Sunday, April 24, 2011

Abu Dhabi Dreamin'

Allah In'shallah

"Is this your first time in the United Arab Emirates?" The deep resonance in his voice startles me.
I am not prepared.  My passport is quickly lost in his ebony hand.  The best I can do is to squeak out a weak, "yes."
Sitting tall in his white robe and head scarf, he looks through me.  
"Where are you coming from?"
"Beijing."  I figure he thinks I'm nervous because somehow our cultural roles are reversed and in this part of the globe, it is I who could be the terrorist.
He smiles.  I try to smile and be as worldly as my passport claims I am.  But...please don't look at...
"Where do you live?"
I am relieved by the repetition.
"Beijing."  Why? Because I am proud to come from China?  Or now we are both sure that I am an American who can't possibly see the world from a strictly Western slash Judeo-Christian vantage?
The light gleams off his dark eyes.  He knows more about me than I would like to share.  He is regal
and I pretend he is all knowing.  If his white teeth break out again under the goatee, I think I might faint.
It's a long overnight from Beijing.  Maybe I've been in Beijing too long.
"Welcome to Abu Dhabi".  It is a kingdom and all the men are princes, I think as I walk away
trying to avoid the eyes of all the other members of the royal family.

It's clean.  Suddenly instead of spitting and snotting, men, tall men, glide in their stride in their white shimmering robes.  The streets are immaculate.  No garbage or dog poo, no donkey carts.  There seems to be order at crosswalks and at street signs. And it's hot.  The blue of the sky is interrupted only by the white minarets which reach toward Allah.  Driving home with my friend on the five lane road amongst palm trees, I feel like I am in LA, an LA without traffic.  Except, there are the robes, white and black, which seem at ease floating beside the blondes in shorts and others in suits.  In the Paris airport the contrast in dress seems awkward.  Here you want to wear a robe like the Emiratis. I want to be an Emirati.  My friend tells me there are no poor Emiratis.  When you turn 18 you get a car and a house.  There is a lot of oil in this small land and the population is not as vast as Saudi Arabia.  So the wealth is distributed.  You can feel the oil money, of course like anywhere, some have more than others.  Yet this is one reason they do not fear any kind of revolt.  The poor people here are immigrants, Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Philipinos.  Immigrants can't stage a revolution. But everybody here knows that the country would come to a halt if the Indians stopped working.  It is the Indians who are the middle managers, administrators and bank workers.  The Emirates depend on them.  But then I have to remember that if I were an Emirati, (and I like saying it-Emirati) I would not be wearing white but black.  The thin material of the abaya falls loosely when you slip it on and the black head scarf too easily falls off one's head.  When my friend took us to the Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Mosque commonly referred to as The Grande Mosque, I got my chance to wear one. It is instantly slimming.

I know, right about now I am supposed to get into the whole male-female Arab Moslem power divide.  It's pretty obvious where that goes.  There is more testosterone here and I can see that as a good thing and a bad thing.  I know the whole polygamy, more than one wife situation is a bit weird and then I think about the benefits of having a part time husband.  Either way you go with your position, the arguments seem evident.  In the end, of course, I would have to speak up about having to wear black instead of white in that heat. 

Although Abu Dhabi is a new city located where forty years ago there was mostly only sand, its history dates back to the 3rd millennium.  Its origins come from a culture called Umm an-Nar.  It was a village inhabited by nomadic camel herders, fishermen and pearl divers.  Like much of the Middle East, it was a tribal culture headed by powerful Sheiks with the unavoidable interference of colonial powers, Portugal early on and later the British. The houses back then were made of palm fronds and the wealthy lived in mud huts-until 1952 when oil was discovered.  At this time the seven sheikdoms unified into the present federation of states.  The making of Abu Dhabi as a world-class metropolis started in 1966 when the mud huts were replaced by luxury hotels and high-rise buildings making up the now memorable skyscape.

