Three Months Back

I returned from the Middle East at the beginning of January. Immediately was faced with the attentions, needs, problems, triumphs and tragedies of friends and family. A lot happened within the first few weeks.
Subsequently I have wanted to reflect back on "Al Kharif" (the autumn) but each time I began I felt unsure about my distance from the experience.
With everything that has happened with my life and the lives of those I love, Al Kharif now feels indeed a part of the past. And as spring seems to have truly and finally come to New York, I can hope to articulate what I've been thinking.

I miss...
...the sense of camaraderie I felt from other women. In some ways I think that casual relationships between men and women reverse dynamics in the Gulf and the United States. In the States I can talk fairly easily to most men, while with women (with New York women in particular), there seems to be more of a watchful aspect. In Oman I felt a common bond with women, while relationships with men lacked the sense of ease. They arise from different causes--I think that the source of the tension is competition among New York women, and societal constraint on male-female interactions in Oman--but both detract from easy-going interaction. I do not mean to apply this across the board to all experiences, but it represents one of the clearest differences in day-to-day existence.

...wearing abaya and hijab. I loved the simplicity of morning preparation and planning, and then the resulting easy elegance. Although at first I was thrilled and over-whelmed to have such a choice of clothing every day, it wore off quickly.

...drinking chai, hearing the muezzin, seeing my friends from SIT and my host family. I met such amazing people in Oman, Yemen and Egypt.

Oh, I learned that I did not receive the Fulbright, unfortunately. I am trying to find a job in the Gulf for next fall, but in the meantime I have to find something to cover rent and food this summer. And whatever I find may end up requiring me to stay longer than I originally hoped...but regardless, I'll go back eventually.

Desert Log Part 4: The Return

We spent our last night in the desert near the edge of another cliff; an earthquake had left the rim looking like a row of collapsing apartment buildings, complete with "alleys" 60 feet deep. The proximity (25 km) to the Dahla Oasis afforded our first contacts with other life forms in 7 days: pigeons roosted in the giant cracks, a crow cawed, and a weird hooting coo awoke me at dawn. We reached the edge of the plateau the next morning; in the photo with me and Bob it is possible to see the greeen stain of the oasis creeping onto the desert's anemic palor. We inched our way down the winding descent from the oasis, finally arrivng at an apparently deseerted military checkpoint. Uncle Bob begain to drive past, when it suddenly erupted with 18 yearold soldiers, one of whom brandished a large rifle with a serrated dagger at the end of its barrel. Apparently our descent had been illegal. However, after perhaps half on hour of shouting over the radio, the ranking officer had to let us go. In the meantime Bob had chatted with the boys cum soldiers. We suspected that they would have wanted to keep us longer, if only for a distraction. But we continued on, through the picturesque fields of Dahla, stopping at one town to look at the old architecture, and a temple from the Roman period done in imitation of Old Kingdom styles. We decided to break up the 10 hour trip back to Cairo by returning to the same lodge at Bahariyya Oasis. Returning to Cairo through Giza was a shock. The appreciation for other signs of humanity that I had felt in Dahla quickly evaporated in the hordes of aggressive vehicles and crowds of people living on top of each other.
We finally arrived and faced the staggering task of removing the dust from every surface that we'd carted with us. Now, countless loads of laundry and dishes and numerous hosings and air blastings later, the material goods are clean. As are the humans, though the week of sun and dry air left my fingernails brittle and face chapped. Am going now with Myriam to have "halawa": honey-wax to remove leg hair.