The fabulous lunch that almost killed us

Our most excellent hosts at AMIDEAST booked lunch today at The Seven Seas. It is a beautiful restaurant that sits right on the edge of Gulf with a beautiful view of the city scape and the sea. It was elegant and beautiful. There was the minor detail that it was also a popular place to smoke shisha, but we sat as far from the smoke as we could. We sat down to the prix fixe menu, so we didn't know what would happen. First came this plate:

Was it our salad? It looked pretty chunky, but just as we were about to attack it, the appetizers began to come out. It turns out that was the center piece that we almost ate. Well, the food kept coming and coming and coming. It wouldn't stop!

Finally, we sat back and sighed. We had done it: we had met the lunch and ate it. But wait! Four trays of dessert suddenly appeared on the table along with Turkish coffee so thick you could stand a spoon up in it. Here are two of the four dessert trays.

Holy Smokes! We did our best. It was all so good, and there was so much of it. We waddled out of the restaurant vowing never to eat again as it seemed we had reached the pinnacle of quality and quantity.

A little more on journalism

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please note: this post does not intend to criticize the government, the emir, or Kuwaiti culture. This post includes only observations made directly from published newspapers freely available in Kuwait and interviews with Kuwaiti journalists.
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In reading the local Gulf newspapers, it is clear that local journalism is still developing its own distinctive voice. Sometimes an article will mention a topic in a headline that has already efficiently summarized the content of the article. For example, an article with the headine "38 Individuals take pre-marriage test" reports that 38 individuals took a pre-marriage test and were happy with the process.

The daily paper I prefer to read, Al Watan, often includes some very entertaining sentences at many linguistic levels. Here is an example from the opinion page: Islam is particularly concerned with alcohol and its strict prohibition stems from the fact that not only does it affect the mind, but also it influences the spirit of its consumers in a sense that in both cases alcohol consumers have no power and control over their behavior as well as their utterances.

However, in addition to the linguistic interest of these periodicals, there is also an interesting process of content selection. By general consent, one does not criticize the ruling family, although the constitution only specifies that one cannot criticize the emir. Of course, this is unless they shoot each other, and then the papers will report that as they did last week when a nephew shot his uncle outside a diwaniyya. This caution was repeated in many conversations throughout the Gulf. A journalist we spoke to said, "There is no censorship. We are free to write about anything we want. We just don't criticize our advertisers because the paper needs them." So, no criticism of the ruling family, the emir, or the advertisers. As a result, the Kuwaiti parliament is eagerly covered by Kuwaiti journalists. For example, "In the meantime, the parliament approved amendments to the foreigners law, whereby the offspring of Kuwaiti women married to non-Kuwaitis will be exempted from residency fees. These women have been also entitled to sponsor their non-Kuwaiti husbands, while their children will be entitled to permanent residency provided the woman was not naturalized by marriage in accordance with article 8 of Citizenship Law."

Yesterday, we met with four journalists from four of the local papers. We were very excited about the prospect of speaking with them, and at breakfast we planned what questions we might expect from them and how we might respond. When we arrived and sat down, they asked two questions: What do you think of women's situations in Kuwait? and How have the financial difficulties of the economy affect the Fulbright program? Then silence fell, and there was a long, awkward pause. Finally, one of the journalists asked, "Do do you have any questions for us?"

I asked, "Could you talk about the educational path that lead you to journalism?"

One young man responded, "Well, I have a degree in economics, but this job was available, and I kind of like it."

Another slightly older man said, "I have 15 years experience in hospitality management, but there was no work in that field for me, so I am doing this." Clearly the papers must have kept back their trained journalists for real stories.

So, even though the job of journalist does not seem to be at the top of the Best Employment list, they are quite creative. Here are some of my favorite headlines from the past few days.

"Young Kuwaitis Seen Exercising Tuesday morning"
"Healthy Citizens Warned Against Pretending to Be Handicapped"
"Encouraging Female Ex-Patriates to Breastfeed Citizens"

The continued development of writing

I'm just saying.....

Today Al Watan reported that a blogger in Egypt had been pulled from an internet cafe last week and beaten to death by police in the street outside. The police report that he died from asphyxiation as a result of swallowing a bag of heroin just as police entered the cafe. The family dispute this finding.

Today Al Watan reported that four Jordanians have been arrested for postings on Facebook that were deemed slanderous of the government. The postings were not reported.

Today the Kuwait Times reported that a blogger who criticized the Emir was let out of jail on bail because of poor health.

In other news, the Rolling Stone has suddenly developed a journalistic reputation in reporting that some members of the military may not hold the highest regard for the present administration. As a result, the Rolling Stone reporter has kept his job, but McChrystal and his civilian press aid has lost theirs.

Role Ambiguity at the Souk Almubarkiya

A few evenings ago, Beth, Jill, and I (all ladies of a certain age), when to shop around the Souk Almubarkiya. This is a huge souk. It is a maze of little shops chock full of *everything*. My inner crow was in heaven. There were piles of copper coffee pots, stacks of different types of rope, heaps of suitcases, racks of abayas and dishtasha (with accompanying underwear), poles of prayer beads, and masses of scarves. And so much more, all piled up and tended by enthusiastic men, and occasionally women, who would call to us as we passed, "Welcome Madame" or "Please Madam" or "Here Madam". We stood out as "not from around here" as we strolled through this garden of material culture. Men with trays of fruit drinks cruised the alleys in case anyone got thirsty. Once we got lost and wandered through a men's coffee area. That was awkward.

However, Debra and I went back the next day. Debra wanted to get an abaya and a sheyla, and I went along for company. However, I was made uncomfortable by the content Madaming, so I put on a sheyla to try to hide, after a fashion. It totally worked. Nobody Madamed me. When I stopped to look at something, nobody came over to pressure a sale. It was much more comfortable to shop this way.

Well, Debra went into one corner to purchase an abaya, and I was helping out. I held her bags (if you know me, you know I was totally "hands free" myself), and I offered helpful advice. I held her skirt down as she tried on abayas so there would not be some kind of inappropriate show. After she made her purchase and was ferreting in her wallet for cash, the shop keeper folded up her purchase, put them in a bag, and briskly handed me the bag with a curt, "For Madam." As we walked away, I puzzled a bit about about that interaction, and it occurred to me that he must have thought I was her maid! It was hilarious. Here is my photo of me being Debra's maid. I guess that's why nobody bothered me at the souk. I didn't look like I had any money to spend. Here is the photo Debra took of me in my role as her maid.

