Happy New Year everyone!

We've had a lot of visitors coming through, which is great for Iola and us too. It started with John's sister Melanie, who came for Christmas. We went to Jordan with her. Iola started calling her Titi. She left on New Year's Eve's afternoon, which we celebrated after dropping her off at the airport in Dubai on her way to Paris. We drove back to Abu Dhabi and invited a couple from downstairs to hang out on our patio. 

Colin Wambsgans came on New Year's day, and was here for twelve days on his winter break from CalArts-composing-grad-school. He'd been really excited about going to Yemen, but the US and British embassies there closed down because of the bomber connections, and it didn't seem like a good time to go, what with the ongoing war going on in the north and south of Sanaa too. I was secretly relieved about the embassies. I'd been nervous about bringing Iola. I probably would have stayed inside the whole time, looking at the city -- purportedly the most beautiful in the world -- through hotel windows. Instead John and Colin went to a Yemeni restaurant, and loved it. We did go to the Mussandam peninsula in Oman, though, and camped on a beautiful little beach right by an ancient Omani cemetery. We went swimming in the morning, the water was perfect and there were little tropical fish everywhere, and we hiked up a cliff and looked down onto sea turtles. We drove to Khasab and explored a fort museum, and took a boat out for two hours to see the archipelago from the water. It was a lot of driving for just one night, but still great to get out and see it again. It had been a year since John, Iola and I went with Lauren and her Portuguese friend. That time we camped on top of the cliff, not realizing our little car could make it down to the beach. You have to do everything at least once here, before doing it right the next time. On our way back to Abu Dhabi we tried to stop at the Burj Dubai/Khalifa, but it was too frustrating. You have to enter from the Dubai Mall, the biggest mall in the world, which is a terrifying place. Last time we went to that mall John and I lost each other, and Iola was three months old, and neither of us had our phones, and I couldn't remember where the car was parked. I sat outside a restroom and cried for forty minutes until he found us. He'd been frantically running around to multiple restrooms looking for us. Maybe the Dubai Mall will require three times before we get it right.

We had a couple days to ourselves and then my friend Maggie Cummings came with her fiance Matt from Boston on their way to India. They only stayed for two days and were really interested in markets and old stuff, so we went to the fish market at Meena and the old souq and museum in Dubai. We also stopped in time for the tour of the grand mosque, which gets more beautiful every day. Now they are gone; I dropped them off at the airport this morning.

We are breathlessly waiting for Nathan and Kelly to come day after tomorrow with their baby Loretta. We haven't met Loretta yet, despite being so close for so many months. We want to go camping with them too, maybe to Wadi Bih, but we have to rent a bigger car to fit the babyseats and all of us. Right after we drop them off, John, Iola and I are heading to Cambodia. John is doing a story on the resettlement of Phnom Penh after the fall of the Khmer Rouge for the Review, dusting off some old notes from when he lived there, and I'll write something on traveling with Iola. We're staying with Brian Calvert, who we lived with in DC and haven't seen in two years. We'll be back on the 31st of January, and then... John and Martha arrive on February 2nd! They will stay until the first week of March.

In the background of all this, we took on a roommate to reduce our rent. Mohamed is a New Yorker-Egyptian, we really like him, he works a lot and Iola calls him Hamed. He's 22 and comes from a big family so he jokes with her a lot. I don't know how long he'll stay with us; but it's nice for now. 

It's been a really arduous week for Iola. Thank goodness she can unwind on her new swing!


Arduous because it was my first week of "work." I can't call it work without quotation marks until I get paid, which is not forseeable. I told my "boss" that I don't mind working for free to learn the ropes of the import-export world of Abu Dhabi, but I sure didn't come all the way here to lose money, which is exactly what happened this week, since childcare isn't free anymore. At least the hours are flexible.

Hence Iola's stress. She's learning Pashto from her wonderful babysitter, but so far that learning has only been exhibited in a shrinking of her english vocabulary. While we were in America she spoke about 20 words fairly commonly, and now they have condensed to four: mama, daddy, ball, wee! But mostly mama. Meanwhile her other tools of expressiveness have expanded; when she wants to go for a walk she brings her shoes and points at her backpack and won't take no for an answer.