My favorite thing to do here, besides catching up with my friends, is to go to the private beach, Corniche gate three.  There is a 10 dhiram ($2.50) entrance fee and for five dollars more a Philippino follows you to a padded lounge chair of your choice and opens up an umbrella.  And there you are right in front of the famous skyline on a fine white sand beach staring out on turquoise blue (did I say clean?) waters.  It's unbelievable.  I love Abu Dhabi.  But I have to admit, since this is only March and I spend most of my time under the umbrella, that it must get insanely hot in the summer.  I take many dips in the sea to cool off.  No, it must get a crazy hot that I have never experienced.  My friends say walking outside in summer is like opening the oven door- the heat just overwhelms you.  You can't breathe.  You have to move quickly from one air conditioned setting to another the way we in Beijing scurry to warmth in the winter.  The sun could scorch you to ash; Make-up melts down your face.

The well-known Abu Dhabi malls provide acclimatized environments in which to move around and of course to spend all that oil money.  They are destinations even for people who don't much like to shop.  The architecture of these little cities is fascinating. They have indoor gardens, children's playgrounds and even massive aquariums.  They are manmade habitats for the heat, really, a place to pass the day.  The sport of shopping is contagious here and I take lessons from my friend's sixteen year old daughter who somehow convinces me to buy high heels and Ray Bans.  I wonder how I my ankles will fare on the uneven streets of Beijing.

What I will miss most (besides my friends-the kind of people you meet in the world who give you a sense of home wherever they are-the kind of people who teach you that home is about people, not place) is the call to prayer five times a day echoing from every mosque in the city simultaneously.  Starting at 5:53 AM (the time changes in relation to the sun) --- a man's voice sings-beautiful -tones which reach deep into a self so easily forgotten.  It doesn't matter if you are Moslem or of another faith or of no faith at all-those notes in varying pitches reach for your soul, calling for your return.  How does sound effect in that way?  Every day the calls are different.  The calls to pray structure the day.  It is easy to keep track of time.  I can count on an open reminder for my ancient self to be called back.  It feels like safety.  The kind of safety you have and understand when you say Allah in'shallah- God willing.  I will see you again, Allah in'shallah-if it is meant to be. You can count on that.  Really, it is all you can count on.  I hope to return to Abu Dhabi-Allah in'shallah.  Or at least I now have it in my dreams.





Sunday, February 6, 2011

Evil Spirits don't Like Smoke

A New Year in China

In spite of my vow to never be here again for the number one holiday in China, last night we ushered in the year of the rabbit. The Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, comes at the start of the lunar calendar and in fact it is suddenly warmer here in Beijing. A year ago nobody had warned me so when the explosions started outside my window; I ended up curled in bed, shaking from the heart stopping vibrations and blood-curdling noise.  I was terrified.  I had never experienced anything like it.  I was supposed to go out that night, but was too scared to walk in the streets which looked and sounded like a war zone.  Every family left in the city had invested in major fireworks and they were not timid to blow them up on successive corners.  It went on 24/7 for days.  After all, the Chinese were welcoming the year of the tiger which is aggressive, dynamic and forceful.  I was a physical and psychological wreck by the fifth day.

This is a new year.  Not only did I go out last night, but I was not paralyzed or put out by the enormous rockets ignited on the other side of the street as I walked.  A spark had even hit me and I simply moved on.  Had I changed?  What was different?  At about 11:30, I decide to walk home to make it back just before the midnight onslaught.  I watched myself happy amid the crashing and banging that was picking up all over the city.  My gaze went up in admiration to the cascading, colorful lights which streamed through the sky.  This year I even stopped to watch and appreciate the bright blasts.

How strange it was to be glad, making it home just before 12 to see the massive display.  I didn't even need the Winnie-the-Pooh eye cover and ear plugs I had purchased to protect myself from the mayhem.  I went to bed still watching, delighted by the mesmerizing sights even as debris hit my window.  When I got tired, I went to sleep despite the noise.  Somehow this year it was comforting.  Could the year of the rabbit really be that different from the year of the tiger?  Apparently.

My friend told me her uncle spent two thousand dollars on fireworks every year.  He would open the window to his apartment and hope the smoke would blow in.  The bad air was one of the things I hated most about Beijing, so of course I asked, "Why?" "Evil spirits don't like smoke", is what she said.  So today I did something else which surprised me, I opened the window in my apartment and could smell the smoke, a by-product of bottle-rockets.  I don't like smoke either, but I'll try anything to get rid of those pesky evil spirits.