Museums in Kuwait

For many interesting reasons the arts have an ambiguous place in Kuwait. There are lots of museums, and I think we have visited them all! We went to the Dickson House where the most famous British Colonial Administrator and his wife lived in the early 20th century. Violet Dickson, the lady of the house, was quite the formidable character. There is a story told about her that when she and her husband moved in to the traditional sea front house they were to live in for their entire tenure in Kuwait, she had a bit of house cleaning to do. Evidently, the place had gone to ruin under the auspices of the previous colonial administrator, and the place was full of rats. One night Mrs. Dickson put out a white sheet in the courtyard, put food on it, and waited. As the rats came out to eat the food, she shot them one by one with a rifle. So much for the rat problem. Here is a photo of Mrs. Dickson in the desert with her son. In Arabic, the mother is referred to as "Mother of [son's name] so since her son's name was Saud, in this photo she is identified as Umm Saud.

We also went to the Sadu museum. This is the traditional Bedouin weaving museum. It was full of lovely weavings. While we were there, a group of chatty young girls came in to have their weaving lesson, and they seemed very excited about it!


We went to the national museum in a tremendous dust storm. It was eerie to walk around the windy, dusty abandoned courtyard. The national museum had some fairly unlabeled faintly organized archeological exhibits from digs on Failaka Island which dated back to 3,000 BC. Evidently there was water on this island and it was a verdant lovely place to live and trade with local boat traffic. That was until the Iraqi invasion when everybody was moved off the island and the beaches were mined. Now there is a small beach resort and strange heritage village on the island, but the town is a ghost town. More on Failaka in another post.

The national museum also houses a "heritage village" that is a warren of little alleys to emulate a souk with little stalls inhabited by mannikins in awkward ethic craft poses. This is followed by an eclectic collection of artifacts from the 20th century like a bunch of stringed instruments, many typewriters, some bakelite telephones, and lots of coffee pots. I had heard that in the invasion, the Iraqis had looted the museum but by now 90% of the original catalog had been returned. However, these artifacts must have been on loan somewhere because we did not see anything that looked like it might have warranted looting.

We also visited the planetarium at the national museum. We asked for the English language galaxies show, which was really cool as it showed excellent pictures from the Hubble telescope. However, if I may nitpick a bit, the cheesy introduction suggested that the history of astronomy began with the European renaissance, and I happen to know that Galileo et al were all reading the works of astronomers from this part of the world to inform their work. In fact, Galileo wrote in Arabic script. In the Sharja museum in the UAE, there is an extensive astronomical technology exhibit from well before the European Renaissance. I found it odd that the Smithsonian Institute, who claimed to have made this planetarium show, did not know about the Arab astronomers.

We also visited the Museum of National Memoriam which documents the Iraqi invasion. It is principally dioramas that re-enact the progression and atrocities of the invasion of 1990. It was quite traumatic, not just to learn about the minutia of the atrocities but to be assaulted by the very loud simulated air raid, machine gun, tank, and screaming sounds that went with each installation. After the dioramas came the individual memoria to the people who died or were POWs. It was heart wrenching to view the pictures. I asked several young people we met if they had gone, and they said, all their schools had taken them there as a field trip, but many said they did not really pay a lot of attention: they remembered it was loud and dark, and one young lady said, very softly, "It made me hate Iraq."

On a less traumatic note, we visited the Tareq Rajab Museum. This is a private home made into a museum for the private collection of Tareq Rajab. He was the first director of the Department of Antiquities in Kuwait and was an avid collector. The museum has a large collection organized according to the 19th century British catalog system: put things with the same shape together in the same place. It is a varied and lovely collection almost entirely unencumbered by text. The silver jewelry is lovely, the collection of ornamented flintlock rifles is astounding, and the traditional costumes are beautiful. They have a whole section devoted to the country of Palestine.

The most exquisite of the museums was the calligraphy museum. It had a riveting video about how to make the ink and reed pens. The pieces were so beautiful that I was re-inspired to continue my Arabic studies. There was also a collection of Arabic calligraphy done by a Chinese artist.

But what about modern art? Is there any in Kuwait, or is it all just heritage crafts, and with modernity art died in Kuwait? Mais non! We visited the modern art museum, much to the surprise of the single docent. Much of the modern art displayed in the museum seemed to date to the 70s and 80s, but there were some 21st century pieces there also. I thought the most striking pieces seemed to come from the sculptors who were responding Kuwait's struggle to find itself in the 80s and recover itself in the 90s. This was the most evocative piece for me by the artist Sami Mohammed, dated 1989.

So yes, Kuwait has local art, and there is community involvement. It is not very well advertised, but it is there, and it is all worth going to see. The Amideast organizers have done a great job organizing all these visits, and I have learned so much at each one.

A piece of satire: Dusk in Araby

Dusk in Araby
by Ruth Benander and Debra Beilke
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Authors' Note: This piece is intended as satire. No disrespect is intended towards the Fulbright-Hays Program, The American University of Kuwait, Kuwait City, the Dubai Police force, or the Ghani Palace. This piece of satire does not intend to minimize in any way the crime of human trafficking.
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The Ghani Palace Hotel crouched on the shores of the Arabian gulf, her faded glory gently decaying into the desert.  Once she may have been considered lovely, but her charm had gone grey, and the process had not been graceful.  In her later years, she received few guests into the warrens of her hallways, and when she did, it seemed to come as a great surprise.  As her splendor waned, she became more of an architectural bookmark for beach front property rather than a page of text for some form of holiday nostalgia.  Foot steps in her halls and many stairwells raised dust and sent the staff into a panic.  But her bulky shadow could hide money as well as dust, and in the freewheeling blackmarket of the Gulf, this made her attractive.  

Despite the mosque-studded skyline, the Kuwait City of the Ghani Palace, its own parallel universe, teemed with vice of all kinds—opium dens, beer-induced belching contests, and ladies’ saloons, to name some of the more rampant examples of sin in this den of iniquity.   Yet lurking even deeper beneath the surface was something worse, far worse—an international ring of academic human trafficking known to insiders by the code name Fulbright-Hays.   The latest crop of FH captives were trapped in a dhow that had been anchored close to the shoreline for weeks since they could not confirm their booking at the Ghani Palace.
 
