expat Archives | Naive Psychologist

Visit to Sharjah

In which I am not the adventurer I think I am

I loved that green scarf my eldest boy had wrapped around his waist in that photograph. It was soft to touch, the creases fell out of it, and it matched nearly everything in my wardrobe. I took it with me whenever I left the house and it nearly always ended up wrapped around one of the boys.

At the time this photograph was taken we had been living in Abu Dhabi for ten months, and those ten months included the extended three month summer break that I spent travelling through Spain and then living in Edinburgh for a month where I staged my first (what would come to be my only) solo show.

We were spending the weekend in Sharjah, the small emirate that borders the other side of Dubai and is about 150 kilometres from Abu Dhabi. At the time, it had a lot more cheap accommodation and schooling than was available in Abu Dhabi and many people on low incomes would commute. Every day. They probably still do, but I’m not sure about details like that anymore.

By this time, we had found a place to live and while the lads and I were in Spain, the mister had moved out of our temporary apartment and into our new compound apartment. We had passed the first anniversary of my dad’s death, my grandfather was more settled in his new accommodation. In the shadow of the GFC and a company merger, the mister’s employment was not unstable but was more complex than we had thought it would be when he accepted the job offer over a year before.

I was also facing something entirely unexpected: I was not loving living in a different country and culture to my own. This messed with my mind because until now I had thought that I loved travel, that I wanted to live anywhere, everywhere allthewhere. For more than twenty years nearly every decision that I’d made had been on the understanding that I wanted always to be seeing new places. On our backpacking trips I had listened to everyone else’s stories of living in Singapore, Hong Kong, the Middle East and I had thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ You understand, don’t you, that when I say ‘thought’ I mean ‘believed’. I mean that this was who I thought I was. A person who wants to be in new and different places. Even if it had sometimes frightened me or made me feel uneasy, the opportunity to think beyond myself had always energised me.

This was not my experience in my first year of being in Abu Dhabi. During that time I was filled with such intense and debilitating feelings of dislocation that it was impossible to focus or concentrate on anything much more than the immediate task at hand. More deeply, whether I was conscious of it or not this was having a profound impact on my sense of identity and self.

On the weekend that this photograph was taken, I was taking practical steps to grapple with this mismatch in my expectations of myself and the reality of my feelings. I was organising trips like this thinking that it would help me to root myself more firmly in the place. That’s what I’d always done previously when I felt out of place and dislocated – I’d thrown myself fully into that space.

It didn’t work. I did not enjoy my weekend in Sharjah even for one second. The emirate of Sharjah is dry (that is, without alcohol), but the Russians we shared the lift with as we went down to the lobby of our hotel were clearly drinking something more than water. Sitting by the pool for an hour I felt like I was a character in a road trip movie only I was the only one who hadn’t taken three days of drugs to get there. The weather had not cooled and I hadn’t adjusted to the constant heat of the desert. I couldn’t get my head around the museums’ hours and so we were mostly wandering around between closed museums and empty markets. And I didn’t once feel that spark of excitement and discovery that I do at new museums and art galleries.

Of course, this was a temporary unhappiness. Soon enough, time would soften the sharp edges of my grief. I would make peace with the many changes to my identity – the changes that had been forced on me and the changes that I had made. I would stand steadily again even if the ground under my feet were sand.

But on the day I took this photograph I didn’t know any of that.

Coffee

In which I am, once again, a sucker for an accent

This is the story of how I know you cannot have an orgasm simply from drinking coffee.

Once upon a time yesterday morning everything went wrong starting from the moment when I got out of bed at 4.50 am to get a floppy adolescent to swimming training on the other side of the city. For example, the cat upended the food scraps bucket in order to get to the imagined delicacies contained therein. I have no idea what he was after because when they were upended on the floor all I could see were coffee grounds, carrot skins and an avocado seed. I will not bore you with the rest of the details because although they felt horrific as I lived them, when I write them it looks like nothing more than a boring list.

Anyhoo, I decided to treat myself to a coffee before I went to my office to do some work.

The barista said, ‘Can I help you?’ and his accent was Spanish, and this was the best thing that had happened to me all day.

‘I would like a skim milk caffe latte please, but I can have it only half…I don’t mean half the shot of coffee but half the milk.’

‘Ah, you mean like piccolo, I will make you piccolo.’ His accent was still Spanish.

