Sweet, sweet potatoes. Not sweet potatoes though.

I was walking back from lunch when I saw a baked potato stand that looked familiar.  There was a lady in it absolutely beaming at me and oh shit! It was the same sweet Filipino cashier lady from a year and a half ago near the corniche!  Just goes to show you that delicious cheesy potatoes, and not love, conquer all. Sort of. 

Outskirts of Dubai

Plenty of stray cats here, and they live as easily as any human can hope to imagine.  Yesterday, I saw one lay down on the steps in front of a busy entrance to a supermarket.  Not off in a corner, right in the middle. Just lazily observing all those people coming and going and thinking to themselves, that yes, here is a cat, we must all go around.  If there is time, perhaps we will pet it, but for now, we will have to find an alternate route or just step over it.
So I stood next to it for a bit - well, off to one side as I might be more difficult for people to step over - just for a few minutes to see what the life of a cat on the outskirts of Dubai was like.  Momentarily, a short Indian man with a toddler in his arms, stopped in front of the cat and made a meowing sound.  The toddler looked at the cat and giggled.  The cat looked up and catted.  The Indian man saw me observing and smiled and I smiled back.  Then the man and his happy kid headed off in one direction. A few moments later I headed off on my own.  The cat, it took a nap. 

Days of Sharjah Observations

Across the road, a pigeon flew into a kitchen through a door open to the street. The first guy that saw it threw his hands up and backed away immediately to a presumably safe corner. The second contorted spasmodically to avoid near certain death. The third corralled the flightful intruder, the frightful intruder, picked it up casually and placed it quite gently on a metal case right outside the door. It's been 10 minutes and the pigeon is still outside. Everything is calm.

Never going to use a stupid pigeon as an accomplice again.

Idiocy Unflinching, Part 2

We were an especially attractive couple and I suppose that made a difference down there.

We didn't need an alarm clock anymore, or maybe I just didn't need it.  Of course I would pretend to be asleep sometimes when she first woke, but I don't know why exactly.  Maybe I was tricking time and space into letting me observe her when they thought I wasn't around.  It made sense when I was in bed, anyway.

Through my half closed eyes, she would noiselessly transform, from my naked playmate, into a world conquering professional woman.  Her clothes belonged to another era, a more modest, sillier time that sought to mask beauty with boredom, but she was still lovely to look at. When I would finally wake visibly, even in those early lightless hours, I don't remember it ever being disagreeable.  Probably it helped that I could lay in bed in that sublimely soft and cool dove-white comforter that I believe was her favorite of my meager possessions.

Eventually I would get up, throw on my baggy grey sweatpants and one of a million white undershirts (fashion maven), then head downstairs and out to where the cold bite was refreshing for me, but fitful for her car.  Likely she would be more comfortable if the heater was on for a bit too.  

The dawn light would wake up everything outside just as she finished up. Probably I came up from behind her, where my hands without my permission went straight to her boobs.  They were very much in love with her boobs - it wasn't my fault.  Sometimes she would show mild exasperation at her newfound immobility, and sometimes she went on as if I was simply another bit of clothing she had somehow put on. I just enjoyed being near her. 

But she would free herself shortly enough and I would brush my teeth as the sink was free.  With the last of her preparations addressed, we'd head down to her car.  I'd open the door for her and close it behind her.  She'd roll down her window and it was always her eyes that said thanks.  I kissed her properly and immodestly.  Her lips were soft and warm, glossed and smiling.  Then that happy little civic drove off with that happy gorgeous woman off into another new day.  

I'd stand there for a bit in the cold.  I can't fully explain why here either.  I remember there was some vague feeling of accomplishment that usually lingered.  Also some serene sense that possibly I could exist here after all.  Maybe.  

And then as the young sun painted around me with elongated reds and yellows, I would head back up to my lovely dove comforter.  The bother of the rest of the world could yet wait a few hours. 

I don't know if I've ever loved anyone properly, but some nights, I miss her inconsolably.

Things Done Changed

So when i was a bebbeh back in Dubai, we would go to the parks, where all sorts of things to climb and conquer lay before us in sandy islands dotted about in the lush manicured green grass seas.  Towering at least two, maybe three stories high, the main attraction was a steel pole a foot or so in diameter, from which a taut webbing of  thick red rope extended down in all directions, an unfinished tee-pee of a spider with giant fly dreams.  We would climb it endlessly, make it to the top, survey all the lands that now belonged to us, and then with a bit of bravery, wrap arms and legs around the pole and slide unfettered all the way down.  Then we'd climb right back up again.  Mountaineering for bebbehs, I suppose.

My exploration needed a destination and I heard that somehow this seemingly dangerous relic of the late 80s  still stood in Dubai, in Safa park.  Why not capture a bit of nostalgia on my way to re-discovering this city that I left behind now a quarter of a century ago?

Except when I got there, it was closed.  They told me it was for renovations.  Well.  Shit.

Fridays in Dubai.  All those wonderful weekends of our youth started on Fridays and we had the same request for every one of them.  Chicago Beach Hotel.  Five well mannered delinquents, we'd pile into our red Mercedes 250 , singing along innocently and nonsensically to the Lambada, growing ever more rambunctious as the salt sea air let us know we were getting closer without ever needing to ask if we were there yet.  What ever happened to the Chicago Beach Hotel then, Mr. Cabbie?  He had no idea what the hell I was talking about.

Well, shit.   Again.

At this point, the cab driver, instead of being annoyed, realized I had neither any idea what I was doing, nor had I any reasonable options other than his cab.   Being only my second day back in the country and my plans already skewered, I asked him for suggestions.  I was hungry and figured I should just head to a mall somewhere, so naturally I grabbed some McDonald's while he pumped some gas.  Well, ok.

Next he took me to what he assumed was the beach I was talking about.  Driving past it, it quickly occurred to me that I didn't really want to sit on empty beach in my jeans and t-shirt, eating fries while watching a few families romp around in their bathing suits.

At this point, the cabbie, thoroughly bemused by my misadventures, fully embraced his role as my personal tour guide.  A few different times already, he'd recommended Miracle Gardens based on my initial Safa park request.   Now he started peddling it like he was born there.  I had no idea what Miracle Gardens were, but they sounded like somewhere I could possibly relax and eat, so I relented.  Off we went.

Now a quick word about me, I am in the extreme minority in that I am a man almost entirely indifferent to flowers.  I'm well aware  that most men can spend years in aromatic fields of lilies and daffodils, but I have to confess, my interest in flowers piques only in those rare moments when I am delivering them to a pretty woman, and even then, I am more interested in their effect than in the flowers themselves.  All of these eccentricities I suspect I should have explained to my cabbie immediately upon entering his cab.  This was my failing.  As a result, there I stood, one man alone, outside of Miracle Gardens, armed with a bag of McDonald's.

Now for those of you that don't know what Miracle gardens are, imagine some sort of flower heaven you'd take your significant other to, largely to take mushy, lovey-dovey pictures.  I guess I have expressed my love for fast food and burgers on occasion, so I suppose it was appropriate.  Except I wasn't allowed to take the food in.

Well, shit, yet again.  Sorry, love.

Almost immediately, the guards asked me quite conversationally what the hell I was doing there and then laughed and laughed as I told them about my tour guide.  Bastards.  Friendly, though.  I had no other choice really at this point, so I started walking around, pretending quite ably that I was some fancy photographer with a smartphone.  It was mostly newlyweds and old couples, with the occasional family, but as I made my way around the grounds, there was a lovely European woman that approached me.  So not too bad.  "Where was the bathroom?" she asked me.  Oh, right, even though I wasn't in a uniform, it only made sense that a lone guy walking around was probably the head gardener or something.  That way, Miss.  And please do let those guards over there know if the restroom is satisfactory.  We hope you enjoy your visit.

At this point, the misadventure needed a close, I grabbed a cab, asked him to turn up the a/c and to just take me to the Dubai Mall please.  I sat in the back pensively looking out the window and that's finally when the nostalgia hit me.  Vast yellow expanses, pockmarked with those dry, hardy bushes - the desert was still the same.  And just as before, it was as uninhabitably comforting, best viewed from a traversing vessel, as the sea to a sailor.  Finally, some small vestige of my childhood had survived. So I started to take a video of it

... except my battery was dead.

Motherf...!

Need to buy a ticket, but am finally heading back to Dubai.  Here is a link to a lovely interactive way to conceptualize how small biases contribute to a segregated society based off the work of Nobel Prize-winning game theorist, Thomas Schelling.

Vi hart for super-president!

LINK:  Parable of the Polygons

Idiocy Unflinching

The third short story.  Orders of magnitude worse than the first two.  Does not even have a picture of  a pretty woman for the cover.  Enjoy.

Idiocy Unflinching - plaintext version for people that donut like the cursive font/color of the original