I will be leading a book discussion at the Boston Athenaeum: Two Views of Corfu, April 25 at 10 am
Join us for a discussion of two very different books which feature the same landscape and main characters. Most people know only one of the Durrell brothers, but each one has his own brilliance. Lawrence writes about the historical and literary landscape in an artistic and serious manner, while Gerald focuses on the local wildlife, a group which includes his older siblings. The juxtapositions between what each one thinks is important and noteworthy makes reading the books in tandem a delight. Gerald doesn’t deign to mention his brother’s wife; Lawrence ignores the fauna. Gerald has nothing to say about Greek myths; Lawrence pretends he is not with his family. Read one book or both and join a short visit to the gorgeous Greek island of Corfu. If the conversation leads to a wider discussion of Lawrence’s fiction (The Alexandria Quartet), Gerald’s impressive improvements in how zoos are designed and the Boston area’s best Greek restaurants, all the better.
Lawrence Durrell – known for fiction: Alexandria Quartet (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea) and The Avignon Quintet(Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian, Quinx)
light humor: The Best of Antrobus, Esprit de Corps
travel writing: Prospero’s Cell (Corfu), Reflections on a Marine Venus (Rhodes), Bitter Lemons (Cyprus), Spirit of Place (collection of travel writing)
children’s fiction: White Eagles Over Serbia
biography: Larry: A New Biography of Lawrence Durrell, 1912-1945; Lawrence Durrell: A Biography by Ian S. MacNiven
if you like his fiction, maybe try: The English Patient
if you like his light humor, maybe try: Hotel Splendide, La Bonne Table, Bemelmans
if you like his travel writing, maybe try: Provence, F. M. Ford; The Station, Robert Bryon
Gerald Durrell – known for autobiographical books set on Corfu in his childhood: My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives; The Garden of the Gods
animal collecting/ creating a zoo: Three Singles to Adventure.A Zoo in my Luggage, The Bafut Beagles, The Whispering Land, The Aye-Aye and I, Menagerie Manor
animal/ nature conservation: The Ark’s Anniversary, Amateur Naturalist
children’s fiction: Rosy Is My Relative
autobiography: Myself and Other Animals
biography: Gerald Durrell: The Authorized Biography by Douglas Botting
Several people have asked me, “Aren’t you glad you aren’t in Oman right now?” Actually, no. I wish I was there, but I have aged out of work visas and can’t afford one of the housing units that comes with a residence visa. I do not support this war and I think America should stop bombing Iran. It must be terrifying for the people who are staying and all the photos of expats leaving the Arabian Peninsula make me reflect on how difficult it was to leave Oman, even with plenty of notice and in peacetime.
In remembrance of happier times, this is an essay I wrote in 2017. May peace come soon to all troubled lands.
“I’ve never such a beautiful ocean” – tourist
“Holy sweet Jesus he’s got no clue” – local
“Public Relations” lyrics from the musical Don’t Stop the Carnival
Tourists burble. Tourists gush. If I hear a woman is raving about how “the food is so natural and healthy!” you can be sure that she’s got a plane ticket back to the Land of Whole Foods and Mexican restaurants within a week or two. It’s amusing to watch a man coo about how relaxing life is here, all the while checking his Blackberry and reading e-mail on his laptop at one of the two cafes in town with wi-fi.
Expats don’t coo. Expats don’t prattle. The people who live here, we send SMSs: “Flaxseed oil in at the pharmacy,” “Sandstorm coming – batten down hatches,” “Did you hear X is in the hospital?” and “Do you know a good carpenter?”
I call an expat friend and ask, “What’s the name of the place you hang your clothes?”
He starts throwing off fancy French furniture terms: armoire…
“No, no,” I say, “What’s the simple word. I forgot it.”
Pause.
“You mean ‘closet’?”
“Yes!” We say goodbye and hang up the phone.
A woman who came to town for an extended visit mentioned to me that she had a rental car. I told her to be careful; any problem that happened to the car while she had it was her responsibility.
She said, “I didn’t sign a contract.”
I said, “It doesn’t matter, the understanding here is, unless you go to Budget which is twice as expensive as normal rentals and has insurance, that any problem is your fault and you pay for the repair, as well as the regular daily charge.”
She said, “But I didn’t agree to that and I didn’t sign a contract.”
Expats do not say “I didn’t sign a contract.” They would laugh and tell you about the rental car in Uruguay, which would segue into a story about Nepal, and then into that fabulous B& B in Dorset. Expats know that this is not a theme park full of natural and healthy food, beautiful scenery and exotic folkways. It is a working community. You either stay cut-off by cycling between your job, the two expat grocery stores and the big hotels or you become part of it – whether you agree or not. Expats are normal people who have evolved and devolved into a new species.