Undercover agents from the Dubai police department were appalled at the human misery they discovered (via hidden video cameras rigged to the dhow’s interior.)  The middle-aged captives were rolling in agony on the deck of the dhow as it rolled back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in the waves and the 120 degree heat.  Already miserable from sea-sickness, the hapless academics were tortured even further by the techno-funky rap music pounding so loudly the reverberations were felt in Baghdad.  Although the Dubai police (henceforth known as the “Dubai Boys”) felt the pain of the FH captives, they did not rescue them—not yet.  They needed to watch and wait in order to uncover enough evidence to convict the king pin of this human trafficking.  Daily, the Dubai Boys were learning more and more about this powerful Godfather.  They knew he was headquartered in Washington, D.C.  They knew his name was Joey.  They knew his days were numbered.

It was noon in DC, seven in Kuwait, and Jerry was worried. The men holding the academics reported that yet another academic had requested to move to another location on the dhow, and several were complaining that the internet connection on the dhow was slow. Three had begun to clean the dhow, much to the dismay of their captors. This was not how humans being trafficked were supposed to behave. Worse yet, they were all taking notes and competing to interview their captors, each crafting clever questions to expose their captors' world views and cultural identities. Joey knew things were going from bad to worse when he discovered that the academics were blogging about their unique perspectives on the nature of human trafficking through ethnographic explorations and chronicling the disorienting dilemma of such participation. They drove their captors crazy by constantly trying to critically reflect on their experience. Joey knew he had to pawn them off soon on some university looking to contract faculty to teach English as a second language for low wages. How else could the knowledge economy be supported except through cheap academic labor to construct the foundations for the best educated populations in the world? It was dirty work, but someone had to do it. Joey just saw himself as another epistemological middleman. He contacted his man, Jamal, in Kuwait.

Jamal sat on the roof of the Ghani Palace watching the sun set over the broiling city, throwing cigarette butts into the roof-top pool. He fondled his prayer beads as he reflected on the Fulbright Hays dilemma.  Clearly, something had to change; the dhow was no longer a safe place to keep his captives.  But where to transfer them?  As the hot desert winds began to whip themselves into a frenzied sand storm, Jamal had a brainstorm.  Why not move his human cargo to the Ghani Palace?   Nobody would ever think to check for them in the Palace.  It never occurred to anybody to check into the Palace.  It was the perfect solution.  There were a few minor problems--such as the need to train his operatives how to put towels in the hotel rooms, how to clean the sinks, how not to look confused when a hotel guest tried to check in—but these could be easily resolved.
  
Two hours later, Jamal was riding the waves of the Arabian Gulf on his jet ski as he raced towards the dhow at full speed. He was followed by a twelve-pack of Filipina operatives in matching outfits on their own jet skis.  He was feeling good, full of resolve.  He and his operatives would climb on board stealthily and grab the captives from behind.  Before they transferred them to the jet skis, the Filipinas would, of course, offer them coffee and a selection of chocolates.  Working in the underbelly of academic trafficking is no excuse to behave like barbarians, after all, and protocol had to be observed. 

Suddenly, in the dark and stormy dusk, a door slammed, a maid screamed, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon. The maids scattered in confusion, their jet skis making a maze of wakes that shook the dhow like a flag in the stiff breeze. Jamal leapt from his jet ski to the dhow, desperately clambering up the ladder, slick with the two-stroke engine sheen left by the hordes of jet skis. He was unprepared for the sight that met his eyes. The dhow had been transformed into faculty offices. Surrounded by reference texts, maps, and jumbles of flash drives, the academics looked up.

"Do you have any cold water?" one asked distractedly, "It's rather hot. How can I be expected to complete my curriculum project if there isn't a cold bottle of water to drip all over my notes?"

                “I’d rather have a beer,” muttered one under his breath.  “When I was trafficked in Ghana, at least they had plenty of good beer.”

                From a heap of books and papers, another academic peered at Jamal and asked, "Where are your parents from? Do you have national rights? Did you go to university in the United States? How do you feel about the efficacy of the parliamentary system in a country where family clan loyalty is still an entrenched decision making protocol? "  

                A third academic marched briskly up to him and said, "Your maps are out of date. You only have maps from the 1940s. Have you noticed that things have changed? You can't still list pearl diving sites in maps of the 21st century because that is merely a rhetorical invocation of the past. There is no place for rhetoric on maps."  She glared at a stunned Jamal. 

                Yet another captive, who lay groaning with sea-sickness, mewed feebly from across the dhow, “Do you know of ANY Kuwaiti authors?  Any at all?  There must be at least one Kuwaiti Jane Austen wannabe…”

                A distinguished academic in the back shouted, "This hummus is terrible!  Give me a proper kitchen and I'll make you hummus that will knock your eyes out."

                Jamal sat down. Who were these people?  He was promised young pretty girls with pert American accents. It was supposed to be easy: take their passports, promise them authentic exotic experiences, and hand them over to the American University.  This crop of contract workers did not look at all like pretty young girls and taking their passports appeared to be as easy as finding edible food at the breakfast buffet of the Ghani Palace.  "I have to think," Jamal said, voicing his confusion aloud. The result was immediate. All the academics retreated to their piles of notes and left him alone.  Someone had to think: they understood that. 

                Jamal looked disconsolately, and then with growing hope, at the approaching pirate ship which appeared to have Dubai Police stenciled on the side.   Yes, he was correct:  it WAS the Dubai Police, those high-tech superheroes of justice who were so effective at stomping out crime in their own emirate that they had been recruited to clean up in Kuwait as well.  Jamal knew that the Dubai surveillance apparatus was second to none.  He knew, too, that their gig was up.  They were busted.  What to do?  He made his decision:  he would give himself up to the Dubai boys and tell them all he knew about Jerry.  He hoped they would be lenient on him.  After all, he was just a low-paid contract worker himself.  Why should he go down for the Godfather’s wrongdoings?  If he were lucky, he might get off with 100 lashes and deportation to Egypt. 

            He stood up on the front deck of the dhow and waved a white flag at the Dubai Boys. From the bow he had a better view of the approaching ship. The Dubai Boys had spared no expense. The finest calligraphers in the world had stenciled the gleaming white cutter, the whitest in the world. The cabin towered above the deck and was the tallest cruiser cabin in the world. And what was that tall white structure in the back? It looked like a ski slope….it WAS a ski slope—the tallest manmade pirate ship ski slope in the world. Those Dubai boys knew how to travel in style. Unfortunately, the entire boat was not occupied, as several cabins remained empty since the construction of the boat. The interior was not quite finished, but none of that mattered: from the deck of the dhow, they looked good. The best in the world.

