. Exasperated, I told him never mind and started walking home, because the staff shuttle had already left. The sun and heat were brutal that afternoon. About two blocks from school, I noticed something hanging out of the pocket of my backpack. I realized that I had put it on without checking the pocket zipper, and it had been wide open. I looked quickly and saw that I still had my wallet. What else might have been in the pocket that could have fallen out? Should I backtrack and see if anything was on the sidewalk? I was hot, tired, and irritated about not getting the help I needed. So I didn’t go back. My camera was probably less than a minute’s walk behind me. Easy come, easy go. And so it was with the dog. She came back to life after some water, food, a good bath and a little TLC. I thought of giving her the name of Priscilla, which is the last name of a friend back in Tacoma who has been courageously fighting a battle with cancer. I didn’t get to keep her long enough to find out if she would have any of the fun and vivacious personality of my friend in Washington. Pooch Priscilla was a quiet and gentle while I had her. She seemed very trainable to me – likely to become a wonderful and obedient companion. I even toyed with the idea of trying to take “Prissy” back to America with me. A young friend from my reading group met me for dinner a couple days later. She loves dogs. She had been looking for a dog. She wanted it. She was thrilled about taking the dog before she even laid eyes on it. Prissy didn’t want to go. But I dragged it out the door on a leash, into the elevator, pushed her into my friend’s car, and said goodbye. The friend called me later that night to say that her parents, with whom she is still living, had rejected the dog. They were taking it to a shelter the next day. For a second or two, I considered telling her to bring the dog back to me. But it made no sense. I had to let her go. I’m glad that someone served as an intermediary for passing the dog along, because it would have been really hard for me. I hope she’s okay. I choose to believe that she will end up in a nice home. She really was a very good dog.

Though it was only a few days that I had her, this experience reminded me that having a pet can help you to not be so wrapped up in your own internal dramas. I have to admit that that has been much the case during this second year in Kuwait. Since the whole Taize experience and my return to Catholicism, an old dream about joining a religious community and becoming a “Brother” has been heavily on my mind. I’m almost, but not yet too old to be accepted into a community. I went back to Pennsylvania in December and spent a week in retreat at a small monastery near Allentown. When I got back to Kuwait, my school director let me know that I had to either commit to another school year or submit a letter of resignation. So I submitted the letter of resignation. The whole process of sorting out questions and dealing with uncertainties can be quite a trial in itself.

I made plans to go to Jerusalem for our spring holiday. One of the catechism teachers I work with put me in touch with a man who organized unofficial group tours from Kuwait, a tricky business, since Kuwait has no diplomatic relations with Israel. You will not be allowed back in the country if they know you have been there. The only way to get around it is to enter Israel via a certain land border crossing where they will let you in without stamping your passport. Unfortunately the guy who was organizing the tours failed to pay the necessary bribes, or whatever, and got deported from Kuwait. So I went alone. Getting in and out required a lot of patience, but I managed without any problems.

For me, Jerusalem was not a place that fostered prayerfulness. I found it very hard to maintain any kind of positive spiritual mood there. It has been a holy city for millennia, but it didn’t feel very holy to me. I stayed in a pilgrim’s hospice right on Via Dolorosa, the legendary path of Jesus’ final passage through Jerusalem carrying the cross. Christians, Jews, and Muslims stream past each other in the narrow streets, and each community seems caught up in an intense vision of great importance, but the visions neither complement one another, as one might hope, nor does any one of them succeed in suggesting universality. Rather, spiritual truth seems fractured there, spoiled by an attitude of “I’m correct, and you are wrong.” Of course I was only there a week, but that was my first impression. The old man who gave me a walking tour of the old city and Mount of Olives knew everything about every church, how many hundreds of years such-and-such a community of monks had lived in some old crumbling building, where were the disputed locations of this or that event from Jesus’ final days in the city, and so on – but this man was a Muslim, and he was just leading people around to earn his daily bread. At the end, no matter how much money I game him, he scowled and asked for more. The shopkeepers were so pushy that I didn’t even want to look. An Armenian Christian promised me that he would never cheat me because we can’t take our riches to heaven, but cheat me he did, and at a level that made me ashamed of my gullibility as much as his brazenness. A priest I met with for spiritual direction said that the Jews who lived around him would just as soon spit on him as say hello. He told me that religious life in America was a “cesspool,” and anyhow there was no time for it because the world was going to end very soon. In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, tired-looking Orthodox priests kept the crowd moving along with stern gestures and hand claps. In short, Jerusalem was a great antidote for Taize. The highlights of the week were in getting out of the city to go on bus trips. Strolling through the market in Bethlehem and having Turkish coffee with a couple other single travelers was pleasant. I would recommend tourists to Israel to make their base in Tiberia, the surprisingly green and beautiful region in the north around Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee.

Once back in Kuwait, I took stock of my experiences and where things were heading for me. I began to wonder if I had made a mistake in not renewing my contract. I had to respond to a few emails from vocation directors who wanted to know what I was thinking. I wrote and told them about my doubts, and I never heard back from any of them again. My role as Catechism teacher at the cathedral kept me going to church, at least. I spoke with as much honesty as I could get away with, and the children were very loving. As the day approached for their first holy communion, more emphasis had to be put on the practical orchestration of the event. I’m not sure of the numbers, but I’m guessing there were six or seven hundred children receiving. They had to be trained and directed about how to line up, stay quiet, join in the responses, and stick out their tongues. At times it felt like an a big production being carried out for the sake of family tradition more than anything else. On the morning of their first holy communion, the children were all dressed up, girls in their fancy white dresses and boys in white suits with little white crowns on their heads. I, along with one other teacher, a lady from the Philippines, had to lead the procession of children into the church because we were first-time catechists. The ceremony was long and elaborate, with a lot of music, pomp, and photography. This was a huge event for these families. I found that regardless of whether I had great or little confidence about the active hand of God in life and in the world, the love of these people for their children was enough to make me feel very good about helping to prepare them for communion and try to make it meaningful for them.

With time, I have recovered from Jerusalem. One night, an Egyptian man spoke to me in Arabic in the cathedral courtyard. He thought I was an Arab. It turned out that he was from a small group of Arab Christians who were meeting weekly to pray in an upstairs room in the cathedral. They didn’t have permission, but in the chaos of the ever-crowded cathedral, nobody stopped them. He had intended to invite me to join them because he thought I was an Arab. Of course I don’t speak Arabic, unfortunately never made significant progress with it, but they invited me anyhow. I liked the idea of praying silently on the side while they prayed in Arabic. As it turns out, only the man who spoke to me that first night doesn’t speak any English. He is a Protestant (not common in Egypt) and keeps company with Catholics. It has been a source of great inspiration, and sometime amusement, to hang out with this group. Huda and Osama have great finger-wagging arguments about the Virgin Mary. Jorge picks me up in his un-air-conditioned car and talks to me about his chain-smoking unemployed son as we weave in and out of traffic. An Indian guy, Victor, has now joined us. They all speak Arabic except for me, but they insist on doing a lot of the prayer in English, no matter how much I protest. These are very pure-hearted people. I wish I had met them when I first came to Kuwait instead of at the end.

Meanwhile, I still spend time with Mahmoud. I’ve been to his home three times, and each time I was treated to his mother’s fantastic home cooking. The last meal I had there was meatballs cooked in yogurt sauce. After school lets out, I’m planning to do some traveling with Mahmoud, his brother, and one or two of their friends. We’re going overland via Saudi to Jordan, then hopefully through Syria to Lebanon. I got a transit visa for Saudi, but Syria refused to give me a visa, simply saying “No visas for Americans.” We’ll try again at the border. Mahmoud and I have had a lot of discussions about religion. He has very warm sentiments about Christianity. Something I’ve wanted to do since coming to Kuwait is try an inter-faith fellowship with Christians and Muslims praying together. We’re going to try it with a few of our friends at the end of this month. I mentioned it to Jorge, and I hope it wasn’t a mistake. The whole point is to put aside self-righteousness and any notion of a contest in which the people with the wrong religion convert to the other side. I don’t know if Jorge really understand that, since he has very much grown up in a world of “us versus them.” Anyway, I can’t un-invite him now, so we’ll just have to let things roll and see how it all goes.

Time is winding down quickly. The IEP testing is done, and I’ll be in meetings with parents all this coming week. Many teachers have already started their packing and shipping. They say that they can’t wait to leave. As for me, I don’t want the days to pass too quickly. As much as I may have complained about Kuwait, I feel sad when I think about leaving. Friends that I’ve made here ask me why I didn’t renew my contract. As often as not, I tell them the whole tiresome truth. The story is ongoing. I don’t know where I’ll be in six months or a year. We have teachers in my school who have left and come back. Anything is possible. I feel a little burst of emotion and threat of tears when I think about the whole Kuwait experience. I know the sentimentality is probably a sign of oncoming male menopause. It's hard to say whether the tears are happy or sad. As Waleed once told me, whether your luck is good or bad, the best thing to say is: Al hamduli’llah (thanks to God).

I'm still in Kuwait

2008-10-12T18:43:00.000-07:00

(written Sept 26, 2008)

I just checked my refrigerator to see if my wallet was in there. Can you relate to that? When I have too much to do, things find their way to the most unlikely places. Well, it wasn’t in the refrigerator. My latest taxi driver Mohammed-Iqbal (who says his name like “mama-dickball”) called me to see if I found it, and just as he called, I found it in one of the side pockets of the same backpack-briefcase that I’d already checked about six times. Mohammed-Iqbal was happy to hear this. I owe him money for this morning. He said I could pay next time. He is a Muslim from Chennai, India, and seemingly in the process of converting to Christianity. The first time he took me to the cathedral, he asked me for a picture of Jesus. I didn’t have one, so I went to the little bookstore on the cathedral property. I figured maybe they would have a holy card or something. They didn’t have any, but the guy working there had a memorial card from somebody’s funeral or something that showed the Jesus of Divine Mercy. That’s an image that depicts Christ holding up his right hand, while his left hand points to his heart from which a spectrum of rainbow light shines downward. The first time I saw that image was on a sticker in a gift shop at the Basilica Shrine in Washington DC. I bought it because it struck me as a symbol of Christ having some loving connection to gay people, who often use the rainbow as their symbol. It’s still stuck to the cover of one of my old journals, now packed away in a box in my sister’s garage. Mohamed-Iqbal kissed the plasti-coated memorial card I got from the cathedral bookstore and thanked me for it. I didn’t remind him that as a Muslim he should consider all graven images as unlawful. I figure that’s between him and Allah. It will be interesting to see what happens. He said he would like to come to mass with me some time. They have a mass in Tamil, his language, a couple times a month. Maybe I’ll try to take him to one.

Oct. 13, 2008

It’s 2-something in the morning. I was awakened by the sound of a dog barking. One doesn’t hear dogs barking in Kuwait. Dogs, in general, are feared and reviled in the Islamic world. I remember Mir Ali, the guy from Hyderabad I befriended when I was in high school, nervously backing away from our little white cockapoo, Bridgette, as if she were a 500 pound gorilla. A couple who joined the staff this year had their dogs flown in from the states. They walk them in the morning. One of them was the service dog who lived with their disabled son for many years before he (the son) died, and the other has been that dog’s companion since the death. The husband works with me in the middle school. He recently has a look of horror on his face – the realization that he is committed to living in an unpleasant place for a long period of time. It’s existential shock. I recognize it. I hope the barking dog wasn’t one of theirs. Anyhow, it’s stopped, thank God. As I lay there wondering whether I was going to fall back to sleep or get up, I mused about the terrible futility and honesty of the poor dog. The domesticated dog is not really prepared to live in a natural environment anymore, and see where his fate takes him—to pace in small apartments in cities wherever his master chooses to go. I interpret his barking: free me, pay attention to me, let me be who I am meant to be, or kill me. Is this not a prayer as eloquent as any we can compose?

Mohammed Iqbal stopped taking my calls last Wednesday, a couple days before he was scheduled to receive his monthly salary and pay me back the money I loaned him. (I know, it's a bit confusing--I said I owed him money. I paid him back, and later he borrowed a sum from me... a substantially larger sum.) I thought about never telling anyone about my bleeding heart gullibility, but why pretend? I tend to trust people, I have made the same mistake before, and I will again. I know plenty of people who are defensive and suspicious. I don’t admire them. Some of us gamble at the slot machines and some of us gamble with destitute taxi drivers. You win some, you lose some.

About two weeks ago, during Eid, I was invited to go with a Kuwaiti friend on his father’s yacht. It was something like 50 feet, with two huge motors. We traveled for about one hour out into the Persian Gulf, to a tiny patch of rock and sand called Kuber Island. We didn’t actually go on the island, but we anchored there, did a little fishing, ate a lunch of Kuwaiti “machbous diyai” chicken and rice, and swam around the yacht. Another guest, an Italian national who works at the Italian embassy, and I were both stung by jellyfish. An old retired doctor, a friend of the owner who was also along for the ride, informed us that the best remedy for a jellyfish sting was urine, and he said that in the old days if you got a jellyfish sting you would get your buddy to pee on you. I just suppressed a smile and sipped on my pepsi. Unfortunately, the shoulder that was stung is still hurting, almost two weeks later. I think that I probably coincidentally pulled a muscle in the same spot where I was stung, but I can’t help wondering if I should have taken the good doctor’s advice more seriously.

I went to mass tonight at the cathedral. Sunday is not church day here in Kuwait, but it was packed just the same. There are 140,000 Catholics in Kuwait, and only three legally permitted churches. The people were reciting a pre-mass rosary when the electricity went out. The bishop came to say mass by candlelight. Given no sound system, the Bishop’s unfortunate weak voice and Italian accent, and the fact that the congregation consists almost entirely of people who are not native speakers of English anyway, I’m quite sure that nobody understood his homily. But the mass itself could be followed easily enough, and it was very beautiful to experience reverence and calm among the few thousand people jammed into one building with no light but a few candles.

Meanwhile the world teeters on the edge of economic armageddon. I am guilty of harboring a tiny impulse of glee at signs of rain on the greed parade that has defined American culture and society for much of my life. Forgive me, but I want to see people plant potatoes in their back yards. If the meager efforts we’ve made to concern ourselves with the environment, global warming, social justice etc. have only been extravagant fancies to entertain after everything else is crossed off the shopping list, then those things are probably going to be serious casualties, and somebody will come back to say, “We’re all poor and miserable and the earth is ruined. Are you happy now?” We like to say that change is good. Here comes the test.

OK, I’m going back to bed.

Ramadan-o-rama

2008-09-07T06:31:00.000-07:00

Outside I can hear the honking of horns, and the street below is a parking lot. All the schools and businesses quit early during Ramadan, and everybody heads home at the same time. My school beats the traffic by letting us go a half hour earlier than everyone else. We have a new driver. He's an old Syrian guy with a leathery face and bristly beard. He looks like a National Geographic picture, a little scary. The first day he was silent. I imagined him reciting the surras in his head and trying not to make eye contact with us infidels. But he was just shy. Since then he's softened up, and he's so gentle and respectful, it makes me ashamed of my first impressions. This morning he showed me a picture of an American teacher he met when he was working in Cairo. He carries the guy's picture around in his wallet.

Ramadan is different this year. I guess I've changed. Some Arabic staff got word that I was upset about the mosque noise. They all started asking me if the mosque noise was disturbing my rest too much. By the time they got around to asking, I had already softened on the issue and I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but I admitted that sometimes it woke me up and I couldn't get back to sleep. One of the teachers said that he was going to call the Ministry of Religion and tell them about it. Well, apparently it worked. For the past week, the call to prayer hardly wakes me up. Not only is the volume turned down, but the vocalization is softer. Sometimes it even gives me the idea to pray. Imagine that. All my Muslim friends are fasting right now, and sometimes I can see the exhaustion in their faces. Islam requires a dry fast -- no water. It must be so hard to go without water all day when it's hot. I made up my mind that I would do something in solidarity with my Muslim friends, so I committed to a vegetarian diet for the month. I also threw away the half pack of cheap Egyptian cigarettes that I bought. It would be good to quit meat and tobacco permanently, but we'll see how the month goes.

I heard last night that Kuwait is experiencing the highest humidity that they've had in ten years. Last week it felt like a steam bath outside. As soon as I stepped out the door my eyeglasses would fog up immediately. It was strange. It's starting to subside a little. The combined heat and humidity does tend to keep people indoors. Usually I will walk a couple blocks to a small basement grocery store to pick up an item or two, milk or whatever. I'm using up everything I have to avoid going anywhere. Strange dinners of macaroni with cashew nuts and ketchup. The school provides a shopping a bus once a week, and tomorrow is shopping day again. I mustn't make the mistake I made last time -- the heat put me in a frame of mind to buy liquids. I bought NA beer, fruit juice, water, milk, etc... hardly any solid food. Of course five liters of the fruit juice were for a special project. By the way, we've learned that you have to use real fruit juice. I already knew that myself, but a good friend confirmed that artificially flavored sweetened drinks will not ferment. He was basically trying to make wine out of Kool-Aid.

When I got back to Kuwait, I sent an email to the Vicariate of Kuwait Catholic church to ask about volunteering. I got an answer back from the bishop, who invited me to come and meet him. I met him. He's an Italian. He talks just like Marlon Brando in the Godfather. We talked about the fact that westerners don't come to mass much in Kuwait. Apparently, those who go at all go to a small mass said by the military chaplain at the American Embassy. He seemed very tired. He's been serving in Arab countries for about 40 years. He invited me to attend a three-day "Unity Congress" about unifying the Church in Kuwait. It was this past weekend, and I went all three days. I got to see another side of the Indian and Filipino Catholics whom I described before as having sad and angry faces. At times they can be very focused on reverence and solemnity, but I also saw them clapping, flapping angel wings, and singing their hearts out when they were prompted to do so. It was funny, cute, and humbling.

The official emphasis was on bringing together the different ethnic communities and Rites which tend to stick to themselves too much. In small groups, I tried to extend the definition of Church. The Indians and Filipinos in my discussion group were hard pressed to think of non-Catholic Christians as their brothers and sisters, because they've experienced too much painful division and separation. Unfortunately, the local evangelical Bible church see the Catholics as prime targets for their missions. Families are split up over this. It has been going on for generations, I know. My grandmother had two brothers who became "Assembly of God" fundamentalists, and the rift in the family was never healed. Attacks on Catholic tradition can sometimes get a little sharp. The traditional Catholics that come here from India and the Philippines have a strong devotion to the Virgin Mary, and this is often made a point of attack for the non-Catholics, who call it idolatry and say that Mary was just an "eggshell." (It almost sounds funny -- eggshell! Do they think that Jesus of Nazareth hatched from an egg?!)

