Learning Arabic

In preparation for Eric’s assignment to the Middle East, Eric’s sole job day-to-day is to learn Arabic.  All day, every day.  Me, on the other hand?  The only Arabic I’d ever learned was from our tour guide in Cairo when I was 14.   “Ma feesh for looz” has ever since been etched in my brain.  It’s and adorable little phrase meaning, “I have no money” and is kindly designed to fend off beggars.  Despite the obvious usefulness of this phrase, I decided to hire a tutor and, at least, try to keep up with my linguistically-gifted and time-enabled husband. 

Not only would I be learning Arabic after work, but I planned on overcoming my very recently acquired fear of speaking foreign languages aloud.  Although I was fluent in French, conversant in Spanish, and adept at ordering antipasto at almost ANY Italian restaurant, I was shy to use any of these languages after “the incident” of 2000.  Two days into the New Millennium, I thanked the Dunkin’ Donuts men in what I thought to be their Mother tongue by graciously accepting my doughnut with a warm “gracias!”  It rolled right off my tongue in a perfect Castillian accent.  Too bad they were clearly Pakistani.  We all had a moment of silent confusion as each pair of eyes met the others in pure dumbfoundedness, until Eric and I left and exploded into hysterical laughter in the car.  It was the last time I decided to “go native” on strangers.

Long Beach Island, New Jersey

Eric showed me a fantastic website (http://looklex.com/babel/arabic/003.htm) that teaches Arabic on-line.  It has the alphabet, sounds, grammar and is organized into chapters like a textbook.

            Chapter 12, titled “Swedish Women”, caught my attention amidst Chapters 1, 2 and 3, “Greetings,” “Counting,” and “Food.”

            Some key phrases gleaned in this chapter are:

            “Since I was a teenager, I have loved Swedish women.”

            “I have seen many films with beautiful blonde Swedish women.”

            “What I like most is the blonde hair with the dark eyebrows.”  (Our taste in women was very specifically spelled out in Arabic on this site.)

            “The Swedish woman I love most is Britt Ekland.”

            “But I think she is old now.”

            “That is the good about films, blonde Swedish women stay young forever.” 

            I just know that these gems of communication will prove invaluable while “traveling” in Yemen.  By “traveling” I, of course, mean getting kidnapped since that appears to be all the rage there (Yemen’s poor economy is sometimes sustained by kidnapping foreigners and demanding payment).  On the plus side, I might meet a fellow Britt Ekland fan in my captors.  But, there is a negative:  Who would want to pay ransom for a crazy Swedaphile?!

Boca Raton, Florida

Practicing his new vocabulary while working out, Eric approached me on the treadmill and asked in Arabic, “Do you have any special concerns about the arms market in this city?” What?! I’ve been taking Arabic for months now and I know the words for “thank you” and “refrigerator.” Where is it that he plans to take me where, “Do you have any special concerns about the arms market in this city?” will be a useful and necessary phrase? Special concerns?! Special.  About the arms market…

Sterling, VA

Completely befuddled after listening to my stories week after week, Sana’a (my Arabic teacher) interrupted me to ask who was this “Eric” I was speaking about.  Like Eric and me, Sana’a didn’t understand why Abbas (her husband and Eric’s Arabic teacher) called my husband “Malawer.”  I guess a man named Abbas Abbas – a man with two last names… or two first names depending on how you look at it – need not concern himself with such trite details.

I think Eric should go by just Malawer…  In the spirit of “Just Jack,” he could be “Mostly Malawer 2K3.”  It’s got a stand-alone Madonna/Jesus quality to it… a similarity that every good Jewish boy is looking for, isn’t it?!  Or better, he could go by Malawer Malawer… like Little Caesar’s.  “Pizza Pizza!”

Washington, D.C.

So, a very unfortunate thing happened to my passport.  Coming off a very bad passport photo that followed me around for years, I was determined to take a better picture – one where I looked a little less like a sausage.  Having gone to the extra mile to secure a decent photo — which involved taking a variety of digital shots and specifically choosing the least heinous of them for submission — I felt positive that immigration officials throughout the world would Ooo and Ahh over the lack of resemblance between the real-life me and my magazine-worthy picture.  Nevertheless, I arrived at lunch, where Eric awaited giggling with my new passport to discover “the issue”:  dust between the photo and the laminate.  Not only does it appear as if I have chicken in my teeth, but also – and this is the piece-de-resistance – it appears as if I have a big, blue booger in my nose.  Awesome.

