Abu Baby

some writings

Rose and John — 2010-02-18T17:49:00Z

There's two things I'm really proud of in this week's Review. I'm going to copy and paste the first paragraph here, but it's worth looking at the photos online and reading the whole thing. The first is John's story about remittances, which he worked really hard on. He wrote it before we went to Cambodia, took a break to do the Cambodia reporting, and then came back and stayed up many nights editing and finishing. I'm proud of it because I didn't kill him. The second is about a concert Martha, Lauren and I went to on Monday in Dubai. I loved the concert, and then writing it... I don't know how to explain it, somehow it made me feel like I was helping to put these subaltern labourers' voices on the map. Of course the people who organized the concert really did, but then none of the press coverage mentioned these guys' names, or bothered to interview them. I loved interviewing them. It made me want to be a journalist. Of course I love Bollywood songs, too.

Bringing it all back home
February 19, 2010, John Gravois
Down the glass-fronted row of exchange houses along Abu Dhabi’s Liwa Street – the city’s unofficial remittance district, where hundreds of security cameras monitor a long, intermittent border-fence of plexiglas teller windows – Maridel Estrelles walked briskly one recent afternoon carrying a glossy faux-leather handbag and, as usual, a wallet full of other people’s money. Trying to keep pace alongside her was a young Bangladeshi man in a spread-collared shirt named Zilani, who carried a small, scuffed laptop folio with flimsy turquoise piping. They were rushing to catch a taxi to the Musaffah Industrial District, 30 minutes away, hoping to arrive there ahead of the clattering buses bound home for the labour camps at sundown.

Whistle while you work: An unlaboured concert in Dubai
February 19, 2010, Rose Dakin
The other night, Mukesh Manilal Patel stood in front of a jam-packed room and opened his mouth to sing. “Hera, hera”, he started, hushing the raucous crowd as his voice filled the space: up to the tall industrial ceilings, across the floors strewn with giant bean bags and down the shelves full of art supplies along the walls. It was standing-room only at the JamJar art gallery, and home-made cupcakes were Dh10 each. The winners of Western Union’s inter-labour camp “Camp ka Champ” singing competition had come to make an appearance in the heart of Dubai’s Al Quoz hub for the aspiring creative class.

Abu Dhabi in winter

Rose and John — 2010-01-18T09:23:00Z

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.

Swing at the end of the day

Rose and John — 2009-11-25T20:39:00Z

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.

Breastfeeding certificate

Rose and John — 2009-11-08T19:16:00Z

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:

california files

Rose and John — 2009-07-18T07:08:00Z

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.

I've been in California for six weeks now, not counting two days in DC and three days in Altoona PA for a story on the DelGrosso sauce family business. And one hour on a Philadelphia pilgrimage to the Liberty Bell to read the first amendment engraved on an iron plaque: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Simple enough to make a person cry. It's beautiful, and unusual.

John's story on NYU Abu Dhabi came out on Friday. Since I started this freedom vein of thought, I should say that he was happy with the editing process. It is part one of a two part series. It is an uncensored labor of love. Of writing, truth, and balance. Read it.

Six weeks of home. And two more in front of me. They've been good for iola and me and John for the three weeks that he was here with us. Iola said her first word a couple weeks after arriving: Echo. The name of her honorary grandma Sande's dog. At first she pronounced it Eh with an intake of breath Goh exhale. She would practice in a whisper under her breath and then say it out loud whenever any dog came in view. She doesn't yet say mama or dada, but how does a first child know what to call her parents? No one else calls me that, and I rarely refer to myself in the third person, so I am still the unnamed ever present love of her life. A name would be useful.

Yesterday at the DelGrosso amusement park in Tipton PA she started saying Wow. Practicing and practicing, then Uh Oh. Before that she had also noticed things with Oooooh.

I would like to write more about the actual days; the people who visited, John's appendicitis, my family. I had it all written out in my head as I was driving home in the dark tonight. But it was a long day and I'm tired. I left Altoona a 6am and arrived in Ukiah at 10:30 pm. It could have been worse! I got the standby that saved me and iola six more hours of waiting around like vagabonds in the airport. I'll post another one soon.