My "boss" has a lot of colorful stories about Abu Dhabi; he's been here for 35 years. One time, he took a bunch of money out of the bank and put it in an envelope and stuck it in his briefcase. During the course of the day he put it on his desk, where it was forgotten when he left for home. That night he got a call from the airport saying one of his staff members was trying to leave the country. The guy was apprehended with the money and charged with theft.

It turns out that when you are the sponsor for anyone's employment visa, you are notified by SMS or a call when they pass through immigration. Then you have half an hour to figure out why they are leaving the country and can request airport authorities to stop them before they board the plane. Sponsors have a lot of power. This was very interesting to me; I hadn't thought through or heard that detail before.

It is the Haj Eid tomorrow, as well as Thanksgiving, so all the grocery stores are low on supplies. We are celebrating on Friday.

I have a video of this swinging evening at vimeo.

Jet lag is hard. It seems like it gets harder, too, as iola gets older. She is more tightly tied to daylight rhythms, so the 12 hour change between California and Abu Dhabi creates a strong biological lag. I read a couple months back that there are hundreds of biological processes that operate on a diurnal schedule, some are quick to adjust and others take up to ten days. We are on day four now, and it has been the first semi-normal sleep day. It's harder here, too, because we don't have the external rhythms of a tight community to keep us going, so sometimes a seven hour nap seems like the perfect way to spend the day. I tried to plan things for our days, but I kept accidentally sleeping through them.
 
Until this afternoon, when we went to a "Breastfeeding Tea." We walked from our apartment to OnetoOne hotel, where they'd set up tables in the garden and had sandwiches and tea for hundreds of breastfeeding moms and their babies. We got there just before it ended, due to napping. As soon as we arrived I spied the woman who had been our lactation consultant the day we were discharged from the Corniche hospital 15 months ago to the day. She spied me and John too, and said she remembered us, and I totally believe her, though there are 900 births per month at the Corniche. John was the only man in attendance but she said it was ok, so he helped himself to four sandwiches. She said she wanted to make us a breastfeeding certificate, and was being followed around by other moms eager for their certificates, and when she turned to fill theirs out I cracked jokes with John about adding the certificate to my resume, under "awards and certficates." Eventually she filled mine out, and I took it and chatted with her and another midwife that I remembered from my many visits to the Corniche. Pretty soon iola wanted to leave, so we started walking back home, cracking more jokes about the certificate, which I was carefully holding. As we were walking I opened it to read it and suddenly started bawling. So much for all my jokes. It's nice to have a certificate for something that has been a lot of work. I'm grateful to the Corniche for making it. Here it is, everyone:

I'm sorry to have taken such a long break from writing. The break started because I wanted to say something thoughtful and summing up about censorship and Kelly's NPR piece about press freedom in the UAE. Then the stakes were high and my thoughts didn't sum. And I started putting more updates on facebook, nothing of substance, but it took the urgency out of my need to share iola's brilliant accomplishments. And I started traveling.

The other night I interviewed an Iraqi woman for a section of the Saturday paper called "home and away." It's an as-told-to thing, asking expats in Abu Dhabi about their conception of home: where they have lived; what home means to them; if they still have homes in their home countries; if their perspective of home has changed through moving. I've done a few of these, and they are such nice conversations about travel, art, cooking, the sea (everyone mentions the sea), relationships, and finding people of similar brainwaves in the places that they end up. This woman left Baghdad in 2006 and moved to Jordan for two years and then came here. So you can imagine, a bit, how war has shaped her conception of home. My interview with her increased the drama quotient by so much that I almost felt silly sending it into the editors. I can't quote it because it's not published yet, but it was so wonderful speaking with her and getting a sense of perspective on the beauty of Abu Dhabi right at a time when I was feeling sinister undertones living in a country without free speech laws. Abu Dhabi is an oasis. It is other things as well, I don't mean to diminish the road ahead, or the bumps behind. But there's a start: The National finally wrote up a piece on the torture video, which I applaud. It is written by "staff," and is conservative and protective in its language, and that is fine. It has been a year. I remind myself: A year. There is a lot of broken trust to build.

               

The evening I interviewed Zahraa, I noticed a restaurant in the ground floor of her building that looked like a healthfoody California place, so I stopped and looked at the menu. Whole wheat pancakes with orange syrup! Poached eggs! I decided we had to try it this weekend. So we walked there this morning. It was tragic. The pancakes were the size of two bites, the thickness of a crepe, and the leatheriness of a shoe. The orange syrup was orange juice thickened with corn starch. Our hopes were dashed. It turned out to be a restaurant for diabetics and heart patients, run by a hospital. But we had a nice walk getting there and while we were there iola took her very first abstract photo, entitled rose's legs:

                                       
She was the only one who enjoyed her meal of honeydew melon, after playing in the empty (of course!) BiteRite cafe. At least it was cheap. I came home and made a grilled cheese sandwich.