People's cell phones kept going off all weekend in the middle of everything. Lectures, panel discussions, prayers, the consecration of the Eucharist -- doesn't matter -- you would hear somebody's cell phone go off with some crazy variety of ringtone; once it was Bobby McFerrin's famous whistling bit from "Don't Worry Be Happy." In hindsight, that was kind of prophetic. I was getting annoyed, though, and thought, "Can't these people get a CLUE and turn off their cell phones?!" Then on the last morning, a cell phone rang in the middle of the Bishop's address. I saw him look down and I thought he was going to really scold us. But he fumbled in the pocket of his cassock and said, "Oh, I fogetta to turna offa my mobile."

After such a busy weekend, I'm glad to have some stay-home time tonight. I might go down and give some food and water to the cats that live outside the lobby door. There used to be just one, an orange tabby. A brown and gray one has figured out that somebody is putting food out, and now he's taken up residence there as well. They're both starved to skin and bones, and they cry at everyone who uses that side door. Poor little critters. Other than feeding them, I'm just going to play some music, do some feng-shui (that's a fancy word for tidying up) around the apartment, and take a glance at my lesson plans. Maybe I'll play my Arabic Groove CD.

Maasalama

back to Araby

2008-08-29T04:59:00.000-07:00

I must have reached a new plateau of middle-aged dorkiness. What would my friends think if they knew I was tuning to Easy Listening on internet radio? I’m finding I’d much rather hear Patty Page singing “On the Street Where You Live” than David Bowie’s angsty “Ziggy Stardust.” For crying out loud!

Come to think of it, what’s probably more surprising is that I’m not listening to the “Arabic Groove” CD that I bought. I thought I ought to be giving myself the appropriate soundtrack for myself while I’m here. When I was an exchange student in Japan many years ago, I had a kind of rating system for myself as a person living abroad. I felt that it was my responsibility to prefer everything Japanese. Whenever I went to the department store snack bar for a corndog or listened to my Supertramp album, it was a kind of guilty pleasure. I knew that I supposed to be immersing myself in things Japanese. People go to great lengths to “do as the Romans do.” There’s something in Japan called “natto,” which is fermented soybeans which have a gooey slime on them and make long saliva-like strings when you pick them up with chopsticks. They smell and taste disgusting. To love natto is to prove your status as a true japanophile. I knew a guy who made the mistake of boasting that he LOVED natto. His fame spread quickly, and everywhere he went people gave him bowls and bowls of natto. He secretly told me that he regretted ever saying he liked natto, but by then it was too late to back down. What you have to do is explore with an open mind, but be honest about what works for you. I like wearing a dishdasha around when I can get away with it, because nothing else makes sense given the heat here. Jeans are just miserably hot, and I don’t see how anyone could wear them regularly without developing fungus in the crotch. But after swimming this morning I didn’t feel too bad about eating at McDonald’s for breakfast (not very exotic, but I just wasn't in the mood for bean gruel and pita bread). I was with Mahmoud and his brother Mustafa. Mahmoud had called me at five in the morning to see if I wanted to go swimming in the Persian Gulf. It’s something you only do in the early morning before the brutal sun gets going.

The sun was just rising as we got to the beach. It was huge and gorgeous. We discussed what would be a good description for our morning sun. Mustafa said it was like an orange. I told him he should be ashamed of himself for such an unpoetic description. So he said, “How about a golden plate?” That was an improvement. We settled on “golden peach” for our metaphor. And that is was, a golden peach of a sun, marking the morning with a kind of celestial blessing. The water of the gulf was soft gray-blue color, and close to body temperature (but refreshing nonetheless because the air was warmer than body temp). Here they call it the Arabian Sea, and according to our staff handbook, teachers can receive a warning letter at my school if they refer to it as the Persian Gulf. Persian or Arabian, it was wonderful, and we swam far out and back. Then we went and ate our McDonald's Value Meals. I found out that Mustafa likes fishing and communist ideology. I’ve pretty much come to see communism as a discredited pipe dream, but I shook his hand anyway. I love youthful idealism. Where would we be without it?

Wow, now my easy listening internet radio station is playing Ryu Sakamoto’s “Sukiyaki,” the only Japanese language pop song that ever made the hit parade in America. The irony never ends. And here we go with Rosemary Clooney and “You Took Advantage of Me.” I’m so hot and bothered that I can’t tell my elbow from my ear. [dance break]

Let me see, now what can I tell you about my first week back in Kuwait? The first day I tagged along with my friends from the old clique (the British 5th grade teacher and his art teacher wife) to get their computer set up for wireless internet and have lunch at the mall. The art teacher wife is pregnant. She can’t really take the sun at mid-day, and when we had to hike from the parking spot to the computer place, hubby had to forge ahead and let us follow him by going in little runs from one air-conditioned shop to the next. The heat is not as big a topic of conversation since this is our second year here, but neither is it ignorable. Yesterday afternoon I came home and saw that Yahoo Weather was showing Kuwait temperature as 120 degrees. So it seemed kind of crazy when the same couple called me on Sunday and asked me if I wanted to go for a ride with them in the desert to visit Mutla Ridge. 5GT insisted he was going to attempt to hike the ridge a bit despite the heat, and let the Mrs. run the air conditioning and wait in the car. It sounded insane to me, but I figured it would be something to write about, and I could wear my new Indiana Jones hat out there without feeling too ridiculous. It was a long ride. When we got to the ridge, it was completely inaccessible because of fencing. I read later that it is in a military zone. We did stop at a little general store that had the quality of a space station on the moon, out in the middle of nowhere-and-nothing, just barely air conditioned to tolerability and stocked with everything imaginable. We went to Ahmadi, known as the roughest district in Kuwait, said to be populated by stone-throwing Beduoins. We went all over the place asking for directions to the historical Red Fort. Nobody threw any stones at us. One guy said, “Isn’t that in New Delhi?” (Indeed there is also a Red Fort in New Delhi. We chuckled over the silly idea that someone would go to the wrong country in search of the Red Fort.) We finally found it. Unfortunately the Red Fort is closed on Sundays. They took a picture of the gate, and then we went to Marina Mall to eat at the food court. So much for our educational Kuwait field trip. Still, it was a fun day.

What else transpired this week? Waleed and Ahmed joined me in the school’s pool on Tuesday. Waleed’s swimming is looking great. Ahmed still can’t stand to put his face in the water. We’re both coaching him. He invited us to his sister’s apartment for dinner the next night. He bought grilled chicken, bread and hummus. We spread newspapers on the floor and tore into the food with our fingers like wild barbarians. A bone flew out of my mouth and landed in the hummus. Waleed said, “Don’t worry no problem.” I love those guys.

We have been having great inter-religious dialogue.. and here, I’m not really kidding anymore. Since Taize, I guess some people would say I’ve sort of “got religion,” and prayer has claimed a new priority in my life, for better or worse. It now makes a lot more sense to me why these guys drop everything to pray. I’ve decided that when I’m with one of my Muslim friends, now, instead of sitting there picking at my fingernails while he prays, I’m going to pray beside him wherever possible. I’ve done it a few times already. Catholic prayers, like the “Our Father” and the “Glory Be” lend themselves quite well to this. It seemed especially relevant and meaningful that night at Ahmed’s apartment, because Waleed got a sudden call from his uncle. His uncle said that something had happened to his mother, she was in the hospital, and it was very serious. The uncle was on his way to the airport to fly back to Egypt, and he told Waleed that he needed to make travel arrangements immediately. Waleed came unglued. Ahmed and I prayed with him for a while, and then he went home to figure out what to do. After he left, Ahmed and I stayed up and talked until after midnight. It’s amazing how much you can communicate with extremely limited language ability.

Taize is not easy to replicate, but it is a kind of incubator for a little spiritual flame that can be brought home or wherever life takes you. I’ve decided to start attending mass at the Vicariate parish here in Kuwait. I’ve written before about the “third world” quality one finds there. Last week the mass was said by an old priest from India who sort of barked out the liturgy with forceful, mechanical tones. The faces of the congregants, nearly all either Filipino or Indian, looked angry and sad at the same time. They always seem beat up by life here in Kuwait, and I’ve seen enough to understand how they struggle and how they are treated. Faith keeps them going, and their devotion is palpable. I know Mustafa the Communist would probably quote Marx’s famous line, “Religion is the opiate of the people,” and look no further. Maybe I’m too hypnotized myself; I just think it’s more complicated than that. Today I’m going to try to save a few dinars by catching the bus to church. I talked to one Filipino guy before mass last week… maybe I’ll see him again. It would be nice to make a friend or two there. But even if I don’t connect with anyone, it’s okay. I want to say a couple Glory Be‘s, because I found out just a little bit ago that Waleed’s mother is okay. And my own mother and father are okay. It was great to spend time with them this past summer, and I miss seeing them, but I know they’re okay.

Now I’ve written a blog entry, so I can cross one thing off my to-do list. Tonight maybe I’ll write my new students’ names in my attendance book (school attendance is done on the network, but administration wants us all to keep handwritten records). Maybe I'll dust off the banjo and see if I remember the three chords I mastered last year. Till next time, Maasalama.

Europe, Canada, and home

2008-07-28T08:20:00.000-07:00

(Gananoque, Ontario, July 15)

I am sitting in a white and purple cabin with fake deer lawn ornaments and petunia beds out front overlooking the highway. We are in the Thousand Islands district of Ontario. My brother and his wife picked me up at Toronto airport a week ago. We had a wonderful five days at their friends' cottage near Algonquin Provincial Park. Northern Ontario reminds me of Alaska. The landscape is just gorgeous. We saw a black bear and two moose, along with loons, turtles, hummingbirds, etc. Canada - wow!

I have been away from Kuwait for a month. I’m having a cup of black coffee and some cold, leftover steak and mushroom pie that I ordered at a restaurant last night. I just got back from a walk in a cemetery that borders these rental cottages. I woke up too early and felt restless. The walk seemed to help. I put out a general invitation to all the ghosts to let them know that I would be glad to have a friend who has seen the bigger picture and might be willing to help me figure shit out. I didn’t get any responses, just a few mosquito bites. I recalled the memory of Brahmin big brother TS telling me that I should regard all trouble and confusion like inevitable grass and weeds growing up everywhere until my happy ending arrives.

I was in Europe for three weeks, but I didn’t do much sightseeing. I flew into Basel, Switzerland, and stayed in a hostel for one night, then took a train to Lure, France where I was met by a forty-something guy from London with a bright smile and a Mohawk haircut. This was Lovestar, the guy I’d connected with through email. I was now in the company of “Faeries,” a little-known subculture of gay hippies with whom I have often felt very at home. My own Faerie nickname, “Cannoli,” would be put to use once again, through I have often told myself that Cannoli is no more. Lovestar helped me load my bags in the trunk of his car, where his partner, Spider, sat having a cigarette. Spider has beautiful soft eyes and blond hair, but most people only see his multiple piercings and face tattoos. With time I learned a little about his turbulent life as the child of two junkies who abandoned him to a system full of bad influence and regular abuse. These two Londoners would be my main companions for much of my time in France. Both were hard-core London punk-queers, and some of the details of their world left me speechless, but they were authentic, gentle, and kind, as Faeries are prone to be. Spider was a great cook and a hard worker, chopping wood and tending the vegetable garden every day. Lovestar preferred sunbathing to labor, but he was the brains of the operation, planning for the solstice gathering, coordinating shopping trips and train station pick-ups, etc. People trickled in over the next few days. A wild-haired and witty inter-faith minister, tall and lean despite his 50+ years, now studying Jungian psychology in Zurich; a delicate and soft-spoken Frodo/Harry-Potter look-alike with chronic fatigue disorder and an extensive knowledge of Native American medicine ritual; a golden-hearted sissy who sang Tina Turner songs and hid the stretch marks that told of his growing up obese; a fair-skinned and quiet Dutch truck driver who looks good in a white silk slip and didn’t try to keep up with the English and egos of the gathering; his sage-eyed partner, confident in his knowledge of plants and skilled at using divining rods to find water and energy meridians on land as well as chakras in the body. You get the picture. Not your average bunch of KOA campers.

The place is called “Folleterre” which means “Land of Fools,” and it so happens that folle in French is coincidentally a common pejorative term for homosexual--the equivalent of “fag.” Anyhow, a group of European Faeries bought the place about five or six years ago. It has an old farmhouse with an attached barn, lots of wooded acreage, some apple trees, and a couple water springs. The house has neither electricity nor modern plumbing. So far, it is only occupied during the summer months. The first time I traveled up the mountainside and along its long driveway, I felt like I might have been in Tennessee or Pennsylvania instead of France. Over the course of the week we hiked in the hills, bathed with big pots of hot water heated on a wood stove, cooked and ate delicious stews, stir-fries and pasta dinners along with lots of bread and cheese bought in the village. We had “heart circles” during which we talked about our life journeys and the various challenges and dilemmas we faced. My pressing question was whether to leave for a week for a stay at Taize, an ecumenical monastery and pilgrimage destination in Burgundy, just a train ride away in physical distance but certainly a world away in other respects. Some of the faeries were baffled why I would want to go to a Christian pilgrimage destination, but there was one who had been there three times before, and his comment was, “If anybody gets Christian spirituality right, they do at Taize.”

On the eve of Solstice we hiked up to a beautiful outcrop of rock which is considered a kind of sacred spot on the land, and we paid homage to the setting sun. Then we gathered blankets and supplies and moved to a small prairie where we built a nice fire and had storytelling, drumming, and wine through the night. A few tents had been put up for anyone who didn’t want to sleep under the stars, and I eventually got sleepy and parted company with the revelers. Before the sun came up, Spider came and told me to come and play my recorder to signal wake-up call. We had agreed to hike to Blueberry ridge, the highest point on the land, to welcome the Solstice sun. The march up the moonlit path was marked by mixed giggling from those who’d been up all night and the groans from those who’d gone to sleep and weren’t really ready to be awake again. The sunrise was not particularly spectacular, but it was nice to have a quiet hour with the bracken ferns as we waited for the sun to peek through the pines.

I decided to go to Taize. It was not easy getting there. I caught a ride for part of the way with the Dutch guys and ended up in an off-track location. It was a Sunday, and there were no internet cafes open, so I had difficulty getting directions. There are two towns called Taize in France, and I almost went to the wrong one. What should have been a three or four hour trip took all day, and I arrived late at night. When I first got there I felt completely out of place. For one thing, the primary focus there is on an invitation to young people, and the older generation is sparsely represented. While the young people did not seem particularly religious, the people my own age were mostly ministers and serious committed Christians, primarily non-Catholic. I made the adjustment by paying attention to the less-pious members of the pilgrim population. There were teenagers there who seemed to be having a rock concert experience (I smelled funny smoke near the tent camping area at least once). On the first or second day I sat by some teenage boys who sang along with the Taize chants in mocking falsetto voices. A nearby mother grew impatient with her fussy baby, and when she yanked the kid up to carry him out, the little tyke farted--which caused those teenage guys to bust into convulsions of stifled laughter. I got a kick of those bad boys. I also got a kick out of the one middle-aged monk who, in contrast to others, sat with his arms folded and his legs crossed and looked about with a totally bored expression during the services, as if to suggest that he couldn't wait to get out of there and go back to fix himself a big bowl of Cheerios. I think I was fascinated by out-of-place folks who, in their innocence, somehow evaded the gravity of the place and its strong spirituality. Maybe those boys eventually succumbed to the pervasive atmosphere of holiness like I did. I have the genes for religiosity, and I am easily swept up. I told my discussion group from the onset that I wasn’t really comfortable calling myself a “Christian,” but gradually the layers of the resentment, shame, and frustration of my knotted-up life and uneasy dance with Christianity just sort of fell away. By the third day I let go of resistance. It had a lot to do with the openness and vulnerability of people I met there. I suppose there is safety in a place where everyone comes together from a different corner of the earth, and people find it easier to be genuine. I felt mutual trust and acceptance with people I never imagined would understand me. Most notable was a Methodist minister from Louisiana. He was just as polite and southern as you'd ever find, and at first seemed almost like a stereotype to me, but we became friends, and what a heart of compassion he had. The actual services in the church certainly didn’t feel like any church I had ever been in before. There was absolutely no feeling of religious authority, only a focus on prayer and openness. By the time I left, I felt transformed. Was it brainwashing, crowd psychology, or God? I don’t know, and it doesn‘t really matter. I left Taize so full of love and peace, I spontaneously kept tearing with joy and thanksgiving up as I bumbled through my inevitable missed trains and communication break-downs on the way back to Folleterre. In fact, a missed connection caused me to be two hours late getting back to the station at Lure, and Lovestar and Spider had had such an ordeal trying to be there to pick me up (running out of gas, dealing with their own quarrels, losing patience as train after train arrived with no Cannoli) that they finally gave up and went home with the idea that I’d get a taxi and find my way back. Instead I slept on a park bench in the company of two poplar trees that seemed to hover over me protectively as Taize chants continued to echo in my head.

(continued, July 28, 2008, Ephrata, Pennsylvania)

The return to Folleterre after Taize was very strange. I didn’t feel free to talk about my experience because I understood that Christianity is viewed as oppressive and antagonistic by those guys. Meanwhile, what was normal thinking and behavior for them struck me as unhealthy and confused. There was nothing they were doing that I hadn’t myself done before (except maybe Acid), but it just felt dark and twisted to me after coming from that bath of prayer and contemplation. Did I feel out of place? Well, yes I did. But I’m glad I went back and had that last week at Folleterre. It was a great exercise in acceptance and perspective. It was like seeing an aspect of myself from a remarkable point of view that I never held before. At the same time, I felt love and respect for those guys. We all walk our own tightropes, and they are on paths of their own which I have to believe fit into the big picture just as the chapters of my life fit into mine. Anyhow, they were extremely respectful and kind to me during that last week. We took dinner to a neighbor, a handsome young German skinhead who had cut his thumb very badly while using a sickle. He had a bang-up electric guitar which he plugged in for me so I could impress him with my rudimentary 12-bar blues, something that seemed very cool and American to him. We hiked over the hills and trespassed on some land to have a swim in the beautiful clear pond. Spider was thrilled when little fishes nibbled at his toes. Later, while washing dishes, Lovestar asked me to sing him a Taize chant, and I sang, "Nada te turbe, nada tespante, quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta, Nada te turbe, nada tespante, solo Dios, basta!" (Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten, those who seek God shall never go wanting, Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten, God alone fills us.)