I can't help thinking it is a new year here in China.  At first I think I just may have made it through another "blue period" of my life and may be emerging and that's why it feels new.  I think it is my perpetual, unnatural clinging to a shred of optimism that might be renewing itself.  But if it is not that, what else can it be that makes this year different?  I don't think it is my yearning for something good to happen that brings this about.  I could say it is my courage to start my life over again and again, but there is something else here.  That isn't even anything new for me.  This one isn't about me, I suspect. 

I don't like loud noises, smoke or chaos.  But that is just the beauty of the whole thing.  It doesn't matter what I think.  I see my attachment to my limited assessments.  I need these disruptions to keep me from a self-manipulated definition of anything.  It's not exactly that I need the smoke in my house to scare away the spirits; I need to be able to open the window to ideas which are foreign and illogical to me.  I need the Chinese who see the world differently than I do.  I need the external input, redirection, guidance.  I can't figure my life out on my own.  I admit my limitations.  However strong I may have proven myself to be, I cannot pretend to have enough of anything to figure this life out on my own.  I need those loud noises to wake me up.  We can make all the internal adjustments we can think of, but without taking in some of the external contributions, we have very little.

It's not a new year just because I walked through the fire lit streets of Beijing instead of huddled in my bed.  It's not a new year because I feel renewed confidence in myself and my purpose in the warmth of the Spring festival.  It's not because I have a new outlook on life as I learn to speak Chinese to the people I meet.  I am old enough to have done all these things before in other countries and in other languages.  Yes, these are good and help a person to reinvent oneself, but it's not what I am talking about.  What if there really is a difference between the tiger and the rabbit?  What if I am really more dependent on external factors than I thought?  What if I need the moon to move around the earth just enough times to shed light on my path?  Is that really so crazy?

The Chinese calendar moves in cycles of 60 years.  Whether or not one can understand the two interactive systems of the five heavenly elements (in order, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water) in their yin and yang forms and the twelve Zodiac animal signs, it is clear that the calculations are a way to measure time.  This ancient system has been in place since the Shang dynasty (1600 BCE -1100 BCE) long before the Gregorian one.  Yet both systems recognize man's external relationship with time and perhaps the marking of times and the changing of times.  That's what I really needed to remember.  Times change and no matter how I handled myself or what I thought or did, different time periods would have perhaps more bearing on my life than my individual will.  I found the thought I was looking for when I considered the Cultural Revolution in contrast to succeeding years.  During the Cultural Revolution intellectuals were chained, tortured and publicly humiliated.  Just years after Mao's death, going to college and being smart made a man a hero in his town.  The man who lived through both times was not different; it was the times which were.

This year is different, for better or worse, for its ebbs and flows, regardless of what I think.  I can't help liking that.  My efforts are only a piece of the complex puzzle of existence.  Timing plays a big part, a huge part in all of this no matter which calendar you use.  It's the only way to explain certain things.  Evil spirits and I don't like smoke.  I hate to admit that we have anything in common. But that doesn't even matter.  What really matters is who is going to be left after the smoke clears?  Like the rabbit, I'll be here reflective, gentle and ready for my next jump.

The Red Ribbon is on Cars and not Lungs

It's not just because of the Beijing traffic gridlock that the Chinese government has decided to limit new car registration.  It's the overwhelming increase in car purchases by the new Communist bourgeoisie.  This just means that there is no hope in sight for our lungs.  Another day, I can't breathe. We go days on end when the Air Quality Index surpasses 400.  That is hazardous according to the American Embassy.  On the "crazy bad" pollution days the reading is over 500 which is supposedly the maximum.  It's hard to say how a reading could overreach the maximum, but maybe this has symbolic implications which I fail to see or am trying to ignore.  The obvious meaning to me is that science is confirming what I already know;  it is hard to breathe in Beijing.  

