Weird-O-Meter

Mine is Broken

“Did you see the accident?” Leah asks calmly, as I put the car in reverse and very carefully back out into the street.

“Just an almost accident. What happened in the real accident?” 

“You know how the high school boys fishtail their SUVs and peel out all over town after school,” she says matter-of-factly as she peels off her extra layers of clothing and her headscarf.  “Well, they were all doing that in front of the girls school and one of the guys lost control.  His tire popped off and he hit a sign.”

“Is he alright?”

“Yeah, he just jumped out of his new Land Cruiser laughing.  Then he hopped into someone else’s SUV and off they went – fishtailing down the road.  They left his car just sitting there with three wheels.” The way she tells me this story is the way you would tell someone about your preferred brand of dish detergent.  Blasé. 

“That’s weird right?”  I ask.  “You just told that story like it was a perfectly normal, everyday occurrence.  But that’s weird right?”

“Well, it would be weird if we didn’t see this kind of shit every day.”

 _____

Nothing strikes me as odd anymore.  My gauge for weirdness is broken.  I used to have something of a weirdness thermometer.  The red mercury inside would rise and fall in accordance with the weirdness of things around me.  That thing is broken, and this is how I know:

Minutes before Leah joined me, I was waiting for her in my car.   I was sitting alone, biting at a loose piece of skin near my thumbnail to pass the time, when a massive white Lexus SUV slammed into the parking spot adjacent mine and laid on the horn.  A couple of nomadic chickens lifted their heads up from the sand they were pecking at to appraise the ruckus.

While the sound of the horn was still wafting heavily over the endless sand dunes beyond the grocery store, a tinted window slowly descended, revealing an Emirate man wearing mirrored Cavali aviators and a perfectly sculpted five o’clock shadow.  He laughed heartily into the Mobile Blackberry pressed against his temple, then honked again.  A squatty little Indian man responded to the demanding honk by hastily waddling out of the grocery store to attend to his customer.

If you were to see a pair of $1000 aviators on a man in an $80,000 vehicle at a podunk grocery store in the middle of the desert, you might think it weird.  Six months ago, the red mercury in my weirdness thermometer would have risen as well.  Now it doesn't phase me.

The little Indian chap was still a couple car lengths’ shy of reaching the menacing Emirate when he barked a guttural Arabic command from his open window.  These abrasive instructions to the Indian, which I assume deafened the person on the other end of the phone line, turned the grocer 180 degrees in his tattered sandals, and he ran back towards his store.  You might be wondering who this rich guy is that doesn’t even have to get out of his vehicle to get his provisions.   It wasn’t even weird enough to distract me from the loose flap of skin on my thumb.

There was a plastic drape whipping around in hot wind where the front door to the store should have been, and just before the Indian feller hobbled through it, he turned and looked at me as if to say, I’ll take your order as soon as I help this guy who is obviously much richer and more impatient than you.

Soon, he emerged from behind the plastic doorway with a bottle of water and a cold can of Mountain Dew, which he promptly delivered to the posh-looking Arab in exchange for a couple wadded bills. Transaction complete, the window on the glimmering white Lexus glided back up; this was obviously not their first transaction of this nature. 

The Emirate driver jammed his Lexus into reverse, and without even a casual glance at his rearview, peeled out backwards into the street – his Blackberry still tight against his ear.  I watched indifferently as I continued to work the pesky skin flap between my teeth.

Before this guy’s back tires could make contact with the road behind us, a giant white Toyota Land Cruiser screamed towards him honking and swerving to miss the Lexus.  The two of them avoided an SUV demolition derby by about the width of a Blackberry phone, but the only ones taking notice were the handful of nomadic chickens pecking about.  The Emirate simply reached up and scratched his nose with his left hand and continued to back out, laughing into his mobile all the while. 

The screaming horn brought the Indian chap back to the threshold of his store to assess the situation.  He and the chickens gazed blankly while the Lexus driver, again without checking his rearview, peeled out into the street. 

Meanwhile, the annoying skin on my thumb had been amputated, and Leah still hadn’t made it to the car, so I decided I’d see what the chickens and the Indian were watching. 

All of us - Indian, chickens, and I - watched as the SUV rolled exactly one block and then pulled up next to a puny villa about the size of a trailer home.  The plaster on the side of the home was flaking off, and plastic bags and empty Mountain Dew cans littered the unkempt sand yard.  He killed the engine, stepped out of the Lexus, and strolled into the shack, water and Dew in toe.

Perhaps it strikes you as strange that a man living in this kind of home rocks a pair of four-figure sunnies and drives a Lexus.  My weirdness gauge didn’t budge. Perhaps you find it peculiar that he would drive a car one block instead of just walking.  Eh - normal.

The wandering chickens, presumably satisfied that there was nothing left to see, returned to their pecking.  The squalid little grocer who was still standing in the plastic-flap doorway turned his head, waved his arms, and yelled something at them.  They scattered a few steps, but then returned to their pecking.  The squatty Indian grocer wadded up the bills he'd just received, stuffed them into his pocket, and made his way over towards my car.