When Lovestar dropped me off at the station, he said "God bless you" and I said "God bless you" back to him. It felt a little funny because I knew he was sort of regarding me as somebody “religious,” and maybe I myself was trying to play a role there, but it was a loving and respectful goodbye for both of us. If we were put together with different timing and context, the roles would probably be reversed. Life doesn't make sense on any comprehensible level. The challenge must be to let go of control and really trust in the flow of time with its so-called accidents and surprises. Time itself really is God’s great symphony. T-shirts and bumper stickers are not required.

I have been home for two weeks. I’ve had a lot of time for just sitting around thinking about life, and that is exactly what I needed. It is a beautiful summer morning in Ephrata, the air feels perfect and the sunshine is friendly and gentle on the greenery. Poor Kuwait--once I left it, every place I went seemed so wonderful. But I have no dread of going back to Kuwait. When people ask me how I feel about going back for my second year, I answer that I am very comfortable about returning. The fact that my situation there buys me time to make important decisions about my future feels like a perfect arrangement. Many of my students will be the same ones I worked with last year, and I’m looking forward to seeing them again. When I look at photos I realize just how much I love those little turds. For now, I’ve settled in with the company of family and familiar territory for welcome summer vacation. I am slowly coming down from the high of adventure and spiritual focus. I’ve smoked a pack and a half of small cigars and downed a few beers and bloody marys, bitched about stupid things that bug me, and stolen peeks at internet sites that are banned in Kuwait. In other words, I’m still the same little mess I always was… but I am allowed to hope that the good things that have been planted in me will grow. I have about a month to just hang out and enjoy the greenness of Pennsylvania and the ease of being at home. My mother is keeping the kitchen stocked with home-made cookies and cherry pies to make sure I don’t die of starvation. I opened packages I ordered from Amazon.com in advance from Kuwait. Mostly books to help in learning Arabic. When I looked at the stack of them I realized how much I really have invested in Kuwait. I don’t have any intention of staying there any further than the one additional year to which I’m obligated by my contract. But, at this halfway point I do feel that I can give myself a pat on the back for making the most of my time there on many levels. When I left Ephrata last August, my dad said, “For crying out loud, give it your best shot!” We had been kidding about some of those old expressions like “for crying out loud…” and he was joking and being serious at the same time. And, for crying out loud, I think I have been giving it my best shot, and insha’allah I’m going to keep doing that. But right now it’s the middle of the night in Kuwait, and the temperature is 108 degrees, and I don’t miss anything about it.

Happy summer!
==

departing notes

2008-06-09T14:55:00.000-07:00

(June 8)

I went to the dentist yesterday to have a cavity filled. She put some kind of a jaw-opener inside my mouth so that she could work easily. My face was numbed with anesthetic, but I could feel my jaw muscles cramp from the force of the device pushing my mouth open. I made her take it out. Today I have an earache. I wanted to swim this afternoon, but I don’t think I’ll be able to.

On the way to the dentist, Arshad, a Kashmiri Muslim taxi driver told me a story. His English was very choppy. It took very careful listening to follow the story. This is basically it:

Moses was going up the mountain to pray. A lady on the side of the road said to him, “I’m getting old, and I don’t have a baby because my luck is bad. I want to have a baby. When you’re talking to God, please ask him if I’ll have a baby.” Moses said, “Okay, I’ll ask.” He asked God, and God said, “No. She can’t have a baby.” Moses went back down and told the lady, “Sorry, God said no.” A short time later, there was a holy man who had fasted for an entire year. When he was ready to break his fast he asked, “Who will bring me food and open my fast?” The lady cooked him some food and gave it to him. He said, “Since you gave me food, I’ll pray for whatever you want.” She said, “I want to have a baby.” One year later, Moses was on his way to the mountain, and he saw the lady with a baby boy. She told him what happened. Moses went up the mountain and asked God, “Why did you let that lady have a baby? You told me she couldn’t have one.” Then God gave Moses a knife and plate. “I want a sacrifice of human flesh. Bring me back a plate full of human meat, and then I’ll tell you.” So Moses went traveling around to find somebody. He traveled all over the land asking if anyone would be willing to cut flesh from his own body and give it to God. Wherever he went people laughed at him. Finally he came to the holy man. The holy man took the knife and cut meat from his own arms and legs and put it on the plate. Moses took it up the mountain to God. “Here’s the human flesh,” said Moses. “Now can you tell me why that lady had a baby after you said she couldn’t?” God said, “Moses, you went all over the places asking people to cut flesh from their bodies—why didn’t you take the knife and cut your own body? That holy man who cut flesh from his own body for me asked me to give that lady a baby, so I did.”

There is so much discussion that could come out of this story. I have a lot of questions for Arshad. May one infer from this story that God travels with us through time and may freely change his mind at any given moment? If so, how do the various world religions accommodate the possibility of a fluid and fluctuating God? Why would we ever want to see God as a being who would ask for self-mutilation, even if it’s just metaphorical? Why doesn’t the story present God as telling Moses to do some act of kindness and charity instead of going after a sacrifice of human flesh? Is it because God really is that way, or is it because applying our own economy of give and take is the best we can do? Of course I didn’t get to ask any of these questions, because the language barrier was too great, and there wasn’t time. Anyhow, Arshad was so happy to impart this wisdom, debate would have spoiled it for him. I told him he could take me to the airport on Friday morning, even though I know I could get a cheaper fare from another driver.

We had a field trip on Thursday to a big fancy bowling alley with a full-service McDonald’s inside. It was my mom’s birthday, and since she likes bowling, I especially enjoyed it. I kept saying, “This one’s for you, Mom,” before throwing the ball, thinking that it would be cool to get a strike for Mom. (Didn’t work.) The kids spent the day going back and forth between bowling and eating pancakes and french fries at the McDonald’s. I bowled a game with the boy who wrote about the Monster Dog who fell into the radioactive well. Remember him? He and the other kids stopped bowling right in the middle of the second game because they were bored and they just wanted to go sit at the table at McDonalds and eat and talk. I recruited some of the other teachers to jump in and finish the game. The guard rails were up because many of our students had not bowled much in their lives and were just throwing straight gutter balls. Whether it’s because they are “special needs” or not is hard to say. Anyhow, even with guard rails up, I still didn’t break 100. By the way, I recently learned an interesting lesson about “wasta” from the Monster-Dog boy. (“Wasta,” for those who forget, is the power of influence, pressure, and connections that rules all dealings in the Arab world.) I was going to fail him because he doesn’t do any work, and my coordinator wrote me an email and suggested that I find a way to give him at least a B so that he could make the honor roll. Okay, this is a kid with hugely rich and powerful parents, and my coordinator knows them personally, etc. I started to get uptight for about 30 seconds, and then I thought… why not. He’s got a serious case of ADD or whatever it is, and he’s in a special needs school. I can be tough and try to “teach him a lesson” or I can let him do some make-up work, tweak his grade here and there, and give him the B. If I ask myself the question of whether it’s going to matter ten years from now, the immediate answer is that I don’t have to wait that long—within a week it won’t matter to anybody. Still, I had to get my little dig in, so in the computer server document for his report card I wrote in the comment section, “Student received this grade only because of WASTA.” I am on friendly enough terms with the coordinator to goof around like that. I changed it to something more professional and tactful the next day after I was sure he saw it. But it did get me thinking about what “wasta” really is, and why it persists. It comes down to a “what the hell” attitude. Are our lofty principles really worth the battles? In many cases, no. Things really don’t matter as much as we think they do. So God says, “Hey, unless you’re willing to take that knife and cut hunks from your own arms and legs, just shut up.”

(cont. June 9)
Every time we go on a field trip, a dust storm hits. It happened again while we were bowling, and the dust still hasn't cleared. The sky was blue when we left the school that morning, but by the time I’d ordered my coffee from the McCafe, the wind was blowing and visibility was quickly diminishing. One of the teachers jokingly surmised that we actually instigate the dust storms by the energy create when we impose our chaotic selves on the world outside the school walls. It is kind of strange how dependably it occurs. This one kicked up on Thursday and still hasn't cleared. Temperatures of 110 and wind blowing thick dust. Yesterday, W (who believes in genies ) and I decided we would go swimming anyhow. My earache was gone. The school’s pool is in a kind of enclosed patio with a mesh roof to provide some shade. The mesh doesn’t keep out the dust. There was a kind of dirty film over the entire surface of the pool, but we wanted swim, so we just dived in and tried to mix up the dirt as much as possible by splashing and kicking hard. It’s amazing how you create the illusion of cleanliness by evenly distributing the filth. Swimming with W is so good for my ego. I basically taught him how to swim. He regards me as an Olympic-caliber coach, and I do nothing to discourage that thinking. I give him constant advice. It’s all run of the mill basic swimming stuff like “breathe in with your mouth and out with your nose.” What’s so cool is that W’s swimming has improved incredibly. He is just about as a good a swimmer as I am. Not that I’m a great swimmer, but before he was splashing around with his face scrunched and his head sticking up like he was afraid to get his hair wet.

We had a nice swim, but I decided I didn’t want to sit and meditate in the prayer room afterwards. W has to get in his obligatory prayers after swimming, especially if we’re going to eat koshary or something which means he has to get the praying out of the way. I asked one day if I could just sit in there while he did his little stand-kneel-bow-bow routine. It turned out to be a wonderfully peaceful, quiet room with comfy thick carpet. The powerful air conditioning also made it preferable to waiting outside in the heat and dust by the bathtub-sized turtle pond in the lobby. I found that I can sit in zazen style on a hunk of rolled up carpet by the door and get in a nice 15 minute meditation. But yesterday I didn’t want to go in. Something he said made me think that I didn’t want anybody to assume I was warming up to Islam. W had explained to me that it would never be acceptable for a woman to swim in swimming pool when there were men around, because even if she were wearing a full wet suit, you would be able to see the shape of her body, which is haram (sinful/forbidden). I told him that I thought this was very stupid thinking. Impervious to any criticism of his beloved Islam, he smiled and said that it was fine that western men and women swim together because they don’t know the Quran so the rules don’t apply, and therefore it was no problem. I told him that maybe it would be better if we didn’t talk about such things. “No problem, really,” he said, “I like to talk about what you thinking.” I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t out of politeness that I felt the need to avoid such subjects—it was because it bothered ME to have to keep listening to ideas that I think are so wrong and foolish. Still he didn’t get it. So I thought maybe it’s time to sit outside with the turtles. There used to be five of them. They’re down to two. I guess the heat is too much for them. One of them was balanced on a rock, completely still, its legs hanging down. I watched it for about five minutes. There, I thought, is a true zazen practitioner. I dipped my finger into the water and let one drop fall on its shell. It shifted its head ever so slightly, but did not open its eyes.

May 31

2008-05-31T12:48:00.000-07:00

We have just two weeks of school left. Already the students in “vacation mode.” They complain with real indignation if I ask them to do any work. They just want to play soccer in the little rooftop playground in the 110 degree heat. Today the art teacher said that she is so excited about the end of the school year and going home. I nodded, but for some reason I don’t feel much of that countdown kind of excitement. A group of us had gone in to spend a little time at school. I was planning to swim some laps in the school pool, but it was being cleaned, so I just did a few things in my room. I cleaned the fishbowl. Isabella is dead, by the way. I came in one Sunday morning and the room was about a hundred degrees and smelled very bad indeed. The fishbowl was cloudy with putrescence. Isabella, who had been the star attraction of the fishbowl with her brilliant orange color and bulbous physique, was floating on her side in the middle, swollen even larger than she should have been, and cooked to a dull beige hue. Poor George and Cupcake were squeezing themselves as tightly as they could get into the little plastic seaweed plant, trying not to look at her. I cleaned it all up, got fresh cool water for the survivors, and emailed my director for permission to leave the AC on over the weekend. Now I can enter a nice cool room when I get to school. I am supposed to be getting a head start on phase umpteen of the interminable assessment revision process, but I can’t face it anymore. An old Texan tuba-player I used to know had the expression, “I am so done with that.” And that is how I am feeling too. I am so done. I guess I can’t blame the kids for balking at the idea of more work right now.

I couldn’t swim laps, couldn’t deal with assessment revisions, so I decided to lift weights. But the lights in the weight room are, for some strange reason, controlled by a switch in the business office, and they were off. It has been a long time since I had the feeling of “nothing to do.” I actually picked up a basketball that had been left on the gym floor and shot a few baskets. If I am all alone, in a dark gym, far from ridicule and expectation, I can actually enjoy the little diversion of trying to make a basket. A little while later I rambled upstairs to see what the art teacher was up to. She was absorbed in the serious task of tying pieces felt-covered toilet-paper rolls and paper tubes together with rubber bands to make Scooby-Doo collapse-puppets for her second graders. The art teacher’s idea book makes it look easy, but it’s way too hard for 2nd graders, so the teacher has to do all the work and just let the kids glue on the eyes and ears. I helped her do that for about an hour, during which time I completed two Scooby Doo’s. I pondered the fact that I was originally hired to be the art teacher, and it was probably a good thing that they jerked me into the English department. I don't think I could handle doing goofy little projects like that with learning disabled kids. It's no wonder she can't wait to get the hell out of Kuwait. I suppose some excitement about our upcoming exodus will kick in for me too some time soon.

Last night we had a great pot-luck feast to honor our teaching assistants, who have all invited us to their places for fabulous Indian lunches or dinners at one time or another. The challenge was to cook vegetarian. I was vegetarian from about 1989 to 1995... something like that. I used to enjoy the challenge of putting together a satisfying vegie meal, and I thought I was pretty good at it. Well, I am obviously out of practice. Anyhow, I’ve come to the conclusion that pot-lucks are not a good way to enjoy food. They invariably produce combinations of things that don’t go well together. After we ate, I introduced the game. We played a simple game that involves guessing “password-style” at hints from a partner to determine names written on little pieces of paper. I got the game from the same guy who used to say “I am so done with that.” He could play anything on a tuba. Now he works at Sea World. I tried to make the game as multi-cultural as I could. I avoided the names of American celebrities. I should have known it was going to be difficult when the first comment, made before we even started, was “I hope it’s not an educational game.” People were completely perplexed. Names I thought were known by every living person on earth were regarded with bewilderment. Freud - was he a philosopher? Elizabeth Taylor - she was a model or something, wasn’t she? These were the comments that I heard. One of the Indian husbands is particularly quirky. His hint for Adolf Hitler was, “This was that hot-headed German fellow.”

It is now after 10 PM; just a couple of hours, and it will be June. I already went to bed once, and I got up when the doorbell rang. It’s not really a bell, it’s a button that makes a tweet-tweet-tweet sound like a little bird. It was the lady from the across the lobby. She is getting rid of everything and going home to Texas to get married. I told her I wanted to buy her small wooden table and clothes hamper, and she came to tell me I should take them now. As we moved the stuff through tight doorway spaces in her apartment, she told me about the misbehavior of the seniors in her school. The night after their senior dinner, they snuck into the school and threw dead fish all over the place, and tossed in a dead cat for good measure. “It’s a good time to leave Kuwait,” she said. I was actually a bit surprised to hear her tell me all that, because I have a tendency to blame a lot of our school’s behavior problems on the fact that we have kids with all kinds of learning disabilities and disorders. The big controversy for us this year was when a senior boy peed inside somebody’s backpack. Throwing dead fish and dead cats around the school reminds of something I might have expected in a public school in the U.S.

I was going to get a haircut and beard trim tonight. Forgot. Oh, by the way, I bought one of those red-plaid head scarfs with a black ring to hold it on my head. If I take my glasses off and grin real big I look a little bit like Yasser Arafat. Come to think of it, I should have put his name in the name game. People here think I’m Syrian. I’ve learned how to say, “Do I look like an Arab?” in Arabic. It’s “Ana shekli Arabi?” I was thinking it might be funny to put on my head rag when I meet my brother at Toronto airport, but unfortunately the joke would probably not go over very well in an international airport. Too bad about that.

we're havin a heat wave (cha cha cha)

2008-05-24T10:17:00.000-07:00

It is another Friday morning. Mahmoud will be here in about an hour to give me my Arabic lesson. We have gotten into a habit of having a little breakfast before the lesson. Sometimes he brings fruit and rolls. This morning I am frying some potatoes. When my mom used to make these fried sliced potatoes, they all stuck together in wonderful clumps, tender in the middle and crisp around the edges. I can’t get them to do that. They either fry up like french fries, or they cook into mush.

The IEP’s are finished, and next week I’ll have seven IEP meetings with parents. It’s nothing like at the public schools at home, where everyone is hanging over each word. So it's not quite as awful as special ed duties at home. But it's still been an intense couple of weeks getting everything done and in place for the deadline. I spent a few very late nights at school. I thought about a conversation I had with my good friend who taught at in Istanbul and was instrumental in getting me to explore the idea of international teaching. I was perplexed that he could spend a long period of time in a foreign country and not get to know every corner the place and everything about it. He reminded me that the there was a job he had to do, and that international schools ask a lot from their teachers. One night last week I was in my classroom especially late. At about ten minutes to 9, the building guard came in and started speaking to me in Arabic. I have been taking Arabic lessons for about seven months, but I had no idea what he was talking about. He did get me to understand that he was going to leave the gate open for me and would be back in a few hours. On the way home I got a call on my cell phone from my coordinator. Sheikh Sa’ad, former emir of Kuwait, had died, and there would be a few days of national mourning. We all got an unanticipated long weekend. Unfortunately the building was closed, and I had left everything in piles on the classroom desks, thinking that in the morning I would sort it all out before classes started.

It’s funny how sometimes the body knows when a task is complete and it’s okay to “shut down.” The day that I turned in my IEP’s I developed a sore throat and a fever. I had volunteered for some afternoon activities, but I begged out and took a taxi home. I am just now at the tail end of that summer cold, or whatever it was. I’m still not ready for the gym, but at least I can go get groceries today. I need to use up what I have in the kitchen as much as possible, so I won’t buy much. I leave Kuwait in three weeks.

