#1 - Making Friends in Dubai

OK, now that it's been almost a YEAR since my last post, and I actually think of writing all the time, I'm going to get back to it. I promise.

I've been toying with writing a series...it started out (in my mind) as a sort of 10 Things You Never Knew About Dubai, but as the subject ideas were coming, it seemed like there could be an infinite number of topics.

So here goes, first in an indefinite series:

Things I Never Would Have Guessed About Dubai, #1

It's really hard to make friends

In my admittedly limited expat experience, Dubai has proven to be a very hard place to make close friends. To my mind, an expat posting puts a westerner in a foreign land where you quickly find the groups or clubs that allow you to meet the other foreigners posted there. You all band together, relying on each other for English conversation, information on how things work, how best to run your life in your new environment, and especially for an instant social circle. You quickly bond with your fellow strangers-in-a-strange-land, meet loads of new people and forge a few lasting friendships. You meet at coffee mornings, walking groups, book clubs, cultural interest groups, and in my case, knitting groups. You can ask the ones who've been there longer where to find soy milk/peanut butter/English books/yarn, and learn some tricks for navigating in your new milieu. You have a feeling of banding together and facing a complicated or challenging situation with comrades. That was my experience in Moscow, where my new peers showed me around the city and were always up for lunch dates, shopping excursions, park walks, and metro adventures. A year and half after leaving Moscow, I am still in touch with several women I met there and count them among my closest friends. Many of them have also left Moscow, because expats rarely stay there beyond a 2, 3 or five year posting.

Dubai is a different animal. I'd heard that expats far outnumbered locals here, and it's true. What I hadn't anticipated was that unlike with most expat postings, people stay in Dubai. Many for years and years, if not for their entire working lives. Expats buy homes, educate their children, and generally just move in here. Many of the ones who stay are Brits. The weather's great, there's lots of work, it's not far from home, and there's a great party scene (so I've heard). But the South Africans tend to stay for ages too, as do many Europeans. North Americans tend to only stay a few years, but lots of them are here long term as well. I've met lots of people who've married either locals or someone from a nearby Arab country. For them Dubai is either home for their spouse or an easier place to live than their spouses' countries, while still being a Muslim country in which to raise their children.

In terms of making new friends, the result is that when people are settled in a place for many years, they establish their circle of friends in the first year or two and then stick with them. It helps if you are here when your kids are little, since it's easy to make friends from the parent pool at school or at mom and tot groups, while it gets harder to make friends with your kids' parents when your kids are teenagers and never want you around them.

Still, I was surprised to realize that the city with far more expats had far less for expats to DO. There is a wonderful group called Expat Woman (www.expatwoman.com), and they hold coffee mornings around town. This is great, and a perfect place to meet people when you first arrive. I have met lovely people this way, but as a weekly activity, sitting around drinking coffee is not a long-term plan. I joined the American Women's Association (www.awadubai.org), having heard that they have interest groups and bi-monthly meetings. I've met some wonderful ladies through the Stitch Group and the Writer's Group, no complaints. Maybe if I were less of a chicken, I'd have braved more of their super-crowded and busy coffee mornings and possibly met more people. But I have to say, after the Moscow group with literally dozens of interest groups and clubs, the 5 or 6 clubs of the AWA was a bit of a let-down and the coffee mornings are downright scary.

I was thrilled to start working in January this year, it's really staved off the boredom I was sinking into in Dubai. It also helps me not stress about not having found a nice group of girlfriends to shop and explore with. Plus I'm busier, and so simultaneously less bored and less available (ie, less desperate).

All this said, I have made some dear friends here, even though some have already moved on. I've met a great number of interesting, nice women through work, coffee mornings, groups. I've forged a few valued friendships; the process of writing this down has made me realize how many. Maybe Dubai, City of Expats hasn't let me down after all.

Along with vowing to return to regular blog writing, I will also promise myself to take advantage of my few days off & call up a friend for lunch.

Cultural Center

Rooftop of the Cultural Center

Yesterday I went with five other women to an Emirati breakfast hosted by the Sheik Mohammed Center for Cultural Understanding. It's a lovely program, intended for tourists and expats to get a glimpse of Emirati and Arabic life, and a chance to ask questions of a local woman. We were seated on high cushions around a large beautiful carpet, and served the bitter Arabic coffee in small handle-less cups, our hostess explaining as she went. The coffee is strong but light in colour, brewed from unroasted green coffee beans, and flavoured with cardamom, cumin, cinnamon or other spices, according to each house's personal tastes. A silver coffee pot would brew from 6 am to midnight, always ready for guests. No milk or sugar is served with coffee, rather it's drunk while eating dates for sweetness. Our hostess, a woman from California who converted to the Muslim faith and moved to the UAE to be near friends from Al Ain, is now married to an Emirati man. She explained that a coffee server would always carry several small coffee cups in her hand, filling each for a guest, and returning to fetch more cups once she is down to holding one, so that a guest would always feel welcomed, and not ever feel the hostess was rushed or unprepared for them. The coffee cups are tiny, not because of a lack of generosity, but so that the cups can be constantly refilled by a dedicated coffee server, just a few sips at a time, so the coffee is always hot.

Emirati breakfast

We sipped our coffee and nibbled the sweet, fat dates, fresh and smooth, unlike the dried ones I'm used to, while our hostess explained the Emirati food displayed in dishes on the floor. It has similarities to other middle easter foods, but unlike the more familiar Lebanese foods, there are not many breads and dips. Only one bread is made, a puffy, flat round sprinkled with sesame seeds and flavoured with spices. I could taste cumin and cardamom in the whole-grain bread. She said it's not often served at breakfast, as it takes several hours to prepare and the cook would have to get up at 4 in the morning....this particular bread is not sold in stores. There were also little fried pastries, like large misshapen Timbits, sweetened with date syrup and served with honey. They were pretty darn good! Then there was a sweet pasta, vermicelli with date syrup and raisins, topped with a plain omelet. She said some people mixed in scrambled eggs, but this variation allowed you to avoid the egg if you didn't like it. The last dish was a very plain chick pea soup, with large plump chick peas and a thin broth at the bottom of the pan. She told us it is a favorite snack of emiratis, not just at breakfast time, but also for evening, and was served in movie theatres until recently. It was all delicious, a little plain, and pots of honey were available to add sweetness to everything. With our food, we were served hot black tea in small glass cups, and offered sugar cubes as sweetener, but no milk. I'm finding it's quite a British custom to have milk in your tea, and not that common elsewhere! Except for Canada, of course...and probably the other British colonies as well.

As we ate, we were able to ask questions about whatever...she encouraged us not to feel any question was invalid. The obvious things came up, the things that seem most to interest foreigners, the things we get a very slanted view on in the media, such as the way the women dress here, and idea behind it all. I'll try to explain a little of it here, it was so interesting to hear it from the perspective of someone who lives their life that way, especially someone who was not born to it, but chose it as a way of life.

Typical Abaya

The women in the Gulf region in general, and the UAE in particular, wear a full-length black cover-up dress called an ABAYA. It's loose through the body and sleeves, though fits through the shoulders. They are generally tailor-made to fit properly. The sleeves are wide, probably 24 inches around at the opening, and go to the wrists. The dress goes to the floor. It goes over normal street clothes, jeans, skirts, etc, and you often see fancy high-heeled shoes peeking out at the bottom, and the flash of the hem of what's being worn underneath as women walk. The abaya is topped by a head scarf called a SHAYLA. This is draped over the top of the head, and wrapped to cover the neck all around as well. In UAE, a BURQA (tranlates from Arabic as sheild) is only the face covering, not the whole garment as it is in other regions. Here, a burqa can be cloth or brass. The brass ones look quite sinister, with a horizontal covering the eyebrows, a wide mustache-shaped flat part covering the lips and tip of the nose, and a little bar coming down the bridge of the nose to connect them. Sometimes, inidigo powder is worn on the face underneath as a kind of talcum powder to soften the fit of the burqa, and it turns the skin dark purple. The purpose of all this clothing is for modesty; the Muslim women believe that they are supposed to cover themselves from head to foot for their faith. This custom is much-discussed by westerners, and is often perceived as oppressive or forced, but the message I get here is that it really is a woman's perogative and choice. At puberty, women begin to dress in the abaya and shayla, and at marriage can begin to cover their faces as well. The metal burqas I described are really only worn by older, traditional women. Much more common is a fabric veil worn over the lower half of the face, or even the shayla scarf draped to cover the whole face (the material is a little bit sheer, so I'm pretty sure they can see!). The abayas worn every day are traditionally plain black, but you definitely see lots of women wearing abayas and shaylas decorated with embroidery and crystals. That is, according to our cultural hostess, traditionally meant for special occasions, but is now worn by young women trying to look trendy. She said many young girls, rather than spurning the abayas like we might think, are anxious to begin wearing them, much like our teenagers chomping at the bit to start wearing lipstick to seem more grown up. You do see young teenage girls at the mall wearing abayas gaping open so you can see their cute outfits underneatch, their shaylas dropping off their heads. Apprently, if they saw their parents, they would tidy it up quickly.