As the Dubai Boys pulled alongside the dhow, Jamal had second thoughts. He figured it might be better just to lie low. His English was good, he was wearing cargo shorts, and if he could just get his hands on bulky man-bag, he might be able to pass for a professor. Quickly, he huddled behind a nearby stack of papers and tried to look interested in minutia.

The police were getting busy. It took some time to rescue the academics. As soon as the Dubai Boys thought they had them all in one place, two or three would wander off. One kept requesting coffee. Another briskly informed the police that it was time to pee, and half the group disappeared into the bathroom. In a desperate attempt to get the academics off the dhow, an officer announced that there would be coffee and snacks served on the other boat. The effect was electric; most of the academic, now plus Jamal, were on the police cruiser so fast the dhow hardly rocked, but on the way over two of the academics got distracted and leapt overboard. Fearing some kind of bizarre escape from rescue, the Dubai Boys looked over the railing. There were two middle aged ladies paddling around next to the boat.

“Look at us swimming!” they called, “Does any one have a camera to document us swimming in the Gulf!”

The Dubai Boys pulled them out and firmly locked them in the cabin to drip all over the sofas and not create more distractions while Jamal clutched his makeshift man-bag to his chest and hoped he would not be noticed. The Dubai Boys did not have time for details like counting human trafficking victims. Since there was no human trafficking in Dubai, they actually had little experience with the crime. Only 23 cases were recorded each year in Dubai! As a result, they figured they would just liberate the academics in Kuwait City and let them figure out the details. Jamal had no cause to worry. Maybe, he thought, this was his ticket out of the Ghani Palace and on to better things. He planned his new future during the trip back to shore.

On shore, a new crisis presented itself: where to put the academics? The Dubai Police were not interested in some measly victims of human trafficking. Who could believe them anyway: they probably came to work as contract educators for the universities on their own, planned a dhow trip, and got stuck out there. And lost their passports. And had unrealistic expectations about their work situation. They probably brought it on themselves. The Dubai Police were more interested in the mysterious Joey. The academics could tell them nothing except that he had booked them rooms at the Ghani Palace Hotel. If the Dubai Police couldn’t get a lead on Joey, they at least discovered a block of rooms reserved and paid for at the Ghani Palace. But there were only rooms for ten and there appeared to be eleven in the group. Jamal tried to make himself look smaller and more erudite.

“Make the guys room mates,” barked the Dubai Police sergeant in a sudden fit of inspiration, and the confused desk clerk tried to figure out how he would give the guys rebates, as the sergeant requested. The desk clerk was better at intimidating young women than booking guests into a hotel. These were two completely different skill sets. He knew guests needed keys, so he just started handing out keys. It worked: they all went away. The academics, the police, the guys from the pool hall down stairs who had come to watch the show: they all went away. A dusty calm resettled on the reception area of the hotel. The desk clerk went out to give tuna to the stray cats, so he did not hear the phone begin to ring as the new guests he had given room keys to discovered that they were living in a building whose maintenance had been neglected and this neglect needed to be instantly reported, noted, addressed, and critiqued.

Jamal went back up to the rooftop pool to smoke. He was back where he had started, but he felt changed. He had narrowly escaped, and it seemed that Joey was incommunicado. What to do? He had rather liked the eccentric tribe of the professoriate. They were geeky but fun. He liked his man-bag. It was so much easier than carrying everything in his pockets, and there was room for water and a hat. He contemplatively flicked another cigarette butt into the pool and wondered if he were too old for graduate school.

The Veil as Red Herring

Much is being made of veils/hijab/hegab etc. In the newspaper yesterday, it was reported in one country that wearing veils for women was just made compulsory: there was an outcry of protest. (Somalia just made beards and mustaches compulsory for men). In an article right underneath the one about compulsory veils for women was one where the man in charge had just ruled that veils were illegal: there was an outcry of protest. In a recent documentary on Egypt, the women interviewed had many different reasons for wanting or not wanting to wear the veil, and another documentary on Muslims in Michigan interviewed women who were talking about their personal choice to wear the veil. Interestingly, when one consults the Qur'an on this topic, there are only verses that refer to modest dress for both men and women, but none specify wearing a veil as a requirement for Muslim practice. When asked some local Kuwaiti women about this, they laughed and said, "It is about cultural identity. It is the way of our people." One woman made the personal observation that when a Qatari woman wore her veil pinned tight, it was for religious reasons, and when it was loose and required constant elegant adjusting, it was a cultural identity item.

Legislating costume is always difficult, and it seems that the "reasonable person" criteria often takes care of "decent dress". Of course one can still be utterly scandalized: I don't understand the increasing cleavage exposure in Ohio. But back to the Arabian Gulf: the veil seems to be about choice. An elegant, time consuming fashion choice at that! Modesty? Heavens to Betsy: some of the veils and abayas (and concomitant shoes) in the Arabian Gulf are anything but modest in their fancy cut, elaborate decoration, and extreme fashionistaness. So for people to get all bent out of shape about whether one wears a veil or not is a distraction from other topics of more pitch and merit. The more important issues involve women's participation in public life, education, and social institutions, not what they wear when they are doing it.

For example, in the Kuwaiti parliament, here are two members of parliament, equally dedicated and effective in their work. One wears hijab, the other doesn't. When I went to visit a girl's school recently, it made more sense to choose to wear a more conservative style of dress. Certainly when visiting the mosques, one dresses according to tradition, but putting a scarf on my head does not muffle my brain. There are other issues that muffle the brain, like having one's father or older brother have the last word on whether one goes on to higher education or not, or not being able to travel without male sponsorship.

I am also very interested in the fact that men's veils are not addressed with the same fervor as women's veils. These guys arrange and rearrange their veils with the same fashion sense the women do, but they are not required in the mosque the way women's head coverings are. As long as the head covering is a choice, then letting people choose does not seem to hurt anybody, but when it becomes external legislation, then there are problems. It will be interesting to see how the Somalia issue plays out where men's facial hair is now legislated.

The one thing I have issues with is the niqab, the face covering. To me, a western person in whose culture honesty is a value equated with seeing a person's face and where masks are seen as inherently duplicitous, the niqab has the cultural feel of a mask. I still find it a bit of an adjustment to have a conversation with a person who is wearing niqab. I can get over it, but at first it is like "don't stare at the niqab: oops, staring at the niqab".

Which way is Mecca?

