Author: misschryss

Ejo #14 (Part I) – Invited To An Emirati Wedding; An Inside Look At What Happens Behind The Curtains

Emirati Info, Islam, Learning About Dubai, View all 2 comments

So, it’s 2011.  Happy New Year!  This year, I didn’t make any New Year’s Resolutions.  Nope.  Inspired by a friend, I sat down instead and came up with 11 goals that I wanted to achieve by year’s end.  11 for ’11 (see what I did there?).  One of these goals was to publish an ejo a month for the entire year, so you’ll be hearing a little more from me in 2011 than you have the last couple of years.  But that’s a good thing, right??

So, Australia has the Logie Awards.  The USA ups the glamour quotient significantly with the Oscars.  But let me tell you folks, both of these events pale in comparison beside the extravaganza known as an Emirati Wedding.

In the Middle East, families have been known to go bankrupt in order to put on the most lavish, the most flamboyant, the most grandiose wedding.  Bank loans are common and prices around the 1,000,000 dirham mark are not unheard of, with some escalating to 10,000,000 dirhams and beyond.  It isn’t just about creating a memorable day for the bride and groom.  It becomes a matter of family pride to put on the best wedding of the year.

As an expat, an invitation to one of these things is as common as hen’s teeth (i.e. not very common at all), so if you do get invited to an Emirati wedding, make sure you go.  It doesn’t really matter if you have open heart surgery scheduled for that day, postpone it.  If you are being knighted by the Queen, send someone else to get tapped by a sword.  And if you’re on your deathbed, well, what can I say?  Toughen up princess!  Get out of bed, shake yourself off, put on your Sunday best and get to that wedding – sandstorm, smog or shine!

What I’m trying to say, in case I’m not making myself clear, is that you should go.  It’s an amazing experience.  One which I was lucky enough to be a part of last week when my Emirati manager Omran invited me to his wife’s niece’s wedding.  In fact he invited all the women that work here in the Air Traffic Control tower – I think he did it as an opportunity for us to learn more about the local culture and traditions, and as always I was a willing student.  So, last Wednesday night I donned by best dress (a knee length, silk, Kate Sylvester shift in case you were wondering), slipped on my highest heels (elevating me to a formidable 6’3”), put on my party face and headed off to the Mina A ‘Salam, a five star resort hotel on the beach.

Now, an Emirati wedding reception is just like any other reception in several regards.  In others it is completely different.  The biggest difference is that the couple has usually already been married for the last couple of months.  The marriage ceremony itself is basically the signing of the wedding contract to make the union legal in the eyes of the law (the bride and groom sign separately as they are never in the same room as one another).  After the contract is signed, they are officially married, however they are not permitted to consummate the marriage (wink wink, nudge nudge) until after they hold the reception.  So usually they want to hold it as soon as possible, but convention dictates that they wait a couple of months. 

Just like at the contract signing, at the reception the sexes are kept apart; the men party in one place and the women party in a completely different place and never the twain shall meet.  OK, fair enough; I get the whole Muslim tenet of keeping women’s modesty protected from the hungry eyes of men.  The other major difference (for me anyway) is that of course alcohol is not permitted.  One of my colleagues sweetly suggested that perhaps they would serve booze on the expat table, “out of consideration”.  Yeah, I’m guessing that our needs don’t feature too highly on their list of priorities, and as I suspected there was no liquor at the party.   Not to worry, a few of us got together an hour before the reception at one of the hotel bars to socially lubricate ourselves, the expat way!  So, when we got to the Johara Ballroom, we were by no means raucous (after all, there’d only been time for two cocktails), but we were certainly far more relaxed and receptive to the evening that lay ahead.

OK, allow me to set the scene: At the door, we handed our invitations to the female security detail and were granted entry into another world.  Thousands upon thousands of white rose petals were strewn along the red carpet (yes, red carpet – and the Oscar’s don’t have rose petals do they!) leading into the main room.  Ah, how do I describe the ballroom?  Well, first of all, it’s big.  Very big.  Probably the size of a football field, with cathedral ceilings.  There were 60 tables, each seating 10 – though we were early so the room was empty.  Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING was white.  The chairs were covered in white silk fabric with big bows tied into the back.  Each table had a candlelit mini-chandelier with a large, basketball sized bouquet consisting of white hydrangeas, roses and peonies in the centre.  Two more similar bouquets adorned each side of this.  There was a white catwalk winding through the tables from the centre of the ballroom to the front stage on which was placed a white leather chaise lounge, looking for all the world like a giant throne.  The entire catwalk and stage area was embroidered with a skirt of countless more white flowers.  The overall impression of the room on first entering was like walking into a big, giant, fluffy pavlova.  Yummy!