Expat – Definition
The first part of my definition of living expat is that it’s voluntary: moving to another country by choice to study, work, retire, create art etc. I am talking about a narrow band of middle-class experiences – not forced immigration or those ‘on the wind’ fleeing war, disease and/ or poverty. I made the decision to live on the Arabian Peninsula.
The second part is that I live middle-class. I live alone (not in a camp or apartment with co-workers), I can move about when and how I choose (not being driven in a bus), I have two days off every week (not only an afternoon or no free-time at all). On the other hand, I know nothing of upper class life beyond what I read in Town and Country. My car is 8 years old and has over 300,000 km; I worry about retirement. I don’t think I am ever going to have a set of Ghurka luggage or diamond stud earrings, much less one of those really gorgeous Persian rugs.
My third point is that it’s living expat. I have traveled to 38 countries but have lived overseas only 4 times. “Living” I define as having an address where mail is delivered, having a bank account in a local bank, and having a set of places to go to – your café, your beach, your tailors, your schwarma stand.
The fourth part of “living expat” is what does “expat” convey? Mawuna Remarque Koutonin’s article [https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/mar/13/white-people-expats-immigrants-migration%5D discusses how “expat” is a racially charged term. I can’t speak for other areas of the world, but I’ve lived in the Middle East for 14 years and on the Arabian Peninsula, “expat” it is an indicator of economic status not country of origin. Here, “expat” means people who have a position which allows them to sponsor bringing over a spouse and/or kids and people who are free to move about as they please outside of work hours. To talk about one group, people put qualifiers in front, such as Arab expats, Indian expats, Western expats. “Expats” is used as opposed to “workers,” almost always men, who live in single-sex compounds whose movements are more closely controlled.
I have never heard of anyone referred to as a “guest” and “guest-worker” is not a configuration used here. I have only heard “foreigner” used by Gulf Arabs referring to non-Muslims. My personal pet peeve is people who call themselves “nomads;” just as bad are businesses which cater to this nonsense: “tools for nomads” with $600 backpacks. Do you carry all your worldly possessions yourself or with a pack animal? Are you without bank account and/ or property? Do you sleep in structures you erected yourself? Do you roam around a wide geographical area without changing continents? No? Then you aren’t a nomad.
Expat Talking
There are many positives of living expat. When British Airways lost my luggage, I had to make a list of the items lost: handmade slippers from Muscat; shoes from Edinburgh; shoes from Leiden; dress from Victoria, BC; skirt from my tailors; shirts from Boston and San Francisco; jean jacket from Denver; Swiss cosmetics; earrings from Maine. Reassembling that small suitcase would take thousands of dollars’ worth of airplane tickets as I pick up clothes as I travel to see family and friends and for conferences.
This is normal for people who live middle-class expat but can be really annoying for those who don’t. We are used to have objects and experiences from a myriad of places and with other expats, ordinary conversations can quickly turn insufferable for normal people: the waterfalls in Vancouver airport vs. the mini-tropical forest in Bali’s airport, Taba in Egypt vs. Aqaba in Jordan, foot massages in Phuket vs. head massages in Delhi, Rhodes vs. Crete, water-taxis from the airport in the Maldives vs. water-taxis in Dubai, island hopping in the Seychelles vs. island-hopping in the Caribbean, Malta vs. Corsica, the Khan el Khalili in Cairo vs. the Blue Souq in Sharjah, Stockholm vs. Amsterdam, Doha airport vs. Chicago airport, throwbacks to crossing into Turkish Cyprus vs. crossing into East Germany. As I said, it gets old fast for people who have built their lives in one or only a few communities.
Every expat has had the experience of being asked “What’s it like” as if one can sum up living in a country for a year in two sentences. And then there are people at home who never even ask that, who avoid any mention of the life overseas.
Expats learn to keep quiet about their lives and open up only with other expats with whom they can trade experiences and opinions freely: making fun of Jumeirah Janes, debating the best college to stay at during the summer in Cambridge, complaining about being woken up by the sound of kookaburras in Brisbane and loons on a Wisconsin lake, comparing Swiss Christmas markets vs. southern German Christmas markets. Expats who have lived in the toughest conditions are usually the nicest. People who lived in Cairo and Dubai are never as friendly or helpful as those who lived in Afghanistan and Papua New Guinea where cooperation meant survival.
Expat Travel
Baltimore, Lisbon, Mousehole, Heidelberg, Petra, Charlotte Amalie, Santa Fe, Al Mukulla: expats get to used to the chance for travel during vacations and the perks of travel seem so obvious, it’s useless to complain about the times I have walked off a plane after a 10+ hour flight trying to remember what country I was in, looking at the signs at passport control trying to remember which line to stand in, all the methods of coping with jet-lags, the stupid mistakes done under the blight of jet lag, and most importantly, the sense that you can never have all the things you like together.
