Coming Home

"Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve; it is life's undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room." ~Harriet Beecher Stowe

I don't know where home is anymore. Supposedly, I am here now. But I occasionally think, with absurd ambivalence, that I want to go home. And when I think I want to go home - for that tumultuous, turgid fifteen or thirty minutes or sixty minutes- I mean my latest home, and that is in Dubai.

It's hard for me to say where "home" is. Now, it is in Dubai - or at least I have referred to Dubai as home since December, when I felt it was time to make an exit from the cacophonous subcontinent back to the desert. Yet, as summer holiday approached I began to think about coming home - to the United States and more specifically North Carolina. I lived in North Carolina for ten years, my entire adult life until I left for Dubai, and prior to that Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Ohio respectively. While I usually tell folks I grew up in Ohio - because physically I did - I, in fact, grew up in North Carolina - most importantly - emotionally and mentally. My mother and my brother remain in Ohio. My father and my stepmother live in Atlanta, and that is my "home base" when I am in the States. And to a certain degree, all of these places - Indiana, Pittsburgh, Ohio, North Carolina, and Atlanta, are some semblance of home - or what home is supposed to be.

These places are my family and my friends. They are places where I have lived and lost and loved. They are joy, silence, laughter, love, acceptance, rejection, sorrow, ecstasy, anguish, chaos, familiarity, nostalgia, turbulence and resilience - all of the things that make up home as well as break it down. They are amazing food in restaurants I already know, they are people I worked with and was inspired by, they are bars where I spent many a summer evening, they are short visits with pals filled with chatter and light and laughter and a longing to continue but acknowledging that the feeling is fleeting and so is the meeting so here is our quick goodbye - again...sort of a little too similar to last year - isn't it?

It's fierce - this feeling of anguish and angst to return to Dubai, to a location I fought with for months, and fought against for months until I accepted it was mine. Knowing I was so excited to come here, to come home, and then arriving and it's amazing and it's almost everything I hoped it would be, but then for a minute, for an hour, those distorted thoughts and feelings overwhelm me and I picture my unpacked flat and my eccentric security guard and the ease of daily life and I "want to go home". Then I am perplexed and a wash of guilt and shame simultaneously mixed with comfort and inextricably linked to what I know not and I wonder about the holidays and next summer and when and if and how I will "come home" again.

And now I am here. Loving every moment. Living every moment. Accepting everything the Universe has to offer. And when those forty-five minutes or so roll around...and I am submerged in discomfort and living the questions, I do not escape it. I do not resist it as I did my new home. I embrace the fear and acceptance and the tears and the peace. I reflect on my people and the amazing visit I have had over the past three weeks and I smile and I am grateful I am here. And when someone asks me when I go back and I realize it is is ONLY ________ weeks (now five), I return to the present and I contemplate "home" - a place and a definition I have been seeking and finding and leaving for the majority of my life, and I breathe - because whether home is in Ohio or Atlanta, or North Carolina or Dubai, or with my family or with my friends, or with my Papi or where the heart is - or all of it and none of it at the same time - "wherever you go, there you are" and maybe home is there also.

Memories of the Heart

"Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring." - Oscar Wilde

For me, May 24 is the longest day of the year. Forget the Summer Solstice. While I do love both the Summer Solstice and the Winter, neither compares in importance to May 24. For May 24 lasts not only one day, but a week at least, and sometimes it lasts much longer.

May 24 is a heavy day. It carries not the lightness and mirth of the Summer Solstice or Valentine's Day, the Fourth of July or Labor Day. Although it often falls on Memorial Day weekend - I cannot forget that - it's no picnic neither for me nor for many of my friends.

The week leading up to May 24 is filled with angst and discomfort. I am afraid I will forget, although my body, my heart, and my soul announce clearly they remember. There are tears and dishevelment and irritation galore - and lots of checking. I am constantly checking. Checking to make sure the day hasn't past unbeknownst to me. Checking to make sure Sarah's candle is still in place and I have something with which to light it. Checking the answering machine to see if any one's called yet - Julie surely will. And checking to ensure that my schedule is not too packed on the 24th, that I will have time to honor my commitment.

At Sarah's funeral, the priest asked us to remember her - to light a candle in her honor - for an hour - and spend some time with her. I always do. But my ritual has changed. Approximately five years later, I not only sat and talked to Sarah for an hour, but I began sitting and talking with Anda too. How bizarre. The same date. Different causes, but the same date. I lost two beautiful, boisterous girls with whom I grew up and now I wear the latter weeks of May with an odd chartreuse shade of mourning and it envelops me.