I have done some qualitative research on the effects of hazardous air pollution and before I lose my ability to think altogether, I must write it down.  There is nothing scientific about this research, it is purely anecdotal and conclusively observational, the most fallible kind.  But the physical symptoms make it hard to gain mental clarity, I have found. Yes, breathing contaminated air more days than you can count must have some detrimental effect on the brain's ability to function.  Perhaps this is just the result of the dulling headache that persists in strange throbbing ways.   Thinking is like trying to find a sharp edge in pea soup.  The cognitive functions seem to mirror what the brain sees, haze.  Indistinct images appear and disappear in the thick smoke; I think those were buildings.  Sight is casualty. One has to strain to see and I am sure unwanted contaminants are attaching to my retina.  I have had to increase the magnification on my reading glasses 100%.  During the day it looks like the sky decided not to come out.  At night, the colored lights of the city blur into bizarre, unrecognizable shapes.  

It's surreal at first, but after a few days of heavy pollution the physical effects start to impinge not only on the intellectual processing centers of the brain, but also the emotional.  On good days I have trained myself not to look beyond the immediate.  My first year in Beijing, I thought this was a great Buddhist practice. I was living in the present, not looking outside myself for validation. The sphere I focused on was the space of about five feet.  My motivation was not based on external conditions, but instead it came from a place the size a small bread box inside my solar plexus.  I remember last year everyone said it had never been so bad. "This is the worst it has ever been".  Until of course this year, this November.  The bread box theory worked for a couple of days and then started to disintegrate of its own accord.  Turning inwards is not so pleasant with the head and stomach seething.  Other side effects are dizziness, loss of coordination, disorientation and heart palpitations.

I might sound like a hypochondriac, but I swear I am not.  Most of us Beijingers (definition for my unscientific purposes: residents of ten months or more annually)  try to carry on with our days pretending we are not subjugated by the poor air.  We are so beleaguered by insufficient levels of oxygen, we don't have the strength to talk about it.  Low level exhaustion is a constant.  It feels as if some days you never wake up, because what you see is unreal, dreamlike.  I'm sure depression is an escalating risk here.  How could it not be?  Detached from a recognizable reality, I go through days with a sickening floating feeling.  There is no other way to describe it.

I didn't want to do it, but I decided to look up what I was breathing.  I knew it was going to be a list of chemicals with names that sound like monosodium glutamate for the lungs.  The most common pollutants according to the U.S. Embassy are ozone (the bad kind which is a result of a reaction between different oxides of nitrogen), inhalable coarse and fine particles, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide.  I have no idea what any of these are, but I get it, it's not good.  Of course, then I found the actual index and now I know why I feel the way I do.  A good day in Beijing the reading is in the 200's.  That's "very unhealthy".  

0 to 50 Good 
51 to 100 Moderate 
101 to 150 Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups 
151 to 200 Unhealthy 
201 to 300 Very Unhealthy
301 to 500 Hazardous  

Knowing more is only making me realize I better not have any long term plans to stay in Beijing.   Each of those distinct pollutants has a different set of hazardous effects.  According to the U.S. Embassy, "ozone affects the lungs and respiratory system in many ways." This can cause "coughing, throat soreness, airway irritation, chest tightness, or chest pain."  There is more.  That is only one element of the bad air. Breathing particles may cause people to experience chest pain, shortness of breath and fatigue. "Particle pollution has also been associated with cardiac arrhythmias and heart attacks."  That's enough, don't you think?  "Carbon monoxide enters the bloodstream through the lungs and binds to hemoglobin, the substance in blood that carries oxygen to cells. It reduces the amount of oxygen reaching the body’s organs and tissues."  This sounds like a horror movie. Carbon monoxide affects mental alertness and vision in healthy people.  I wish I never looked this up.  I haven't even gotten to the effects of sulfur dioxide.

I can't breathe.  I guess the unscientific research had already made this evident.  Having it confirmed, though, means I am not losing my faculties due to age and puts new meaning on "crazy bad".  I wish there were a happy ending to this, a big ribbon to wrap up this package for the Beijing inhabitants, holiday cheer to see us into the Western New Year, but the truth is that there were 20,000 new cars sold in Beijing the first week of December (http://www.asiaone.com/Motoring/News/Story/A1Story20101209-251794.html). For the Chinese, owning a car is an important status symbol.  It is part of the new world order.  It doesn't matter what the government does to regulate registration or how many people they put on the street with flags to control the flow of traffic.  The Chinese are going to keep buying cars.   The red ribbon is on the cars not the lungs in Beijing.  Merry Christmao!