Even though most of the guests had not yet arrived, there were a great many female servers, divided into two groups.  The Filipina servers were decked out in white shirts and pants, with cute little sequin vests which sparkled under the light.  The Arabic servers on the other hand were all wearing the traditional abaya but these were no ordinary abayas.  They were disco abayas – a brilliant, bright white, and the shelas (headscarves) were all a shimmer from the silver thread and sequins sewed into them.  They dazzled.  Before long my eyes started to hurt and I wished I’d brought my sunglasses to protect them from the glare, but only a moment later the lights were dimmed and the fluffy pavlova turned into a twinkling winter wonderland.

The Filipinas job was to clear the tables and the Arabic ladies poured the tea.  It became increasingly apparent to me that tea serves a very important role in Emirati life.  Gallons of it were being poured all around the room (into cups of course!).  Mint tea poured into beautiful, embellished Moroccan-style teacups.  Tea, sweetened with condensed milk, (a local favourite) served in tiny, porcelain cups and saucers gilded with silver leaf.  And another local traditional tea, the slightly bitter but still delicious za’atar tea poured into tiny crystal-cut goblets.  Of course Arabic coffee spiced with cardamom was also available.  There was no shortage of refreshments (of the non-alcoholic variety that is), and I availed myself of every single offer whilst we waited for the rest of the guests to arrive.

And this, people, is when the show really started.  Let me explain it this way.  When I put on my $400 dress that evening, I got dressed knowing that the wedding was going to be a glamorous affair.  What I didn’t expect was that my little outfit by a New Zealand designer would be put to shame by the sophisticated confections of sartorial giants.  Chanel, Versace, Dior, Gucci, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Lanvin, Louis Vuitton, Balmain, Givenchy, Prada.  Every single person that walked through that door looked like they belonged on some Hollywood best dressed list.  They looked better than movie stars.  They looked amazing.  I might as well have turned up in overalls.  And guess what?  I couldn’t exactly hide or blend in, as when I stood up I was at least half a foot taller than anyone else in the room.  Damn those 5” heels!

What I’m attempting to say is that these women weren’t wearing dresses or frocks.  They were wearing gowns.  Stunning, drop-dead-gorgeous, worth-thousands-of-dollars, gowns.  They had all, without doubt, spent their afternoons reclining for hours while someone had tended to their hair and make up.  And I’m not even going to talk about the diamonds.  Suffice to say that the contents of that room were worth millions of dirhams – I don’t even want to try to calculate how many.  Let’s just call it LOTS!

So this red carpet parade took a couple of hours, and by 10.30pm, 550 perfectly groomed women had sat down at their tables, the room now a sea of jewel-coloured dresses.  Emerald, sapphire, ruby, amethyst.  A rainbow of couture.  It was beautiful to behold.  But no sooner had I started to admire all the colours than a veritable Mexican wave of black spread over the room from back to front.  The ladies were all throwing their black abayas back on and covering their up-do’s with their shelas.  This could mean only one thing – a man was about to enter the room!

And that dear friends, is where I shall leave it for this month!  To find out what happened next, tune in to February’s ejo.

Bye til then

Chryss

Ejo #13 – My Life As An Air Traffic Controller at Al Maktoum International Airport and Introducing You To Dangerous Doug

Air Traffic Control, Dangerous Doug, Learning About Dubai, Writing, , , , , View all 9 comments

OK, I’ve had writer’s block.  To be honest, I’ve never really been able to write very easily when I’m employed as an Air Traffic Controller.  Perhaps that’s just an excuse, or maybe it has something to do with how I need to use the different sides of my brain.  Let’s go with the latter (though we all know it’s almost definitely the former).  There’s nothing like a bit of self-denial to get the ball rolling anyway.  But at least it’s rolling.