The day after school lets out, I’m flying to Basel, Switzerland. Though I would love to tour Switzerland some day, I’ll only be there one night, because my destination is a farm in Vosges Mountains of eastern France. There’s a community there that’s going to have a lot of people coming to camp out and put on a summer solstice celebration in June. After that I’m meeting my brother and sister-in-law in Toronto, and we’re going on a road trip up to Algonquin Park for fishing, hiking and a visit to some of their friends. I won’t actually be back in the states until the third week of July. I planned all this because I didn’t want to jeopardize my “foreign income tax exclusion” status and have to hand over a third of my hard-earned Kuwait dinars to Uncle Sam. Americans lose their non-resident status if they spend more than 35 days of a given year in-country. After I made all the plans, I found out that the rules wouldn’t really kick in unless I made about twice what I did, but the reservations are in place, and I think it will be an interesting summer.

I will probably leave my banjo in Kuwait. I can’t do much with it. I’ve never had a lesson, and I have a hard time wearing those metal finger picks, so I’ve gotten used to just playing it with my finger tips as you would a guitar. The picking style I use is also guitar style. I had the idea when I left America that I would have long evenings with nothing to do, and I would fill the time with all sorts of creative endeavors--teaching myself banjo, finishing my black-hole of a novel, and maybe even painting a few canvases. I hardly managed to keep up this blog. Teaching sucks up all your time and energy no matter where you are, and the fact that there aren’t any pubs or interesting places to hang out in Kuwait doesn’t necessarily open up a surplus of opportunity for creativity. One ends up sitting around apartments with other teachers, overeating, sipping kitchen-bucket grog and rehashing school gossip. The Arabic goes unlearned, the banjo unplayed, the sketchbook closed. I am fighting the tendency to think of all those creative ambitions as youthful whimsies. It is starting to feel to me, at 46, that such endeavors are silly and futile. “What do you think you are, a college kid?” my internalized critic sneers. Ah, but I read in the Reader’s Digest that old people who study languages hold on to mental faculties into old age. That’s the ticket. I'll just do all these things as geriatric exercises, like crossword puzzles.

===
(next morning)

Yesterday was a nice day. Mahmoud tested my Arabic and since I could pick out about one word from all his sentences and guess what he was talking about, he concluded that I was making progress. He has a journalist friend from Germany who speaks fluent Arabic. I’ve met him a couple times. After talking with him, I’ve come to the conclusion that Arabic is a dying language. It is like Latin must have been during its descent. It has spawned local languages which are vaguely intelligible one to the other, while the parent language is preserved only for official communication. Knowing Arabic would let me comprehend radio and television communication, but I will never hear anyone using it on the street. Still, it has been a means of psychological breakthrough for me to feel a thread of connection to the Arab world, and I enjoy the lessons, so I suppose I’ll continue.

Last night I was walking with the small group of teacher friends that I’ve hung out with since the beginning of the year. I’ve managed to avoid using names all this time, so I might as well stick to that. We talked about what happened to our building guard. I told you about him in an earlier posting. His name was Amet, and he was the Egyptian who told me he had a degree in psychology. He disappeared. Today I finally asked the building harris what happened to him. Apparently he was arrested. He was accused of talking to a lady. He spent two days in jail and then got deported to Egypt. The harris explained that we westerners don’t realize how common this kind of thing is. He said he was walking to the supermarket with his wife one time, and the police stopped him and accused them of being boyfriend and girlfriend. They had to prove that they were married. He said once he was with his own mother and the police harassed them. But it only happens to the powerless people at the bottom of the pecking order. This is Kuwait.

Two of the friends in my group are a husband and wife team, he, a 5th grade teacher and she, the art teacher. She told us a couple weeks ago that she is pregnant. They will probably be staying for a third year in Kuwait. I am counting on getting out after two, though I have no idea what I will do when I leave. We’re going to have a huge turnover of staff this year. Most of the teachers are going on to other international schools -- in Laos, China, Ukraine, to name a few. People ask me if I plan to go to Japan after Kuwait. If I do go to another international school, I do hope it’s in Japan. Last night I dreamt about visiting some unnamed American national park with my dad and step-mother. It was so beautiful. I think something in the soul cries out for home. But then what if there’s no comfortable place for you when you get there? Well, as I was saying, we all walked together through Hawally last night in the hot night air - probably about 105 degrees. A hundred hair dryers blowing hot air on you. We came to a dead palm tree on Tunis Street. It’s just the stalk of the tree sticking with a few dead palms hanging from the top. It’s been that way since I arrived. I pass it a couple times a week. I told them that I once considered photographing it as a symbol of this country: dead, depressing, and pathetic-looking. They laughed in agreement and asked me why I didn’t do it. I told them that I kept thinking about it and never got around to it. Now I realize that if I’m going to take a picture of a tree to symbolize Kuwait, it’s up to me to find one that I like. I’ve got another year left to go here, and I’d better keep my attitude in a good place. They agreed. It’s a shit country, commented 5th grade teacher, but it hasn’t been a bad year.

school winding down

2008-05-10T00:59:00.000-07:00

It’s Saturday morning, and I’ve closed myself in the spare bedroom with the door shut and the window open so that I can smoke a cigarette without stinking up the whole apartment. I have bragged for most of my life that I get away with smoking when I feel like it and never get hooked. I suppose I’m pressing my luck. I told T (my Malaysian friend) that if the cigarettes aren’t there I don’t miss them very much, and he retorted, “Then how do they get there?” But somehow I’ve gotten away with doing this on and off smoking all this time and never had a "nicotine fit." I’ve bought about three packs in a year—not too bad. These German-made Davidoff Lights cost half a dinar - about a dollar and half. For now, in the morning, it’s still cool enough to open the window. I’m perfectly aware that it makes little sense to smoke in the morning and work out in the afternoon.

I’ve been working out at the school with W, the Egyptian guy who works with the Arabic staff at school. We’ve gotten to be pretty good friends. I seriously considered moving out of the teacher flats and getting an apartment with him so that I could really get my teeth in Arabic language study. I finally decided against it. Being with the Arabic staff, he only makes a fraction of what I make at work, and even if I paid 75% of the rent, there would always be an uncomfortable gap between what we can afford in terms of what we put in the refrigerator, the amount of pocket money being thrown around, etc. Already I skip going to my fancy gym with its top-of-the-line equipment and facilities so that W and I can work out together in the school gym. Anyhow, W is probably a bit too serious in his embrace of Islam. We had a discussion about genies that opened my eyes somewhat. One of the staff got into a little bit of hot water for showing a video about genies to his class. Arabs believe in genies, and they’re not kidding. Most westerners probably think that genies are characters in stories and legends, like faeries and elves. But because the Quran talks about genies, even educated Muslims must convince themselves that they exist, and they categorize them as evil. When I talked to W about it, I said, “Oh come on! Do you really believe that?” to which he responded, “I know you American Canadian people think this very strange. It because you don’t know about genie.” I realized how far apart we really are. If the Quran says it, this guy believes it. This is the problem with religious texts that lock people into ancient belief systems.

Last week Mahmoud, the guy who’s giving me Arabic lessons, went to Mecca. He went in a mini-van. It’s about an 8-hour drive from Kuwait. He came back with a bottle of Zam-zam water for me. Zam-zam water is holy water from a well that spontaneously sprang up at the feet of Hagar’s wife after she got stuck in the desert and prayed to Allah. He also brought me an Indonesian men’s wrap-around skirt, and piece of toothbrush plant root. There’s some kind of plant that produces a tough, fibrous root, and if you take a piece of it and chew on the end of it you have a toothbrush. The skirt is a lot like the ones I got in India. I guess they sell all kinds of things from the Islamic world at Mecca gift shops. I need to get him something from America when I go home this summer. My lessons are coming along okay, but Arabic is unbelievably hard. The written language doesn’t include vowels, so you have to just hear the language enough to know what words are supposed to sound like. Given the amount of time and study I’ve put into it, I should know much more than I do. When I was applying to international schools, I liked the idea of going somewhere where I could study another language. Italy would have been perfect for that. There was an art teacher position open in an Italian international school in a small city near the Slovenia border, but when I got to the job fair I found out that it had already been filled. I already had a good foundation in Italian, and I’m sure I would be nearly conversant by now if I had gotten that job. Arabic and Japanese are probably the hardest languages in the world, for different reasons. Arabic is impossible to speak, and Japanese is impossible to read.

I was called about two weeks ago by a Kuwaiti lady who was looking for someone to tutor her son, a boy who goes to a different school. She got my name through the grapevine. A lot of expat teachers make extra money this way. I decided to give it a try, but it has been a rocky start. The woman has the kind of presumptuous attitude of privilege that Kuwaitis are notorious for. Her son is a 4^th grader who just needs some training so he can perform in class. He’s very good at English. I just spoke to the mother on the phone. I was dressed and ready to go for this morning’s session, and she cancelled it because I didn’t confirm. She sent me a text message asking for confirmation while I was at the souk (market) last night, and I didn’t even see the message until I was dressed and ready for my pick-up. I just don’t like the way she talks to me like I’m a servant. I tend to get a little proud and put an edge on my voice to let her know that I can “take it or leave it.” She clearly picks up on this, and a subtle struggle of egos ensues. I’m very tempted to drop the deal, but it is not difficult work, and I think I can do it well, not to mention that the money is good, even if less than the going rate for expat tutoring here. Well, we’ll just have to see how it develops. I have the luxury of saying no if I decide. So many poor people here have to work for tyrannical masters who treat them like dirt.

I was at the old city souk last night with some teacher friends. I bought an antique copper tea pot. There is a style of teapot with a long curved spout the shape of a parrot’s beak. Someone told me that these teapots were a symbol of welcome in the Arab world, and that they make good souvenirs of Kuwait. This one is real copper and has a tiny seal pressed into the metal with some Arabic letters on it, which gives it a nice authenticity. Afterwards we went to a Thai restaurant in Salmiya, the more modern shopping and restaurant district. I’ve been eating a lot of spicy food. T gave me another cooking lesson and showed me how to make a zesty Malaysian curry using fresh herbs and lemon grass. He also showed me how to make a kind of relish with hot chili, fruit, spices and dried fish. It sounds terrible, but the resulting stuff is a kind of power-chutney that must be tasted to be believed. It’s extremely powerful – a taste explosion. Not for timid meat-and-potato eaters. I love it.

Since I won’t have my tutoring session today, maybe I’ll walk to school and do a little work. Mid-term grades are due Monday. I gave an exam. I tried to design it for success, but some kids still failed. At the beginning of the school year, I was inclined to think that my students were all pretty capable, and I didn’t really feel like I was teaching special ed. It has been a gradual awakening. We did formal assessments last month, and I found that there are a few of them who have made zero progress. One boy seems to actually be deteriorating, and it’s very sad. At the beginning of the year he was witty and ambitious. I stood over his desk to see how he was doing during the exam. Even the way he held his pencil, his unnaturally long, thin fingers bowing against the pencil rod like they were made of rubber, reminded me of his real handicap. He was supposed to produce a topic sentence, but none of the painstaking review or obvious hints written on the white board in front of him were enough to get him through it. He looked at me desperately and said, “I give up.” I tried to argue with him. “No, you can’t give up!” But he was so miserable being asked to do something that was just beyond him. Maybe it was a year of being pushed too hard that had killed the wit and energy that he’d shown me in September. I probably need to praise these kids more. Well, at least he passed the test.

Mahmoud just called to tell me he's bringing me some stuffed grape leaves that his mother made. They're Lebanese. Lebanon is on the verge of civil war right now. I guess I'll put on a shirt.

not much to say

2008-04-27T12:17:00.000-07:00

When I look from window of the air conditioned middle school work room down at the street baking below, I guess the temperature at about 100 degrees . The brightness of the sun conveys an idea of the heat. The shabby buildings around the school look bleached out. The laundry of poor laborers hangs stiffly from balconies. When clothes hang in very dry air with no breeze, they dry hard. If you look down around the buildings at the unused inches of space here and there, you will want to see some straggly weeds, but there are none. Nothing grows here without a lot of help. The buildings are not old, but they all seem to crumble in the heat. Paint refuses to hold on to anything. Rooftops are crowded with satellite dishes. Everybody pays bootleg service providers for satellite TV. Diagonal to the school, a new apartment building is going up. If I look up, I can see a laborer is perched on a some flimsy boards with a big pan of soupy liquid cement, sloshing it over the concrete bricks to create a stucco-like finish. I count and see that he’s working at the 12^th floor level. He has a red-checkered cloth wrapped around his head. He tries to step into the shade of the building's interior corner every minute or so. I think about times I’ve heard people refer to Arabs as rag-heads. There is a guy pushing a wheelbarrow down below who doesn’t have a rag on his head. He’s wearing a ball cap. It looks a little funny with his dishdasha robe, but he probably thinks it’s much more stylish than a rag, even though it must be hot. He has a path around the piles of rubble and trash. I can’t tell what he’s moving. I am surprised to see some birds flitting about. I wonder how they live. People sometimes put breadcrumbs and buckets out of water out for pigeons. I don’t know how the smaller birds manage, or the cats.

Inside, the air conditioner is blasting directly on us. It is too cold. I ask the students repeatedly if they are cold, but they keep saying no. From the look on their faces, I’m guessing that they don’t want to say no for fear of being thought of as wimps. Rich Kuwaitis must endure the cold of air conditioning. Last year one of my students told me that her house was so cold that it was barely tolerable. She said that the system was broken and would not turn off. It just ran constantly. The air conditioning people were too busy installing new systems to come and fix it. It is a strange category of hardship, the burdens of uncomfortable castles.

Finally I decide that the AC has to be turned off. The air conditioners are operated from a remote control switch. The isn’t a remote in the room, so I have to go get one from the math teacher’s room. As I may have mentioned before, the corridors and lobbies of the school building are unenclosed. It’s a kind of indoor-outdoor architectural design. When I step out of the middle school work room, it’s like going from a freezer into an sauna. It feels good. I want to stand there and warm up a little bit, but I shouldn’t leave students unattended while they’re taking assessment tests. I quickly go into the math teacher’s room, grab one of the remotes, and hurry back to the work room. The students are still sitting there, working on their English writing assessments. These are Arab children, but many of them speak better English than Arabic. I have had a discussion with Mahmoud about these children. He thinks it’s horrible that they don’t know their mother tongue. I think it’s just interesting. It says a great deal about a certain segment of the Kuwaiti upper class, that they would steer their children to adopt English over Arabic. Is it because they know that many people in the world distrust and despize them, and call them “ragheads”? And maybe they themselves don’t want to be associated with traditional Arabs and their black-veiled wives. Children of modern parents make fun of the black-covered women and derisively call them “ninjas.” Not having much sympathy for the burqa tradition, I had to suppress some giggling the first time or two that I heard this.

The students had to write a narrative as part of their language arts assessment. One boy has written a very short narrative called, “Monster dog!!!” It all seams fun to pet animals but do they think its fun. What do you think? and they even hate it more when one dog fell in a radioactive well. even thou he should’ve died he’s alive and he’s angry he’s Monster dog! That's his story in its totality. It was supposed to be a three paragraph narrative, but actually it's not too bad by our school standards. This is one of the kids who prefers English to Arabic. I'm told that the Arabic teachers just leave him alone and don't make him do anything. If they forced the issue, it might blow up. There is something here called "wasta," which translates roughly as "downward pressure." It means you absolutely do not argue with people in power. Children here can have you fired or deported if their parents side with them, and they usually do. But I do like this boy who wrote about the monster dog. I think he might be on to something with this theory about animals not liking to be petted as much as we think they do.

After school, two guys from the Arabic staff wanted to work out in the school gym. Both of them have been working at the school longer than I have, but they have never ventured near the gym. I don’t think they had any idea it was open to the staff until I told them. I think they were afraid to go there themselves, but if I decided to go, they would go. I have a gym membership at the fancy Holiday Inn, but I decided to go down to the school gym and check out the weight room for their sakes. When we got there, the guys were in awe of the fancy weight training and exercise machines. One of them got on the treadmill and with great excitement started running on it. He doesn’t have gym shoes; he was in his bare feet. He was slowly forcing the belt around and around without turning the thing on. He thought that is how it works. That’s how foreign it was to him. These guys both grew up in Egypt. They are dirt poor. A lot of Egyptians borrow money to pay for huge bribes so that they can buy their way into work visas in Kuwait. Then they basically lives like slaves, paying back their debts and sending money home to their families. Yet they consider themselves to be much better off here. They can even get an old clunker car and drive around. The other day one of these guys insisted on taking us to lunch at Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was a big feast. I have thought about getting an apartment with these guys next year. But I’m a little worried that it might be disastrous. Even if we got along great, what would happen after I left? Having me around would inevitably create an artificial increase in the standard of living, because what I could afford to contribute, just in buying everyday stuff, would have a big impact on them. Then I would leave and they would be poor; they would have to move out of the nice place that they lived in when the American roommate was there. Anyhow, I showed them how to turn on the treadmill, and how to use some of the weight machines. They are both fat and very out of shape. Poor people don’t get healthy exercise in a place like Kuwait. I’m a little bit afraid that if our director knew I took members of the Arabic staff to work out in the school gym she would put a stop to it. She is a pragmatic administrator. If Arabic staff thinks they can use the gym, what will we have next? The school maids going for a dip in the swimming pool?

Tonight I thought about going down to talk to the building guard. He told me that he’s expecting them to build him a little booth when it gets hot so he’ll have air conditioning and won’t have to sit in the heat all night. I was wrong about the temperature today. I guessed it at 100, but when I got home I checked and saw that it was 108. And it’s still April. I hope they do build him a little booth, but I’m worried they won’t. And, I’m also afraid to befriend the guard. That’s why I decided not to go down and talk to him. Even in the little bit of time I have talked with him, I have already gotten so I'm uncomfortable thinking about him having to stay up all night, every night, without a break, for about 78 cents an hour, and most of that has to pay for his work visa debt. The rest goes to his family in Alexandria. He lives in an apartment with 11 other workers. It’s a three bedroom apartment with 4 to a room. I want to buy him a radio so he can at least listen to a soccer game or something while he’s hanging out in front of the building all night. He told me that I am the first American he ever met. Before me he only heard about us, and it was all bad. He says he hated Amreekee until he met me, and now he loves Amreekee. It makes me laugh and cry at the same time.

A Quiet Spring Break

2008-04-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

It has been a sleepy Friday afternoon. I haven’t left my flat yet today. They use the word “flat” here instead of apartment. A lot of Arabs confuse the words apartment and department, which may explain why they opt for the less confusing “flat.” I am going to try to drag myself to the gym in a few hours. It has been a very blah week. This was spring break at my school, and most of the teachers were traveling either to job fairs, workshops, or sightseeing trips. I saved a lot of money and got caught up on work by staying in Kuwait. There were a few highlights.

