My First Khaleeji Wedding

Tonight I crashed a local wedding with my friend Hissa. “How is that different from a western wedding” you ask? Well, for one thing the prevailing opinion is that adequate decorations require a team of set constructors; in this case, they were going for a lavish high school production of Mid-Summer Night’s Dream look (you know, all whimsical trees and flowery bowers). The other main difference is that they’re segregated by gender. I’d like to imagine that the men have epic limbo contests or something but I really don’t know what they do. However, I do now know what the women do… they jiggle around in preposterously awesome dresses.

Seriously, these things are a wonder. I’ve never seen anything like them in the west. It’s as if every dress must have 5 dresses’ worth of stuff on it. Lace? Check. Satin? Check? Rhinestones? Check. Emroidery? Appliques? Sequins? Check, check, and extra-check (the more sequins the better). Velvet? Mesh? Pearls? Attached 3-quarter lengths sleaves? At least 3 conflicting neon colors and an asymmetrical neckline? Check! More than anything else, they resemble figure skating costumes made into full length ballgowns.
These are some extremely restrained examples:





Adding to the peculiarity of it is that, whilst all the women are dressed like this, not all of them will show it. Some are sashaying their magenta be-ribboned asses around, cleavage everywhere and eyes so heavily made-up that they sink to slits. Others wear the abeya (floor length black gown) but with their perfect coifs uncovered. Others keep the head scarf and the abeya on. Others, usually only a few older women, wear the headpiece that extends over the nose and covers the mouth with a triange of metal (the shape of these always reminds me of a beak and so when I see their wrinkled faces with pointed metal beaks I see some sort of half-hag / half-hawk creature of Greek mythology). Anyway, all this is in the same room, so as you look around, you see a lot of black, a few bird monsters, and pockets of intense color and cleavage.

I wish I could share pictures, but of course cameras are forbidden because no man can see them dressed that way unless he’s the hubby. Sorry! Girls only!

Disproportionate is hardly the word

This is a picture taken Monday of Israeli girls signing shells to be fired into Lebanon.
What kind of world is this? These girls should be scribbling cutsy flirtations in ballpoint pen on the soles of boys' converse all-stars. Instead, they're drafting messages of hate on notepaper that does this:

and this:

These are innocent civilians, and they're being killed by the hundreds. The Israeli girls' "notes" are supplemented by internationally prohibited chemical weapons (a fact that seems curiously absent from the american news coverage).

More pictures, petitions, donations links etc. on www.fromisraeltolebanon.info

Speechless

What does one say to someone whose hometown is under attack? I don’t know, and feel a lesser girlfriend for it.

I’m scared by the recent activity in Lebanon and Israel and don't know what to do about it. Life here in Dubai is just the same as normal, spinning by at a pace I can’t afford to step away from. But an airport runway I’ve actually landed on now lays in smoking ruins and a suburb I’ve driven through is about to be flattened by Israeli tanks. It’s surreal and terrifying, and that's just the reaction of a girl who's visited once.

I can scarcely imagine how people in Beirut are reacting. When I was there, I was struck by the prominence of the scars left on the public psyche by the civil wars. Years of relative peace have ticked by, but still “in the war” “during the war” “because of the war” is in every sentence and on every brick in the city. It didn’t seem to me to be a negative preoccupation, just an acknowledgment of the centrality of the war in their city identity. I even felt something positive in it, in that there seemed to be a palpable sense of relief, still, in the termination of that danger and chaos. My heart goes out to them now – it must feel like relapsing into a nightmare.

What Lebanonsense!

Beirut recently dislodged Sevilla as my favourite city I’ve never lived in.

Gorgeous, gregarious, bursting at the seams with charm.

Crimson cabs.

Bullet-bruised buildings.

Beiruti balcony bliss.

Downhill stripping

You can take the girls out of boarding school, but apparently you can't take boarding school out of the girls!



Congrats to the half-naked bride-to-be taking the picture!!

a baby step towards hell

I bought expensive sunglasses. Very expensive sunglasses. With a name on the side.

WHAT HAS BECOME OF ME?!!

Raining gerbils and hamsters

SO… I moved to Dubai.

I moved on a whim, thinly disguised as a job. I came for some sun, I came to see the shiny buildings, I came because I’ve never been to the Middle East aside from a midnight layover in the Abu Dhabi airport, which rather resembles a spaceship dressed as a Las Vegas peacock.

Dubai is an odd place. Modern, bustling, incredibly exciting, and yet somehow hollow. No heart, no soul. I guess this is the Tin Man of cities. More on that in another post… For now: let’s talk about the weather. 75’ and sunny everyday, not a cloud in sight. Apparently it rains here 3 days a year. This is likely to drive me insane eventually (I live for thunderstorms), but it’s OK as a novelty for the moment.