The other interesting part of the discussions was about marriage here. The marriages are arranged, even if the couple might have a hand in the choosing. You might, for instance, see someone you are interested in at university. You might speak to them cordially, but you would not flirt or date. You would ask your family and friends about them, find out who they are, and perhaps work towards a match. Dating and flirting are for fun, and do not lead to marriage here. The perception is, if someone will flirt with you, who else have they already flirted with? This goes for men and women. They also have multiple spouses here, up to four wives are allowed. According to our guide, who is herself a second wife, around 80% of men have one wife, and some have two, but more than that is uncommon. She also said, in answer to our western objections over this, that there are pros to it...yes, you might be sharing your spouse with another woman, but by law he must provide equally for you. You may or may not have any interaction with the other spouse, according to the women's preferences. Time is divided fairly, and children decide with whom they spend their time. They might stay with their mother, travel back and forth with their father, or visit the other wife. For the most part, it sounds like it's run like separate households. It avoids the complications of mistresses, and keeps everyone at the same status level. The situation is not forced on any of the parties; if you are the first wife, and do not wish your husband to have a second wife, you can say no, or divorce him. Women here are able to divorce their husbands if they wish, and have clear guidlelines in the Koran. Women are allowed to work and be educated, and any money they earn is theirs to keep, while their husband is expected to support them and their children. They don't have the same concept of alimony in a divorce, but the men are obliged to provide for their children's well being and educations. (They are not allowed to take a second wife if they cannot prove they can afford to support them.) Men are also obliged to support their wived to whatever standard they are accustomed. If the standard is raised, they must keep to the new standard. Interesting to hear all of this from someone who lives this way; we all had lots of questions, but it seems, in the UAE at least, that women are fairly treated and in control of their own lives. It's awfully hard to judge them harshly for their customs, when our own customs of marriage and spousal support are so flawed and chaotic.

Man in Kandoora

We also heard about the "royal family" as we think of the sheik's family. The current sheik has only been ruling for a few years, since the death of his father, and I got the impression that he might be having some issues. The ruler here is not appointed for life, like I thought, but more or less elected by consensus, and can be ousted if the people want a new leader. There is a son here who seems to be the next in line, but I learned that even that is not necessarily so. The people can choose anyone they like from the sheik's family to rule. It would be interesting to know more about how that would come about; I wonder if anything like that will happen while I'm here. She also told us that the sheiks here have no bodyguards...the people just wouldn' t want to harm them. George W Bush presidential visit a few years ago raised eyebrows when he traveled with bodyguards...the locals couldn't understand the necessity. The reasoning was, if he was traveling with the Sheik, no one would harm him. This seems a little naive to me, as surely to god a would-be assassin could get through customs somehow, but hey. He survived.

All in all, an interesting morning that gave me some more insights into the culture here. It's easy to forget, as you wander through the endless malls here and shop for all the same brands you see everywhere else in the world, that only two generations ago this was mostly an area of Bedouins in the desert and some settled families of pearl and spice merchants. It must be an interesting experience for the Emiratis to share their small homeland with so many foreigners. It certainly is interesting from my end.