I sit here and I breathe. What else to do? Call off work and lie at home watching Beaches and Girl Interrupted and ultimately Amelie or Breakfast at Tiffany's? It sounds like a plan, but it is impractical. Best to stay busy and then come home to spend my pleasant, peaceful hour (at least, I often spend more) with two wonderful women whose presence we have been deprived of for 11 and 6 years respectively. What makes the day long is not the time I spend with these ladies and their spirits, it's the time leading up to it. That hour is sacred and one of my most holy of the year.

The anxiety, the tears, the weariness and the overwhelming feeling of injustice are not logical. They are parts of what we call memories of the heart. The discomfort is not rational, it rises from within and settles over me just as it does you when the anniversary of a death, a breakup, a parting of ways from your best friend, an aborted fetus, a lost child calls you back to a time you knew and had long forgotten - or so it seems. Memories of the heart do not follow the calendar, they are visceral and real and they might as well be a mental holiday from reality because your emotions, your memory, and your soul take over and it is far easier to accept the memory than to reject it because ultimately you're fighting a battle you have no power to win. Because memories of the heart have already been decided. And that's part of what makes them so all-encompassing.

It is now May 24. Today is the day I have been working all week not to forget. Today is the day I will sit with two beautiful girls - frozen in their young adulthood - and talk without judgment and without explanation. I will catch them up on the past year, as will many others from our hometown who know this date far too well. And I will settle into my chartreuse mourning, my lace curtain of memory veiled with sunshine attitudes and wild women hearts and be thankful they were here then and that I am here now.

In memory of two vivacious women whom I was lucky to have in my life for many years. The world is a brighter place because of you. SKB and ALTZ. Rest in Peace Ladies.

In Dubai

"We are all connected to everyone and everything in the universe. Therefore, everything one does as an individual affects the whole. All thoughts, words, images, prayers, blessings, and deeds are listened to by all that is." - Serge Kahili King

I came home yesterday and the cleaning woman was here. I had just been rollerblading at Jumeirah Beach. Approximately 41 degrees Celsius. Simultaneous annoyance and joy. Annoyed that I couldn't just come home, take a shower, and lie undisturbed - or whatever I decided to do at the moment. It was Thursday, the last day of the week and I reserved for myself the right not to decide anything, to live at whim pending how I felt - on Thursday evenings. The joy - the woman had been here before and did a good job.

Prior to leaving for work, I had left a note for the cleaning service: Please clean the bath/shower very well, Please clean the silverware very well, Please clean the balcony. Last week's service was so-so, and it appeared that sometimes when they came the showers were not cleaned completely and the cleaning of the silverware left something to be desired - especially since I put it directly in my mouth.

I went into the office.

"Ma'am!", the woman exclaimed. "I was not here times before. Filipinos here before."

I looked at her and smiled, "OK, that's fine." I had no idea what she was talking about.

"Ma'am, the bathrooms are not good?" she continued. "Filipinos were here before,"

Now I got it. She was concerned that I would think she had done a poor job in the past. She is blaming it on the Filipinos. Damn. That's harsh.

I reassured her. I had to simultaneously allay her concern and defend the Filipinos.

"It's OK," I said. "Always a good job. Last week was not good. All other times good."

She was still a little nervous. I reassured her again.

Damn. She was claiming that the Filipinos did not do a good job cleaning. I, personally, love the Filipinos in all capacity that I know them - I will make the oversimplification that they work extremely hard. Most of us do favor the Filipinos. They are renown in this part of the world for their nannying and cleaning skills. Often ads seeking nannies are specifically requesting Filipinos. However, I do not care what nationality, race, religion or "color" the cleaning women are as long as they are thorough. I had already forgotten the nationality of this woman, whose name I know, but may not be able to spell correctly .

I was taken aback.

"She's blaming the poor cleaning on the nationality* of the other women," laughed Erika. "Nice," she said facetiously.

I thought about it - have been thinking about it - the dynamics of race, ethnicity, and nationality here in Dubai. There are many here. The city is a modern melting pot - perhaps the modern melting pot of the East, with immigrants making up approximately 80 percent of the population. Pakistanis, Indians, Sri Lankans, Filipinos, Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Somalis, Ethiopians, South Africans, Kenyans, Brits, Scots, Canadians, Indonesians, Australians, US Americans, Syrians, Liberians, Iranians, Nigerians, Nepalis. We're all here living, breathing and working in the same city. But there are some dynamics that throw me for a loop - occasionally and usually momentarily.