Also, this is a cute one that'll make you hungry for watermelon.           

So much bad news about the UAE.

So much good news about Iola.

I landed in Abu Dhabi on May 19th, 2008. In three weeks, we'll be evaluating our year, and reevaluating the decision to stay.

I have lots of opinions about the bad news. Also about Iola. She is getting so much smarter. Yesterday, for instance, I offered her a potato wedge, which I was eating with ketchup. She took it, looked at the ketchup, looked at the potato, and then rubbed it in the ketchup. I can't say dipped, exactly, because she got a lot on her fingers. She wasn't too impressed, but she tried it twice, so it couldn't have been that bad. It made me wonder what other things she has been imitating, besides banging on the xylophone, trying to stand up, grabbing the mouse and obsessing over the keyboard and cell phone. Does she think she sounds exactly like us when she talks?

The slave society, torture video stuff...
Johann Hari wrote a piece in The Independent that had good reporting but faulty conclusions. He wrote that Dubai has been built by slaves. There are too many people who choose to come here without being duped to call it a slave society. That's my opinion. There are those who have been lied to by recruiters about the salary or the type of job, and those recruiters are human traffickers. Part of me thinks this: there are millions of South Asians and Filipinos here. Those wishing to get a job in the Gulf should do their due diligence about the job, ask friends of friends for contacts and the low-down, and not go into debt to put their lives in the hands of sketchy people. They are desperate and without resources to ask questions, so it is cold-hearted of me to place the burden of responsibility on them. Primary responsibility lies within the source country. Recruiters are operating in India or Pakistan or the Philipines, enslaving their citizens, and should be apprehended as criminals. There should be coding and permits and hotlines and inspections, and potential laborers should go through licensed recruiters. The UAE government should cooperate with data sharing and criminal prosecution for illegalities that occur, but mostly it happens in deceiving people before they arrive. Lastly, the UAE construction companies need to address their supply chain labor issues. If they cared about responsibility, they would. But they won't care about it until it is exposed as an outrage, because that's the way companies work, and that's why a free press is great.

Which leads me to the torture video. The story is that a grain delivery man was tortured by someone in the royal family. The real story, though, is that there were police in uniform* involved, and that the UAE government performed a review and found that "all rules, policies and procedures were followed correctly by the Police Department." Which sounds ridiculous, though I don't know the laws. I wonder, will this make people within the UAE government realize why the media glare is important - to keep irregular members of the family from creating havoc, and a government from sounding ridiculous? People, corporations, and governments are all more likely to behave when they think someone is watching. For me the pressing question is this: is it realistic to believe that a free press as an institution can be built slowly over time? There is so much defensiveness about the Western press being critical and even racist of the UAE, that I'm not sure the positive externalities of a free press is registering. Most people here don't realize western press is also critical of the west itself. Critical of everything, biting, nagging: doing its job. Holding people accountable.

The National has been silent. One year is not long enough to build a free press in Abu Dhabi. 

*maybe not police, instead security guards? Conflicting reports. There are some interesting comments on this on the UAE Community Blog, especially by khulood: "admitting shortcomings is the first step to greatness, and believe me, we ARE on our way." So that's hopeful.

Back to Iola:
     I took these yesterday in Khalidiya Park. Couple minutes after the climbing practice video.

Sometimes people ask me how I spend a normal day. I just had a normal day! And I feel like writing, so I'll tell you all about it.