Here are two signs from two different hotel rooms. They are supposed to indicate the direction of Mecca from the hotel room. I asked one of the hotel staff how to read the sign, and he just shrugged. I suspect he did not understand my question. Gentle reader, any suggestions on how to read these signs? They are plastic disks glued firmly to the wall, so their rotation must have been on purpose as they do not move. Why do the arrows point up or down? Does the visual rotation of the ka'bah relate to the interpretation of the arrow? Why is the arrow not three dimensional? Is it an implied compass direction assuming north to be the top?

Potties I have known

Here is your basic potty. Space for lots of bottom, and a lovely edited bidet spigot for perfect hygiene.


Here is a lovely bathroom that gives you a multicultural choice of strategies.


Here are some lovely tiles in our Kuwait bathroom for the more aesthetic potty experience.


Here is the most aesthetic potty room we have visited so far. The potty was just a potty as in the first photo of this entry, but the mirror, well, the mirror...


This is a brutal potty from the early 20th century located in a traditional house on Failaka Island.


This is a dhow (traditional wooden boat) potty. This view is looking up a 10 meter tall ship. It is the most basic potty of all, but it is the one with the best view.

Frisson, Art, and Politics

In order to create art, it seems that a bit of frisson, friction, discomfort, or disorientation is required. I mean art as in expressive communication of alternate viewpoints whether in poetry, fiction, sculpture, painting, film, or whatever a person has chosen for expression. Professor Tolkien wrote that things that are good to have and times that are happily spent make short stories and are quick in the telling, but things that are hard to bear and times that are painful make riveting stories and are long in the telling. So if you have an educated class that is entirely provided for, perhaps there is no motivation for art. One Kuwaiti person asserted that as along as women are bought off with enough money for travel and shopping, there is no motivation to examine their lives and realize that there is more than just shopping and travel. When they realize that, they will organize and work for more political rights for women and children.

Others have asserted the same opinion concerning literature in the Gulf. One finds a great deal of hyphenated Arab writing in English by Arabs who have moved to other countries, and with that distancing and the frictions of living in other places, they are able to write about these discomforts and the accompanying insights. Nationals in the Gulf are very comfortable. Some teachers at state universities say that men who are Gulf nationals take their jobs for granted, so they are not motivated to apply themselves to their studies. In fact, about 70% of university students are female. Maybe the limitations on women's movement and choices provides women with the push-back required for artistic reflection. Certainly there is more writing available from these women. In the short stories and novels I have read so far in English, marriage and relationships figure prominently, but such is also true of women writing in other genres. I wonder if there is a Molly Ivins equivalent in the Gulf? Maybe this person is just now in grade school, and we will hear from her in a few years.

We were wildly fortunate to be able to have a private session with three of the women who serve in the Kuwaiti parliament, and they opined that women need to be more involved in the work force and in public life in order to have more support for women's rights. As long as women are comfortable, they will not support political and legal changes in women's rights in Kuwait. Today there was supposed to be a vote for some pieces of legislation that would give citizenship to the children of women who married non-Kuwaitis and another that would provide support for women who would stay home and raise children instead of joining the work force. The female ministers of parliament were supporting the citizenship legislation, but they were not so supportive of the subsidies for homemakers because it was potentially a way to convince women to stay out of work.

There seem to be competing social forces at work here because if women make up 70% of the universities, but are then paid to stay home with toddlers, it is not clear that this is a recipe for social success. One a person learns to think, it is hard to say, "Okay, now stop thinking." Raising children is a very difficult and important job, and research is clear that a well educated mother raises better educated children, so in this way, it could be a very good thing. In fact, raising children should merit hazardous duty pay at times. However, there may be some women who might want other duties, and these may head out to the work force. Certainly these four women who ran for parliament did, and they are making a difference for mothers and children, or trying to. The vote for this legislation was supposed to take place, but parliament could not meet to vote because a quorum was not present, so those who showed up all went back to their offices. Three of the four women ministers actually agreed to talk to us since parliament was not meeting, so we went to the huge diwaniya room in the parliament building to discuss women's rights in Kuwait. These were dynamic people who felt frisson in their culture, and were ready to move forwards. They all had PhDs from the United States, were witty, knowledgeable, generous, and full of passion for their work.

Between the US ambassador to Kuwait, Deborah Jones, and the Kuwaiti women in parliament, there is hope for planet earth after all: the trajectory of the proverbial handbasket may yet be diverted by people like these phenomenal women.

The Ghani Palace Hotel

The Ghani Palace Hotel crouches on the shores of the Arabian gulf, her faded glory gently decaying into the desert. Once she may have been considered beautify, but her charm had gone grey, and the process had not been graceful. In her later years, she received few guests into the warrens of her hallways, and when she did, it seemed to come as a great surprise. As her splendor waned, she became more of an architectural bookmark for beach front property rather than a page of text for some form of holiday nostalgia. Foot steps in her halls and many stairwells raised dust and sent the staff into a panic.

The feet of the Ghani Palace herself were like a pair of Roman sandals, harkening back to a mythological past, strips of balconies strapped wide spaces together. Small shops and offices made up the lower layer of mud this faded lotus stood in. Grimy little stores sold philosophical signs like, " If you drink, you die. If you don't drink, you die." There was a video store that rented Hollywood and Bollywood films with all the sex and violence left in, unlike the cinema versions that edited those parts out, resulting in a certain amount of plot ambiguity (if any of the film was left after the excision). There were small offices with crowded desks and empty chairs.

There were few actual people in the Ghani Palace Hotel. Guests were a disturbance that confused the staff. When ten guests suddenly arrived one day, it caused a shock that ran through the hotel and made her sigh and shift uneasily. Her elevator, already old and tired, groaned so audibly that any guest foolish enough to use it quickly learned the error of her ways and retired to the stairs, although this move disturbed other furry and feathered denizens of the hotel's upper and lower reaches. The stairs trailed through the Palace in intestinal twists and shifts. No one flight completely reached from top to bottom which resulted in elevator-leary guests wandering up and down random hallways searching for the next set of stairs. Pentacles appeared in the faux marbling of the walls. At the bottom of one set of stairs, many chairs clustered around the door ready to break free and run wild.

But the greatest shock to the frayed nerves of the venerable Ghani Palace Hotel was the invasion of the guest rooms by actual guests. Towels that had lain dormant to peacefully house sophisticated mold cultures were disturbed. Windows hosting sediment were shaken. Floors that supported a complex strata of desert dust and indigenous dust bunnies were trodden upon. The Ghani Palace shuddered.