It is useless to grumble but inside most expats’ hearts there is a wish for impossible meals and events: Dutch pancakes with American coffee, an English pub lunch with waiters who come to the table, Bangkok with the air quality of Edinburgh, Winnipeg’s summers with Puerto Rico’s winters, Dubai shopping but with taxi drivers who speak English; bookstores in Oxford that stay open later than 6pm; Tartine pastries at the Hong Kong airport.
An expat’s life is always a mosaic, never a unified whole. My favorite way to travel is the 8-seater plane from Logan to visit my mom, the train from Sydney to Melbourne, a sailboat in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the DC metro. My favorite stores are Ragamuffin on the Isle of Sky, the main Jim Thompson store in Bangkok, gold stores on the Ponte Vecchio, and M & S. My favorite hotels are the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, MA and the Peninsula in Bangkok but my favorite places to eat are the Palm Court at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh, the Windmill café in Kingston, Ontario, pretty much any restaurant in Rome and the Lime Tree Café in Jumeriah. I want to walk off my favorite beach in the BVI, have a ‘rice table’ in the Netherlands for dinner then fall asleep to the blinking of Grand Forks, ND fireflies.
Expat Decor
I always think that a person’s home should be like a 3D collection of Girl Scout badges; it should reflect who you are and where you have been. Living middle-class expat means that it’s easy to collect pieces from all over. In my living room I have a sofa I bought in Bali, a chair from India that I got in the Emirates, and an Egyptian rosewood chest. The three pieces are nice, but don’t really coordinate with each other or my dark wood IKEA desk or my dark wood book cabinet which had a glass front section resting on top of a (non-coordinating) set of cupboards. That’s one of drawbacks: you pick up pieces as you go along, and you simply have to tell your furniture to get along with each other because it’s almost impossible to get things to match.
Another characteristic of expat living is that pieces usually develop narratives. I have a dish a friend brought me from her trip to Iran; one rug is from the store run by two Iranian brothers at Mutrah souq. There are very few things that I have bought anonymously, so to speak, at a store which I can’t remember. When I go to a friend’s house and admire something its: “I picked that up in a little village in Cambodia when I worked there” or “Got that in Siberia.”
Every piece has a story. The rug I bargained for with a friend standing by amazed at my ability to spin tales about the poverty of teachers to lower the price. The coffee table was bought at X store on Y street with my friend Pat pretending to be my husband and saying I was spending too much money in an effort to get the price down (that trick worked). Even my computer has a story of the how I got it and what happened when it broke down (four hours of sitting in the store reading a novel because I was not leaving until it worked).
Even as a single woman, there’s not much shopping I do on my own – there is often an Omani or western friend to give advice, and I willingly go on shopping expeditions in turn. When I walk thought my apartment I see the pieces connected to my friends Marlene, Tom, Rosemary, Samantha, Barbara, Sophie, Margie, Sanda, and Helen, all of whom have since left town but whose memories remain.
Another effect of living expat is that decorating is usually very personal – you often incorporate other people’s lives and they incorporate yours. In my sitting room, my sofas are from a dear friend who was selling them when she left Salalah. Given how much turnover there is, if you see something you like that a friend has, if they leave you have a chance to get it in a way that would seem predatory in the States. Several times I have had the unsettling experience of walking through a good friend’s house and deciding which of their pieces to buy.
On the other hand, when I want to get rid of something, it doesn’t go out anonymously on the street to be picked up or to someplace like Salvation Army. I give it to the woman who cleans my house. In the Middle East, almost all middle-class households have maids, who either live-in or have keys and come to clean a few times a week. Mine has worked for me for almost ten years and, like most expats, I give her her salary, bonus twice a year and whatever I no longer need.
My old sofa, coffee table, pillows, even shoes and purses are set in a pile for her and she takes everything. I wonder if they are all in her house or if they are handed on to her friends. That angst of “I can’t get rid of it because it still has some use in it” doesn’t exist here – if I don’t need something, don’t like it anymore or have bought a replacement, I can pass it on knowing it will be used. I see it as a ladder: an Omani friend gave me a gorgeous wooden bookshelf; I give the woman who cleans for me my old fridge.
Expat Fitting In
As you live expat, and start to understand the culture, the prevailing wisdom is that you should try to fit in. I agree with this most of the time, but there are also times when I think deliberate dissonance is helpful. Sometimes speaking, dressing and acting in ways that mark you as a foreigner can create a more positive interaction, especially in dealing with Arabian cultures in which people usually dislike being surprised.