Oh, and she took two steps in DC. Inspired by three-year old Henry and his little friends. Since then, she's been more cautious.

Perspective from Zahraa

Rose and John — 2009-05-01T15:14:00Z

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.

sigh

Rose and John — 2009-04-25T18:27:00Z

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.

normal day

Rose and John — 2009-04-16T15:57:00Z

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.

happy easter!

Rose and John — 2009-04-12T20:22:00Z

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.

getting ahead of herself

Rose and John — 2009-04-10T21:21:00Z

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.

Sandy mouth

Rose and John — 2009-04-09T19:00:00Z

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

a new phase

Rose and John — 2009-03-23T18:13:00Z

This crawling thing is very interesting. It's prompted a steep cognitive incline. It's a little weird to have so many changes at once. I wish John were here to help me figure them out, but I'm also glad he's with his family. When he gets back I get a break. Her mobility has opened a whole arena of discontent. (Hmmm, for us too, maybe.)

John and I stopped swaddling iola at 3 months because she had a heat rash, and instead we put her to sleep on her belly, thinking we all survived. Every couple months she goes through a new phase of discoordination and I just want to wrap her up in the swaddle to settle her down. I tried it a couple times at 5 months and it worked a little, but she'd always struggle out of it so I gave up. She needs one again, now. Her naps are only 20 minutes, and she fights sleep with all her might by sitting up and crying. I have to treat her like a tiny baby and bounce her to sleep. I even got out her bouncy chair last night, which has been retired for two months, waiting for the Deuel-McEver baby.

Tonight, just now, she woke and cried while I was working at the computer, and when I went in she was standing up holding onto the bars of the crib, crying mamamama. When did she figure out about pulling herself up to stand? Just now, I guess. She's been saying mama for 1.5 days, but not to me, just as part of her cry. Still, it's nerve-wracking.

She fell off the bed this morning, too, that was scary. No more sitting on beds. Here is a photo of her from this afternoon. She picked up a lime and chewed on it. The other one is from Saturday when we went to the book fair instead of Art Dubai.

first crawl

Rose and John — 2009-03-21T13:53:00Z

There have been a few starts and stops with this crawling challenge, and here is another one. On March 15th iola took three tiny crawl steps at the Emirates Palace, in pursuit of Lauren's bracelet, and then took a 5-day break from the endeavor. Then, the morning after John left for New Orleans (and the next time iola saw Lauren, hmm), she tried it again, with more success. Now she's taking a break from it again. It's hard work. Or maybe she's waiting for Lauren to encourage her.

Jim Gravois

Rose and John — 2009-03-20T04:22:00Z

Jim took his life on Tuesday. Sometimes I feel like we're in a time warp, having a baby in Abu Dhabi. How could we not have spoken to him for more than a year? There's lots of people like that that we feel close to but haven't spoken with in ages, and him disappearing makes me feel it.

Jim drove from New Orleans to Ukiah without sleeping to be at our wedding. He gave us a wad of money for our honey-drive even though he could barely pay his rent. He'd been a nurse at Ochsner Hospital during Katrina. While we were working on the Quintana house he sent us a wooden vanity that had been floating around in the flood waters. He fixed it up, painted it, gave it new knobs, wrote a sweet note from the perspective of the vanity on the bottom of the upper shelf, and sent it to us in the mail. Is he a casualty of Katrina? I don't know, maybe he was already on the brink of something, but Katrina turned his life upside down. His marriage fell apart. He had post traumatic stress from working in the hospital. He starting helping people gut their homes and rebuild for free, living in a FEMA trailer.

This is a picture of him, on the far right. He was six feet eight inches.

John left for the memorial last night, and will be in New Orleans until Tuesday.

INDIA

Rose and John — 2009-03-14T17:50:00Z

iola and i went to india for six days: delhi, gurgaon, pune, delhi and back to abu dhabi. This is all I will write because I want to watch a movie, and it's ten oclock, and I was in a doula class all day. Here is my favorite picture from our trip. More photos on facebook.