The crumbling, abandoned apartment buildings across the street laughed at the Ghani Palace's discomfort. They happily hosted their cats and pigeons who did not try to wash their non-existent windows, sweep their dirt floors, or wipe their broken counters with disinfectant. The Symphony Building, the glass and steel high-rise next door, did not even glance toward the Ghani Palace who she considered an eye sore compared to her up-to-date superiority.

But the bulking, embarrassingly ornamented presence of the Ghani Palace Hotel could not be ignored even as the paint flaked off the balconies and her house-keeping staff puzzled over guest requests for bath mats. Her lumpy profile dominated the skyline available to her, and her distinctive costume jewelry of balconies, arched, windows, dusty carpets and odd ornamental empty pots added to her disturbing charm. The Ghani Palace was not so much a hotel as an invitation to an alternate reality, another Kuwait within Kuwait.

Tradition and Modernity: Eternal tension

Academic Geekiness level: high
Caffeine level: critically low

When mental health professionals do stress tests and measure life events that cause the highest stress that can influence depression and other fun states of mind, they always cite change as the highest stressor. Death, moving house, and divorce are right up there as the highest stressors. So when one is considering the issues of culture change where one faces the death of a way of life, not just moving house but completely changing what the house and neighborhood look like, and divorcing oneself from the past as a way of embracing modernity, the result is a pretty stressful situation: welcome to the Gulf. As a result of the lightening fast pace of change, there is understandably a concern with cultural heritage and national identity. However, the fast pace of change means that there are generational difference in how the past is envisioned, how tradition is measured, and how cultural values keep pace with changing circumstances.

In Qatar, many Qataris would assert that Qatar's history began in 1971 when Qatar became a sovereign state, but implied in that assertion is that there was nothing in Qatar before that time. This is not true: this area, while not involving huge Cairo like cities, did have people who wandered through for trade, people who lived on the coast and fished and dove for pearls, and clans who claimed the territory for its own. But this was not a building people. Architecture was temporary, and even if you build a mud-brick building or a palm frond hut, it would blow down or melt away and nothing was lost. History was kept in oral tradition and in family relationships.

In "modern" society, one keeps ones historical records in things like books and buildings. Doha and Dubai had neither, but began to accumulate them once the late 20th century wealth began to pour in. As they adopted the material culture of "progress", some material values crept in with the things, and consumer culture with its value of Stuff, became a force to be reckoned with. If Stuff becomes the keeper of history and the symbol of cultural identity, then buildings, clothes, and iconography become more important, especially if you have to use them to make yourself distinctive to an outside world pouring in.

In Kuwait, there have been a few catastrophic events that seem to have influenced the Kuwaiti people's relationship with material culture. Kuwait City has been around for 250 years or so because it was a merchant center. Thus, when the oil wealth began to pour in during the 40's and 50's, there was a feeling of really arriving on a grand stage. Farah Al-Nakib, a graduate student at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, reports that in oral histories she did concerning how people feel about buildings and memory, people who had experienced life pre-oil and post-oil in Kuwait said, "Let the old buildings be demolished! It's the new Kuwait that deserves our admiration." And so Ms. Al Nakib likens Kuwait to an Etch-a-Sketch where every time a new building phase comes in, they just raze everything before that time to the ground and start again.

We drove through the old shopping district from the 1960's, which was was very busy, and there were store owners who were fighting the new development scheduled to demolish their stores. There they were stubbornly hanging on, lights on, store full of merchandise, and above (and sometime beside them), the buildings were being torn down. Rebar hung from crumbling cinder blocks next to a brightly lit store full of toys.

On the waterfront in Kuwait City, there are buildings from the early 20th century of one or two stories, with the sky scrapers of early 21st century Kuwait towering behind them. Right on the water front is a new mall with many many fake wind towers decorating it by way of asserting its traditional right to be a shopping area that contributes to national identity.

While we were having our architectural tour of downtown Kuwait City, a dust storm complete with thunder and lightening blew in. The wind whipped up while we were visiting some of the traditional buildings and all we saw was the tops of the trees blowing, but as we got out on the street, the dust surrounded us. Visibility was 100 feet, but none of the shoppers quit shopping. On the way back to the hotel, I asked to be let off at the supermarket to get some cleaning supplies for the hotel room (we have slightly different habits from housekeeping when it comes to cleaning), and I walked home in the wind and dust. It was actually not so bad, and nobody else on the street seemed to notice that there was anything going on. I took a hint from the crowds on the street, wrapped up, and joined them in taking no notice.

But on the topic of change, it seems that Kuwait is in a cultural crossroads when it comes to how to remember history. There is the pre-oil history to remember, there is the post-oil history, there is the invasion of 1990, and there is the continuing progress of modernity. Around the city, there are crumbling relics from the 60's, there is iconic architecture from the 70's, there is the urban development of the 80's , there is the reconstruction of the 90's, and there is the development of a "heritage industry" of the 00's. It is amazing to see everything all at once in one frame. Kuwait has a rich cultural history: it will be very interesting to see how the older generation who is all for moving on will reconcile how to remember with the younger generation who has grown up in the New Kuwait and might want to hold on to parts of it.

New Word Familiar Concept

I learned yesterday about an Arabic word from a young Qatari lady who was describing how the desert can be a rejuvenating place to be. According to the modern Delphic oracle, the internet, the word Brira, from the root "yebra" (to heal), means the feeling of a fresh breeze blowing through your soul and healing you of all care when you stand out in the great wide beauty of the desert. What a wonderful word! I think mountains and rivers can create Brira also. Living in Doha, I must say, in only mild complaint, I feel a distinct lack of Brira.

There is a wonderfully insightful Qatari woman who keeps an amazing blog about life in Qatar called http://thebrirafile.wordpress.com

In your copious spare time, Gentle Reader, ;-) I recommend a trip to the BriraFile.

Malls in the Gulf States as Fantasy Social Centres

Malls are the new city centers in cities that have no center. The mall is air-conditioned and has all the entertainment a person could want, if you have money to spend and time to spend it. In a world of material excess, where progress means "more stuff" then malls are the epitome of joy and fulfillment. So if we accept as a premise that our lives outside the home are about the entertainment of more Stuff, and we socialize around Stuff, then the places where we get our Stuff need to be as entertaining and iconic as possible. The malls we have visited in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Doha have been not just museums of contemporary material culture. They have been positively shrines to materialistic excess and the fantasy that shopping euphoria transports a person to another world, nay, another dimension. Here is the mall where there is a ski slope called 'Ski Dubai'. When you go in to sled or ski, you get a ski jacket and pants with the Ski Dubai logo on it. Everybody is there wearing the same parka and ski pants. If I thought Perfect North Slopes was an entertaining joke, I stand corrected. It is practically an alpine paradise when one is confronted by Ski Dubai. There is a chair lift and 1k run, complete with a sledding hill and kiddie park. There is a 4 meter tubing run also. Whoo hoo. It is also lit with slightly blue tinged lights. People press their noses to the windows outside to watch, so it entertains not only as a ski slope but as a sort of strange reality show as well.