We had one of our three days of rain earlier this week. It sprinkled for a few hours and, amidst panicked cries of “it’s raining cats and dogs!,” I watched from my glass office tower as the city streets transformed into accident-clogged canals. There are no sewage or gutter systems here! Traffic fatalities (already the highest per capita in the world) quadrupled that day and the camels looked confused.

People keep asking me if I’m going to stay. I’m not sure yet. I’ve met some brilliant people, including my long-lost twin brother, but it lacks the quirky, historic, and cosy elements of a city which I usually gravitate towards.

I certainly COULD live here. It’s full of interesting things to look at…


… but I COULD get along pretty much anywhere, and that includes most cardboard boxes.


(though not a box with one of these in it.)

The question is not COULD I make it work here, but should I? Or should I shove off in favour of a city with a wardrobe broader than business suits and evening glitter?

Answers would be most appreciated.

Thank God for Grannies

Mine bakes sublimely delicious cherry pies. Because I’m her “sweetie pie!”

R. Kelly Touches Us All

When I heard the rumblings last year about a new R. Kelly album, my whoop-di-doo-o-meter registered a negative 3. I’ve never been a big fan of the “hoodlum with a heart of gold” school of R&B… and then there was that sex scandal. He handled that so badly. Really, R., everyone knows that you have to cut off their tongues and hands so they can’t identify you later.

So it was with much protestation that I let my friend Patty O’Mallory play me a selection from this new album. He introduced ‘Trapped in the Closet’ to me as a complex and delicately rendered tale of domestic strife, each track an elegant “chapter” of a visionary masterwork. He pressed play. My distaste quickly gave way to prune-faced disgust – “there’s no tune! and the lyrics are stream-of-consciousness!” – which evolved into confusion – “wait, this second track has the same aimless instrumentation” – then wonderment – “did he just say the neighbor burst in brandishing a spatula?” – incredulity – “did he just say ‘I said what, you said damn, I said I know?’ and why is there still no tune?” – awe – “there’s a midget in the closet! and still no tune!” – and finally fanatical flabbergastification. “This is it,” I declared, “the Ulysses of our generation!”

Now, R. Kelly knows his shiznit is radicizzally insurrectionizzlist, but he’s mistaken as to the nature of his innovation. He claims he is a genius for pioneering what he daringly labels “hip-hopera.” Most fans of the genre would credit that honor instead to Prince Paul’s ‘A Prince Among Thieves’ (an outstanding album with, among other virtues, a tune… several in fact), released in 1999. However, as I just learned this evening, most fans would be wrong because the Animaniacs beat both Prince Paul and R. Kelly to the punch with their 1997 album, 'Animaniacs Starring In A Hip-Hopera Christmas.’ Yakko, Wakko, and Dot in da house.

No, R. Kelly’s genius is in the way he shatters our narrow modern notions of lyricism. He eschews the hackneyed verse/chorus structure. He heroically dismantles our feeble dependence on meter and melody. He altogether transcends the primitive habit of rhyming (though, oddly, I read an interview in which he congratulated himself on his ability to deliver the complex narrative in rhymed prose, which is a surprising claim given his failure even to capitalize on the opportunities presented by a character named Bridget having an affair with a MIDGET). But even amongst these bold innovations, his greatest accomplishment is the subtle blend of microscopic detail with gritty dialogue:
- He says “move.” / She says, “no.” / He says “move.” / She says, “no.” / “BITCH MOVE!” / She moves.
- whoo while Twon & Sylvester sniffin’ around / tryin’ a figure out what’s that smell / as they turn and look at each other like whaaat the hell?
- *Cough cough* *cough cough* / Twon starts coughin'. / *cough cough*
- Then she cries out
“Oh my goodness, / I'm about to climax.” /
And I said, “Cool.”
- Then the midget takes his inhaler out / and says, “This is not good for my heart.”
- whoooo the midget faints again / while Twon and Sylvester is trippin’ / “The midget is the baby's.....daddy” / whoo!
- The midget say “God I think I just shit'ted on myself”

Best of all, he has figured out how to convey heightened emotion and narrative tension by simply singing louder. It’s a masterpiece. A towering accomplishment in the history of musical endeavor. A virtuosic reflection on the grit, glory, and heartbreak of the human condition.


But would you expect anything less from a man who pees on fourteen-year-old girls?

Plumps When You Cook It

“What’s my favorite meal? Why, hot dogs and champagne, darling.” (Marlene Dietrich)