A week ago today I was on a cruise boat going back and forth on Kuwait Bay. One of the TA’s at my school heard that I was not traveling and invited me to join her and her husband and some of their friends, all Indian expats from around Delhi. It turned out to be quite a booze cruise – a big party boat with a dance floor and a bar below deck. I guess they can get away with that here the same way that floating casinos on the Mississippi and elsewhere bypass gambling rules by not being on the land. I had about 3 drinks, but they were making them very weak and charging a fortune, so I hardly felt the effect at all. The people I was with were all in their forties, while most of the crowd was in their twenties. The highlight for me was when I talked the men into dancing with their wives. I told the DJ to play an Indian song, and he played a whole set of Hindi disco music. We all got up and boogied with the young folk. When I saw arms in the air I knew I had succeeded.

My new Arabic teacher has become one of my best friends here. He’s the guy I mentioned in my earlier post about the desert outing – the Lebanese guy who told me I look like an Arab. My previous Arabic teacher had had a number of family emergencies and cancellations, and I finally told him I was going to stop lessons for a while. I didn’t tell him I found another teacher. The new teacher’s name is Mahmoud, and if I look Arab, I must say that he does not. He’s a chubby guy with light-brown hair and a frecklish complexion. He also had the past week off, and at one point we talked about maybe going to Jordan, but his brother decided it wasn’t a good time to have visitors. However we did get together a few times during the week. We went to the Kuwait Towers – probably the most famous landmark here, and not unlike the Seattle Space Needle. One night we went to a sheesha parlor and hung out and smoked hubbly-bubbly with a few of his friends. Another time he showed me where there’s a nice park with actual green grass under some water towers, and later he took me to get the best falafel in Hawally, the district in Kuwait where I live and work. Falafel is a staple here. It’s a kind of fritter made from chick-peas and herbs. Although it’s deep fried, it’s vegetarian and usually served with lettuce, tomato and some hummus on a bun, so it’s probably much healthier than a hotdog.

Mahmoud is a devout Muslim who will often leave me waiting on the street or in a lobby while he ducks into a prayer room (practically every office building, hotel, or shopping mall here is likely to have one), but he is a non-fundamentalist who goes out of his way to find a mosque where he can hear from a mullah who has some education and intellectual perspective. We talk about religion quite a bit. He said he might name his son Issa, which is the Arab’s version of the name Jesus. I was happy to hear of this name because I used to drive a Nissan truck, and one day I impulsively peeled the N’s off the tailgate which resulted in my truck having ISSA written across the back of it. I knew Issa was the name of a Japanese haiku poet, but I didn’t know it additionally meant Jesus in Arabic. It has been interesting to discover that Muslims have a kind of unilateral and unrequited fondness for Christians similar to what evangelical Christians have for Jews. Evangelical Christians consider Jews to be God’s Chosen People, but they are counting on them to hurry up and convert at the last minute when Jesus returns. The Muslims have a similar idea. They think that Christians are good people because the Quran apparently says “You cannot be a Muslim if you don’t accept Christians.” However they think we just misunderstood what Jesus was saying. Incidentally they have nothing but contempt for Buddhists and Hindus whom they see as idol worshippers.

Last night I went to see a movie called “Bass Ya Bahar” about Kuwaiti pearl divers during the 1920’s. It is one of the few films produced in Kuwait that received international attention. When I got to the cultural center where I thought it was going to be shown, I found out that I was wrong about the date, and instead of the movie, there was a lecturer there to talk about Kuwait’s beach environments. She was a soft-spoken American lady who did a very nice job of delicately raising environmental concerns without coming across as a troublemaker—something you just don’t want to do in Kuwait. She built her presentation around a slide show of pretty seashells that you could pick up on Kuwait’s beaches until recently. That was a nice approach. There's usually a non-confrontational way to bring up a point if one is sensitive enough to think of it. I guess I’ll go see “Bass Ya Bahar” next week. Since it is Kuwait’s one and only filmmaking success, I’ve already heard that it’s about a poor pearl diver in pre-oil Kuwait who is trying to make enough money to put together a dowry at a time when the world pearl market collapsed after the Japanese figured out how to force oysters to produce pearls by inserting grains of sand into their soft insides.

When I got back from the culture center, one of our new building guards was sitting alone on a couch in front of my building. People do that here where there is little likelihood of rain—they put couches and upholstered chairs outdoors and sit around on them at night, drinking tea, smoking cigarettes, and watching the cars go by. Mahmoud had told them a few times to talk to me and help me with my Arabic, but they are shy. The last few nights there has been only one of them there because the partner has gone back to Egypt or something. I decided to take a couple bottles of NA beer down to talk to him a little. He speaks very little English, so it was a good opportunity for me to practice. I don’t really understand why somebody decided that our building needed guards. They’re both Egyptian, and rumor has it that they were getting 80 dinars a month (about $300) and the big boss came around to check on them one night and caught them snoozing, so he docked their pay 10 dinars, bringing them down to about $260 or so. That’s not very much money to live on for a month in Kuwait. Egyptians have a life of such struggle, it’s really heartbreaking. The poor in India have nothing, but they don’t know better and seem to get along in blissful ignorance. In contrast, I have met so many Egyptians who have college degrees and they are miserable in their poverty. The guy I talked to last night told me that he was qualified to teach psychology at the university, but he had come to Kuwait to be a security guard because it was all he could do to feed his wife and child. Maybe he’s lying, who knows. One of my English teacher friends who has lived here for years tells me that lying is part of Arab culture. She insists that it is a shame-based culture in which people often have no choice but to lie. I haven’t had enough experience to know what she’s talking about, but maybe someday I’ll come back and comment on the idea.

Yesterday I spent most of the day at school. I needed to finish my grades and take care of the goldfish. One day one of my students was trying to talk me into getting a pet, and I told her that I am not home enough to give proper attention to any animal. I made the comment that the most I would ever consider having would be a goldfish. The next day she appeared with a big glass fishbowl and three beautiful fat fantail goldfish. My Aunt Dot, who passed away early this year, once had a big fat fantail goldfish. His name was Captain John if I’m not mistaken. Anyhow, I am now charged with the care of three similar fish. The small white one I named George, after the saint. The other two were named by students. The biggest one is a plump orange thing who has been given the name of Isabella; the black-browny colored fellow somehow got the name of Cupcake. They live only to eat their fish flakes and produce long strings of fish poop which the students never fail to announce in loud voices and then crowd around to observe in mutual disapproval. I have to change the water about 3 times a week. I found an artificial plastic seaweed at the 500 fils store (equal to the Dollar Store) to give the three amigos something to look at. Tomorrow I will have to go in again, clean the fishbowl, and figure out some lesson plans for the week. It’s going to be long stretch this month. We’re going to have three weeks of back-to-back assessment testing and no field trips. Our last field trip was a bit of a disaster… we got caught in a dust storm and had to cut things short, go back to school early, and sit in the theater to watch Alvin and Chipmunks. It won’t be long until the school year is winding down. Of course the heat will soon start to get to oppressive levels again. It’s already been over 100 degrees a few times.

I can hear the wailing of a distant mosque starting the evening call to prayer. You hear a chorus of them coming in like a tide, distance mosques far off, then closer ones domino in until my next door neighbor mosque turns on his microphone so loud that I can hear the click of it even with all the windows closed. I’ve gotten used to the call to prayer now. I still don’t like the Friday sermon. I recorded one of them and I’m going to ask Mahmoud to tell me what the heck he’s yelling about. Wow, the wind is really howling.. maybe we’ll get another dust storm. Sometimes when its storming dust I put a bandana over my nose like an outlaw. I think I’ll do that now and head off to the gym.

(Oh, I just looked out the window and saw that the storm is not dust—it’s rain, actual rain! Fantastic! Oh, but the security guards' couch is probably going to get soaked.)

India trip recalled - part 3

2008-03-29T10:07:00.001-07:00

When the drummer, whose name was Raj, swapped with me the camel-skin drum in exchange for a pair of jeans, shoes, and hat, he also threw in a wooden toy cobra made of loose carved sections that allow it to wiggle like a snake. He told me that his wife made it out of an apple tree root back up north. If it weren’t for that lie, I probably would be looking for an April flight to go back to Varkala and spend a few days getting drum lessons from him. But the toy looked like the sort of thing I think I’ve seen sold by Chinese vendors at flea markets, and I saw another guy selling toy snakes just like them down on the beach. That doesn’t mean that there is no daughter in school pouting for an MP3 player, or that the drum head isn’t real camel skin. But one lie is sometimes enough to cool a person’s enthusiasm. I actually tried to tell myself that maybe his wife really did make that snake out of an apple root. It was possible. I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t true. Anyhow, I don’t mind that he lied. The toy snake was a gift, and he just wanted to make it more interesting. In fact, it is more interesting now when I look at it, because there’s the ticklish silly idea that maybe his wife made it out of an apple root, sort of like when you blow out your birthday candles and think “Well, maybe people really are granted a wish by blowing out birthday candles.”

Early the next morning I took an auto rickshaw through the quiet streets to the train station to meet the Ernakulam Express headed back up to north Kerala. The final stop of my India trip was in a village outside Cochin. Homestays are a lot like bed and breakfast inns that you find in the west, but instead of just breakfast you get all three meals, and the family takes a little bit of interest in you. I was going to the home of a Brahmin family who promised a very traditional experience. On the way I sat opposite an Israeli couple who sprawled out on the seat, one napping while the other guarded luggage. Indians all around us were packed 4 and 5 to seating area, and they looked perplexed about how foreigners could be so clueless about space sharing etiquette on the crowded trains. The couple didn’t follow the Indian custom of squeezing in to allow others to sit, but they did quickly pick up on the practice of throwing trash out the train window. At one point in the morning’s journey I heard the loud clicking of two stones being clapped together and turned to see a young woman with a baby under one arm and some kind of stone castinets in her other hand working her way forward. She was a singer. She stopped in front of us and sang. I didn’t have anything but large bills. The Israelis clapped and gave her money.

Once arrived at the station, I quickly spotted the driver holding a sign with the name of my homestay, and we were off. The place was in a quiet area near the Pariyar river. We arrived at the elaborate gate, and the family all came out to greet me along with a British lady who had a red dot painted on her forehead and was wearing a sari. For fun, they had dressed her up as an Indian lady. It turned out we had a few things in common. She was also an English teacher working abroad, in her case in Granada, and she was traveling alone. She assured me that I had come to a wonderful place.

The house was an old Indian villa with a detached kitchen and a variety of medicinal plants and fruit trees growing around it. I was shown my room which was upstairs in an ancient ornate wooden structure overlooking the road. The interior was dark, varnished wood with framed prints of the paintings of a Indian artist from the early colonial period. They told me to settle in and then come down for lunch.

The food served at the Brahmin house was all vegetarian, made from scratch using all fresh ingredients, and prepared by the matron of the house and her daughter-in-law. They didn’t have servants or cooks. At every meal there three or four fresh dishes served with condiments and rice on stainless steel pans and eaten by hand. The food was very good. It was interesting to have meals which surrounded items not usually thought of as a main entrée. Once the main course was warm pineapple with a mustard sauce - surprisingly satisfying. During my three days there, they let me sample all the local specialties including upuma, a rice dish, iddli lentel dumplings, and dosha pancakes. They were eager to show visitors that healthy vegetarian food could be easy and delicious.

The afternoon was taken up with a little tour of the area. The father of the house, a man I’ll refer to as T., accompanied the other guest and myself and we all went together in an auto-rickshaw. It didn’t take long to get a sense of T’s colorful and endearing personality. He’s a youthful sixty-something man with a booming voice and a face that registers bold emotion and exaggerated surprise about everything.

We went to a shrine at the birthplace of Adi Shankara, the great Hindu philosopher-saint who taught non-dualism. It’s built as a tower with colorfully painted relief sculpture illustrating the saint’s life as you follow the spiraling rampway to the top. Between each episode you can see the graffiti scribbled on the walls by local school kids in Mayalayam language. In the spirit of non-dualism it is fitting to consider that the graffiti is of equal importance to the depiction of Adi Shankara’s holy life. We went from there to visit a yoga school. A group of Italian visitors happened to have stopped there at the same time, and the teacher gave us all a long-winded account of his personal career becoming a yoga teacher and setting up the school there. Unfortunately talk was all we were going to get from him, because he told us he was sorry but he did not plan to offer any instruction until a reconstruction project was completed since the roof had been damaged in a storm. Unfortunately a good part of the afternoon was lost in finding that out. We moved on to a Hindu temple dedicated to the goddess Durga. It was one of the more mysterious places I visited in India. There were monks stationed here and there around the temple doing their pujas and meditations. Non-Hindus are usually not allowed to enter temples, and T. really took us in there to show us a temple grounds view of the Periyar River and a place where people go to do ablutions. I would have like to have spent a little time soaking up the atmosphere of the place. It definitely felt very spiritual and mystical. But we had to hurry off to a dance school. T. wanted to take us to watch a practice session of girls training in Indian classical dance. When we got to the dance school, the class was over, but the owner called his wife to get one of their highest achieving students to come and dance for us. Where other classical dance forms are graceful and feminine, Indian classical dance is dynamic and energetic. It was really very impressive to watch. B., (the English lady) was leaving the next morning and wanted to get some gifts. We stopped at a spice market and she made a few purchases, but then T got a phone call from home and learned that some relatives had dropped in to say hello and they were all waiting for him, so she never got to do her shopping. The house was busy when we got back. The children were running around playing, and the adults were eating and talking noisily in Malayalam.

B. and I sat in the front porch area and talked for a bit. I told her that one of my reasons for coming to this particular homestay was that they offered to make appointments for their guests to see an astrologer. She was very encouraging. She had gone to see the family astrologer and had had a very good experience. She also told me about a place about half and hour’s walk away where I could go in the morning and see elephants getting bathed in the river. We had both had very good traveling experiences and were in agreement about how wonderful it was to have had the chance to come to India.

We all got up early the next morning to have breakfast and say goodbye to B. I was given a hand-drawn map and headed out to find the elephant bath. It was an adventure just finding it. A narrow road turned into a small footpath that led through tapioca fields, banana groves, and rubber tree plantations. There were two little bridges to cross and a school full of adorable uniformed children who wanted to say hello and ask for a pen. “One pen?” “One pen?”

I made a couple wrong turns and almost turned back at one point, but somehow I found the spot. I knew I was in the right place when I saw some other westerners waiting with cameras. I learned that there was a training center for elephants not far from there. It was operated by the Indian National Forest Service to provide employment and care for injured or orphaned elephants from a population of wild elephants living in a nature preserve up river. The young elephants were trained to take part in ceremonies and parades according to Kerala tradition. When the elephants arrived, it felt like the arrival of royalty. The trainers handled them with a bit more roughness than we wanted to see, using prods and sticks to direct them, but one had to consider that these animals were going to be attending festivals and weddings and needed to learn to take directions for their own good. Anyhow, it really felt like a privilege to see elephants in that kind of setting. They are so grand and beautiful. I walked back to the house in a daze of gratitude.

That afternoon I rode along with the daughter-in-law who had some errands to do. I remembered my early experiences when I was an exchange student in Japan, and how I was happy to tag along to the supermarket or the hardward store. In any other situation I would not enjoy sitting and waiting while someone went around to pay their utility bills and whatever, but I was happy as a clam to watch the busy Kerala street scenes while she took care of mundane necessities. Before we went back I bought a set of metal drinking cups and some of the wrap-around garments that the men wear, called kaavi, dhoti, lungi . . . I’m not sure which is which, nor how to tie them, and I’ll probably use them as tablecloths, but who cares!

Later, T. and his granddaughter were going to have a bath in the river. They asked me to join them. This was a wonderful, earthy experience. We went to a bathing area behind a temple dedicated to one of the gods of medicine. It was a beautiful, golden evening, and no one was there but us. The water was warm, and perfectly clean from what I could tell. We had a regular bath with soap and everything. It was like something you might associate with camping, but a regular practice for this family. T. sent his granddaughter into the temple to get some sandalwood paste to make dots on our foreheads, thought to have a cooling and calming effect.

I found out when we got back that the astrologer woman had been ill, and we would have to call her in the morning to see if she was willing to give me an appointment. The family could tell I was very eager to see her. “Do you have some problem that you need to ask her about?” they cautiously inquired. I told them I just felt very unsure about my life and had no real goals or direction for my future. This is the truth, albeit an understated version. I had a strong intuition that I could get some help from an astrologer. I told them that when I was in college, there was an Indian guy living in my dorm who was getting his masters in electrical engineering. He was very smart and scientific-minded, and yet he had come from a long line of palmists and astrologers. Somehow he shrugged off the incongruity of being a scientist and knowing how to read palms. The first time I heard he knew how to read palms, I eagerly asked him to take a look at mine. He peered at my palm for about 2 seconds, and then said, “Not right now . . . another day.” The next time I say him he said, “Maybe Thursday.” Then when Thursday came, he said, “Saturday would be better.” Of course he never did give me the reading he had promised, and I always suspected that he had seen something he didn’t want to tell me about. Anyhow, I know I could have had a palm reading or an astrological chart done any time, but it had never felt like the right time until I started planning my trip and saw that they could make appointments for guests. Knowing all this, T.’s wife told me that she would call the astrologer herself and explain it in the morning. T. also told me that he had some training in palmistry, and when I was done he would like to have a look at my hand if I was willing to let him. That night I lay awake wondering what exactly it was that I wanted to hear or not hear about my life.

The next morning I was up early to the sound of a flute being played at the temple. This was my last day in India. My hosts could easily see how anxious I was about the appointment. Mrs. T. had made the phone call the previous evening, and told me that I could go at 9:30 that morning. Mr. T. chose three fresh betel leaves to which I added a coin, and we wrapped these up as a symbolic token of humility and appreciation. The astrologer was a lady teacher who lived in a neighborhood not far from the elephant bath. They suggested that since I had extra time I should take the ferry across the Periyar to see the ancient church of St. Thomas. That seemed like a perfect idea to me. I found the place near the second bridge where the ferryman took passengers in a long, narrow canoe across the shallow river to the Christian village surrounding St. Thomas’s church. I easily found the old church. Keralan Christians believe that many of their churches were established by Saint Thomas the Apostle himself. There was a statue above the altar of Saint Thomas kneeling as Jesus takes his hand to show him the wound in his side. I felt no conflict about praying in a Christian church before going to see a Hindu astrologist. A nun came in with some school girls who knelt down on the hard floor. When they were whispered amongst themselves I thought maybe they were mischievously distracting one another the way one might expect Catholic schoolgirls to do in a western country, but I think they were agreeing on a hymn to sing, because as I smiled at their girlish behavior they started singing. I left the church feeling consoled and ready to hear anything that the astrologer might have to say.

I took the ferry back, found the house, and entered at exactly the appointed time. Now I will tell you something strange. You are welcome to take this as an indication of how much I am an eccentric fellow with a wild imagination. Six years ago, I was teaching in Tacoma, and I had a major decision to make about whether to leave my job there and go to attempt a job as translator at a Japanese Buddhist Center. I felt paralyzed with indecision. One night I had a dream that I was in a busy airport and I made eye contact with a white-haired Indian lady. She looked at me and said, “It’s not for you.” I did end up leaving my teaching job, but in the end I didn’t take the job and ultimately moved to Pennsylvania to live closer to my family. When I saw the astrologer, I immediately made the connection. You could probably find in India a million white-haired ladies with the same serious gaze, but in my mind this was the same person from my dream. However, after a brief discussion, she told me that she couldn’t tell me anything because I didn’t have the precise time of birth; I would need to make a call home and find out what I could, then come back in the afternoon. As I started walking back toward my homestay, the built-up anxiety was so intense that I could hardly concentrate on where I was going and almost got lost. There was a small shop near the homestay that had a pay phone. I somehow managed to place the international call and woke my mother to ask her to go find her notes that had my birth time that she had copied from my hospital baby bracelette. She gave me the time, and also went onto the internet look up the latitude and longitude of Greenville where I was born. Mom was excited for me, and I promised to let her know whatever I found out. I couldn’t eat lunch that day, and waited on pins and needles for the afternoon to go back. This time I borrowed a bicycle.

When I saw the lady that afternoon, I decided to tell her outright that I believed I had once seen her in a dream. I told her about it, and she smiled.
“You didn’t take that job?” she asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I guess I was too fragile to do that work,” I tried to explain. I told her about how the meditation regimen had been very intense, and while there I’d felt myself becoming more and more emotionally vulnerable. It was a place of Buddhist practice, but during certain times of the day I could hear church bells from distant convent. The sound of the bells had had a powerful effect on me, and in the end maybe I had realized that I could never detach from my Christian roots to really dedicate myself to the practice of the zen center.
She shook her head and said something like, “There is just one God, and all the forms are just different manifestations.” I do believe this to be true.

She spent quite a bit of time consulting books and calculating on paper. Finally she shook her head. “This is very bad.” The first words out of my mouth were “I knew it!” Then she said, “Your birth time is very, very, very, very, very bad.” (Oh my God, she said ‘very’ FIVE TIMES!) She explained to me that I had been born at a time that resulted in my having the influence of what she called “a dragon’s head,” and to make matters worse, I also had “a dragon’s tail”! I was joined to Jupiter, she said, with Saturn in the 5th position. Because of this, what should have been my primary source of strength was denied to me. After this bad news, she asked, “So what do you want to know?” There were only a few things I really wanted to know. What was behind my sexuality and its associated problems, and how could I begin to discern my life’s direction having no plans or ideas for the future even at this stage of middle age? She had little to offer me. She told me to pray, and trust God. I guess it wouldn't have taken an astrologer to suggest that. The good news was that the dragon influence was on a 16 year rotation cycle, and I would have some kind of liberation at the age of 47 years and 7 months. She said that anger was somehow at the source of all my problems, and that it would do me good to practice some kind of centering exercise such as yoga. She also said that I should make spiritual reading a part of my daily life. “Read your Bible,” said this Hindu astologer. “Your Bible is very good for you.” I thanked her and left.

I have heard people talk about astrologers and fortune-tellers who “knew things that they had no way of knowing.” This woman didn’t spell out anything about my life that proved psychic knowledge. It was all very general and could be easily dismissed by a skeptic. But was I quite floored. When I reached the homestay, the daughter-in-law came out to ask me how it had gone. I couldn’t pretend that it was good. She told me to be strong. Later, T. took me up to my room and lit a candle to look at my palm. He was not as cut and dry as the astrologer, but he confirmed that I was bound to endure a period of strife. “Don’t blame yourself when your mind makes you fight with yourself,” he said, “Just look at it like so much grass, it’s just going to be there.” He added some happy things for me to look forward to. “Even at your age, and even with your problems, marriage is still in your future,” he said. “And you will have two children, a son and a daughter.” He asked me if I had any interest in artistic things. He said that no matter what I had done, that success was denied to me because of all the conflict and negativity, but that in the next few years I would have a breakthrough. “Your goal will become clear to you, and all you will have to do is kick the ball into the net!” God, how I loved that man when he said that. I didn’t care whether he was making up some sugar coating to make me feel better.

I had been through a bit too much emotional turmoil that day and had no appetite for dinner that night. But I sat at the dinner table with them. They were waiting for some new guests to arrive. I mentioned that I had been advised to read the Bible, and how I’d found that very interesting coming from a Hindu. T. asked me, “Are you familiar with Saint George?” It just so happens that I took an iconography class in Pennsylvania a couple years ago, and the one icon I completed was of Saint George. “We think that Saint George is the equivalent of Shiva,” he said. “Saint George will help you.”

That night I packed my bags and said goodbye to this family that I had grown to love in a mere three days. The taxi arrived and we started for the airport. The taxi driver had a rosary hanging from his rear-view window. It was about a 45 minute drive. As we were passing through a little town on the way, I saw a church and thought I saw the word “George” out of the corner of my eye. “Please stop!” I said. “I want to say a prayer at that church.” The driver stopped and backed up without batting an eye. I was correct. It was a church called Saint George’s. An image of Saint George on a horse was painted above a small shrine that bore a statue of the early missionary who founded the church. Candles were burning in front of it. I said a brief prayer thanking God and giving myself to His mercy. This marked the end of my adventure in India.

[Post Script] When I was at the Buddhist center where my life had taken one of its many inexplicable twists, I made friends with a Catholic/Buddhist university professor who talked about some of his experiences with bipolar disorder and spirituality. He said that he thought it was very important not to tell just anyone about ones personal spiritual experiences. “Scripture tells us ‘don’t caste your pearls before swine,’” he said. I don’t know where the words came from, but I responded to him that I couldn’t agree. “I think we must begin to think differently,” I said. "Those who we think are swine may not be swine at all. Who’s to say that those people who we think will never understand or appreciate our stories might not have had similar experiences, or at least be able to learn from something we have to say. Maybe there is more universality to our experiences than we imagine. I think we must throw our pearls -- throw them to the swine!” And so I post these notes into cyberspace for anyone to judge, ridicule, or ponder as they will.

2008-03-29T10:00:00.000-07:00

India trip recalled - part 2

2008-03-22T13:07:00.001-07:00

My train left Alleppey at about 6:00 AM and arrived in Varkala mid-morning. I had booked a room at a hotel that is attached to an ayurvedic treatment center. Ayurveda is an ancient system of naturopathic medicine native to India. It is really for the treatment of serious disease, but because prescribed treatments sometimes include such pleasurable therapies as massage and use of aromatic oils, it has become a big tourist attraction for curious foreigners. I was one of those curious foreigners, and I wanted to get some ayurvedic magic.

But my first day in Varkala was a bit of a downer. I had requested the cheapest available room, one without air conditioning, which I thought would be unnecessary since February is supposed to be perfect weather in Kerala - not too hot. My room was on the top floor, and the view from the balcony was great, but the room was hot and depressing during the hours of direct sunlight. I tried to take a nap, but it was too uncomfortable. I went to find the manager to see if I could pay more and switch rooms, but I couldn’t find him, so I decided to just deal with it.

I walked down to the beach. People were either in couples or with families or groups of friends. I decided to have some lunch. I climbed the stairs to a rooftop restaurant. Some poor old guy who could hardly get up and down the stairs was waiting tables. Now, this was on the beach, and you could see the Arabian Sea just as well from the ground floor, but people fancy the idea of having a meal on the rooftop seating area where they can look out at the blue horizon. I felt uncomfortable being part of the transaction that required him to manage the stairs just for this small perk, but there were other tourists up there, and none below, so there I went. At least there were other tourists there, and maybe I could talk to somebody. While planning the trip, I had noticed that many guide books and online bulletin board posts implied that seeing other tourists is the last thing a traveler ever wants to do. In my case, as a solo traveler, I actually wanted to mingle with other tourists. I would have been glad to chat with any sunburned tourists wearing sneakers and carrying cameras. But they were all with their own companions, and anyhow I noticed that they were mostly speaking German, Russian, or some other languages that I didn’t know. The miserable old guy finally made it up the stairs with my vegetable curry. It was the worst Indian food I have ever eaten in my life. I’m sure it could be replicated with the following recipe: Add one cup of frozen mixed vegetables to one can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup; add curry powder, heat and serve. I ate it anyhow, quickly.

I went looking for an internet café. Having only a week in India, I had decided that I wouldn’t spend any time in internet cafes, but so far the day had put me in a bit of dismal mood, and so I didn’t mind killing a bit of time online. Anyhow I could at least check the train schedule and confirm my booking for the next place. While I walked up a side street, shopkeepers yelled at me for not going in their stores. I found the internet café and logged in. There was one message from one of my teacher friends in Kuwait. He wanted to know if I was having fantastic Indian cuisine. I went back and found an old message from someone I had contacted through the “Lonely Planet” website. It was a guy who has a guest house in Varkala. His place had been all booked up, but he had recommended the hotel with Ayurvedic clinic attached--the place where I ended up going. His email had been friendly, so I had written back a few times to ask various questions about ayurvedic therapies, train travel, weather and so on. In his last email, he had said that I should stop in and say hello while I was in Varkala. I decided to send him a note and tell him I was staying in the budget hotel he had recommended, and if I happened to see his guest house I would stop and say hello. I also sent a little note to my family, and then headed back toward my hotel.

By now I had the idea that it could be a long three days of wandering around Varkala by myself, so I decided to cough up the money for the “javeena” treatment, the biggest option of ayurvedic packages offered at the clinic. It was going to be six hours of various treatments, paid for by the day for up to six days. The same friend back in Kuwait who was interested in how I was finding the cuisine had told me about some kind of mega-enema they do that rids ones intestines of a lifetime’s acquisition of toxic oily build-up. I wondered if they would put me through something like that. Well, even if they did, I had no other agenda for Varkala, so I would go along with their recommendation. I was told to be there the next morning at 9:30.

Just outside my hotel was a lean-to where a young man whose otherwise handsome face bore an unfortunate scar was selling light-weight Indian clothing. The Indians themselves seem to have stopped wearing the loose, cotton pajama-like garments, but tourists like them. It was too hot for my jeans and T-shirts, and I wanted to buy some, but I didn’t want to haggle. I don’t like it anytime, I was in no mood for it that afternoon. I tried to get the guy to understand that if he would just give me a fair price I would pay it. It didn’t work. It had to be a contest, whether I wanted one or not. I ended up with a couple of flimsy pajama pants and a big cloth wrap for what was really not a bad price, but I walked away highly irritated by all the manipulation. Since the little lean-to was right outside my hotel, I had to pass in repeatedly for my remaining time in Varkala, and each time he asked me to come back in and buy more, and each time I made a curt refusal. When I think back about it now, I remember how on the last night I saw that the mans’s wife had made a pathetic little stick fire right outside the lean-to and cooked dinner in a tiny pot about the size of the pot I use to boil water for a cup of coffee. That was food for her and her husband and their little girl. I think about the fact that every time I passed, he smiled a goofy smile and asked me to come back and buy more, and I kept up my show of indignation that he had not let me do things my way. I think of that, and I am ashamed, and I wish I had bought a dozen or so pajama pants to give away as souvenirs.

As it was, I had my new purchase, and I wasn’t going to look in any more shops, so I fixed my gaze forward and walked ahead without turning my head to give anyone a chance to coax me to their displays. I walked the full length of the cliff top “boardwalk” of restaurants and souvenir shops and finally came down a stairway to a section of sandy beach. I almost didn’t go in. I didn’t particularly want to. I had to push myself. I had to tell myself that it was my responsibility to have a swim, since I had come all this way. And when I swam out to where the young tourists were body surfing in the waves, I felt sure that with my bald head and graying beard I was certainly the oldest person out there. But I had fun. The water was clean and blue. The waves were perfect. I remembered how to start swimming just ahead of the incoming wave so that it would pick me up and carry me in. Playing in ocean waves is probably one of the most ancient forms of play in human experience. It washed away all my negativity. It let me forget about my isolation and alienation. I spent about an hour in the water, and when I saw that the sun was going down, I started back to my hotel.

When I got there, the manager said he had a message for me. I was supposed to call another hotel. It took me a second to make the connection. I used the office phone to call. The voice on the other end spoke perfect British English. It was indeed the guy I had exchanged a few emails with, and he said why didn’t I come over and have a drink. The directions were tricky, but I decided to give it a try. I got a shower, changed into my new PJ’s, and headed out. The hotel was in much nicer resort section of Varkala. It turned out to be a very classy place with beautiful furniture and gardens. Even though India has an economy that can accommodate budget travelers, there do exist luxury accommodations for those with money to spend, and when you have it you can experience real elegance. This guy was an Oxford-educated Brahmin from another part of India who had somehow landed in Varkala. He was as worldly and urbane as any Manhattan socialite. He made some drinks of fresh watermelon juice and rum, and asked me about America, Japan, Kuwait, Hilary, Barack, what I thought of India, etc. He talked about the great changes taking place in India and shared some funny stories. We got on the subject of Goa. My assistant had once told me about how wonderful it was see the relics of St. Francis Xavier. This guy told me that the Indian newspapers had reported that the body was no longer going to be brought out for public display unless there was a protective window in front of it. Apparently some woman had gotten caught up in religious fervor, and started kissing the feet of Francis’s mummified “incorrupt” body. She got carried away and actually bit his big toe, which unfortunately broke off. I supposed it’s a bit irreverent, but we had a good laugh about that. It was late by the time I headed home, after what had certainly turned out to be a long day of twists and turns.

The next morning I reported to the clinic. The night had not been very restful. It was hot, and the ceiling fan was noisy. I would get up and turn it off to get some peace and quiet, then when I got too hot I would relent and turn it back on again. Finally I used some foam earplugs that I had in my shaving bag, but then it was that uncomfortable feeling of pressure in the ears. Needless to say, I did not wake feeling particularly rested, and there may have even been a touch of hangover from the rum. I was curious to see how the ayurvedic thing was going to go.

The doctor wasn’t there at all. Two small Indian guys with very little English ability were the therapist team. One of them gave me some kind of face tickle thing that involved drawing simultaneous, symmetric patterns of swirlies and circles up and down the two sides of my face with the tips of his fingers dipped in some kind of herbal oil. I couldn’t really call it massage, because in my mind, massage involves pressure and kneading of the muscles. This was some kind of tactile hypnosis, and it was immensely relaxing. Then they put me into a loin cloth and had me lie on large wooden table, made from the trunk of some special tree with a sort of pan carved into the top to catch all the oil being used. And the amount of oil used was astounding. It smelled wonderful. If you’ve ever had a professional massage, you may have smelled aromatic herbal oils before. In ayurvedic massage, they use a huge amount of it. I think the oil itself is thought of as a medication, and the massage is partially conducted as a means of administering it. Some people might not like it because it is really gooey and oily. But the smell is wonderful, and the method of massage is bilateral. Two people work in tandem on either side of you, so that if the pinky of your right hand is being massaged, it’s guaranteed that the pinky of your left hand is being massaged at the same instant. I think the integrated right-left sensation does something to the brain. They massage your entire from head to toe. (Well… actually, there is a spot or two that they don’t touch--darn it! ) I have to admit, it can be quite stimulating, but the therapists are priest-like in their approach. They are absolutely in perfect sync with each other, and if any communication is necessary they actually use little gestures to avoid talking, or whisper so quietly that you think they’re performing a religious ritual. And maybe they are. I compared this to time or two I’ve been in florescent-lit hospitals where loud-mouthed nurses gossiped with each other and doctors played the radio while they waited for the anesthesia to knock me out. The difference in just basic regard for the sanctity of healing is mind-boggling. Even if an alternative model of healthcare like ayurvedic medicine is scientifically empty, the culture that surrounds it is alone worth serious recognition and regard. My third therapy for the morning was another oil therapy. This time, a tiny, steady stream of oil was allowed to fall onto my forehead creating little rivulets that followed gravity along the contours of my head. It went on for a very long time. I imagined that gallons of oil were being used. Again, it was deeply relaxing and hypnotic. After it was over I asked to see how much oil was used, and it looked like less than a pint. Anyhow, it was amazing. After a good wash with hot water and soap, I walked on cloud feet down to the office where I regarded the doctor and the few staff people working in the office. “How do you feel?” asked the doctor. “I - feel - wonderful,” I said in the voice of one who has achieved nirvana. And I immediately signed up for full treatment for the next day.

There was a break during which I wandered around and met a drummer from Varanasi (Benares) who wanted to sell me an Indian drum and would to teach me how to play it for as long as I had time to learn. And then an afternoon session of more Ayurvedic treatment, but I guess I’ve said enough about what that’s like.

That night I went to one of the better beach restaurants in Varkala and ate chicken tikka masala (my idea about eating as much vegetarian food as possible while in India was not panning out) and watched the sun set over the Arabian Sea. The owner of that restaurant is a Hindu and plays a repetitive kirtan chant every evening that goes on and on and on. You think, “Oh, this has gone on a long time. Surely it will end now.” But it goes around one more time, and one more time. I heard one customer say something about not liking it as he got up to leave. But I didn’t mind. I sort of enjoyed the time-lapse that it created. At the same time I wondered about how I would feel if I were at a restaurant and the owner played some devotional Christian music. I don’t think I would like it. I certainly don’t like it when taxi drivers in Kuwait play Quran verse recitation. Why was this ok? Maybe my heart and mind were open from the day’s therapy, or maybe it was just because I was in India, and anything Indian was part of the experience.

Day three (Tuesday) in Varkala was primarily taken up by the ayurvedic treatments. I have to be honest - the first session was the most powerful, and at times I wondered in I had opted for too much and that maybe it was getting to be overkill. How much can you really slime around in that oil without getting sick of it? The power enema never happened, but there were some other interesting treatments. One of them involved taking some kind of mud made from ground plants, seeds and roots and plastering it onto the top of my head, after which a helmet of banana leaves was tied on to hold in the heat and moisture so that it could soak in. That seemed really silly and didn’t provide any particular sensation, but it had some comedic value and I kind of wish I could have had my picture taken with the banana leaf helmet.