I woke up at 5:45 annoyed at iola for squirming in bed. I picked her up and plopped her in the crib in the other room, expecting her to scream while I grumpily buried my head in the pillow. She went right to sleep, and I was so surprised it took me a minute to relax. I woke up again at 7:30 to her cry, and pushed John out of the bed to get her. He said he had to take a shower and get ready to go to Dubai for a labor camp tour, so I told him to let her crawl around in the hall while he shower, because I needed more sleep. I gave up a couple minutes later... ok, I have to pick up the pace of this day-story. Forgot breakfast while I checked Facebook, got a message from Lauren saying she was going to Dubai, arranged for John and Lauren to carpool, and they were out the door by 9:15. Tried to feed iola some instant-rice-and-veggie thing, which she smeared in her eye. Sat iola on her changing table to help me hang up her diapers from the wash, and then put her in the crib. Still working on sleeping in the crib without nursing to sleep, she protested, screamed for 20 minutes and then fell asleep. But woke 20 minutes later. I tried to get her to go back to sleep by nursing, but she was too delighted with the turn of events, and decided to practice climbing. Gave up, and went to see if I could get her to play by herself while I finished (started) my running column. In that underslept clingy mood, she wouldn't let me put her down. We walked around the apartment looking at things. Called Saira, said we're coming over. Took the stairs down, though my calves hurt from my BodyStep class the other day, found the car in front of the sabzi-wala, strapped her in, and took 15th to Airport to Saada. Saira was alone in the house, and iola was delighted to see her too, so I got 1.5 hours of work done. Yay! No internet, even better. Iola started rubbing her eyes again so I nursed her on the bed then put her back in the carseat and drove down Airport to Electra street, parked in the shade behind Cassels hotel-apartments while she slept. Opened the doors and took out my book Lost History to let iola finish her nap, but then I got sleepy and felt weird about falling asleep with all the doors and windows open, so I closed everything, turned the car on, and let the AC run, leaned back and fell asleep (tinted windows). Slept about 20 minutes, she woke up, I woke up, strapped her in the sling, started walking around the block. I'm writing my next neighborhood piece on it. Went in to Cassels, then to a Pakistani restaurant called Sarawan, then the Bangladeshi square behind the Anarkali Plaza. Decided to have lunch at Al Wassal restaurant, because it looked the most... the most... hung-out-at. Looked like guys had been there for hours, just sittin' around. Staring at me as I walked up. That's what I love about iola, she's a great unselfconscious being to hide behind. I went up the rickety stairs to the only empty seating, ordered fish. The options were fish and chicken. I had her on my lap, she mouthed some rice, I asked for yogurt, she had some of that, I got about five bites myself. The food was not bad, but I don't know, I was looking for something special, the ONE place Bangladeshi people go. I think I found it, since that is the epicenter of Bangladeshis in Abu Dhabi, but the lesson here may be that Bangladeshis in Abu Dhabi don't have a lot of money. They have other priorities, too, sending it all home. Got a sooji sweet to eat while walking, since I didn't really fill up, and walked. Went to some textile stores, looped around and went to the Marks and Spencers building, took the escalators up, checked out the My Playground and Kinderzone (fed her on a kinderzone couch), which will be useful places once the scorching heat sets in. Went in to a fancy abaya shop and an early learning center and tried to talk to the Syrian employee, who was very nice and helpful once he figured out what I was asking (what kind of customers come here? why do they come to this one, and not the Khalidiya one?). He gave iola a balloon, so we went out to the rotunda and I sat there on the marble benches and let her play on the floor chasing the balloon. It's a clean floor. The floor polisher came while we were sitting there to polish it AGAIN. A lady and her baby came up and I motioned for them to sit next to me. Also an 8-month girl, jessy with a soft j, Syrian. Iola, thrilled to have someone to paw, tried to pinch her. They talked to each other, back and forth, slower than adult dialogue and less eye contact but definitely call and response. About 4pm she got tired again so we said bye and went back to the car, stopping at a different Pakistani restaurant to get some sweets, and drove home. Stopped in our block area to get a fresh-squeezed apple juice, which I inhaled, parked in the shade of our one tree (ficus) and opened the doors again, waited for her to wake while I read, fell asleep again myself. She woke around 5, we went inside. Changed a diaper (not the first today, don't worry), read a book about bunnies, fed her a couple spoons of banana-carrot curry soup (smeared in her eye, again), gave her a bath, let her romp on the bed naked to practice more climbing, nursed her. Got a call from someone to look at the bed we are trying to sell, showed it to them, a Keralan family, not impressed, got another call from a British guy at the National, he bought it. Nursed her again, put her in the crib, lit a candle, and lay on the bed while she cried, standing up, imploring me to pick her up. I hardened my heart and pretended to be asleep, and 15 minutes later she was too. Got a couple calls from John in there, on his way home from Dubai. She was asleep by 7:30. It's 9pm now. He's not home yet... must be traffic. Thursday night, it's the weekend tomorrow. Tonight Lauren is having a barbecue, but I don't have a babysitter, and I still haven't finished that running column. Started it, though, thanks to Saira. John can go bring me back a burger. That's a normal day. With ALOT of comma splices.