This is Lakshmi, Mira, Latta, Sarika, Iola, Sunita.

Lakshmi is my aunt Sue's foster daughter, Sarika is Latta's daughter, Sunita is Mira's daughter, iola is my daughter.

Time banked

Rose and John — 2009-03-04T14:12:00Z

So much has happened in one week! Julia's Mendo TimeBank got written up in the Ukiah Daily Journal: www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/ci_11824408; iola said blablabla and then, two days later, dadada; she started shaking her head back and forth which makes her a little dizzy; she banged a mallet on the drum to make a sound (now officially smarter than a lot of animals, maybe even Jackson); I forgot to get my and Iola's Indian visas so we are still here until tomorrow morning, and that might be it. It's a lot if you count things in tiny increments.

Last weekend we went up to Dubai and met a high school friend who I hadn't seen in 14 years, Jennifer McElhinny, and she is exactly, wonderfully, the same. She has a really nice husband and her baby Freya is two months older than iola. We also got a ukelele for John while we were there, so now he just wanders around the house strumming it, late for work, singing to himself. It's a little plastic $30 blue one, and he obsessively dreams of the upgrade.

The weather is still nice, but it feels fragile. For three days it was summer. Now it is spring again. In between summer and spring it was really sandy. You could barely see 500 feet away. I've been doing some stories on neighborhoods in Abu Dhabi, one of Mushrif where I always run, and one on Khalidiya where I discovered a new children's park for us to hang out in as long as the weather will let us.

This is a picture I just took right now, with Feraz, who is nine. When I say her Pakistani nannies, I count him as well, because she loves him. I can't take pictures of the sisters; I tried and my pictures mysteriously disappeared. Suppose I deserve that for trying. They are spinning around.

Mussandam Oman

Rose and John — 2009-02-24T17:13:15Z

I am embarrassed about starting my running column tonight, which was due last night, because I didn't run the Ras Al Khaimah half marathon last weekend. It was a casualty of procrastination; a fatality, even. First I didn't register in time. Then a reader wrote in offering me her registration. Then I didn't get a hotel in time. Then I didn't want to wake up at 4am and drive with the possibility of missing it.

But I also didn't want to feel mournful about being such a loser for the whole weekend, so I made up excuses. I got a cut on my foot during a pedicure the day before. Whenever it stung I felt better about missing the race. I finally read the rules and they said absolutely no wheeled vehicles (does a stroller count?). I thought iola wouldn't let us run for more than 45 minutes. They said no late starts. I was worried about finding parking.

So instead we woke at seven and arrived in Ras Al Khaimah at noon, after the race had packed up and left. We went to Carrefour (right by the start, plenty of parking) and got food for camping and a chinese thermarest. Iola got to sit in the shopping cart like a big girl. Then John worked on a story at the foodcourt while iola slept and I read my book-club book Gate of the Sun in the car. Our friend from abu dhabi Lauren and her friend Joao showed up, and then we got back on the road. We got to the Oman border around 4:30, feeling that sense of urgency that imminent twilight always brings. About 15 miles north of the border, by a town called Hana, we saw a little road go off to the left, and decided to take it to get off the main road. It turned into a dirt road, and wound down toward the coast. When we thought our little car couldn't take much more, we got out and camped in a bend in the road. We had sausages and bread and wine; iola slept; john played the guitar; we slept.

It turned out that we picked the most dramatic cliff edge to sleep next to. In the morning we walked out to the edge and looked down 300 feet and saw sea turtles swimming. If we'd followed the road down further it would have let us out onto a little beach where three other (4WD) cars were already parked, tents set up. It was also a cemetary: too rocky to bury the dead anywhere else. Several fisherman passed our camp on their way to the water. I'd been forcibly studying arabic to john in the car, so we got to use a couple words.

We kept driving to Khasab, maybe another 10 miles. That road is beautiful. We had lunch at a ramshackle turkish place with an algerian waiter and an indian translator. The men swooped iola up and brought her into the kitchen to laugh at them. She thought the guy in a checkered dishdasha and baseball cap was especially funny.

We split up with Lauren and Joao in a wadi, because I wanted to take a boat into the islands, and they wanted to explore the village. Somehow by luck we got a boat with us as the only passengers. It was like a living room on the water. We were out for three and a half hours and saw lazy dolphins, and went for a quick dip in the coral by Telegraph island, a tiny island that the british used for build a telegraph cable between Iraq and Oman way back when.

It was a five-hour drive back home, and we got in at 11pm dead tired, feeling like we'd been gone longer than two days, which is the point. It is already summer here again. That may have been our last camping trip until next December.

John and iola on the dhow, February 21st 2009.

John wrote this last week:
Songs in A & D
Until the recent boom years, Abu Dhabi did not exactly loom large in American consciousness. If the emirate did merit a reference in pop culture, it was usually as a shorthand for windswept obscurity, roughly interchangeable with Timbuktu. But for a young Nathan Deuel, growing up in Atlanta, Georgia in the early 1980s, Abu Dhabi was not synonymous with remoteness. It was synonymous with funkiness.

A couple of my running columns have passed by, might as well post here:

Had baby, will run (yesterday)
Paula is most famous, in my mind, for running throughout her pregnancy. She ran up until a day before giving birth to her daughter. Her non-pregnancy regimen consisted of two runs per day, 100-minutes in the morning and evening, along with strength training and lifting weights. She rested every eighth day. During her pregnancy, she stuck to the morning run but cut out the evening one, substituting cycling, aquajogging and swimming instead. The baby’s growth was monitored weekly to make sure it was gaining adequate weight.

Join the club? (last week)
On the other hand, maybe I should consider the running-out-of-doors option. A couple of years ago, when I lived in Lucknow, India, I remember taking cycle rickshaws around the city in 50°C weather. The rickshaw drivers prided themselves on not drinking water because, as one of them told me, it makes them sweat. Now that is hard core: the human capacity for endurance is amazing, no matter how wimpy I feel out in the sun.

Marathon moves (week before last)
The study on depression and running was published in August, but I was preoccupied and didn’t see it. I have always believed in the intuitive and seemingly correct research that showed a strong correlation between exercise and positive mood. There is, in fact, a strong correlation between exercise and happiness, but apparently, one doesn’t cause the other. The study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, tested causality by observing patterns of exercise, anxiety and depression in identical twins and siblings. The researchers found that if one twin exercised more, the other twin tended to have fewer anxious and depressive symptoms even if he or she didn’t typically exercise. So something genetic may be working behind the scenes, motivating the will to exercise and boosting mood levels at the same time.

6 months

Rose and John — 2009-02-09T03:47:00Z

We've been back from the states for almost two weeks, and its indicative that I am still telling time that way.

I'm sitting at Iola's nannies' house writing this; I'll upload when I get home. Iola has changed a lot in the past month -- that maturing pre-frontal cortex, processing emotions -- I wouldn't say she is exactly cunning (yet) but you can tell there's a lot going on, real pathos and delight...

Object permanence is one of those things baby developmentalists talk about, it sounds so unnecessarily technical, and, I'm noticing, not all-or-nothing. I think she's had some form of it though they say it really develops around 18 months. I notice when she's sitting in her car seat and twists her head back to look for me even though I'm out of sight and not making any noise: she remembers that that's where I should be, expects me to be there, and is reassured when she makes eye contact. Last night while we were watching the movie Defiance with Peter she woke and cried and waited in her lizard push-up position until I opened the door. She was looking at the door waiting for me to appear. Is that object permanence? Seems like it but I don't really know.

I uploaded two videos last night, both taken in the morning on February 8th. One is of her playing on the mat with Jackson nearby, and in the other she is eating her first whole banana (a mini one from India). She puzzles over the taste adorably. Sometimes seeing things on video almost lets me see them better; must be the rewind option. In another couple months I guess I'll look back on the videos and think: look how bumbling she was. What adroit dexterity?

I have her on an alternate vaccine schedule, developed by doctor Stephanie Cave, so I have to bring her in to get her next set of shots tomorrow. The vaccine debate is an interesting one, with autism only occupying one small part of the debate, but in the end I decided that I don't want iola to freeload off the herd immunity of other people, and that I am, in the end, more afraid of polio and hepatitis than the imperfect vaccines themselves.

We have moved from the "Bumps and Babes" social sub-group of Abu Dhabi Mums to the "Inbetweenies," but I went to a B&B meeting one last time this week because it was at a friend's house nearby, while the inbetweenies meeting was out in Khalifa city. And I realized that she is a lot bigger than a 2 month-old! She wasn't exactly bigger than some of the 4-month olds (there is something in the Abu Dhabi air, miracle-gro-like), but she was downright witty compared to them. I think she made some of them feel insecure with all her sitting and grabbing. She even tried to poke a little girl's eyes out good-naturedly. Two of the babies were born in the same week as my sister's baby Gwendolyn, so I could imagine her still in the drunken baby stage.

Still no teeth. Does she know her name? What does she dream about? My job has gotten a lot easier as she grows. She prefers sitting up to lying so much that I can leave her to just sit, while I do other things nearby. She really likes that plastic jar, though -- if it rolls out of range she gets annoyed -- one of these days the crawling lightbulb will go on. Last summer I thought I'd go back to work when she turned 6 months, so I'm mulling that over. I don't think so, though, yet.

iola in america

Rose and John — 2009-01-28T14:20:00Z

Ten days ago, we set out for America. We took a direct flight from Abu Dhabi and arrived in 14 hours. We spent the first two days in Brooklyn with Zack and Kristin recovering and testing the cold weather. Rented a car, drove to DC. No traffic, so we arrived at Tom and Kellie's in Mt Rainier in about five hours. It was Monday evening, and Iola was adjusting to the east coast time zone better than we were, but we stayed up and visited with Graeme and his girlfriend Louisa, Matt and Jen who were in from Boston for the inauguration and Tom and Kelly hosted in their cute house that has been retrofitted for their two-year old, Henry (no dining room, all pillows and rugs and toys). Henry was excited to see the "tiny" baby, but then got a tiny bit jealous over the next three days when Kellie held Iola.

Woke up on Tuesday at the crack of dawn and took a special bus downtown. Walked along K street toward the White House; the whole city a festival. Food tents lining every inch of space, the walking crowd gradually getting bigger and filling every lane of traffic. Said goodbye to John who went to hang out with the Emirati students in the NYU-Abu Dhabi class, and kept walking with Iola, past the World Bank, past the DAR Constitution Hall where I graduated from SAIS. The hall had opened its doors to anyone needing to get warm -- some irony there, or maybe just evolution. Walked across the World War Two memorial, past hundreds of portopotties (9,000 total), toward the Washington Monument. Thought, hey, I'll go down to L'enfant Plaza and see my old office building so I steered myself that way. Changed my mind when I realized I couldn't, no way, ford the current of people walking towards the mall from that direction. The K street crowd, coming from the north, had been mostly white; these were mostly black. The city coming together.

Started to get nervous about the cold, the crowds, and Iola's hunger. She let out increasingly loud protests. I skirted the edges, by the dormant cherry trees. Looked in handicapped portopotties to see about nursing out of the wind: yuck, kept moving. Found the Red Cross tent, and hesitated by it, wondering was I a legitimate user of Red Cross resources? The volunteers outside thought so (or thought so of Iola), and ushered us (her) in, gave us a big fuzzy blanket and used it to shield while I nursed. Went on our way again, this time double-wrapped in the blanket, and by now it was almost 11am. Went back by the reflecting pool and watched the 'jumbotrons,' the crowd still gathering, but I couldn't stay still without getting cold, and realized what that meant for Iola, so I kept walking. I walked north toward Dupont and ducked in a starbucks near SAIS to watch the swearing-in on TV. I wrote about it here.

Finding our way home was difficult. I couldn't remember where the special buses picked us up, and the lines waiting for the metro were one to three-hour waits. I had walked up to U street to look at Ben's Chili Bowl (and see if I could get myself a half-smoke). The line went down the alley. They had a policeman stationed to make sure people didn't spill into the street. He chastised me for stepping into the road trying to get around the line. Kept walking down to Chinatown. By the time I was at H and 4th, Iola was fed up. Her nose was cold and she didn't like it. I flagged down the first bus I saw, headed for Fort Totten, and figured if I could just sit somewhere warm and head out of the city, even in the wrong direction, things would be better. A man gave us his seat and Iola was immediately happy again. We thawed and then felt brave enough to step off the bus and hope for another one, going in the right direction, along Rhode Island ave. We walked for a ways up towards Home Depot. The special inauguration bus from Mt Rainier passed us, but I ran and flagged it down. We were so happy to get home and see Kellie and Henry. John and Tom arrived an hour later.

That was day four of our trip. We spent Wednesday visiting friends and the Chronicle of Higher Education, hindi friends in Bethesda, Doug and Josh in the evening, and Thursday John renewed his drivers license, we drove past our house on Quintana (peach tree is still alive). Picked up an extremely safe car seat in Columbia, MD, and got to Brooklyn and met John's parents by 9pm.

I have to stop writing, but there were four more days in Brooklyn. My parents came, we had a big brunch and saw a lot of friends. We could have used five more days in DC, and a few more in NY. I feel bad I didn't get to see some close friends, or co-workers. It's all a lot harder with a baby and an inauguration that brought millions to town. Now we're home in Abu Dhabi and it feels good. Jackson is very snuggly.

Rose update

Rose and John — 2009-01-16T16:20:00Z

I ran my race today! It took me an hour and nine minutes to run 10 kilometers. That is really sloooowwww, about 11 minutes per mile, but faster than a walk, and faster than I was two weeks ago. Haile won it again, running four times as far in less than twice my time. John pulled himself from the race due to his fever, so he and iola hung out and had breakfast at the hotel.

Notice my snazzy sweatband! And brand new shoes: I forgot to pack my running shoes. John had to run to the Mall of the Emirates to buy me a new pair at 10pm last night. They made my feet numb during the race because they're so new. My Monday column will be about the race. Last Monday's column was about pre-race advice, none of which I followed.

We had a quick visit with Katy Chang and her husband JR in the midst of all our forgetfulness. She is trying to start an at gallery in Dubai, he is a new professor. After the race, we had brunch with our friends Karen and Michael Hewitt and their baby Ellis. Then we dashed back home to pack for America. Peter is driving us to the airport tonight.

I am going strong on my new year's promise to collaborate more with friends. I worked with Dan Engber to write a Slate piece on family history, and I worked with our downstairs neighbor Keach Haguey, who has an online magazine, to write a story on our pregnancy. Excerpts below.

Heavy Duty
Nothing makes you realize you’re an animal like growing another one inside you. (Photo by Lauren Lancaster)
By Rose Dakin with John Gravois

Just before we moved out to Abu Dhabi, I had a conversation with my younger sister about birth. It was May 2008, and I was seven months pregnant at the time. I sought her advice because she had seen more births than anyone I knew. She had worked on a cattle ranch for three years, and then a dairy goat farm, and then a weed-eating goat operation where she trucked around a thousand goats to cattle ranches in the Mid-west. She knew I wanted to do everything naturally for my baby’s birth, so it was with caution when she said, “I think a c-section might not be a bad option for you.” Continue reading...

My Great-Uncles Tried To Kill Hitler
One family's story of the Valkyrie plot.
By Rose Dakin, Jan. 12, 2009.

I may not look it, with my overgrown bangs and thrift-store shoes, but I'm descended from aristocrats and heroes of the German resistance. Years before the failed coup recounted in the movie Valkyrie, my great-grandfather Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord tried to overthrow Hitler. From 1930-34, he was the chief of the German military; later, as the commander of an army detachment, he tried to lure the Führer to a base on the western front to arrest him. His plots were never discovered, but his anti-Nazi attitude was well-known and he was forced to resign; he died of cancer in 1943. The following summer, two of his sons—my great-uncles—played their own small role in the real-life Valkyrie plot. They were among the very few who managed to escape. Continue reading