Slumberjack

Our landlord and neighbor, Nabil, has become something more than a friend to us, taking on a role that I can only describe as Crazy Adoptive Uncle from Arabia. He is a guide of sorts, offering the type of insider information that only locals hold, such as the fact that there's both a corner store and laundry service randomly situated within the interior of our little suburban beach community. Although these convenient outposts are only a few blocks from our door, I probably wouldn't have ever noticed them, as a combination of speed bumps and oddly disconnected streets might have kept me off that block indefinitely. 

Nabil is also a conspiracy theorist of sorts, tilting his head down and looking at us appraisingly as he asks "you know the real story though, right?" What follows is often a mixture of healthy political skepticism, outright paranoia, and the occasional cultural roadblock that must be ignored. We are guests here after all, and I'm not about to start an argument. He has a lot to say that I agree with, for instance, we've both come to the conclusion that Hollywood's depiction of Islam is ham-handed and narrow. Naturally action films need bad guys, and so the world's small population of Jihadists have become the Commies of today's cinema.

Recently, Nabil announced that operating a chainsaw was his new hobby, and as his next door neighbor, I can attest that he's taken to this emerging sport with impressive zeal. Over the last several months the weather in Dubai has been nearly perfect, and in appreciation of this fact Nabil and family have moved operations into their large courtyard. We joined them there for Sangria, late one night a few months back, and I was impressed by the crackling fire and the large cache of wood stacked up along the side of the house. At some point, Vanessa asked him where he got the wood from, and he replied: "Oh you know, around the neighborhood." That night, Nabil's standard uniform, a white dishsadasha, bore the rosy smudges of an evening spent around a punchbowl full of wine and fruit. More recently, his clothes been marked by dust and bark .

We'd already heard the chainsaw several times by the afternoon when Nabil announced his new hobby, and he has very considerately offered to sheath his mighty saw if the noise ever becomes a nuisance: "One missed call from you and I will know; too much noise." And while the roar of a power tool, firing up around 11pm on a weeknight, might be annoying in another context, we can't help but turning to each other and laughing when we hear his late night lumberjack's song. Lying there in bed, it's easy to imagine him next door, his smile bright and menacing as he cuts into some tree trunk he's liberated from a construction site.

After repeatedly promising to let him know if the noise ever became a problem, an unexpected series of gifts began to appear in the front yard. Ever since we moved in we'd been talking about planting a tree to replace one that had died and been torn out. We even made it so far as to buy a tree at a nursery, only to return it and generate an, as of  yet, unused credit at a store that will probably go out of business soon. So we were surprised to wake up one morning to find that a tree had been planted in the sandy spot where we'd burned our prayer sticks on New Years Eve.

It wasn't until the second, and then third new plant appeared in the yard that I began to suspect that the mighty chainsaw had been wielded in our favor. We had regularly shared in the noise of the saw, now we would share in its bounty. At the same time, the apartment next door is vacant, and I regularly hear Nabil conducting open houses, his sales pitch goes: "where else in Dubai can you have private garden with apartment? I will tell you; nowhere." So I also suspect that the garden value proposition is being ratcheted up as rents continue to decline all over the city. It may also be a conciliatory gesture to those of us locked in at the old, higher rates-- especially those of us with (hopefully one time) mold problems.

We learned a few months ago that the four identical houses being built across the street from as, as pictured above, aren't the polygamist compound we'd imagined, but four cookie cutter rental properties. Vanessa had set upon the polygamy theory because, while multiple wives are acceptable amongst the wealthy here, the Koran apparently indicates that each wife should have an equally plush Villa and Teutonic SUV. Our dream of having quasi Mormon neighbors was dashed when it was revealed by another neighbor that the property belongs to a group of disgruntled half brothers, themselves the product of polygamy, who have erected the four identical villas at the suggestion of the Chief of Police. The Chief, who lives nearby, apparently wanders the streets at night, mediating complicated family disputes. Nabil should be careful, lest the pedestrian lawman stumble across one of his late night poaching sprees, which by the way, must be pretty damn loud. And so, the progress of these houses has served as a visual marker of our time here, each one changing a little each day, as our understanding of Dubai continues to evolve.

Return to Oman

This past weekend we drove over to Dibba, part of the Omani annex that lies, disconnected from contiguous Oman, at the northwestern tip of the UAE. Dibba is a sleepy fishing village with a few resorts, just over the border from Fujairah. We had followed our friends Jane and Andy from Dubai, trusting their many years of experience as Safari guides in the African bush would help lead us to our destination. In fact, this particular UAE/Oman border crossing is more relaxed than the main Oman border, and I was able to present Vanessa's passport while she slept heavily in the passenger seat. Still, the ever watchful UAE border police did wonder aloud about her prone position, and I assured them that she was only napping. 

We set up camp at the end of a long beach, as far as possible from the moronic escapades of several full size SUVs, one monster truck, and two quad bikes-- one of which appeared to be hobbled by some mechanical ailment that perhaps inspired the removal of the muffler from the second, otherwise working, vehicle. The overcompensating quad's throaty roar seemed to shake the canyon behind us as the rider dumped the clutch, thrusting his front wheels into the air and tearing across the beach. The bike's flatulence reminded me of one morning last year, when I started up my small Toyota pickup to find that thieves had stolen my catalytic converter in the night, disabling the exhaust system in the bargain and earning me a lot of unwanted attention as I drove through a throng of critical mass riders later that morning.

Eventually, the automotive revelers were replaced by a paramilitary dance group, whose chanting, drumming and inexplicable psychedelic organ playing continued into the wee hours. We did our best to ignore them, cooking over an open flame, and enjoying the fresh air and multiplying stars from our graffitied corner of the beach.

The next day we drove back accross the border and breakfasted at Le Meridien, also home to the dive center that would take us Snorkeling/Diving that afternoon. As it turns out, a red tide had suffocated the reef months earlier, cutting off its sunlight for weeks at a time, and the resultant destruction had severely impacted the ecosystem. There were a few sharks, clown fish, and eels on hand, but the amount of sea life was hugely decreased since Vanessa's visit there six months ago. Still, it felt wonderful to be out on the water, and the weather was absolutely perfect.

On the return trip we stopped at a road side market to buy two clay pots for our front porch, and met a few local characters in the bargain. We met a man in yellow sweater emblazoned with the number 23, who explained that he had been a sailor and truck driver all over the world. Upon hearing that we were from California, he listed off the numerous port cities that he'd visited before coming to the UAE and buying his own long haul rig. I tried to give my new good buddy a big ten four, but he shook his head, walking away in quiet disgust. We negotiated with the merchants, shaving a dirham or two off the price here and there, sampling fruits we'd never seen or heard of, and ultimately declining to try the salted sardines, which sat heaped in the late afternoon sun, flies festering from every nook and cranny. It was the perfect end to our brief escape from what has become a festering nook in its own right, as the unexpectedly wet winter has brought an outbreak of mold to our poorly ventilated apartment-- not to worry though, Sheriff Bleach has recently arrived on the scene, and all is well in Arabia.