So, most of you know that I’m employed as an ATC at Al Maktoum International, the new airport in Dubai.  Some of you are aware that the airport has had a most unillustrious beginning.  Meaning that so far there’s been virtually no air traffic.  Before the airport actually opened we were warned of (and dismayed at the prospect of dealing with) only 60 movements a day.  And no, a movement (in this case anyway) has nothing to do with going to the toilet.  It refers to the number of times an aircraft uses the runway.  So an aircraft that lands at midday and then takes off two hours later counts as two movements.  So 60 is not very many considering that when I left Melbourne Tower we were handling 500-600 a day.  And it’s absolute peanuts compared to what David handles at Dubai International Airport – over 900 a day and creeping towards a grand.

So sure, the thought of 60 movements a day was somewhat disheartening.  But the reality has eventuated as even more depressing.  Honestly, the most movements I’ve ‘controlled’ in a single shift has been about eight.  Which is why (you may have noticed) I’ve not once referred to myself as ‘working’ as an ATC but rather as being ’employed’ as one.  There’s a vast difference.

Still, I am employed.  And the fact is that one day Al Maktoum International is slated to be the largest airport in the world (of course!).  It will have five parallel runways and be capable of processing 160,000,000 passengers a year.  That’s a lot.  But really, that reality is a long way off, and so I have been confronted with the question of, “What should I do with my time?”.  I started off whiling the hours at work away by playing solitaire on the computer.  Not very productive and it got very boring, very quickly.  So I decided to do a little bit of self-education (and make a bit of money hopefully) by studying investing.  You know, so that I could be more informed about dabbling in the stockmarket.  Well, what I learned is that I shouldn’t dabble in the stockmarket.  I also managed to learn a few other valuable bits of info though; enough to actually feel comfortable investing in equities for the first time in my life.  I am now the proud owner of a (very) small percentage of a few banks and a mining company.  Thrilling.  Now I just have to hold onto the shares that I’ve bought and in about 30 years I’ll have made my fortune.  But that still doesn’t answer my question of what to do in the meantime???

I decided, dear friends, that rather than do a course by correspondence (which is an idea I seriously flirted with), what I would do is snuggle up to my other dear old friends, words.  And I would, once more, make a serious attempt at writing something fit for publication.  So now, what I have is an idea to work on, plenty of opportunity (with the added bonus of being paid to do it), the equipment (a desk has finally arrived in the tower break room), a New Year’s Resolution to have the first draft of a book finished by the end of 2011, and absolutely NO MORE EXCUSES.

Wish me luck (again) please.

Oh, before I bid you all adieu, I have been reminded that in my last ejo I promised you all a funny story.  OK then, here it is:

I work with a wonderfully weird (and simply lovely) guy called Doug.  I want you all to get acquainted with Doug because he is the protagonist at the centre of countless strange and bizarre experiences and stories, which I would like to share with you over time.

Anyway, Doug is a never-married (but twice-engaged) gentleman in his fifties, though he doesn’t look that old as he takes very good care of himself.  Saying that though, I must also point out that Doug has absolutely no ego whatsoever.  He’ll always be the first to laugh at himself in any situation (and trust me, there are many, many situations).  I want to be as frank as possible here: the man is a poo magnet.  If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong when Doug is around, and furthermore it will go wrong in spectacular fashion.

To wit:  One day, several years ago, Doug was in his apartment (in Sharjah, a UAE emirate) making a late night cheese and tomato sauce sandwich (gross, right?).  Anyway, while making his midnight snack he was watching a show on TV, something related to surgery (possibly Dr. 90210 – I don’t really know).  Now, I’m not sure if Doug already knew that he had a tendency to faint at the sight of blood, or if it was a trait that he discovered that very night.  Suffice to say, he saw some blood on the TV show and fainted at the sight of it, and in doing so he dropped the knife to the kitchen floor.  Also on his way down, he banged his head on the kitchen bench knocking himself out cold for the next fifteen minutes.

What happened in that fifteen minutes reads like some kind of screwball comedy but I promise you all of it is true.  His downstairs neighbour (who’d been taking a bath when she heard the thump as he hit the floor like a sack of spuds), jumped out of the bath, into a robe and ran upstairs to see what the matter was.  She knocked frantically on the door and after getting no response she flung the door open, only to find Doug on the floor in the kitchen, unconscious, with blood pouring out of the wound in his head where he’d struck it on the bench.  She immediately rang for an ambulance, which turned up a short time later with a couple of police officers in tow.