We chat and I say, ‘I need the coffee because I get up early to take my teenager to swimming.’

‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’ (Still with Spanish accent.)

I shook my head.

‘Where do you swim?’

A little more conversation ensued because he wanted to know where to swim that was not too expensive, because in his country he swims a lot and he is missing it.

Then, he passed me my coffee and said, ‘Are you a coffee member here?’

I shook my head and he said, ‘I will charge you only two dollars anyway.’

Spanish accent.

At my desk, I drank that coffee and not only was it made by a man with a Spanish accent who only charged me two dollars, it was the smoothest coffee ever made, ever drunk and I drunked it but I did not have an orgasm and that is the story of how I know it is not possible to have an orgasm just from drinking coffee.

But that is not the end of the story. I went back to the coffee shop at 3 o’clock in the afternoon and ordered another coffee although lunchtime is the time past which I do not consume caffeine. He only charged me two dollars, but the coffee was a little bitter and a little tired. And not every story has a happy ending.

Mind you, not looking forward to the geographical celibacy (if that’s a thing)

‘Would you really leave your husband here on his own?’

At the time she asked, we were sitting at the entrance of the school waiting for our children to come out, and I wasn’t even sure I knew her name. That’s how well I didn’t know her. I was wearing a denim skirt and a cotton shirt I’d pulled off the sewing machine earlier that day. I hadn’t finished it, not properly, and a loose thread was tickling the top of my arm. I was wearing the blue leather sandals I bought at Grundy’s on Rundle Street on a trip to Adelaide three, maybe four years, ago. I like those sandals. They are soft around my foot and easy to wear.

The polish on my toenails had started to disintegrate. I’ve never had an actual pedicure, I just slap a bit of colour on my nails from time to time, scratching whatever is left of the last coat off before I do. Standing in a crowd here I’m often embarrassed when I look down and see the state of my feet compared to everyone else’s. I think that will be different when I’ve moved back to Adelaide. I don’t remember ever being embarrassed by poorly polished toenails when I lived there.

Not that anyone has ever said anything. No one would be rude enough to comment on my ageing, drying feet, would they? But more than once, more than twice, people I barely even know have asked me about moving back to Australia and leaving my husband behind. I won’t say it isn’t something to worry about. I mean relationships do need nurturing if they are to flourish. But really? I wonder. Would you really ask an almost-stranger that?

It happened when we moved here too. People making comments about the dent we would put in our mortgage, about the cars we would drive, the early retirement we would take. I was astonished by it the first time that it happened. In my mind I had always seen myself leaving Adelaide. We had already moved a little bit and travelled a lot. Living overseas with my children was something I always wanted to do. But person after person after person made comment (passing or otherwise) about the financial motivations of our move. So weird.

Certainly, it’s not something I ever envisaged. That I would live in one country and the mister would live in another. But it’s just how things have panned out. Temporarily at least. The lads and I – for reasons various and multiple, individual and intertwined – are better off living in Australia, and the mister’s employment situation means he can’t leave here. Not yet. It will resolve itself. He will find a job. But all the same and nonetheless, we will live apart.

None of my friends, no one who knows me, seems to be concerned about the state of my marriage. Like I say, I’m not sure it’s the most fabulous way to nurture a relationship, live half a world apart. But it is what it is and we aren’t where we aren’t, and step by step it will work itself out. And in the meantime, I am off to have a pedicure. Find out what it is that I’ve been missing all these years.

On umbrellas (and other things)

I took the borrowed umbrellas out of the borrowed car and held them out to the Floppy Adolescent standing beside me. As he reached across his forehead and pulled his fringe into place, I drew my arm back.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’ll carry them.’

‘You don’t have to carry them all. We can carry our own.’

‘No thanks. That’s an argument waiting to happen.’

‘Mum, please. You can trust us. It’s just umbrellas.’

We have been together, the three of us, the two of them and me, for a week and they have been together longer, their extended Abu Dhabi summer break taken in a South Australian winter.

Brothers on holiday together.

Needle, bicker, hug, laugh.

Rinse, repeat.

Add umbrellas.

I handed the umbrellas to him (I know, right) then I locked the doors of borrowed car and the rented apartment and we began our walk towards the tram.

‘Oh God, look at you,’ I said to the lads. It is as if the outside light is somehow different and suddenly I could see them for what they were. Their jeans ripped at the knees, the sleeves of their jumpers too short, everything unwashed. How long has it been since anything saw the touch of an iron?

‘Mum, we look fine.’

‘Howcome you care so much about your fringe, but so little about your clothes?’

‘Mum. Please.’

‘At least tell me you thought to clean your teeth.’

The look! Teenage disdain perfected, but these days I am unaffected.

‘That’s the tree!’ The lads both pointed. They have been kicking the footy day after day for hours. At least once per session as far as I can tell the footy lands in the fork of one of the Norfolk Pines that line The Esplanade. This day, a police car had pulled up to watch them throwing rocks into the tree as they tried to dislodge the ball. ‘It’s all right,’ the lads reassured me when they recounted the story. ‘They were laughing. The had to watch us because there was nothing else for them to do. They’re bored. No one robs houses on Thursday morning.’

We arrived at the tram.

It used to be that when we came back on holidays I had an Australian SIM, an interwebby usb, a metrocard for the tram. Now too much time has passed and the SIM is too big for my phone, the telco has deactivated whatever it was that fired the usb, the metrocard is lost. I stood in front of the ticket machine and followed the steps, one by one, none of it in my memory now, everything being relearned. One dirham coins look like ten cent pieces to me, but not to the machine. We had gone two stops before I was holding our tickets. In the seats at the front of the tram umbrellas had turned into swords.

By the time the tram arrived at Victoria Square the darkness had started to fall. The lights were coming on, the street lights white, and a soft and buttery glow came from the office windows. When I am travelling, this is the time that I feel most alone, most not-at-home. My breaths grew shallow and caught in my throat. I swallowed to pop my ears.

Pirie Street. Rundle Mall. We got off the tram.

‘How far is it?’

‘Just down here.’

‘Yes, but how far? How long will it take us to get there?’

‘Not long.’

‘How long is not long?’

We crossed North Terrace, walked past Parliament House and the bleak, grey space of the Festival Plaza, stark and barren even in the soft light of the early night.

Inside the Festival Theatre it was how it had always been, but it was not what it used to be. Everyone used to be younger, the carpet used to be thicker, the stairs down to the bistro were steeper.

We looked at the bar snacks menu and I ordered. The cabernet sauvignon could have had more shades of marshmallow, the chicken wings could have had less sauce, the salt and pepper squid could not have been more like rubber. The chips were good, but there were not enough to go around. You never know with chips, do you? Sometimes too many, sometimes not enough, never just the right amount.

Bicker, needle, hug, laugh, bicker, needle, hug, laugh.

My boys looked shabby and they had umbrellas.

‘Please,’ I said. ‘Do we have to be the loudest wherever we go?’

‘Mum.’ They spoke in unison. ‘It’s only jokes.’ They wrapped their arms around each other’s necks and walked back up the stairs.

We watched The Book Of Loco a play about a mother’s death, migration and displacement, the edge of madness. I know, right?

I felt my Floppy Adolescent sitting with me and I remembered. My father and I sitting in the Keith Michell Theatre watching a Harvest production of Equus. Or maybe it wasn’t Harvest, but it was certainly Equus. And I felt so grown up sitting with my father. And when, at the end, my Floppy Adolescent stood and clapped and said, ‘That was amazing,’ I could not stop myself.

‘Oh God, you’re crying, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Mum. Really?’

On the walk back to the tram it rained and we were happy to discover that our umbrellas were fit for purpose. At the tram stop it was cold and it was windy and there was no romance in public transport. The rain died down as we got on and by the time we reached our stop there was no more rain, the wind had stilled.

A few steps away from the tram and we could hear the sea, the waves rolling in. All week I have been falling asleep, waking up to this sound. Sometimes it soothes and other times it stirs, whistling through my veins like they are empty alleys in my soul.

A man on a strange reclining bike rode past and out onto the jetty.

‘Do you think he’s going fishing?’ That’s my youngest boy.

‘He hasn’t got a rod. Are you stupid?’ And that’s my oldest.

Bicker, needle, hug then laugh. They looped their arms around each other’s necks and walked, loped two steps ahead, elbows digging into ribs, knuckles ground against skulls. Bicker, needle, hug then laugh.

From behind us I heard the rumble, loudly, of a plane.

‘That’s the plane to Dubai. That’s the one we catch.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because it’s nearly ten o’clock and this is Adelaide.’