Then there is the aquarium and water fall at the Mall of the Emirates. You can visit the aquarium separately from visiting the mall, but just in walking around, a person can still enjoy the big fish tank. Evidently, the tale is told how it sprang a leak one day and the mall had to close. (insert Fear, Panic, and Boredom here). The water fall at the Mall of the Emirates has statues of men vaguely reminiscent of Ken dolls diving down it. It makes a lovely noise, and you can hear it far down the hallways of Stuff. Outside the Mall of the Emirates is a large pond with dancing fountains that people line up to see. It is evidently quite the popular family outing, rather like the drive in movies, which I also read in the paper that they are starting up a huge drive in out in the desert. There are reported to be little air conditioning units you can put on the window of your car so you don't have to leave your car running during the movie. Ah, the life of freedom in the desert. I am not making this up: they are going to show Laurence of Arabia as their first movie at this outdoor theater.

Doha has its own iconic mall: Villagios. This mall, in addition to having a lot of Stuff, also has a canal with gondolas that people who are tired of looking for Stuff can ride in. We went to Villagios on a Friday night, so it was packed, I am telling you, packed with families. Everybody wanted a ride down the 200 meter (more or less) canal. The gondolas are motorized, but there is a south east asian person standing on the back guiding the boat along the canal with a rudder attached to the faux gondola pole he is holding. The ceilings are painted with clouds, and along the mall path there are faux Venetian Ponte Vecchios periodically for crossing the path. But if the Venetian theme pales, you can go over to the food court and watch people at the skating rink. According to a sign there, the Gondolinas are the local figure skating team who compete there (with whom one wonders), but there is rumored to also be a hockey team organized by (surprise) the local Canadian ex-pats. The local Australian ex-pats have organized the surfers who like to chase the storm surges off the East coast.

Malls. Personally, they give me hives. The stuff stuff stuff. I feel oppressed by the material culture, but after awhile it gets humorous. We found a cell phone store that had gold plated and titanium cell phones for $30,000. The sales man said it was all about lifestyle. Yup.

Peak Water

Academic Geek Level: High
Caffeine level: low
Utter Bafflement level: 11 on a scale of 10

Welcome to Qatar. It is level, rocky, flat, hot, and has a two month period in Winter where there is a bit of rain and some things try to turn green. Until desalinization plants, there were only a few thousand people who would hang around anywhere for any length of time, and they moved around a lot.

Peak water has already been reached in the Gulf States but the full implications of this issue will not be felt until Peak Gas has been reached. in the Gulf States, about 90% of the usable water is from desalinization. This means that the water is very very expensive and, as a result, highly subsidized. Nobody pays the real price of water. In addition, people rely on bottled water and to my utter amazement, there is no large scale recycling effort. Not surprisingly, there is also a huge problem with waste management and over-flowing landfills. In the UAE we learned that the per capita trash generation was among the highest of the developed world. To add to the issue, the population in these countries has doubled in the last 5 years.

However, it is cheap gas, in Qatar, that keeps the impact of these long term environmental problems from having the impact that they may in the future. Qatar has huge reserves of natural gas, and due to strategic investment in gas technology, specialized port facilities, and pipeline investments with other countries, the World Trade Organization has estimated that Qatar has enough gas to last until 2500 or something huge like that.

Somehow the romance of water eclipses all sense. Palm trees cost about $2.00 per day to keep alive: these are popular landscaping items and represent a huge cost. Around and inside buildings, the landscaping is lush and in profound denial of the natural environment. The need to landscape with non-native fauna to create a fantasy land of luxurious amounts of water leads architects to try to create this landscape even when all evidence for its success is to the contrary. In our hotel, there are huge decorations of *fresh* flowers every day. The fossil fuels that this beautiful arrangement represents in water desalinization, transportation, and air-conditioning to make it last all day is HUGE.

I read in the newspaper that Qatar is investing in real estate in other countries so it can grow food there to import when the famine strikes and peak water's effects become real. Already the newspaper is reporting that Egypt is in fierce water rights struggles concerning the Nile and it's southern neighbors (the Nile runs south to north, so north is downstream: it makes sense to the Egyptians). When I asked about the costly landscaping, one person said that some areas as beginning to use what they call "Arizona Style Landscaping." This means using rocks instead of grass. We saw examples of this at Georgetown University's campus here where they have used white stones around the building and astroturf for green around the parking lots. Of course they still have acres of grass and lots of fountains. Gentle Reader, forget about peak oil--it's all about peak water.

The Doha Philharmonic Orchestra

The moment I heard that there was a philharmonic orchestra (as opposed to a misharmonic?) in Doha, I had to go. If you are a Gentle Reader who visited Ireland with me in this blog, you may or may not remember my posting on the Limerick Community Orchestra. I was rather expecting something ragtag, but as with all in the Gulf States, you get an astonishing juxtaposition of situations. First, we had to go buy tickets at the Virgin MegaStore. My colleague Debra, who specializes in 18th century British literature, and I walked into the acoustic assault that is the Virgin MegaStore. The music was quite loud, and the people who worked in the store were dressed in fan costumes for the World Cup, which is currently possessing the entire city of Doha, nay the entire world, except maybe the United States. So Debra, a co-Janite, and I walk through the thumping beat of the bright red store populated by young people wearing huge furry rainbow hats to a little counter that says, on a handwritten sigh, "Tickets". We caught the eye of a young man in a Brazil futbol jersey (it was no use trying to speak), and I held up the little brochure for the Doha Philharmonic. He spent a great deal of time typing, stamping, and tearing, and then he handed over a ticket.

The next night we hailed a taxi whose driver looked at my ticket with great puzzelment. "Where do you want to go?" I pointed to the writing on the ticket, which was probably not as helpful as I hoped, "To the Aspire Zone Ladies Club for the Philharmonic." He asked, "Is that near the Villagios?" I had thought it was and indicated that. It seemed to be enough, and we took off. He seemed to think we knew where we were going and kept asking for directions. Finally, with the mall in sight, we just asked to be let out, and we would navigate from there. Luckily, Debra asked the next person who passed for the direction of the Philharmonic, and we had fortunately gotten out of the cab at just the right place.

When we entered the hall, it was like going through a little tardis-like warp. We were in a hall full of northern Europeans chatting away in two or three languages. There were some Qatari nationals taking tickets, or people dressed like Qatari nationals. Dress, demeanor, language: we could have been anywhere in norther Europe except for the fact that the tables in the foyer were covered with the ever present bottles of water.

We went into the ballroom that served as their concert hall to find out seats. These turned out to be plastic chairs set out on the ballroom floor with paper numbers taped to them. We sat in the back in 50 riyal seats (about $10). There were about 200 people there, tops. As soon as the doors closed, everybody in the back of the room immediately stood up and moved forward so that the whole audience was up next to the orchestra regardless of ticket price. This was clearly something normal to do as there was no furtive looking around before the back moved forward.

The first piece was emblematic of the wacky multicultural experience that is the Arabian Gulf. We were in Qatar, but there were only 5 or 6 nationals in the audience. The orchestra looked completely European and Asian, with the exception of one double bassist who might have been "from around here" in a rather general sense. The audience was most definitely not local. The composer of the first piece was Sudanese who wrote a piece about when he lived in Switzerland, so the music was supposed to evoke a Swiss landscape. There were chimes for church bells, flutes for bird song, a snare drum for trains passing, cello glissandos for cows mooing (quite enjoyably effective), and a cow bell to simulate the sound of cow bells ( to go with the mooing cellos). It was great!

The next piece was Tchaikovsky's concerto in D major for violin. Kolja Blacher was the soloist, and he was playing a 1730 Stradivarius which was being loaned to him by his Japanese patron. I have never heard this concerto played so fast: it was like Blacher was red shifting while he played, and this violin was a divine sound. Of course the astonishing technical precision of Blacher was amazing as well. The conductor, Thomas Kalb, was so enthusiastic in his conducting that he was jumping up and down on the podium and catching some serious air.

The last piece was a modern piece by a polish composer, Witold Lutoslowski, who seemed bent on wild inclusivity such that there was a huge gong, a tambourine, two harps, three pianos, every timpani available, much brass, and that cow bell left over from the first piece because, goodness knows, you can't have enough cow bell. This was a loud piece because everybody got to play for most of it. At one point in the euphonious cacophony, the snare drum came in as a series of rat-ta-tat-tats that sounded just like the neighbor banging on the door to get the orchestra to turn the volume down. When the tambourine came in, I almost leapt out of my seat because Mr. Lutoslowski had asked that one of the many percussionists running around in the back should hold up the tambourine and scrape the back of his thumbnail up the skin of the tambourine. I did not find the effect musical. However, according to the program, "The toccata is interrupted twice by chorales in the brass section." I waited on the edge of my seat to see how the bouncy conductor would deal with this interruption. It was great! He energetically motioned as if he were making a questionable gesture in Italy, and the brass barged right in with their chorale. It was very loud, very exciting, and utterly exhilarating. What a show: we clapped and clapped for them, and there were even people in the audience who hooted when the percussion section stood up to be acknowledged.

What does a gig in Doha mean for these world class musicians? Half way through the concert, half the audience left because England is playing the US tonight, and the game started during the intermission. This meant that when the concert ended, there were about 75 people left to appreciate these musicians. Of course we clapped until our hands hurt, and we hoped our enthusiasm would make up for our lack of numbers. As we left, and came around the side of the ballroom cum music hall, there were all the musicians making a beeline for their cars. I guess they were hurrying home for the futbol also? But back to the question of what a gig in Doha means for a professional classical musician. I bet the pay is good even if there are no real facilities and the audience is rather small. I wonder if it is a stepping stone for Greater Things, or if it is "any port in a storm". Whatever it is, they were really good and not many people in Doha know that.

Birthday in Doha

Thank you, Gentle Readers, for your happy birthday wishes. I skyped Ralph to show him the birthday cake I made for myself: two Digestive Biscuits with Nutella for filling. It was mighty tasty, but unbeknownst to me, there was more to come. (Kendra, this next bit will be familiar to you, but I had to share) I was sitting in my hotel room dutifully grading final research papers (yes, I am finishing my classes online from the Middle East; laugh if you will), and there came a knock at the hotel room door. I got up to see who it might be, and lo and behold, there was a room service guy there with a cake. "Happy Birthday," he said, and handed me the tray with the cake on it, complete with a plate, a card, a carnation, and knife with a white ribbon tied around it. Stupified, I said, "What?", and he replied, "It is your birthday, here is your cake," as if that explained everything. I took the cake and recovered enough to say, "Thank you!". The card read, "Dear Ms. Benander, from the staff of the Ramada Plaza, we wish you a very happy brithday." Can you believe it? The hotel gave me a cake?! Isn't that hilarious?

So that is my birthday in Doha. Three years from 50! I can't wait! (I understand 50 is the new 30).

Food at meetings

Academic Geekiness level: low
Caffeine level: medium

The nature of hospitality in this region of the world makes me feel inadequate in my own home entertaining. When people come to our very simple home on Webster Avenue, we offer what we can, but it pales in comparison to what is offered here. I think I would have to live closer to Servatis to be able to do what the Emiratis served, and to a different extent, the Qataris. I cannot yet speak for Kuwait, but I will update you as soon as I find out, Gentle Reader. It varies a bit in quality and quantity, from a huge buffet to delicate little cakes. There is always water, no matter what. Also, these photos do not include the "beverage service" that usually happens, which includes coffee and tea in most cases. Tasty yummy coffee. We had most hospitable dinners at two homes that included stunningly beautiful tea sets: my personal resolve is to obtain a tea set that has matching cups so I can serve tea to more than one person at my house. Right now I only have two tea cups that match. I feel pathetic: I want to be a lovely Middle Eastern hostess because they are so lovely and so very very nice in the highest sense of the term nice. I want to be able to make my guests feel like they made me feel when I was a guest in their homes. However, this is a farewell tradition of bringing out some smoking incense to make the clothes smell nice, and then the hostess brings around perfume for all the guests. I don't think I can learn to do this. I will start with something simple like getting tea cups. Maybe when I'm a little older I can progress to also making sure my guests leave smelling nice.

Anyway, what follows is a photo essay of the various treats that have turned up at our meetings and hostings. Nothing has yet to match the "hot banana taco" that got chronicled in this blog last year at Harlaxton Manor in the UK.