The cops took one look at the scene: an apparently dead man on the floor with blood gushing out of his head, a red spattered butcher’s knife flung across the kitchen floor and a badly shaken, half naked, female neighbour in hysterics.  They quickly concluded the obvious.  The neighbour had murdered Doug.  She was promptly arrested.

Then, to shake things up a bit, Doug started regaining consciousness and protesting his neighbour’s innocence.  This, contrary to what you might imagine, did not actually help things.  What it did was lead the cops to wonder why this lady had tried (albeit failing in the attempt) to kill Doug and they came up with the only logical solution.  He must have tried to rape her.  It makes sense.  She was scantily clad, he tried to rape her, she defended herself by stabbing him in the head with a knife.  The case was all wrapped up.  And so, they arrested him too.

The two of them were then taken to the police station to be booked with their respective charges amid increasingly hysterical declarations of innocence that were only heeded once a senior police officer took the time to examine the knife more closely and discovered that the red stuff was indeed just tomato sauce and not Doug’s blood after all.  Both were let off with a warning (oh yes!): they should not have been alone in the house together as they were neither married nor related by blood.

Sharjah Police: 1, Doug: 0.

Next time I’ll relate how Doug managed to even-steven the score.  Til then, I wish you all a fabulous Xmas and I hope 2011 brings you all abundant joy, health and happiness.

Kiss

Chryss

PS David says hi!

Ejo #12 – Emirati National Dress: The Dishdash and The Abaya explained

Emirati Info, Islam, Learning About Dubai, , , , , , View all 21 comments

I’m lucky enough to work with an Emirati who is extremely open and more than happy to answer pretty well any question about his country, culture and religion.  His name is Omran and over the last six months I’ve discussed many, many interesting things with him.  I’d really like to share some of what I’ve learnt with you.  Let me tell you about the national dress of Emirati men and women.  I’ll start with the men as there’s a lot less controversy about what they wear.

 

Arab men wear an ankle length, dress-like tunic (usually with long sleeves) which is called a khandoura.  It is also known as a dishdash which is a much cuter name, I think.  Contrary to popular belief the dishdash is not required to be worn by men for any religious reason.  It is more a traditional outfit of the region, which has been adopted because of its versatility in the desert climate.  It protects the wearer’s skin from direct sunlight while providing very good ventilation under the ‘skirt’.  And of course the white fabric reflects sunlight, keeping the wearer cooler.

 

But white wasn’t always the traditional colour of the khandoura.  Apparently in the olden days the dishdash used to be a more sandy coloured fabric – for rather obvious reasons.  Now that every household has easy access to dry cleaners and can buy bleach at the local supermarket, it has evolved into a very brilliant white outfit.  I am constantly amazed by how bright and clean their whites are.  I know for sure that if I wore a dishdash, it would have coffee stains on it before I even left the house in the morning.

 

It’s not actually decreed anywhere what colour a dishdash is supposed to be so you often see younger guys being a bit more adventurous.  I’ve seen navy and I’ve seen a kind of pale green.  And I’ve seen several shades of brown, from light cream to dark chocolate and even black (which looks rather smart in my opinion).  So while there is variety, I am yet to see anything too crazy or out there.  No pinks or purples, but they do apparently exist.  I’m also pretty sure that Burberry do a dishdash in their signature check.  I sure would love to see that.

 

Another way the Emirati dudes express themselves sartorially is with the headscarf, which is part of their traditional outfit.  You do occasionally see an Arab guy in a dishdash without the headscarf (known as a ghoutra – no it’s not a tea towel, though, yes, they do sometimes resemble kitchen linens), but more often than not they are worn together.  The black coil holding the ghoutra onto their heads is called an igal, and it’s sole purpose is to hold the scarf in place.

 

The ghoutra, you may have noticed, comes in a range of different colours and styles.  All Arabs can wear the white ghoutra (it’s kind of like wearing blue jeans, it’s a staple but it doesn’t really say anything about you).  But each country in the area also has their very own special check pattern in addition to that.  This can be compared to the Scottish clans each having their own tartan check.  It identifies the wearer as belonging to a certain tribe or place.  The Palestinian national check is a large black and white pattern (as worn by the late Yasser Arafat).  The UAE national ghoutra is a small-sized, red and white check.  Actually you’ve probably seen it.  It seemed to gain prominence last year worn as a scarf around the necks of pretty young things around the world.  I’m pretty sure I saw a picture of Elle Macpherson wearing one once.