Often, there are interracial / interethnic couples. It fits. It's like New York - if you cram a whole bunch of different people into a small space, they're bound to begin mixing. This is not surprising. I am surprised occasionally, but not so much. Because people in this part of the world often associate religion with ethnicity, race and nationality, this becomes more convoluted or more clear - depending on how you think.

The Dubai FAQs Marriage in Dubai web page states:

Expat as well as Emirati couples can and do get married in Dubai. The rules and procedures vary depending on nationality and/or religion.

Generally, two people of the same religion can marry without difficulty. People of different religions may face some problems. A common situation is when a Muslim man and Christian woman wish to get married. That's OK (cultural and/or family considerations notwithstanding) but a Christian man will have to convert to Islam before marrying a Muslim woman.

Emirati men sometimes marry non-emirati women but the reverse is rare (although not completely unknown).

The Dubai Courts oversee procedures and regulations pertaining to marriages. Their website is mostly in Arabic and it is difficult to find relevant information in English. The marriage section tel is +971-4-3347777. The court will not perform a civil service for marrying Christians - you have to go to a church or your embassy or both.

Intermarriage is, for the most part allowed here permitted one follows the outlined protocol. The toughest challenge is, clearly, for a non-Muslim man to marry a Muslim woman. There are many reasons intermarriage is more common here now. Since weddings bills are continually increasing, as well as dowry demands, "Emirati bachelors are increasingly unwilling to marry local women. Growing numbers of bachelors, unable to raise the six figure sums that many prospective in-laws demand and reluctant to fall into debt, have opted out by taking European, Asian or foreign Arab brides," states the article "What Price a Wedding?" in the July 2000 issue of The Middle East. Also, in recent years, women in the Gulf states have become more independent due to the rise of educated women, people have gotten married with unrealistic expectations, and society's obsession with materialism has fueled the formally-noted skyrocketing dowry demands and wedding costs.

As of October 2007, the country's divorce rate was at 46 percent, the highest in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) according to "Divorce and its impact on the UAE society" an article in the GulfNews by Najla Al Awadhi. All of these factors are contributing to the decrease in marriage among nationals in the UAE. The officials here have attempted to halt the trend by offering financial incentives for nationals to marry one another.

But - the country is no longer comprised mostly of nationals (an issue the officials also hope to combat with their financial-incentive scheme since only children born to local women are considered citizens) - therefore the pattern of mixed-up marriages is visually and anecdotally clear. With so much diversity and so many different people, one assumes that there is an air of tolerance - it seems to be as consistent as the wind.

Take for example, the Western obsession with race and color. It's Eastern equivalent is the obsession with religion. I came here expecting to find a fair amount of "blacks." However, there are not many people here who consider themselves "black" no matter how dark their skin is - especially if they are Arab or Muslim and they are not from the US or sometimes Africa. It's similar to the attitude many people in the Dominican Republic have. I long ago stopped getting excited when I saw folks of my own hue, people who maybe would 'get' my storyline, around the city. Color here is misleading and almost nearly inconsequential.

Everywhere there are advertisements for "fairness cream", which boasts the power to "improve" the complexion. "Improve"? Because it's "bad" in all of its copper, bronze, or ebony glory?

There are many odd dynamics and conundrums here when it comes to ethnicity and nationality, and race and religion as well. I consider myself "black" or "brown" or "yellow" or "black" and "brown" and "yellow" depending on the day because that is the history and the reality that I know. That is my storyline. Yet, I come here, and I am considered a "Westerner" - I have elevated status. I get called "ma'am" and "madame" on a daily basis and someone comes to clean my flat every week and I have not left my husband and children behind in my home country to provide a better life for them. This is where the economic factor comes into play. It's where ethnicity and economics collide. Dubai is where ethnicity, religion, race, nationality, and economics collide and what we previously knew as known becomes un.

*For the purpose of this post, the following definitions will suffice:
The Free Dictionary by Farlex
Farlex, Inc 2009

Nationality:

1. The status of belonging to a particular nation by origin, birth, or naturalization.
Ethnicity:
1 -An ethnic quality or affiliation resulting from racial or cultural ties
Race:
1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.
2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution