welcome to UAE

The acorn-shaped windows two stories above my head as I stepped onto an escalator were my first clue I had arrived somewhere unlike my other destinations.  Twinkling white lights simulated stars in three of the windows while the others had only a starless black sky.  I passed uniformed several men with dark eyes and hands folded behind their back, scrutinizing each person and their bags in the motley parade of passengers.  Through glass walls, a cluster of three women, clad in black abayas, hurried from a store.

At customs, a man in the white thawb flicked his fingers, gesturing me to step forward to a high oak desk that shielded him like a fortress.  He didn't look at me as he snatched my passport and pressed it into a lighted box.  Over his dark eyes, his thick black eyebrows were knotted together.

"Look, camera," he growled.

I stared at a small round lens and my face flicked into a grin, then thought the better of it, and I tried to look serious.  I glanced back at him but he was already looking down.

"Camera, again," he said with a gruff but whispered voice.

Then he pushed my passport back to me without a glance.  I smiled, even though he was already beckoning the next person forward.

In the terminal, groups of men in thawbs stood talking.  With each group I passed, I quickly became aware of my own anxiety about being so clearly an American.  I hope that feeling will abate as I'm able to paint my own portrait of this world.  Occasionally, a pair of women in black abaya shuffled along, fabric swirling to the floor.  A pair of beige platform sandals caught my eye.  The two inch sole and five inch heels were attached to a thin set of ankles and, as my eyes traveled up black folds of fabric, to a petite woman teetering above them.  One hand gathered her abaya up several inches as she gingerly picked her steps across the expanse of floor toward Customs.  A strip of intricate black lace swirled around her ankles; a young boy walked beside her.

The heavy air pressed into me as I stepped through the double doors of the airport to the outside.  I glanced back at Karen, my CSC team member, as we scanned the crowd of signs for our names.  Karen and I met in the Atlanta International terminal.  She is the only other American female on my CSC team, a statuesque brunette with a ready smile and mischievious twinkle in her eye.  I felt instant kinship with her, reinforced by her whispered "Hi sweetie," expansive hug and successful effort to convince the man in the window seat beside her to switch with me for the flight to Dubai.  We had already shared parts of our lives, laughed, dozed, read, watched movies and joked for 15 hours by the time we found ourselves hurling across the desert in a sedan toward Al Ain.

"Wonder what the speed limit is here?" she asked.

"I've been looking for signs, but I haven't seen any," I whispered.

"Maybe there isn't one," she said as the driver gunned the accelerator and shot around a sedan.

On both sides of the highway, palm trees hovered in a barrier, along with other fluffy Truffula-like trees decolored to gray in the orange night lighting.  Beyond the road, only darkness.  Every quarter mile or so, the green-lighted tower of a mosque sliced into the night sky.

Over an hour later, we turned up a curving driveway to our home for a month.  The hotel looked like any fine hotel in the U.S., except for the curving shapes of Arabic on its sign.  Uniformed bellhops ushered us inside and up to our rooms, just two doors away from each other.  Each staff member asked several times if there was anything else I needed, then minutes after the door closed, the phone rang again to ask me if the room is ok and I am in need of something else.  A gentle but eager Arabic hospitality was already apparent.  

A small plate with "Welcome" written in chocolate held a date and several flaky cookies that tasted of pistachio, honey, orange and butter.   One square seemed to be baklava, another a shortbread cookie crowned with half a pistachio.  I gratefully devoured them after only a moment's hesitation to ponder whether they might be vegan.   After a quick stroll to find the exercise room (the same treadmills as my club at home!), I unpacked and slid under a thick white comforter to sleep.