I went back and met the drum guy. I decided I would buy a drum. He wanted to barter instead of taking money, which I thought was interesting. He claimed that his drums were of his own making, and I had no reason not to believe him. He said that since coming to Kerala, his daughter hated it and had stopped talking. She hadn’t talked to him for months, he said. But in Kerala there was good education, and she was going to school and learning to read and write, which he could not do. He said that after such a long period of not talking, she finally asked him for a favor. All the other children at school had electronic gadgets. CD players, MP3’s, cell phones, etc. India really has become very technical, and you wouldn’t think it would reach the poorer classes, but it has. She wanted some gadget to take to school. Anything I had, he would trade for a drum. Even if it was just a few American music DVD’s. This made me sad on a few levels. First of all, it was sad that the lure of this kind of materialism--a coveting of the most superficial kind of flashy tech crap--was obviously hitting the simple lives of India’s humble working class. And this guy didn’t care about that his daughter was getting sucked into it -- he just wanted to make her happy. I remembered hearing an interview of a woman who had raised her son living in a car. They were homeless, but the boy wanted some $100 Nike shoes to wear to school. She broke down in tears as she talked about how she saved for a year to buy him the shoes. She couldn’t give him a home or decent life. But she would get him those shoes. I actually considered trading my cell phone for the drum. It’s a nice one, and I got it used for a super low price from a wealthy student at my school. I think I flipped a coin to decide, and the phone stayed with me. I ended up swapping a pair of jeans, an old pair of cross trainer shoes, and a hat, for one of his best drums which was made with a camel skin. I threw in some money too. It all fit him perfectly, which made me think it was a good choice. He told me to come back in April, when I have another break, and he would teach me how to play that drum. It’s a tempting thought.

Enough about India? Bored yet? Well, I’m not through writing about it. The next morning I boarded a train headed back north where I had arranged to spend my final few days at a homestay run by a very traditional Brahmin family in village outside of Cochin. I will write about that in my next post.

I have written this in bits and pieces over the course of the weekend, which is now over. It is now late night on Easter’s Eve, and time for me to go to bed. Tomorrow morning I will get up and walk to school, for Easter Sunday is just another work day in Kuwait.

India trip recalled - part 1

2008-03-14T23:23:00.001-07:00

While I was in India, the days were long, and Kuwait seemed to be an eternity away. Two weeks later, I am back, and I look with bewilderment at the few odd souvenirs I managed to acquire. Sometimes travel really can seem like a Narnia experience - you come back and nothing has changed, and you almost question whether time and space may have played a trick on you.

I was in India for the last week in February. That is National Liberation Week in Kuwait. Kuwait was liberated first from the British, and then some decades later from Iraq under Saddam Hussein during that same end-of-February calendar week. Kuwaitis celebrate with flags and banners, and they take the whole week off work. The young people go cruising on the Gulf Road creating gridlock traffic jams during which they get out of their cars and run around spraying each other with water guns and aerosol cans of party foam. I skipped all that and went to Kerala in southern India.

When I was about 15 years old, I saw a notice on a school bulletin board about being an exchange student. When I look back on it, I am not sure whether it was the call of adventure or the desire to escape my life that compelled me to apply. I know I wanted to go to India more than anywhere else. It came from a combination of 1960’s hippie ideas about how cool India was, along with a sense of the exotic from early childhood memories of a slide show from an uncle who had spent time there in the Peace Corps. I was a strange kid, a self-conscious misfit, a bit of a sissy, a bit of a nerd, and I was absolutely ecstatic with the idea of going to India where I might find a totally different world. I was accepted into the program, given my choice of destinations, and was preparing to spend my junior year in India. But things didn’t work out. The summer of 1978 was a miserable one for me, as I waited every day for my Indian visa to arrive. Then August came and went. I actually missed over a month of my junior year of high school waiting for the paperwork, but it never came. Finally my father got a phone call. He broke the news to me. There had been an argument within the organization over numbers and hosting responsibilities. The plans had fallen through. They were very sorry. I had to go back to school. The next year I went to Japan, and my whole life went in a different direction. But every time I encountered anything that had to do with India, my interest was unyielding. I had ample vicarious experience of India by reading, listening to other people’s stories about it, and fantasizing about going there. In fact, I remember once talking to some people at the designated smoking pavilion at Breitenbush Hot Springs in Oregon, where there were some real bohemian types sharing their India stories, and it occurred to me that my mind had really had its fill of India, and I felt like a member of the club without ever having gone there at all. I told my exchange student disappointment story to these people and said, “I think I am so saturated with the idea of going to India, that now I don’t really need to go there anymore.” One of the guys responded, “That’s perfect! Now you are ready to go!”

This is what I wrote while I was waiting for my flight:

Feb. 21, 2008 Kuwait Airport I’m 46 years old, and I’m going to India, 30 years late. I wanted to go when I was 16. I was intoxicated with the idea of it. Now, I’m just going. I’m a fat, middle-aged American tourist, going to India to eat at restaurants and stay in hotels. But actually, I think I have a pretty good week planned for myself.

I wrote a full scenario of visualization based on the itinerary I had planned for this solo trip. Afterwards, I looked to see how accurate I had been, and indeed everything pretty much came out just as I had hoped, only better. If people ask me about India, I don’t think I could really give India an unqualified recommendation, because India travel is a gamble. But in my case, it’s as if some angels who keep tabs on things knew that it just wouldn’t be right for me to have anything but a wonderful time in India, and that is just what I had.

This will be a full retelling from here, so if you’re the kind of person who hates slide shows and prefers to be spared the details, you may scroll through it quickly or go back to your email.

I flew into Cochin on a Saturday morning, the 22nd. Looking out the window of the airplane, I could see green fields and swaying coconut palms all around. I had arranged for a pick-up from the guest house where I was going to stay an hour and a half south of Cochin in the port town of Alleppey. The driver drove as if I were royalty on urgent business, honking for everybody else to get out of the way for us. I had to tell him to stop honking and slow down. Meanwhile I took in my first sights of India. After being in desert climates for so long, I just loved looking at the blessed vegetation. It was also cool to see all the cultural signs of being in India - men in dhotis and women in saris, signs written in Malayalam and Hindi, auto-rickshaws and funky, old-fashioned looking cars of the standard Indian model. The driver pointed out a small elephant being transported in the back of a rainbow-painted truck, and a brilliant turquoise-colored Kingfisher bird perched on a wire. I had not slept much on the red-eye flight from Dubai, but I was still excited just to be there.

Kerala is the southern-most state in India. Christianity has been there even longer than it’s been in Europe, and Indian Christianity is very, well . . . Indian! I saw the first signs of it during that ride to Alleppey. There were stores like “Saint Joseph’s Furniture” with a picture of Joseph holding the baby Jesus. A lot of trucks and taxis were labeled to show their dedication to the Virgin Mary or Christ the King. Normally one would be more interested in seeing the elephant-headed Ganesh and the other Hindu gods in India, but for some reason I was completely fascinated by Indian Christianity. When I got to Alleppey, I started to notice crumbling old churches and roadside shrines to various saints. I walked to the Alleppey beach and saw Catholic nuns walking with schoolchildren under the palms. The beach was beautiful and clean. I talked to some young guys who wanted to practice their English, and then a man who wanted to read my palm for 200 rupees - about $5. He was the first of three individuals who gave me psychic readings during my week in India. He didn’t speak English well, so it was hard to get much from him, but he said that I would live to be 96! He also said that I had two minds--and “enjoy” mind and a “tension” mind. He tried to tell me a lot of other things, but I didn’t speak his language and he only knew a few words of English. But finally he told me that things would get better for me, and don’t worry. That was reassuring. People who disapprove of my taking advice from palmists and astrologers are welcome to contact me, and I will send a long list of more things about me for their additional disapproval.

My guest house room in Alleppey was VERY basic. A cement floor, cement walls, a tiny cot with a pink mosquito net hanging down over it. A skinny white cat came in for a visit. I was delighted to have a feline visitor to welcome me, just like in Dahab. An old man with a bandaged foot was hobbling around the guest house. He came up to me and spoke in English. “Excuse, sir,” he said in a hushed tone, “ may I have 500 rupees please, but don’t tell my son?” He was the elderly father of the proprietor of the guest house. He was a little demented. I thought it was sort of funny that I had come to India where people expect to be hounded by starving beggars, but instead I was getting this different kind of beggar--a perfectly well-fed old guy who panhandled his son’s customers when he could get away with it. “He won’t give me any of my pension!” the man complained. “But you mustn’t tell him I told you. He gets very mad at me!” I told him that 500 was a bit too much, but I would give him 200, and he could count on me to keep it a secret. I saw him a few times after that and each time he said, “You didn’t tell my son, did you?” and I assured him that I did not. That evening I walked through Alleppey town and found a hotel that had a nice restaurant and served cold beer. Ahh, yes! I had a nice bottle of Kingfisher Lager with a dinner of local fish, prepared Kerala style fried spices not unlike New Orleans “blackened” dishes. When I got out of the hotel, a rickshaw driver asked me if I wanted a ride. No, I just had to walk through town back to my hotel. He wanted to talk to me, ask where I was from, etc. And then he asked why couldn’t we get his buddy and all have a beer together? Well… this is the type of thing I love to do -- take foolish chances for the sake of making a friend. So I said, “Yes! Let’s do it!” He ran a short ways down the street and came back in another auto rickshaw which was driven by his friend. The man’s name was Matthew and his buddy’s name was Babu. We went to the government liquor store and bought three bottles of cold beer and then went on our little joy ride. By now it was quite dark. Matthiew went into a small shop and bought three cigarettes for us. We parked by a canal and drank our beer and smoked our cigarettes while Matthew explained to me that in Kerala all religions were friends. He was Christian, Babu was Hindu, and they were best buddies. Babu didn’t speak much English but nodded enthusiastically. Then he started up the auto rickshaw and took me around for a night tour of Alleppey churches. Tipsy though we were, we stopped at some Christian shrines that had candles burning, and Matthiew and I said little prayers while Babu stood respectfully behind us. They dropped me off at the guest house and asked if they might see me again. I said maybe I would go back to that restaurant the next night, but it didn’t work out and I didn’t see them again. It was probably not the most responsible thing to do, going drinking and driving with two strangers in India, but it was fun, and I’m glad I was irresponsible.

The owner of the guest house (the old guy’s son) was home when I got in, and he invited me in for a chat. He had actually grown up in Kuwait -- and had awful memories of it! This guy was an “Anglo-Indian” -- which I think means that he is racially Indian but speaks English as his first language and lives a very western lifestyle. He had lived in a bigger city in India, Bombay maybe, and clearly had once been a part of the “cool” avant-guard intelligentsia there. His walls were covered with his own modern art oil paintings and posters of dance raves that he DJ’ed, probably in the 80‘s. But there seemed to be something a little tired and disappointed about him. He probably opened the guesthouse thinking that he would make friends with a lot of traveling westerners but found that when it really came down to it he was just running a cheap hotel for tourists and it wasn’t that much fun. I would have liked to have engaged him in some clever conversation just to give him a little encouragement, but unfortunately I will a little buzzed from the beer and all I had to talk about was how cool India was, a boring topic for him. I went off to my cement cell and set my alarm for five-thirty, since I had a six o’clock pick-up scheduled for a backwater tour.

It turned out that six-o’clock, early as it felt to me, was not early enough for the backwater canoe guide, Shaji, to give me the tour he wanted to give me. He had in mind to get me out on the lake to watch the sunrise, but we were still quietly moving along the canal when the sun rose. It was beautiful nonetheless. I’m so glad I opted for the private canoe backwater tour. Shajee was wonderful. He spoke just enough English, sang songs in Malayalam, and rowed our canoe so quietly through the canals and rivers that we could hear all the bird songs and all the sounds of the villages like mothers talking to their babies and people coming out to brush their teeth and bathe in the river. The water was clean and had no foul smell whatsoever; later in the day Shaji used my Sony digital camera to take a movie of me swimming around in the middle of one of the lakes. We visited a church and school that was accessible only by boat and footpath. Children saw us coming and called out, “one pen? one pen?” If you ever go to Kerala, take a box of pens as gifts for children. Unfortunately I didn’t have any. We went to a small stone hut that served as a restaurant and ordered a breakfast of porotta bread with a small bit of potato and broth. The bread was a kind of soft, thick crepe that tore into tender shreds. It was really yummy. The soup was spicy, and I made the mistake of eating a hot chili pepper. When I figured out that it was a hot pepper, I made the mistake of thinking that I should just gobble and swallow quickly without letting my taste buds know too much. Don’t ever do that! It would have been much better to spit it out. Suddenly I felt what seemed to be a hiccup coming, but more than a hiccup, it was an tremendous involuntary shriek! I shrieked about 5 times and all the people looked curiously to see what was wrong with me. They eat those hot chili peppers like candy. Shaji pushed more porottas toward me and said, “Just eat bread! No soup!” It was funny.

The whole day was an amazing massage for the soul. Hours were spent doing nothing but slowly traversing the calm backwaters. You hear no traffic noise because no cars go to those places, and there’s very little motorized watercraft. I pray that tourism will not get out of hand there, because one can easily imagine speedboats and jet skis ruining the serene atmosphere. For now, it’s like a hidden treasure in the modern world. I thought in the morning that I might get bored, but I did not. The gentle scenes of rice paddies, villages, banana groves and birdlife were just enough to keep me comfortably engaged, and if I felt a little sleepy, I just leaned back and dozed to the sound of Shaji’s soft paddling. We stopped and had a wonderful dinner of fresh caught prawns served on banana leaves, then stopped again later at a little riverside shop for a snack of fresh coconut which they chop open right in front of you. There were a lot of big, beautiful, elaborate houseboats going back and forth carrying groups of foreigners enjoying their own very different experiences of the backwaters. A couple times Shaji let me try my hand with the paddle, but it was work for me and I didn’t have the knack. He has been rowing the backwaters for 15 years, and he does it effortlessly. Over the course of the afternoon we talk about religion, politics and our families. He called himself a “Mussulman” which is a very old-fashioned word for Muslim. Of course he wanted to know how it could be that I was not married. I just told him that I had had a complicated life, not an easy one. When we didn’t understand each other, we just smiled and let it go. Shaji told jokes and I laughed even though I had no idea what he’d said. I just laughed because he had told a joke and I wanted to laugh. It was night when we got back to Alleppey. I had only intended to go for half a day, but had changed to a full day’s trip. I didn’t have quite enough money, and Shaji was going to just accept what I had and say goodbye, but I insisted that he follow me back to the guest house so I could give him the remainder. He waited with the auto-rickshaw while I ran to get the money, and when I got back he was on his cell phone making arrangements for future customers. He stopped talking to shake my hand and say with great earnest that he was going to pray for my happiness, and pray that I would get married. I told him that I would pray for him as well.

2008-02-09T08:30:00.001-08:00

A Desert Outing

2008-02-09T08:05:00.000-08:00

[copied from memo book to blog]
Saturday, Feb. 9 9:30 AM

I am waiting for the word to board a bus for the one-day “Desert Camp” sponsored by the AWARE Center Islamic Institute. There are about 40 or 50 English-speaking expats here, but none of my friends wanted to go, so I don’t know anyone. As I listen to them with their loud western hooting and laughing I feel kind of glad that I don’t know any of them. In the midst of all us foreigners with our sweatshirts and jeans is one Arabic woman in the most severe mode of full black cover, so that her eye slit is practically closed. How can she see? I think it would be funny to see her bump into a wall or something, but that is mean. One of my students explained to me that the real reason for a woman to wear the burka would be that she were so, very, very beautiful that her appearance would otherwise create havoc. From the shortness and squatness of this black shape, I would say that this woman has employed more than black cover to conceal her ravishing beauty; some Houdini trickery has been added to confuse onlookers and deflect their lust.

For the past few days it has felt like spring in Kuwait. Winter here was colder than I expected, once dipping into the 30’s, but generally undramatic. I was told to expect horrendous dust storms and maybe even a flash flood. We had a couple short sprinkles. Now it’s getting warm again, and winter seems to be over. I have been in Kuwait for about six months. I don’t like to say it, but …. well, Kuwait isn't so bad. I guess it’s the comfort of familiarity kicking in. Kuwait is doable. It’s not Shangri-La, but it’s doable.

Now we’re on our way. I’m on bus 1, sitting behind the driver. I hear all the English conversations going on behind me. The highways in Kuwait show it at its best. Landscaped strips of land divide the highway and also border it on both sides. Palm trees and shrubs, eucalyptus trees, even expanses of ground cover manage to stay green with the help of sprinkler systems and the cooler winter weather. I have no idea where in Kuwait we’re gong for this desert fun. We have a pretty young African girl as our guide. The AWARE Center is funded by Kuwaitis but staffed by foreign Muslims. The director is an American lady, and the woman in charge of public relations is Dutch or Belgian. Both wear hijabs (head scarves worn by Muslim women, which, once accepted, cannot be taken off in public). There are a number of foreign women who have married Kuwaitis and taken the hijab. I usually feel sorry for them. You hear about how they get stuck here. Children of mixed marriages are always kept in the custody of their fathers, so women stay and keep in line so as not to lose their children. Of course there are foreign wives who do not wear hijab, and many I’m sure who are very happy with their lives here. There are always many sides to any story, but it’s easy to imagine a life of resignation and compromise when one meets these women. The most startling case I encountered was at Kuwait University, where I went to see a presentation of skits by the Japanese language classes. There was a Japanese woman there wearing a hijab. It was almost painful to see. I don’t know what one could compare it to. Japan is not a multicultural society, and it had to be a huge transformation for any Japanese woman to end up married to an Arab and wearing hijab. I suppose I buy into the myth that Japanese people have in their hearts and souls something which is forever Japanese and quietly treasured. How did this woman bear to depart so irreversably from her culture? Yet when I saw her in hijab, I didn’t think of her as a deserter, but rather as a lonely pioneer who left her home forever to live in this alien universe. 気の毒(ki no doku) means “heartbreaking,” and that’s what I felt about it, though I’m sure she would be highly insulted to hear anyone comment like that.

We are on the highway headed to a place called Nawaalseib. I haven’t heard of it before. There are oil refineries in the distance. We just passed a town of tents. Kuwaitis set up large tents in the winter months and go there for outings. It’s like the permanent campgrounds in the States where trailers are parked next to each other long term--not really camping, but just a place for weekend getaways and change of scenery. Not that there’s much scenery here. It’s just flat fields of dry dirt, from what I can see. Now we have pulled over because the other bus has a flat tire and we have 11 empty seats. Now we’re waiting for the driver, and I’m looking at the litter on the roadside. Kuwait has a terrible litter problem. In fact, in many cases you couldn’t really call it litter, you have to call it piles of trash. Litter means “here and there.“ There are places in Hawally (where I live) where poor immigrant neighborhoods, probably Indian and Pakistani, where people have created unofficial dumps. It’s pretty disgusting. Next Thursday, the Middle School is doing a “Litter Pick-Up” as part of a field trip, but we’re going to the cleanest part of Kuwait. If we cleaned up around the school it would make more sense to me, but parents would probably not approve. Okay, here we go. I think we are headed towards Wafra. I’ve seen it on the map. It’s near the Saudi border.

An American Black lady is having a conversation with our guide, who it turns out is from Chad. It’s fun to listen to them, one with an African accent and the other speaking American “Ebonics.” The seem delighted to talk with each other, like cousins separated by history, culture, and geography.
“Yer heead scarf is so pritty, I wanna get me one a them and learn howda wrap it around my heead.”
“Oh, I wel hopily show you how to do et.”

We’ve pulled off the road and are now entering an unpaved desert lane that heads off into the north. Lots of young Kuwaiti teenagers on quad bikes. It’s a tent city in the white, flat, barren desert. It reminds me of Black Rock City (Burning Man Festival) -- same landscape minus the hippies and artists.

Now I’m at the desert camp. It’s a kind of temporary museum of Arab culture. I’m just hanging out here in a big carpeted tent set up with cushions to sit on. I watched some Kuwaiti guys play drums and do a sword dance. There a little screen and projector set up to show a move about the Arabian Desert and Bedouin life. They're going to serve us a big fancy lunch later. People are dressing up in Arabic costumes. A red-haired lady puts on one of the total head-covers with tiny eye slits, and her friends take her picture. “Smile!” they say, and everyone cracks up because of course you can’t see her smile. Sure, it’s all a little hokey, but people are doing a good job of making things fun for themselves.

1:30 PM

I walked a distance (not sure how far, maybe a quarter mile or so) from the tent area. It’s cool and windy. It feels good to be in a wide open space. I found a rocky ledge to sit on, and that’s where I’m writing this. Quad bikes are buzzing around in the distance. There is actually sparse desert life in evidence out here. Bits of small, spiky grass grow from the ground, which is crusty, not loose sand. I saw a quick-traveling long-legged beetle. I also spotted a hole, probably belonging to a reptile or maybe a desert rat of some kind. The whish of wind sounds nice. The sun is shining, but it is not harsh. There’s another beetle. A flying ant. Here is a list of some of the litter: a squashed water bottle, made opaque by sun and sand; a small KDD chocolate milk carton (our field trip group will be touring the KDD dairy after our litter clean-up); scraps of rotted wood; a yogurt bottle; pieces of plywood; tiles; a broken plastic tray with poppies and daisies printed on it; rotted hunks of carpet. Two beetles are hanging out on the carpet. A sock. A yellowed, plastic key-chain decoration with chips of abalone shell embedded in the plastic. I think I’ll keep this as my souvenir. I like this place. More rat or snake holes. Some kind of footprints, could be rabbit or fox. Things probably live here where they can scavenge from human garbage. Now pages of a newspaper are parading noisily in tumbleweed fashion across the flat expanse. A bottle here: Vitamin C-enriched Rani Natural Banana drink.

It is nice to be somewhere where I can hear my gravely footsteps on the ground. I am walking back to the tent now. I can see the flags. Strangely, a Japanese flag and a Kuwaiti flag fly side by side. If I made that up it would be too contrived, but it’s true, and I will take a picture to prove it.

3:35 PM

The shadows are getting long, and if the wind gets any cooler I’ll have to get my jacket from the bus. The lunch would have been fantastic, but the first people in line heaped their plates, and the latecomers had to settle for the picked-over bits. It was big platters of meat served on beds of rice, but in our case it was bones on beds of rice. I had some stuffed grape leaves, something I usually don’t like very much, but these were very good, the best I’ve ever had. And there were some tiny but delicious baklava-type pastry deserts. A chubby Lebanese guy who teaches Arabic at the AWARE Center came and struck up a conversation with me. He thought maybe I was from Italy because of my name. Actually, when my name is pronounced by Arabic speakers, it sounds like “Beiruti,” which is an Arabic name which means “from Beirut.” Since I’m told that I also look Arabic, I suppose I could blend in if I really wanted to, as long as I didn’t have to talk.

6:56 PM
I’m home. It was a nice day. What did I do? I went for a walk in the desert and looked at the litter. But it was a nice day. You have to make things fun for yourself.

marhaban, 2008

2008-01-02T00:54:00.000-08:00

"Marhaban" is the Arabic word for "welcome." I greeted the first sunrise from the summit of Mount Sinai. More about that later.

I am still in Dahab. I know a lot of people would question my decision to spend my full two weeks, a luxury of time for Egypt travelers, in little Dahab without venturing to see the famous sights of the Nile. My friends from Kuwait did find me. I was walking down the street and I heard someone call my name. I was saving Sinai and St. Catherine's monastery with the idea that I would do that with them when they got to town, but they had just come from there. Instead we spent a day snorkeling and lounging at another diving spot called Three Pools somewhere up the coast. It was very nice to visit with them. They just spent two nights here, and then boarded a bus for a 17 hour ride that was going all the way up the west coast of Sinai and down the Nile to Luxor. I decided not to join them. There were still a few things I wanted to do here, and I figured I might be able to fly directly to Luxor on some future break and have more time there. To make up for missing Luxor, I booked a day trip to Petra. Petra is a famous "lost city" in the interior of Jordan that was discovered by a Swiss explorer in the 1800's. It was featured in the movie "Indiana Jones," and was given some recognition as one of the Wonders of the World last year. Getting there involved obtaining a visa for Jordan and taking a ferry across the little finger of the Red Sea that goes along eastern Sinai. It would be easy to drive to Jordan, but it would require crossing over a short strip of southern Israel, not an easy option. Petra was marvelous. We had a very nice guide, an older Jordanian man named Abdul, who dealt with the demanding, complaining tourists in our group with remarkable patience and grace. We had lunch included in our tour, which turned out to be a feast buffet in one of the nicest hotels around Petra - it was excellent. Since I don't like simplified and sugar-coated accounts when I read other people's writing, I suppose it is incumbent upon me to be be honest about the reality of my experience in Petra. There are times when solitary travel is wonderfully liberating, adventurous and inspiring. There are also times when it is depressing. I found myself in an unfortunate mood while I walked around the ruins of Petra. It was a fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime experience to see and explore the temples carved directly into the granite cliffs... but perhaps it was bad timing for me. I will always remember it as a place where I felt a world of loneliness. In a way, perhaps it is a fitting way to to experience the reality of a once vibrant city turned into a desolate skeleton of stone. Speaking of stone, two children pursued me to buy their souvenirs - the little boy had packets of post cards and his sister had pieces of color-veined rock. I gave in to the their demands, and shortly after, our guide admonished the group not to buy any rocks from children because it encourages them to break up the ruins of Petra. I should have known.

New Years Eve was a memorable experience. Usually the trips to St. Catherine's leave at 11 p.m. so that the tourists can travel in a van and then do the long climb to Mt. Sinai in time to see the the sunrise from the summit. After that they descend and tour the monastery. Well, I heard at about 6:00 p.m. on Monday night that there was an early tour leaving for a "New Year's Eve party at St. Catherines." A party at the monastery? Huh? Did I hear that right? Well, I wasn't really interested in going to the bars and discos in Dahab, so I decided to go along for this peculiar scenario. It was a night I will not soon forget.

The van was full, and the driver knew no English at all. We told him how to say "Happy New Year" but he said it like "hebi noons yeeer" and that is what he said for the rest of the trip no matter what the question was. Can you turn down the music? "Hebi noons yeeer." Aren't you driving in the wrong lane? "Hebi noons yeeer." Still, we had fun on the way. I tried to cajole the other passengers into levity by clapping and pretending to sing along with the Egyptian music he blasted. We got to Sinai at about 9:00 or so and started to climb. There were a LOT of Japanese people there, and I met two ladies that I kept company with until they got tuckered out and accepted an offer to rent a camel ride as far as the path remained passable on camel back. The sky was a starry sky like I've seen only once or twice in my life. Incredibly gorgeous. But the wind started to get harsh, and of course the temperature dropped as we gained altitude. We had hoped to be at the summit for midnight (maybe count-down at the summit would have been something like a party), but we settled for a stop at a tea shop that was suddenly there on the climbing path, completely inaccessible and I can't imagine how they keep the place stocked, but the guys running it apparently live there all the time. (That was very bad sentence structure coming from an English teacher - do I care? Not enough to fix it.) Anyhow, nobody wanted to go in and buy tea because we're all so used to being ripped off and figured they would want 100 Egyptian pounds for a cup of tea. But we relented, and it was good because the tea was hot, and the price was acceptable, and we all got to hang-out in there with the old Egyptians dudes and welcome the New Year together. "Aum sayeed aleekum" is the way the say Happy New Year in Arabic, from what I gather. But what it meant was that we had made the early departure for nothing, and we would be getting to the summit at about 1:00 a.m. and have to wait all night for the sunrise. Considering the wind and cold, I wasn't sure how that was going to work out. As it turned out, there was ANOTHER unimaginable tea shop just below the summit. The cold wind was just howling while we huddled in there, and I couldn't really believe it when the guy kicked us out because we were staying too long! I'm sure it had something to do with the fact that he was renting blankets. I rented a large size blanket, draped it around me, and climbed the remained few hundred feet to the summit of Mt. Sinai. There are two ancient buildings up there - a small church and a mosque. Of course, both were locked up. Everybody in our group sort of stood around looking at each other as if to say, "What do we do now?" I decided it was going to be long, cold night, and the best thing to do was just make the best of it. I found a small stairway that led to a little cellar space beside the mosque, and decided I would camp down there. It was full of cigarette butts, but I decided I would rather deal with that than the freezing wind. So down I went, and only came up briefly after I started worrying that the Japanese ladies might die of hypothermia if they didn't get situated somewhere. The younger one who had haggled for the camel told me that they had figured out where they were camping and would be fine. So down I went to my little dungeon and cacooned myself in the blanket on the bed of cigarette butts to wait out the night. I think I probably got about 10 minutes of sleep total. At one point I saw a mysterious figure shining a flashlight in my eyes. I thought maybe it was one of the guys from the teashop. I sat up and looked. This was the surreal moment of the whole experience. It was an old, white-bearded monk in full black robe. He spoke to me in Greek, and I apologized in Arabic. I don't know what he said but from his gesturing I think he was worried about how cold I was. Then he just waved me back to sleep and left. How did that old guy get up there? I mean it was a HARD climb for all of us! But I just pulled the blanket around me as tightly as I could and lay back down. As the darkness gave way to gray dusk, I heard more and more voices cutting through the howling wind. One man just above my little cave talked and sang in Spanish with a booming voice. He sang some patriotic songs for Colombia and started reciting the rosary. He would say the first part of the Hail Mary and wait for someone to respond with the second part. Nobody was responding, so I started saying it in English. He probably got a kick out of hearing it coming back from the pit below him, but when I finally crawled out, I kept the blanket wrapped around me and didn't make eye contact with him. The wind remained trecherous through the morning, and it was full of dust and grit. People were singing, praying, and shouting in a variety of languages. The Colombian group the was liveliest, and they kept doing a kind of Christian cheer that went "ALPHA Y OMEGA! ALPHA Y OMEGA! ALPHA Y OMEGA! SOLO - JESUS!!" Then they would hoot and holler at the end. It was kind of catchy and cute, but reminded me of a high school pep assembly. At some point the sun started to come up, and indeed it was a gorgeous red sunrise. The mountains around Mt. Sinai were grand and dramatic. It was worth all the misery, even including the climb down. Someone I ended up on the "Penance Path" coming down, so I got to think about my sins as I tried to ignore the knee pain. St. Catherine's was awash with tourists. In defiance of the museum atmosphere I lit a candle in the chapel and sat to pray for a while, trying not to fall too much asleep. I was the last person back to the van. Everybody got into an argument with the driver for refusing to take a person to another place along way, since he had a receipt showing that he had prepaid an extra amount for the drop-off. Our driver looked at the paper and just said "Habi noons yeeer."

It is now my last night in Dahab, and I am pretty much packed and ready to go. I am trying to smuggle some booze into Kuwait with me. I bought a plastic canteen and filled it with brandy. If the Kuwaiti customs officers find it, they'll just confiscate it.

I'm really glad I decided to stay in Dahab for the full two weeks. I didn't get to see the pyramids or the sphinx, but I got to make some friends here. I say friends... I don't know. One guy I talked to thinks that all Israelis make problems because it says in the Quran that they always have and always will until Allah's wrath strikes them. He also says that he wants to open a restaurant next year, and he also wants to find a wife, but she will not help in the restaurant, because that is not the Muslim way. Arab women must just sit in the house, he says. I don't push him very hard. I let him talk. He made me a fine dinner tonight, special Egyptian chicken cooked very slowly in an oven with potatoes and onions and tomatos, and it was delicious. He refused to take a tip. The other person I got to know well was a really nice man named (can you guess?) Mohammed, who works every day from 8 am to 1 am at night in an internet cafe. I ended up hanging out and talking to him quite a bit. I talked to him about fundamentalism, hipocrisy, and demonstrative religion, and he actually seemed to understand what I was talking about. I wish I could help this guy, who is trapped in this job working 17 hour days every day with no day off, ten minute breaks for breakfast and dinner, and gets paid about 300 Egyptian pounds a month ($50). This is a guy who studied geology at the university level. That's just wrong. I'm going to give him some money before I say goodbye. It won't put a dent in anything, and maybe I'm an idiot, but when I think that I spent more on my gym membership than this guy makes in a whole year, I just can't shrug it off.

What an eye-opener Egypt has been, on many levels. I leave tomorrow with a head full of mixed feelings. I'll need that shot of brandy when I get home.

Dec. 25, Dahab, Egypt

2007-12-25T03:32:00.000-08:00

Hello. It's a sunny day in Dahab, Egypt, a small backpacker resort on the Red Sea Coast of the Sinai Peninsula. This is where I chose to spend my winter holiday. Dahab is known for affordability (about $6 per night at a backpacker hotel). I'm enjoying the sunshine. The snorkeling is fantastic, and there are a lot of interesting travelers - from all over Europe, Australia and Canada. Strangely, Americans are conspicuously absent, so everyone makes a fuss when I say I'm from America, and they refer to me thereafter as "Jon the American." I've been on two outings since my arrival last Thursday night. One day I went on a desert trek out to hike in some Canyons (very reminiscent of places I visited in Utah with my dad), and visit an oasis where Beduins have a little settlement. Bedouins are the descendents of desert nomads who do not really belong to any nation. They are given their own parcels of land where they are allowed to live in their traditional ways, kind of like American Indian reservations. We had lunch served to us by Beduoins. It was some kind of mildly seasons meatballs, potatoes, cucumber-tomato salad, and rice. It was pretty good. The other outing was to a different Beduoin settlement called "Ras Abu Galum," this one up the coastline beyond road access. You have to take camels to get there. The camel ride was fun. The way up was much better than the way back because a boy fixed my saddle for me so that I could ride comfortably. On the way back they were in a hurry so I just had to jump on a camel and go. Very bumpy, very rough. I actually got down and walked for the last half mile. Both of these trips were in the company of a French lady I met who lives and teaches in Alexandria. She didn't speak much English, and I speak no French, but we were both traveling alone and so we sort of looked out for each other. The snorkeling at Ras Abu Galum was really great. I saw fish of every color of the rainbow, and some amazing ones like "lion fish" that have a "mane" of white and black patterned skinny fins that come out of it. I wish I had taken some money to Ras Abu Galum because there were children there selling trinkets, and they just didn't understand that I had no money. They wanted to sell me something in the worst way - even the smallest price for the littlest little bead bangle... and finally one exasperated little boy just gave me a bracelette and said "Present - no money - no money." I felt funny accepting a present from this little kid with no shoes, living in a shack. The French lady went back to Alexandria the day before yesterday. I'm meeting other people every day. I met a girl from Saitama-ken (Japan) and talked to her for a while in Japanese. Also met a fellow named Robbin from Edmunton Canada, Swiss carpenter named Manwell, and a Dutch journalist lady named Jovanna. Everyone, of course, is just passing through, but it's kind of fun.

I have had number of conversations with Egyptians here. Many of them speak good English. English is required in their schools. Usually if you talk for more than 10 minutes, they will bring up the topic of Islam and ask me if I have read the Quran. You also see a lot of men with black and blue bumps on their foreheads from hitting their heads on the ground when they pray. They all assume that nobody from the west takes any religion seriously. Of course all they see here is tourists interested in having fun. I can't get them to even consider that there is more than one way to look at spiritual truth. I have no interest in getting into debates about which holy book is the truth. How tiresome. These conversations do tend to take the wind out of my sails with regards to learning Arabic. But I made a connection with a guy here in Dahab whose father was Egyptian and mother was English. He's fluent in both languages and gives lessons at a very reasonable rate, so I'm meeting with him for some practice. I find the language interesting, still.

I'm not sure how I'm going to spend the rest of my Christmas day. There is a place here advertising Christmas Turkey Dinner As Good As Mother Make. I might go for pizza instead. I'm hoping that my friends from Kuwait will come through in the next day or two. They're heading from here to Luxor where there are many ancient tombs and monuments, and I'll probably join them for a few days. Meanwhile, I'm managing to pass the time away on leisurely breakfasts, afternoon walks and catching up on some reading. There are a bunch of very tame, gentle cats living in the hotel where I'm staying. There's a space under the door to my room, and they just squirm through there, come right in and make themselves at home on my bed. They're good company. I might venture into one of the bars for drink or a game of pool. I'm not very good at shooting pool, but people are so laid back here I don't think it matters much.

I'm not always in the mood to be a reporter, so the blog entries, as you see, are less frequent. But I am getting along okay. It will soon be 2008 and I will already be through the first quarter of my contract period in Kuwait. That's a good thing! : )