 

In addition to the pattern on the ghoutra it may also be worn in several different styles depending on how the wearer feels that day or what image he wants to project.  He can just wear it flat across the head or he may pull one side of it over the top of his head, or even twist it at the back kind of like a loose, long braid.  And when he’s feeling sporty he can wrap it around his head, bedouin style, with all the loose ends tucked in.

 

A few people from back home have expressed interest in what is worn underneath the dishdash.  To be honest, I haven’t actually discussed this with Omran, though I’m pretty sure he’d be more than happy to chat to me about it.  Anyway, from my own observations it would appear that, at the very least, they wear a t-shirt or singlet (‘wifebeater’ for my American friends).  I’m pretty sure the dishdash has some kind of  extra fabric around the nether regions (kind of like a skirt) but as for whether or not they wear underpants, this has not been so easy to determine from my casual and furtive glances.  If I had to say I would probably guess that they go commando.  Which is an interesting though when you consider what would happen should a young man wearing a dishdash become unexpectedly aroused (as young men are wont to do).  I’ve never seen it happen so perhaps there is some form of undergarment being worn.  Who knows??  It’s fun to think about anyway.

 

OK, so onto the women.  As opposed to the men, who are wearing the dishdash because of where they’re from, the women wear their national dress because of the religion they believe in.  They are required by the Qur’an to cover up with a loose cloth (in the Middle East, this covering is known as an abaya, and the headscarf is known as a shela).  According to the good book, women are required to hide their ‘ornaments’ in public.  ‘Ornaments’ has been interpreted to mean a woman’s body and hair which is why they cover them up.  Unfortunately, the more extreme Muslims of the world have a tendency to take what the Qur’an says and then try to amplify it in the belief that Allah will think they are better Muslims.  In this case they have decreed that a woman’s ‘ornaments’ means the entire woman, thus forcing her to also cover her face and hands.  From what little I know, this is not actually correct in the eyes of Islam but it is what is sensationally distributed around the world, leading to misinformation.

 

Another misconception is that women are forced to wear the abaya in order to prevent Muslim men from being overcome with passion.  This is bollocks.  First of all (in Dubai at least), Muslim men are exposed to women’s body bits every day as most of the women here are expats.  Secondly, no-one forces the women to wear the abaya (again, I speak only for Dubai).  They are actually proud to wear it.  This is worth repeating (and I’m not exaggerating it or making it up).  They are proud to wear the abaya.  I’m telling you, if you saw a group of young Emirati women in the mall walk past you, their black robes swishing around them, you could only describe them as regal.  It actually gives them a power – because only they know what is underneath the robe.  And it’s not a power that only the observer imagines.  You can see that they are more than aware of it themselves.  It was wonderful to realise this when I first came here, because just like everyone else, I assumed that they were being oppressed by having to wear it.  Not so.

 

Plus, in recent years, particularly with younger women, it has become quite the fashion to decorate the abaya with all manner of shiny things – like sequins, glittery thread and even Swarovski crystals.  Funny how the garment that they are wearing to hide their ornaments is now covered in them.  But they are pretty, and it is big business.  Even the major designers are jumping on the bandwagon and designing the black robes.  Christian Dior, Chanel, Gucci.  They all make abayas and charge up to 30,000dhs for them (that’s about AUD$10,000).  So tell me, if you’re wearing a Dolce & Gabbana abaya, are you really being oppressed???

 

The original purpose of the abaya is to protect a woman’s modesty – I suppose this could be interpreted as meaning it is required in order to prevent a man’s uncontrollable lust???  I don’t know.  What I do know is that, according to Islam, only her husband has the right to see a woman’s body.  Perhaps I’m romanticising it but I think that’s kind of cool.  I certainly know that some days I would love to have the option of wrapping an abaya around myself and stepping out in the world with no-one being able to see what I’m wearing underneath.  Admittedly those are either ‘fat’ days when my jeans are a bit tight and I just want to go out in tracksuit pants, or when everything else I own is in the wash.

 

OK, that’s it for now.  I had a funny story to tell you (unrelated to dishdashes and abayas) but this has turned into quite a long ejo so I’ll save it for the next one.  I’m sure by then I’ll have more than just one funny story to tell.  I promise, promise, promise not to take three months before I write to you again.