I learned this point when I went to two social events with a non-Omani Muslim woman (I’ll call her Muna). We were both wearing the right kind of clothes for the event but Muna greeted each Omani guest in the correct way but I said, “salam aleikum” – the wrong thing to say. This greeting should be said by a person who comes into the room, but I was sitting down. It is such a blatant mistake, each woman who was greeting me paused for a moment, looked at me carefully, then carried on with greeting the other attendees, often gesturing towards me and asking other women, “Who is she?”
My incorrect greeting immediately signaled that I was foreign and the women could immediately adjust their expectations and assumptions about me. Older women did not wonder why I don’t stand up and kiss them on the head, etc. There was a momentary flutter, but I was quickly forgotten.
On the other hand, several women tried to speak to Muna after she gave the correct greeting. Then Muna would explain she didn’t understand Arabic, which would cause surprise and begin a several minutes conversation about how the woman THOUGHT Muna was Arabic-speaking, but she wasn’t and where was Muna from and why was she at the event and wasn’t it a surprise! Several Omani would say they thought Muna was from X country, Muna would explain she was from Y country, the women would say “Oh you look like you are from X,” Muna would affirm that she was from Y, the women would ask “Is your mother from X?” Muna would answer no; her mother was also from Y. This happened several times and after her country of origin was cleared up, there was no more conversation.
What happened with me was opposite. The women sitting near me would usually ignore me for an hour or so, then ask me a question or two (how long had I lived in town, was I married, did I have children, was I Muslim etc.) which would slowly grow into a longer conversation. After two or so hours, all the women around me would have talked to me. As I was sitting quietly, smiling at the children, accepting tea, looking as benign as possible, the women would socialize with each other, occasionally glancing at me, then slowly one or two would start the process of figuring out who I was and passing that information around.
I had given them space and time to adjust to me and I happily answered all their questions with answers that made sense: I am a teacher, I have learned Arabic from my students, I am a friend of the groom’s sister, etc. There was always a sense of wonder – this American Christian sitting amongst us! – but I made no sudden moves, gave ready and plain answers, smiled at children and (with honesty) professed myself delighted with the house, food, tea, party and the company. Slow, easy and steady but always marked as different and foreign.
This insight was found by chance (the first time I did this, I really didn’t know the right thing to say) but I realized that, on the Arabian Peninsula, the more you speak and act correctly, the more it is believed you know all the culture’s rules. In my experience it is far better to start off with an obvious stumble and rehabilitate yourself later than to start strong only to fall off. Set the bar low, make it clear you don’t have all the necessary cultural knowledge and mistakes are forgiven or at least not coded as deliberate rudeness.
Expat Friends
Expats friends can sometimes turn to gold. When I met The Divine Ms. S., I felt like I was reunited with my birth sister. Just as my idea of ‘plot’ is add another shark attack, my idea of decorating is throw a few more rhinestones on. She had a living room with floor to ceiling red velvet curtains on all the walls and a four-foot mirrored snarling jaguar statue. Truly a woman after my own taste.
Living overseas in a small community everyone knows each other – most people live next to or near people they work with; you see all the same people at the same (few) restaurants and shops. You can’t move unobserved. You and your car are known entities and, maliciously or not, information is passed around. If you go to Lulu’s you either see someone you know or someone was driving by and saw your car, or someone saw you take the Lulu’s bags out of your car.
You learn not to lie, but to preserve some sense of privacy, to be circumspect. You seldom use names in conversation or discuss your specific plans. Everyone says, “Oh I am busy that night” or “Yes, I know that restaurant. I went there with a friend once.”
Once you become part of a circle, you have to take care of those people; you have to help. Like it or not you are in for giving rides to the airport, rides if their car went in for service, borrowing books, handing out whatever medicine you have, sharing the names of good dentists and plumbers. Unlike a small town in America, it is impossible to find basic information here. There is no Yellow Pages, much less store web-sites. The opening times change, stores close or move locations. You have to tell the newcomers the name of the good tailor and about the Japanese dollar store. The gardeners have to tell each other when a certain plant (mint, yellow hibiscus, almond trees, olive trees) is available at the nursery and when there is a delivery of clay pots. The person you told about the good new shawarma stand is the person who, tomorrow, will tell you about a good place to have curtains made. You have to walk people into stores and hand them over to your ‘cushion guy,’ your ‘frame guy,’ your ‘copy guy’ and your ‘coconut guy.’
You get to know what everyone in your groups likes to eat and drink. As I walk around the grocery store, I send off messages: “Hey, they have tortilla chips!” and “Hey, they have dried cherries.” I get calls now and then, “Hey, they have cranberry juice!” and “Candy canes are in.” When I leave town, I ask for requests. When my friends return from trips, I get goodies: Halloween candy, vitamins, clothes dye, doughnuts, curtain fabric.
Expats almost always develop a veneer; whoever you meet you can manage a pleasant conversation about something. You go to a party, end up sitting next to someone you didn’t know – you two look at each other and there is an almost palpable assessment, “Ok, let’s get on with it” and you make a go at figuring out something in common: How long have you been in town, where do you live, where do you work? You smile and wave when you see acquaintances, “How are you?!”
Nothing serious, no soul-baring, no sharing, no real talk, just simple chat, do you know where to get a good hair cut? Have you heard anything about the new Al Jazeera flights? A bit of complaining about the weather, a little discussion about what’s available at the grocery store, “Strawberries are in at Isteqrar!” and “I saw real Hershey’s chips at Al Haq.”
Expats know: you do what you can with what you have where you are.
Risse, M. “Living Expat.” Emanations: Chorus Pleiades. Carter Kaplan, ed. Brookline, MA: International Authors, 2018: 308-318.
I meant to publish this several days ago, but recent events have overtaken the usual quiet, home-based focus of Ramadan on the Arabian Peninsula. I know that many expats are currently trying to leave but I want to put this up as a reminder that, whatever else is happening, it is still Ramadan.
the section on how to behave respectfully during Ramadan from ‘Researching and Working on the Arabian Peninsula’ (2025)
Ask questions about Islam, but frame those questions respectfully. During Ramadan, one male student at the Arabic school where I studied ridiculed a female, Muslim student who was fasting, “She said she was fasting but then I saw her drinking water – she’s a liar!” The woman had her period, so she couldn’t fast but there was no way a woman would tell that to a new, male acquaintance. She was acting appropriately; women act in public as if they are fasting but eat/drink out of sight, then ‘make up’ those days at some point before the advent of the next Ramadan.
Before you leave, look up when Ramadan will fall; Freya Stark (1940) famously made the mistake of not checking before her difficult trip with Gertrude Caton-Thomas. Unless you are Muslim, male, and specifically doing research related to Ramadan/Islam, doing research during Ramadan will probably be difficult. Muslims will be concentrating on prayers and family. You might be invited for iftars (the meal to break the day’s fast) but there probably won’t be time/opportunity to have private conversations/ask questions.
In addition, it’s a good idea to pay more attention to your appearance and behavior. Ramadan is not just about fasting from food from sunrise to sunset; Muslims should also refrain from anything that pulls them away from spiritual reflection, for example being angry, lying, cheating, or listening to non-religious music. You should live in a way that allows everyone else to also concentrate on spiritual matters.
There might be specific laws in your location, but in general I suggest trying to blend in with your surroundings, be it a university, archive, or business. This often means dressing more modestly than usual, e.g., switching from short-sleeved to long-sleeved shirts with rolled up cuffs if you want, tea-length instead of knee-length skirts, less or no jewelry, make-up perfume, etc. Before the month starts, ask if there are changes people often make.
If you are not fasting, keep food and drink out of sight. Don’t leave your bottle of water clipped to the outside of a backpack, put it inside. Various people don’t fast for various reasons (such as being pregnant or ill), so it’s understood and accepted that people are going to eat, just do it behind a closed door or in a hidden corner. Some businesses will set aside a room for non-Muslim to eat meals in or employees will informally co-opt a room, so ask around. If you are in a new space or are the only person not-fasting, try stairwells. Usually there is an empty area at the top of the last flight of stairs.
Behavior in Ramadan relates to two concepts I will discuss further in the sections about tribes and clothes in Chapter 5. First, many cultures on the Arabian Peninsula are tribe-based, meaning it is expected that you will try to fit in to prevailing mores in the same way that people fit into tribal expectations. During the day in Ramadan I cover my hair and the most frequent comment I hear is, “Good, you are with the people.” The fact that I am attempting to blend is seen as positive; yet at the same time there is no expectation that I will adopt every behavior of a Muslim women.
During Ramadan I drink coffee, eat, and play music in my office but my door is always closed. When someone knocks, I drape my scarf over my head, cover my coffee cup with a Kleenex, turn off the music, then call out “Come in.” Everyone knows I am hiding my coffee while they wait outside my door, but in 19 years, no one has complained because I am making an effort to respect the rules and that is sufficient.
The second concept is that people who alter what they wear, what they say, how they act can be viewed with suspicion. Hence, decide if you are going to change anything and what you are going to change, then stick with it throughout the whole month. Dressing modestly one day and not modestly the next is often viewed as worse than dressing non-conservatively because the person is viewed as playing with/making fun of cultural norms. Several years ago, when I decided to wear a head-scarf during daylight hours in Ramadan, I knew that was an irrevocable decision and I have stuck with it. Ramadan creates a framework for my changes and gives a clear explanation of why I am behaving differently.
My last point is that modifying your clothing and behavior (not playing music during the day where people can hear it, not showing anger, not reacting to anger, etc.) helps you navigate smoothly. Yes, sometimes it’s hot to wear a headscarf and sometimes it’s awkward to get it correctly arranged. I hate walking out of the house without lipstick and perfume. On the other hand, these adjustments mean a month without women shooting me angry glances, men acting as if I don’t exist (cutting in front of me in line), clerks pretending that they don’t see me and government officials refusing to help me. When I tell a male student to stop yelling in the hallways, he is not going to backtalk me.
Sometimes other expats show frustration with me and ask “Why are you making your life difficult?” I see my actions in terms of helping to create a peaceful atmosphere. I know it’s silly that I carry my coffee cup at my side or behind my back when I walk to rinse it out in a sink. I know the sight of my coffee cup will not ruin someone’s day, but why should I flaunt the fact that I am drinking? It doesn’t hurt me to be discreet.
I love the Dhfoari tradition of “killing the snake” (hunger) by inviting close friends to a pre-Ramadan gathering with a beautiful and delicious array of food.
Culture reproduces – kids and outsiders learn what to do because of written rules and standards and/or people inside the culture explaining and enforcing.
The how of that replication is always interesting to me because it is so easy to see when parents instruct children, but not always clear in every-day life.
This morning I had a good example at the check-out line in the cafeteria. I put my carton of food on the scale and as soon as the clerk told me the price, I picked up the carton and set it in my purse, then I pulled out my wallet.
As soon as I picked up my carton, the person in line behind put their carton on the scale, making me realize that I was working on the assumption that people don’t put their food to be weighed until the person ahead of them has paid.
As I was handing over the cash, the person behind me asked the clerk a question, which the clerk answered. Then, as I was putting the change into my wallet, preparing to walk away, I heard the clerk say to the person behind me, “Usually, just wait for the person ahead to finish.”
I thought that was an interesting statement first, because the clerk was making expectations clear. Often in the States, there are few or no written directions, especially in stores or restaurants. In this cafeteria, you serve yourself and pay by the weight of the food but there are food workers standing near the food so someone might expect, for example, that the staff will put the food in the container or that there is a certain amount that you can take.
Second, the clerk’s statement is an order (verb first, no “you”) but it’s softened by the “Usually” and “just.” It’s bringing someone into cultural rules gently, without “you did it wrong” or “this is what WE do.”
This makes me think about how an adult corrects another adult about a cultural convention. Sometimes people uses glares or “excuse me” to point out mistakes, or they ignore the person. But when it’s a simple mistake, how does a stranger learn the right way to navigate?
When I lived in Germany, I was terrified of bakeries which were full of fierce, elderly clerks. I could read and write about difficult 1600s German texts, but the glare of a little old lady behind the counter utterly disarmed me. I was confused and made do with pointing at the kind of roll and holding up my fingers to show how many I wanted. It took for weeks until I was confident enough to say my order.
In Oman, I watched the same kind of learning curve with people in bakeries who were used to first-come, first-serve. They would wait until all the people who were in the store before them had ordered, then start to speak, only to realize that the clerk was ignoring them.
Sometimes they would speak louder or try to say “I was here first” but no one would pay attention. Clerks do not care about the order in which customers walk into the store. The order of service is: Omani women, Omani men, foreign women, foreign men and oldest to youngest within each category. I would sometimes point to an expat man and say “he was here first” but the clerks would not care. I was female; I got served first.
Now that I am in the States, it’s first-come, first-served. You spend years learning how to behave, then you have to re-learn how to behave.
I left Oman exactly one year ago and I miss Salalah every day. This is one of the first essays I wrote about Dhofar, sent to friends in October 2005
When I said I was moving to the Middle East and people asked me, “Isn’t that dangerous?” I replied “Not really.” What I meant to say was “What is ‘dangerous’ is not what you would understand nor what I would I be able to foretell.” Witness my taxi driver.
In many place in the Middle East, taxis don’t have meters and there is an accepted ‘in-town’ fare for ‘just go’ and one for ‘go and come back’ which, considering how long it takes to get a check cashed, find the right form, mail the letter, etc. basically means the driver will wait 10 minutes or so for free. And since usually you are running around trying to get your errands done Thursday morning (ME equivalent of Saturday morning) from 9 to 12, if you have a driver who doesn’t smoke, spit, leer or drive like a maniac, you will often just keep him all morning, giving him one lump sum when he takes you home.
If you find a really good driver (knows some English but doesn’t ask if you are married), you can work out a weekly rate for taking you to and from work every day and Thursday morning errands. As you can’t lease or buy a car without your official visa, which can take up to a month once you are in-country, getting a good driver quickly is essential. This is usually a process of having a lot of bad taxi rides (blaring music; passing on the wrong side; getting lost) until you find a guy you like. The paradox is that drivers who offer to be a regular driver are usually exactly the wrong kind of guy (a “any club who would have me as a member…” issue – you want a taxi driver who does not particularly want to talk to a Western woman, who treats you as one more anonymous fare).
My second night I was in town, I stopped by a schwarma stand (a few tables inside, clean, well-lit) and sat for a few minutes to have my chicken wrapped in pita bread and fresh fruit juice in peace. My colleague, X, walked in by chance so I started to ask him what some of the items on the menu were. X didn’t know what “Maryam” meant in this country and as we were discussing, a middle-aged local sitting at another table, explained the meaning (mixture of orange and mango juice) to X in Arabic. I asked about another term; X asked the local guy, who explained with a few smiles and gestures, fruit juice and frozen ice cream. I tried a third item; X, not interested in my linguistics endeavors, left. As I was paying, the local man introduced himself as N and asked if I wanted a taxi.
I said no, but, impressed that he had kept talking to X, not trying to talk directly to me until X had left, I asked for his mobile number. After he gave it to me, a man walked up to me and asked “You want a taxi,” I laughed, then glanced at N, who met my eye and laughed too. Ah, a sense of humor!
The next day I asked one of the secretaries to call N to pick me up from work. We went to the telephone company – I wanted a mobile, the ne plus ultra necessity of ME life. I had various forms, all of which were rejected by the clerk. N, who had wandered over to see what the problem was, jumped right in. Fifteen minutes of heated discussion later, the clerk agreed I could have a cell phone. Then it was two hours of paperwork and waiting. Once I had the phone chip in hand, back in the taxi. “Could you please take me somewhere to buy a phone?”
This was a request, but also a test – were we going to end up in his cousin’s overpriced House of Cell Phones? Nope, straight to a real store (i.e. you would get a warranty). But the man at the cell phone counter hadn’t shown up for work yet. I told N I would go to the grocery section for 15 minutes. When I returned 20 minutes later, he tapped his watch and said “I have been waiting five minutes!” Part of me thought “give me a break, I have been in-country 48 hours, I don’t even own a coffee cup”; part of me thought “Getting scolded by your taxi guy is a good sign. The more he sees you as a regular person, the better.”
Cell phone man arrives; I pick out a phone; N takes over. He installs the chip, sets the date and time, adjusts all my settings, programs a password, calls my phone and puts his name on my contact list, then calls himself on my phone so he has my number. We are now joined.
I put my groceries in the truck and collapse into the back seat; “Time to go home” I say. N drives off in the opposite direction. I am going to get a tour of the town and there will be a quiz: “This is Water Roundabout. What is the name of this roundabout?”
“Water.”
“Very good.” Then he heads out of town – as in away from all buildings and up a mountain road. Hmmmm, then he turns off the main road and onto a small side road. I contemplate whether I should ask him to turn around, attempt to jump out of the car or scream. I wonder how one calls the police, given that I have a brand-new cell phone in my purse, which for all he I know he has sabotaged. I wonder if this qualifies as “dangerous.”
I don’t do anything – trust? stupidity? jetlag and culture shock and general weariness? Ten minutes later he pulls up at beautiful scenic overlook. “Too much beautiful” he proclaims. Well yes, not that I wanted to go a scenic overlook, but then I hadn’t seen anything of the town yet except the inside of offices, so it was rather nice.
After sufficiently impressing upon me how nice his town was, he pulls into an open air restaurant and disappears for 5 minutes. When he comes back he hands me over a carefully wrapped plate of something. “Fish,” he says with a smile. “Special fish.”
Then he drives me home. Where I discover it is a plate of grilled beef cubes. Ok.
Two days later we are out for more errands. We go to find me two small lamps, which he insists on plugging in to make sure they work; fuse boxes, which he inspects carefully; plastic bath mats, which he allows me to choose in peace; cleaning supplies, he picks up and looks at, but doesn’t comment on. I’m starving.
He pulls up to a mini-cafeteria, toots the horn and asks me “chicken or egg?” Well that is a Mobius strip sort of question. The guy comes out of his shop and looks at N. N looks at me. OK. “Egg.”
After a few minutes, the restaurant comes back and hands me a wrapped sandwich which is a bun shaped like a hotdog roll, but sweeter, with a chopped up boiled egg, cucumbers, tomatoes, ketchup, mystery sauce and cold French fries – which pretty much covers whatever one could possibly want or need.
“Nice?” N asks.
Nice indeed.
He has a real job besides taxi driving so he can’t take me to and from work every day, but I call him for errands and for longer missions. When I was stuck at a hotel far from town with 2 obnoxious Brits and a bunch of local taxi drivers who wanted 5 times the going rate, I called N.
“Let’s take one of these taxis and just pay what we want to pay when we get there, not what we have agreed to pay,” said one of the obnoxious guys.
“You can’t do that. And N said he would come, he’ll come.”
“Why would he come all the way here?”