—————————————————————————————————————————————–

With an 8-12 window for an arrival time, who knew our movers would ACTUALLY show up at 8 a.m.?!  It seemed impossible… and, yet… Still in bed, I sent Eric downstairs in his pajamas to fend them off for a few minutes.  He returned with a report: downstairs, he greeted two small Indian women and an 80 year old slender man.

“I’m pretty sure our movers will actually die today.”

We were relieved to learn Frail, Frail and Frailer were only the packing team, Eric and I both had visions of one of the slight women crushed under one of our many humongous armoires.

Eric received his 100^th and what was supposed to be his final travel itinerary.  Extreme emphasis on “supposed to be.”

Upon closer review, Eric noticed that his Cyprus to Kuwait leg had an eensy, weensy little layover in Beirut, Lebanon – a place that remains forbidden to most government officials.

He was glad he noticed as he forced to change his schedule yet again.  Eric envisioned the pilot announcing a near landing in Beirut whereupon Eric would be convinced the plane had been hijacked.

He’d either have the entire Washington area mobilized to act on the news or be sucking his thumb under his freshly wet seat.  (My guess:  the latter.)

September 6, 2003

New York, NY

I knew my farewell/Tim’s 25^th birthday (my brother) dinner was going to be fantastic as soon as I walked into the restaurant.  Upon waltzing in early (that’s right, folks:  EARLY!), Il Vagabondo’s 90 year old bartender called me “Bellissima.”

“I like you,” I replied. “You just might be my new best friend!”

So what if he’s blind in at least one eye and talking to his Frangelica?!

Midway through dinner in this upscale and fairly serene restaurant, my eccentric friend Max turns to Jamie to inquire what his “poontang status” is.  Loudly and in a voice that could carry across town, my girlfriend Susie shouts, “Poontang? What is POONTANG?  Max, no one knows what that is!!!!!”

I’m fairly certain all eyes in the room were now trained on our table.  Laughing so hard we were unable to catch our breath let alone stop her, Susie persisted, “What’s poontang?!” And then, attempting to work it out herself at a volume that could wake the dead – in China – she bellows, “POONTANG?! POONTANG??!  POONTANG!  Nobody knows what that is!!!!  Poontang!”

As soon as our table (and several others) came up for air, we explained as subtly as possible what it was.  Then, I recalled when I had first heard the expression.  I was in the 9^th grade riding in the back of Max’s Saab.  Max, being a smart-alecky show-off, asked me if I knew what poontang was in front of his friends.  And, I, being a know-it-all, replied, “Yes, it’s an island off of Vietnam.”

Ready to drive across town, we all approached Max and Lauren’s car parked a block or so up the street.  As Max and Timothy neared the car, they each separately sensed something off.   Again and simultaneously, they each laid a hand on the hood of the car, quickly revealing that Max had left the Cavalier RUNNING for the entire three hours we dined.  He burned more than a quarter tank of gas and left the air conditioner blasting on high.  It was so frigid inside that car – they could’ve kept PRODUCE fresh.  Siberia in January is typically warmer than the inside of this Cavalier.   From then on and throughout the night, we banished social faux-pas makers and other evil-doers to cleverly named,“Cold Car” as it became our penalty box.

Approaching the Gaff (the bar in which we were to meet up with my parents), I noticed the chalkboard placard outside had been written in my mother’s familiar handwriting.  Before having a chance to react, I overheard some guy exclaim, “Hey!  That’s the girl from the photos!”  OH…. NO….

As it turns out, the entire bar, from dartboard to bathroom, was covered in pictures of Timothy and me spanning every phase from cute to awkward to extremely awkward.  I was happy to share my oh-so-80s feathered bangs look with friends and strangers alike.

The party was great.  Tim and I recreated the photo on our cake of us making funny faces when we were about 8 and 6.  Well, I consistently made the stupid faces while Tim bailed out at the last second.  Again and again.  “No, for real this time, let’s do it!”   Tim would say.  One, two, three… Cheese!  He’d smile handsomely and I’d look like an asshole. 

Max strolled around with frosting all over his face, having normal conversations.  Amazingly, and I still can’t figure out the logitics of it but, he had cake in his eyebrows!

Excitingly, Max announced to the fam that he and Lauren are expecting.  A thrilling and slightly frightening revelation coming from the guy who streaked our high school during the Christmas assembly to the lyrics “Do you see what I see?”  Lauren was urging Eric and me to have a baby now so that her child will have friends at his future birthday parties.  Max and I laughed about how our kids could be religiously confused together.  “Mom, why do we pay Santa Claus gelt to light our menorah?”

Amsterdam, Netherlands

There really is something about that “Y” chromosome.  Mom and I spent the last few days packing furiously while Dad had XM satellite radio installed in his car.

For more than a week, my life has been a non-stop-flurry of erranding.  With only one hour to spend at work, I misjudged the turning radius of Marty’s ubertruck and scraped the parked car next to me, instantly unpriming Marty’s primed bumper.

The background on Marty’s car is as follows:  he’s a BAD driver.  He runs into all kinds of stationary objects.  Marty called us up one day just after Alex was born to “happily” report that he had randomly met some strangers in the parking lot of Circuit City who were now at the house banging out dents and repainting his Lexus.  Needless-to-say, only one member of the family thought this was a good idea – and that member was, of course, Marty.  The guys primed the car, took half their pay, and never returned.

My sister-in-law, Ali and her children, Alex, Lily and Peter, came over to help pack.  Lily and Mom became fast friends and soon we heard 2 year old Lily yell from the basement, “Hey!  Come on down here!”  When her mother, Ali, responded, Lily yelled back, “No.  The other!”  She also followed Mom around the house going, “Lynne….” “Lyyyynnnne….” “Excuse me, Lynne?” and my personal favorite, “Lynne….where’s your daddy?” – meaning poor ol’ Keifer!  As we hugged goodbye, Lily gave me a little extra “romp-bomp-a-chomp” and I still have the teeth marks to prove it!

So, here I am in Amsterdam, conjuring up ways to inset as much sin as possible into my lay-over before it all becomes illegal.  Who needs Amsterdam when you’ve got Schipol airport filled with casinos, bars, shops, massage parlors, and a museum.  And, you just know a hash house and a brood of hookers isn’t too far away!

In the meantime, I’m enjoying listening to Dutch.  It’s almost English, but not quite.  I feel like I’m constantly misunderstanding what everyone’s saying.  For lunch:  Chicken McNuggen!

Stepping out into the airport, I felt lost.  Not because of the great abundance of dishdashas, a white robe-style dress for men (it’s like the biggest fasion faux pas on record!  They should really call each other before they all go out.  Do they all shop at the same transvestite store?!).  Nor was it the black abayas for women or the foreigness of the place at all.  It was because I had no idea who or what to look for. 

In fact, it was Michael, a humongously tall, burly Indian who worked for the U.S. Embassy as a driver, who found me first.  I was amazed by his probably innate ability to pick me out of the throng of travellers.  Must be some sort of Mumbai magic.  Or my blonde hair sharply contrasting against a sea of black headscarves, known here as hijabs.   Or that… whatever.

Wisked through customs and passport control, we left the airport and set out into the city.  There wasn’t much to see on the ride home as the highway raced through that empty desert.   And, I went to sleep on my very first night in Kuwait with some disappointment about our locale. 

Even more depressing , I was sleeping uncomfortably in a bed with a valley.  I was awakened panickstricken in the middle of the night by the neighborhood mosque.  I stared out our bedroom window, listening as the calls to prayer from all across the city echoed from minaret to minaret in the darkness.  Jetlagged and unable to return to sleep, I mentally tried to sing along with them despite having little to no karaoke experience in Arabic.

In the daylight of the next morning, Eric and I set out to explore the city.  He knew his way around somewhat as he had arrived a week prior.  And, in true Malawer fashion, Eric knew his way around just enough to get to the most out of the way, hole in the wall, Indian restaurant for the South Asian equivalent of a breakfast sammy:  Keema paratha.  (And by the way, it was outstanding and we have yet to duplicate the deliciousness.  Any good recipes, send them my way!)

What had just seemed like dark, desolate desert the night before erupted into a bevvy of sights, sounds and smells just waiting to be consumed.  I felt such sensory stimulation that my whole body was vibrating with excitement. 

What a little sunshine and meat pockets can do for a place is indescribable!

Kuwait City, Kuwait

If there’s one thing that I can say about Kuwait, it’s that it’s hot.  Really fuckin’ hot.  Hot like you’ve never felt.  It’s currently past 10 o’clock at night and still a cool 99 degrees.  We went to the Radisson to work out a couple of days ago and I’ve never imagined a swimming pool that looked more appealing.

Drivers and pedestrians alike are crazy here.  Not Cairo crazy – that’s “Crays-see!” – but very unruly, nonetheless.  Eric has taken to it, however, like a fish to water.  That said, he still nearly snuffed out a snuffy on route to Nino’s tonight.

——————————————————————————————-

This area of the Gulf is known for all-male social gatherings called Diwaniyahs.  Diwaniyahs are rooms generally located at someone’s house where the men get together to openly discuss politics, the eroticism of seeing an uncovered female arm, etc all while under the influence of tiny cups of scorching hot tea.  Post-dinner, I was envying Eric’s ability to go to such a diwaniyah.  Gender segregation sucks!   Eric responded, “If there was a place like that for the ‘bee-atches’, it’s be called a ‘bee-waniyah’.”  Both politically and culturally insensitive in just one sentence!

September 21, 2003

The dogs arrived!  Or should I say: the dogs arrived.   And, as usual the dogs arrived in a way that only they can.

After waiting for an hour at the baggage claim of Kuwait International Airport, we learned that the dogs would be available in the cargo area.   So, after running into our friend Michelle and an embassy driver we pulled up to the airport’s administration building in a U.S. Embassy show-of-force four car caravan.

While Eric, Michael (an Embassy driver) and Hamsa (an Embassy admin employee) dealt with an unnecessary amount of additional paperwork, I decided to check out the mutts.  Isolated like Hannibal Lecter , Camden and Rumble were barking, still in their crates at the center of the empty, dimly lit cargo hold.  The cargo workers, too afraid to approach them, were just watching them carefully from the frame of the outdoor cargo hold.  I must have looked like a lion tamer as I walked directly toward them to calm them down and deliver some much needed water.

That act done, I had nothing left to do but wait for Eric and his gang to finish the endless pile of paperwork.  For a while I watched from afar as Eric, Michael and Hamsa were sent from one building to another back to the first and back yet again to the second.  The image of the three is permanently imprinted in my brain:  Hamsa (who is so gay, he glows in the dark) sashaying , clipboard swishing determinedly back and forth across his ribs, followed more slowly by Eric who has no tolerance for bureaucracy of any type and shows it in his swagger,  and followed even more slowly by Michael, a very tall, very portly, very sweaty Indian man who was likely wondering how he got sucked into this mess.

In between that fun, I wound up drinking tea with a local official who barely spoke English.  Conversation was fairly dull after I exhausted my random Arabic (Me: “Hello.  I like birds.  The car is black.  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6….”), we watched Sunday Night RAW.  At first it seemed weird, but in the end I think nothing better demonstrates international unity and transcends all language barriers than some good, ol’ fashion, phony ass-kicking.

As the processing of said paperwork was continuing to drag, we moved our party outside and wound up smoking shisha (flavored tobacco which is amusingly called “Hubbly Bubbly in this part of the world) with an Egyptian cargo worker.  Ali, the Egyptian host of this strange late-night gathering, spoke fondly of an American soldier who he had befriended in Kuwait during the war.  “You know,” he said to Eric, “You know the American who work here?”  Oh, yea…..sure.  There are only 200,000 American troops stationed here in addition to the tens of thousands who reside here.  Did you mean Steve?

After five hours, we were finally allowed to take the dogs home.  They look great.  I had visions of our boxer, Rumble riding all the way to Kuwait with his head out of the airplane window.  Thankfully, he doesn’t look too windblown.

Wednesday

Hello, hello!

Eric and I are going crazy.  We have not yet signed up for satellite T.V. and only get about 4 channels of Kuwaiti-state run television.  Which means a LOT of “Law and Order,” a LOT of Bollywood musicals, and a lot of Mecca.  We did get a movie once.  “Cruel Intentions”.  Explicit language was censored.  Every time a male and female touched each other, even on the arm, it was censored.  Graphic violence?  Censored.  And, you can forget about love scenes.  All in all, the movie was wittled down to about 30 minutes of incomprehensible plot.  Plus it was interruped for nearly 10 minutes of prayer.  Unerstandibly then, we prefer to watch Bollywood to Kuwaiti T.V. and have suffered through a couple of musicals thus far.  Thank GOD I brought some DVDs to watch on our laptop.  Too bad for Eric they happen to be more musicals!

I got my temporary Kuwaiti drivers license yesterday and am officially braving the traffic in Kuwait.  The drivers here are incredibly bad and I drive like an old lady comparatively.  But, I’m getting around a three-block radius.  The worst of the drivers are the muhejabas (the women who fully cover their heads and bodies).  I have seen more than one enter  the ever-present roundabouts talking on her cell phone, holding a cup of coffee, bouncing a child on one knee, all without any peripheral vision.   Also, I’m fairly certain things like stop signs, lane and traffic dividing lines and turn signals are all considered optional…or mere guidelines.  Or completely negligible.  But what do I know?!  I’m still learning.  Afterall, I just got my license!

Miss you! xoxox 

Er

“Who doesn’t like pizza?!  That’s un-Indian!”

-Eric’s declaration after learning that the US Embassy’s south Asian driver, Michael’s son suffers through Little Caesar’s pizza for the promotional gifts.

Rumble farted himself awake a moment ago.  Dazed and confused, he curled towards his rear and wafted in the heinous bouquet, proving once again that whoever smelt it, dealt it.

——————————————————————————————————————————————-

WALA: The Koranic radio station.  “All Allah, Allah the time.”  -Eric

It Ain’t Kool in Kuwait

Hello!

As you are probably guessing, Eric and I arrived safely in Kuwait. Due to a minor misunderstanding between the Embassy and the airline, picking up the dogs was a major ordeal. Suffice it to say that after LOADS of extra paperwork, five hours, four glasses of tea with local government officials, loads of patience and one hour of Sunday Night RAW, we were allowed to take the little devils home.

The dogs love having a yard and are spending much of their days eating the dates that fall like dandruff off the trees in our yard.  They’ve never been more regular.

The Weather:

So, you want to know about the heat, do you?  It’s hot and I mean hot.  Thankfully a dry heat. Like livin’ in an oven. It has consistently been 115-120 F during the day and about 99 at night. Amazingly, I’ve been told that it has cooled down immensely since the summer, when the temperature has been known to reach 140. And, as a bonus, it gets humid during those months. Both hot AND humid?! Humid..in the desert.  So very wrong. Definitely writing a letter of complaint to Mother Nature.  One or the other – not both.

I’ve been told that officially, the temperature is never reported above 120. If it does get reported, then the laborers (who are all non-Kuwaitis) get the day off. And, if THAT happened, the country might literally shut down – Kuwaitis wandering around helplessly, unable to pump their own gas, open their own doors, eat, swallow…

The heat has an interesting effect. For starters, you find yourself constantly thirsty and, thus, constantly drinking and, of course, constantly  running  to the bathroom. Also, since all the residential water tanks are located on the roof, you can either take your shower hot or scalding hot. There is NO cold water — which presents a small problem when trying to do laundry….all my shirts are teeny-tiny. You begin to find that air conditioning set under 80 degrees is freezing. You cannot ride in cars with leather interiors or you might melt…. or you might find yourself branded with an auto emblem.

Kuwait receives very little rain per year which is why it amuses me every time I hear the the weather forecast on the radio. “Tomorrow’s weather: Sunny and very, very hot.”

All said and done, for someone like me who’s always chilly (often thought to be lizardly cold-blooded), this type of heat is just fine for now.

More to come. Hope everyone’s doing great!

Erin

Long ago, on a cold January morning in 2002, I enacted the “9 O’Clock Rule.”  Due to ungodly wake-up schedules that either met the demands of Teletubbies or tumors, some unnamed members of the Malawer family would routinely call the household of these Malawers at pre-dawn hours to discuss simple matters such as travel plans, investment strategy and why we might still be in bed at 7 a.m. on a Saturday.

Out of these thoughtful, yet sleep-disturbing phone calls, was born the “9 O’Clock Rule.”  Simply stated, The Rule serves to protect the right to sleep uninterrupted until 9 a.m.

So today, in an impressive feat of telephony, Marty managed to break the 9 o’clock rule across MANY international time zones by calling at 7:30am this morning.  Kudos!

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Eric met the neighbors across the street tonight.  When asked, he couldn’t remember their names, “Something Something al-Something.”

October 2, 2003

Brian and Georgia, our closest friends and coincidentally the former tenants of this house, came down to stay with us for the weekend which really brought the “mi casa es su casa” thing to a whole new level.

October 3, 2003

I genuinely thought I was navigating around Kuwait City very well until I took a wrong turn and found myself stuck in the Men’s Hair Saloon Souq for 45 minutes unable to make a much needed left-hand turn.

Oddly, Kuwait appears to be a country that doesn’t believe in left turns.  It’s a go straight or go home philosophy!

Tomorrow is U.S. National Day (i.e. Fourth of July in October).  Should be fun.  Maybe.  Sadly, the Ambassador decided not to call it Independence Day and instead is calling it “The 511th Anniversary of the Landing of Columbus”.  A stretch of creativity to say the least.  But I get to dress up a little, which is always nice!

———————————————————————-

After-event Report: 

Oh my god was it hot last night.  A breezey 100 degrees – like having a hairdryer blow hot, humid air all night.  In short, a perfect night for an international outdoor entertaining.  While I wore a linen sleeveless dress, my male counterparts were all perspiring so profusely that they had sweat stains creeping through the backs of their blazers and the seats of their pants.  The heat was so brutal that Eric, for one, was so dehydrated after two hours of schmoozing under the oppressive stars that he could do nothing but chug Diet Cokes for a full half hour. 

 On the plus side, the US Embassy didn’t host our event at a hotel, nor did the crowd lift their lighters only to the sound of our national anthem coming out of a tape deck.  We had a band – live music, folks, because we’re just that cool.  The embassy must have hired mostly American restaurants to serve food to the guests.  But, it was to no one’s surprise that McDonalds was the first to run out of goods.  Those french fries are crack.   

————————————————————————————–

The Marine Corps Ball started out, as it usually does, by playing the Kuwaiti national anthem, a very blasé little ditty that the Kuwaitis don’t honor in any special way.  Following that, seemingly so bold set next to the Kuwaiti anthem, the Star Spangled Banner began.  I watched as every American in the room stood, removed his hat, placed a hand over his heart and, despite the entirely lyric-less version of the song, I heard many people singing along softly.

There’s something so special about listening to the U.S. national anthem amongst members of the Armed Forces, especially those who are still supporting Iraq, many having already served there.  I looked around the room with some awe as I realized that these servicemen and women are living the spirit of that song.

By the time we hit “the land of the free and home of the brave”, I was already tearing up.  And, I wasn’t alone. It was a very interesting moment by comparison and I wondered if our Kuwaiti guests felt the power and reverance our anthem generated tonight.

Why is it that smoke detectors always run low on battery power at the most inconvenient times?!  Why can’t they start beeping incessantly …I don’t know, IN THE DAYTIME?!

Ours went off last night just after we fell into a peaceful slumber.  Thus, Eric found himself atop a very high, very wobbly ladder at 2 a.m., steadied only by a suddenly useful copy of the Qu’ran and me.

A few years ago, we had three (count ‘em… THREE) smoke detectors begin chirping simultaneously.  This was in our condo days, when Eric was not yet armed with the knowledge that you simply must remove the battery to silence the detectors.  Instead, after fumbling with each smoke alarm for half an hour at 3 a.m., Eric walked down the stairs, down the street, and locked the devices in the trunk of his car.

Ah, look how far we’ve come!