I looked in the direction of the airport, but I could not see the plane. Too much cloud? Taken off in the other direction? I wanted to speak. I wanted my boys to know, I wanted them to understand that this is an Adelaide sound, that when I was their age and my parents brought me to Adelaide and we stayed in my grandfather’s house this was the noise that woke me. Planes just taking off or landing. This was the sound that reminded my body where I was, where I had woken. Somewhere safe that wasn’t home. I had no idea that those planes were flying to places I would one day see.

The lads ran on ahead. My heels clicked on the paving, the sea rolled in, the wind had started again.

There was no rain and the Norfolk Pines were silent.

fancy dinner without the lads

We are going out for dinner, the mister and I because the lads are not here and because we both start late at work because the country is on Ramadan hours. We choose a place that’s in the hotel that’s over the bridge and around the corner from where we live.

The Ramadan cannon to mark the end of the fast has sounded. We aren’t fasting, but I always wait for the cannon before I begin my evening meal. It seems the right thing to do.

There is one taxi at the taxi stand. It was a risk to walk the humid walk to the stand and not order one to the door because at this time of the night many taxi drivers are at the mosque to pray and to break their fast for the day. Our driver is eating when we knock on the window of his car. Something wrapped in paper, he has a plastic bag on his lap which he is leaning in to. He slugs down a drink before he pushes it all back into his bag and we drive.

His taxi is air-conditioner cold.

The streets are quiet. I have been driving out on the highway at Iftar time and been all alone. You could, as they say, fire a cannon and not hit anyone.

The hotel, usually alive with locals and tourists and expats alike, is subdued. The cafes are restaurants are curtained and the stalls of the souq are all closed, covered in cloths and boards. Only the Starbucks has taken down its partition.

The Japanese restaurant looks closed, but there is a woman at the podium outside and she opens the door and takes us inside. Last time we were here, the lights were blue, the music was loud, the tables were full. Tonight, the lights are bright, there is no music and when we arrive the restaurant’s custom doubles.

We choose a table by the window. The curtains, which hide the food from fasting Muslims during the day, are still closed.

‘Can we open the curtains now?’ We ask the waiter.
‘No, sir, because we are serving alcohol, that’s why.’

A group of young (very young) men come in and sit at the table in the middle of the restaurant. Attracted by the Sunday night buffet, but apart from that I wonder who they are. They aren’t teachers. And at this time of year they surely aren’t a visiting rugby team. Oil and gas? They have the upper body for it. They eat sushi and drink beer.

The young couple at the table next to us begin to smoke.

I order a martini and the mister orders mojito. The martini is pink, the mojito is weak. More people arrive and we feel less alone but still we order, we eat, we leave.

As we walk out of the air conditioned hotel and into the humid air, my glasses fog and I have to stand for a moment so that I don’t fall down the stairs.

Unaccompanied

We tootled up to Dubai at 10 pm on Saturday night to drop the lads off at the airport. They’re catching the plane back to Adelaide for a stay with their granny before I join them later in August. They’re flying as unaccompanied minors. I wanted to take a photograph but The Floppy Teen was stroppy and wouldn’t let me. So here’s one I prepared earlier.

That’s last year’s. So that’s two years in a row they’ve been packed off to Australia on their own and in this life, anything you do for two years feels like the foundation for a routine.

I felt enormously proud of them last year. I mean, it’s sort of no big deal. You take them to the Unaccompanied Minors Lounge, the people behind the counter put the minors’ passports and documentation in plastic folders and then, when the time comes to leave, they take them through the fast track lanes of immigration. The minors make the long, boring trip, get off at the other end and get taken through the fast track lanes of immigration and customs before they’re deposited with the people we’ve authorised to collect them.

The lads took it all in their stride this year, just as they did last. I guess I would have preferred it if they’d looked back – even a glance – to give one final wave to those of us standing behind the rope at the ‘Passengers Only Beyond This Point’ point. But more I was struck by the idea that I’d made children who could do this thing. Travel half way around the world with just each other. It’s so very far from the life that the mister and I had as children. And yet, it’s exactly the same. Visiting your granny at school holiday time, thinking not even one bit of the parents you’ve left behind.

I wanted to tell you more about it, but the time has flown and I need to get off to work. And pressing publish, that’s how blogs stay alive.