You can’t explain the intricacies of the taxi relationship to Middle Eastern newbies, so I keep quiet. N comes; the guys start to ask him why the hotel taxi drivers were ‘so stupid’ as to charge so high a price that I ended up calling him instead. N doesn’t understand the question, thank goodness, and I try to steer the conversation to other issues. But both men spend the taxi ride complaining about Middle Eastern taxis and the Middle East in general.
When we drop off the second guy, N gets out a piece of paper to write his mobile number. “No, no, no,” I say softly in Arabic. N looks at me – why am I depriving him of a customer? – but puts the paper away.
As we head to my home, he says accusingly, “I give my number; you say no.”
“Those men too much bad, argue with you, not pay you fair price. My friend, I give your number. Not bad men.”
“Bad men?” He looks at me in the rearview mirror, not quite believing but sometimes you just have to trust across that cultural divide.
“Too much bad men,” I say.
“Ok.” He drives me home then refuses to let me pay him. “I was sitting, no work, you call, I am happy.” I tell him to look over there, he looks, I drop the cash in the front passenger seat. He laughs.
He goes to his village for a week and brings me back a large plate of fresh dates and an indescribably ugly black plastic bath mat.
I call him to ‘go round.’ He picks me up and we drive out of town. I don’t say where I want to go, just that I need to be back home at 6pm. “7pm,” he says. He switches on the English language radio station and, carefully avoiding the herds of camels in the road, drives for two hours – beautiful scenery flashes by. I drink the water and eat the ‘pizza’ flavored potato chips he insisted on buying for me.
I trust N with my life on steep, winding roads with camel obstacles; I trust him as he drives lonely roads hours outside town to places I couldn’t find on a map. I get in his taxi, say “Bookcase” and he takes me to the, by his carefully reasoned standards, the best place for bookcases in town.
When I said I was moving to the Middle East and people asked, “Isn’t that dangerous?”, I replied “Not really.” What I meant to say was “I have a lot of fresh dates in my kitchen I am trying to give away and a very ugly black plastic mat I am trying to discreetly throw away.” What I meant to say is, “May I introduce you to N?”
I left Salalah a year ago and am still processing that loss. I miss my friends and so many aspects of Dhofari life, especially:
Long conversations – When you sit down to talk to a friend in Oman, it’s expected you will talk for hours. I miss having coffee with a female friend for 2 or 3 hours; picnic dinners with the research guys which could mean 6 or 7 hours of chatting.
Gorgeous Nature – Pristine, empty beaches; snorkeling over reefs; boat rides, skimming along next to pods of leaping dolphins; sitting in the desert or on a beach with no ambient lights so you could a dark night sky full of stars; green mountains in the monsoon season
Animals – lizards and chameleons; seeing foxes, hearing wolves; the parrots which came to my guava tree; flamingos; camels, especially baby camels
Food – fresh coconut milk, schwarmas, fresh Yemeni bread, lobsters cooked over coals, fresh fruit juice, Balbek (if you know, you know), fresh lemon and mint, fresh fish
Teaching literature and 98% of my students – Although it cost me $100s a year, it was fun buying and reading books as I searched for new poems and stories to teach. It was a joy to craft syllabi with texts from different time periods and cultures with similar characters, plots and/ or themes and then the best part, talking about these texts with students who had great insights and could make connections to other texts and their own lives. Some classes were an uphill climb but in some classes we laughed all semester.
Discussing religion – Everyone I knew believed in God and was up for talking about religious beliefs; I could say, “I will pray for you” and ask, “Will you pray for me?” as a part of ordinary conversations
Multi-cultural everythings – Walking through the grocery store and not knowing what I was looking at: new vegetables, new fruit, words I didn’t understand on jars; all different kinds of clothes and fabrics
Active ethnography – I was always watching, listening, trying to figure out what was going on: What was that word? Why did that person do that? It was exhausting but always interesting
Constantly learning – students were always teaching me new expressions and gestures; the research guys teaching me how to how to drive on sand (only getting stuck three times!), up steep inclines and over rocks
Language barriers – Being able to go through the day without understanding most of the conversations around me was relaxing; now I constantly overhear people venting when I walk home or sit in a café
My truck – Driving in Oman is so fun on flat desert roads, twisting mountain roads, roads that curve along the shoreline
Houses – High ceilings, archways, lots of counter-space in the kitchen, well-designed bathrooms
What’s nice about where I am
Being able to easily see/ talk to friends, my mom and family
Working with kind and competent people: no lying, no back-stabbing, no drama and every single person says “Hello”
Flower stores, especially Kendall Flower Shop, Brattle Square Florist and Petali
Breakfast sandwiches, pizza, salads and ice cream without freezer burn
Not sharing my apartment with mice, spiders, bees or armies of ants – quiet ACs
Come From Away 
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