Saltymoon

Each day, late in the afternoon, I depart on what I have termed my lone lunar ramble, a tour of our corner of Jumeirah that deposits me on the shores of the Arabian Gulf with just enough sunlight left for a short run. This walk/run only revealed itself as a solo venture because my hard working wife seldom makes it home from the green salt mine in time to join me. Please don't assign any bitterness to that term, the salt mine is Miller family shorthand for the workplace, an expression that resonates with this anti-carreerist soul. I could not be more proud of her hard work and accomplishments, having waited so long for the building world to catch up with her hard won knowledge. 

The lunar nature of my jaunt derives, in part, from the initially coarse quality of the sand. When I cross the midpoint of this extremely wide beach, the sand takes on the smooth tropical grain of Costa Rica or Hawaii. This is because of Dubai's immense off shore dredging project, an undertaking which pulls the soft floor of the seabed up into the light of day so that it can be reconstituted into man made islands and redistributed by the truckload along the city's shore. Each twilight the long shadows of winter nudge the senses into a state of confusion amidst November's unexpected fever.

Add to that the fact that I am an alien here, and revel in the feeling of detachment that comes with this, as I have the luxury to observe from amidst the relative invisibility afforded me by my hobo resort wear. I'm like Twain's displaced yankee, albeit from the west and lacking a machine gun. In this way, being here is not unlike my personal experience of junior high school, this time without the oversexed aggressivity of classmates. That sort of hormonal/adrenal frenzy is reserved for the UAE's roadways, which aren't so very different from the hallways of PJHS.

A few days ago, the big toe on my right foot was attacked by a camouflaged rock. I was strolling down the beach in my usual state of post-run disarray when this dense congregation of atoms reached up and bit me. My response was to howl in a manner that even my eleven day old niece would find offensive. Sonia has already established a quiet dignity that I can never hope to emulate. As such, I've been absent from the beach for a few days, but I should be making my re-entry soon. I did make one limping circuit recently, carrying the camera with me to document my route. Immediately outside our gate I ran into Makhboub, our villa's resident handyman. Vanessa and I were recently rewarded with a fish of our own from one of Makhboub and Nabil's weekly trips, I've also been invited to come along sometime, which is exciting. We successfully gutted and scaled our prize, a local hamour white fish, opting to bake it nestled in a riot of cilantro and lemon, all wrapped up in tinfoil like an insane birthday present.

Currently, our beach is home to a perimeter of red flags which are intended to keep visitors out of the water, although there is no signage indicating why, and in some places the flags are at least 50 yards back from the shore. At the sailing club, a beach near our tiny apartment, a sign perched atop an improvised fence announces that the sea is "Closed for Renovations". I have never seen the ocean fenced and corralled the way it is here in Dubai, where private beaches are often closed in by 12 foot tall fences that run some 30 yards out into the water. There's not much that can be done about the current biohazard, aside from waiting, as this poorly documented health risk is the result of untold tanker loads of raw sewage that were covertly dumped here. Eventually, a whistle blower phoned in the strange behavior of a driver seen pulling back a manhole cover that had been outfitted with an improvised handle, lowering his truck's hose down the opening, and opening the release valve. These sewage transfer drivers have apparently acted out of frustration as Dubai's grossly impacted sewage treatment plant regularly has lines of trucks waiting for hours on end to empty their bowels.

While the not-so-free local press is typically allergic to controversy, they did wisely chose to cover the sewage scandal, although one wonders what percentage of Dubai's vast army of impoverished day laborers are actually literate. In any event, the typical cast of scatophobia averse bathers, as seen in the water on any given afternoon, seems to represent a broad socioeconomic cross-section of Dubai's inhabitants, so perhaps these brave souls are just avowed antibiotic users. As for me, I'll be staying dry for a while yet.