Today we went to St. Joseph's Catholic church, which had services all day in about 17 languages, sometimes two at once. In the morning I stopped by to see when the English services would be and overheard the Arabic mass. Made me smile, somehow, to hear Allah invoked in a mass, to hear the Our Father in Arabic. All the English masses were being held outside to accommodate the thousands of people, literally thousands, at each service. We went at 6pm while the sun set, and a bit of rain came up. During Communion the next-door mosque's azhan sang out, interrupting Catholic prayers with Muslim prayers. Not seamlessly, but not prickly, either.

I've been working on stuff for the newspaper. I wrote about a couple neighborhoods, including ours. I interviewed an expat on his concept of home. (I also interviewed another for next weekend publication.) I wrote a feature on health clubs in Abu Dhabi. I'm still writing my weekly exercise column, though it is sorely flagging in spirits. I wrote about the doula class I took at Kate's house.

We are on day four of attempt number three of sleep training for iola. I am using a two-step approach, taking two weeks for each step. The signs are encouraging already, but it was terribly hard on everyone the first three evenings. Now, suddenly, she can go to sleep with only a couple whimpers. In the first step, she learned to fall asleep in her crib by herself, but I still comfort and nurse her as normal throughout the night, sometimes co-sleeping if she settles (the reason I am doing this is because she started wanting to play in bed with us while we wanted to sleep. And she's getting too big to lift in and out of the crib constantly. I don't mind a couple times a night; I mind every 45 minutes...). In the second step, well, I don't really know how the second step goes. But it may involve me ignoring her during the night while John goes in to comfort her... not sure. I have fallen strongly on both sides of the cry-it-out debate, absolutely convinced 1. it was horrible and then 2. it was fine. Perhaps that's because she's 8 months now, and has a sense of object permanence (we keep the door open so she can see us doing boring things down the hall, just in case she forgets about object permanence). Or perhaps it's because all three of us are sleep-deprived every day lately. I also did a bunch of reading up on it, and saw some studies that showed no psychological damage, and a huge improvement in sleep ability after "intervention." Who knew that sleeping is a skill to be learned? Some people are blessed with natural talent, but others (about 25 percent of babies, according to researchers) struggle with it, sometimes for years. And sleep problems as a three-year-old predict sleep problems as an adult, which is correlated with depression... so I wanted to deal with it now, not in two years. 

I also wanted to write about my huge environmental breakthrough. I was unsure about whether using cloth diapers is better on the environment here, with all this energy-intensive desalinated water. I figured out a way to make sure: I pour iola's bath water into the washing machine after her bath! Voila. I bought an extremely low-tech washing machine with a glorified hose input because I knew I would never forgive myself for being lazy and drying my clothes in a machine when we live in a desert (and I knew I would, if I could). The little things we do to save our humanity. It only took 6 months to figure this out... and the washing machine is right next to the tub. It's not super hygenic, but... she's toughening up against the germs in the world.

the silly baby is trying to stand up with no hands! It's ridiculous. She grabs onto something, pulls herself up to standing, wobbles, and then very very carefully lets go with one hand, and then the other. And immediately falls on her butt. We just laugh at her, and then she laughs at us, but I feel a little concerned at how cavalier she's being. She's getting way ahead of her skills. She's not even very good at crawling; she does a normal hands and knees crawl, and then she switches to a hands and feet spider walk. I can't tell if she does it because she doesn't like the way the ground feels on her knees or if she thinks it's more advanced to be using her feet.

I went out to a movie tonight with a friend. The first time in a cinema since... the Dark Knight, or maybe WallE, anyway a long time. John stayed home and babysat. The mall was so crowded with Emirati teenagers, boys and girls both, I've never seen it so packed. But I don't go out much, like I said, so maybe it's like that all the time.

We went to the Khalidiya children's park today. John is crunching on the nyu story, so iola and I went alone.

       

We went to the beach last weekend and Iola, sitting in the sand, gently lowered her face to the sand so that she could drink it.
It's just the way she lowers herself, very carefully, in the bath when she feels thirsty.
It made me think about sand, water, wind, waves, dunes.


The sea


A cresting wave

Sand rain
The geniuses