I cracked the window and spoke deliberately and slowly in hopes that he might understand some English. “I. Don’t. Need. Anything. Thanks.”

“EHH!”  He responded. 

EHH! I've come to learn is the universal term for I have no idea what you’re saying, but let’s bumble through a conversation with hand motions and a linguistic concoction of English/Arabic/Indian.  As he inched his way towards my car, I decided I liked this guy, if only because his blackish skin and small, white button-down shirt made him look a bit penguinish.

I waved both my hands in front of my face and smiled.  I tried broken Arabic. “La La La, Mafi Ordeed.”

He shrugged his shoulders and wrinkled his forehead.  “EHH!” Either I didn't speak good Arabic, or he didn't understand Arabic.  I rattled my head in the east and west direction hoping a simple no gesture would do.  He stood his ground at my window.  Not knowing how else to tell him that I wasn’t interested in buying anything, I turned the key, rolled the window up, and stared straight ahead, effectually ignoring him. 

Is that a weird thing to do?  Maybe six months ago it would have struck me as patently weird.  Now, it didn’t even register on my weirdness gauge. 

My penguin Indian friend, however, clearly found the situation weird. 

He was wondering, of course, why I was sitting alone in the parking lot to his grocery store if I didn’t need anything from said grocery store.  After all, his business is on the edge of town in rural Al Wagan - a small, decrepit Bedouin village jutting out from a sea of sand dunes where age-old tribes adhere to conservative Islamic values.  There’s no reason for a blonde white guy to be in that town at all.  There’s even less of a reason for a blonde white guy to be in that particular town sitting in a parking lot of a grocery store if he doesn’t need any groceries.

As I assessed this bizarre scene from my penguin-looking friend's perspective, I suddenly realized that the weird thing about all this was that, so far, none of this had struck me as weird.  But what else could I do?  I couldn’t leave without Leah, and we had agreed to meet in this little parking lot.

The grocer waddled into my line of sight out in front of the windshield and gave me a hearty scoff and shoulder shrug.  He offered up his final EHH - but this time punctuated it with a question mark. 

“EHH?” Then he harrumphed himself back through his plastic flap and into his store.

I didn’t speak his language, but I definitely understood his question. EHH? meant Why? Why was I here?  What was I doing?  It was all very weird for him.

And maybe the whole scenario should have registered atop my weird-gauge too.  After all, what I was doing in this man’s parking lot was essentially hiding.  I had to pick up Leah and take her back to the city where we share an apartment building, but I couldn’t pick her up at her school because we are mandated to respect the local culture and values in Al Wagan – one of those values being that an unmarried woman should never be in a car with a man unless it’s her father or brother. 

It’s not illegal to ride coed, and it’s not even taboo in the cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, or my hometown of Al Ain.  But out here in the desert town of Al Wagan, the place where I spend my workdays, a coed car ride shared by unmarried teachers could really ruffle some feathers.  Nomadic chickens and otherwise.

And that’s weird right?  Six months ago, before I had lived in this country – it would have been.  Now, it doesn’t even register on my weirdness gauge.

Without any loose thumb-skin to keep me occupied, I began to look around with my six-months-ago-Adam-eyes to see what else should be registering on my weirdness gauge.

That’s when it occurred to me that unfenced chickens wandering around town are weird.    

I looked up to see what the chickens were getting up to now that all the excitement had dwindled.  They seemed to have exhausted their hopes of finding food in the sand near the store, and they were wobbling off in the other direction. I watched them in my rearview mirror as they venture out into the empty street, and I wondered, perhaps as homage to the old joke, why the chickens were crossing the road.  

Once they arrived safely on the proverbial other side they shuffled up to a fence line near a lean-to hut fashioned from old brown palm branches; there, they roosted in the shade of the glossy black 2012 BMW that was parked next to the make-shift dwelling. 

Wait, I thought, a shiny black 2012 BMW parked in the sand driveway of a makeshift Bedouin hut?  How did I not notice this juxtaposition before?  Presumably the same man who operates this rickety chicken farm fashioned out of rotting palm branches owns a brand new German-import luxury vehicle.  This should have sent the mercury in my weirdometer rising long ago. I had seen it as I pulled up.  I just hadn't noticed it.  There's a difference.  But I had to forgive myself.  Luxury vehicles are as common here as palm trees - even out in the middle of the desert.

Six months ago, seeing a man refuse to leave the comfort of his vehicle to purchase a bottled water and Mountain Dew would have struck me as weird.  I would have assumed he must be someone with fame or political sway. Six months ago I would have expected someone who could afford $1000 shades and a Lexus to live in a place that doesn’t resemble a Bedouin Boo Radley’s house.   But now, six months later, nothing seems weird. 

Suddenly aware of the infinite weirdness around me, I began to wonder what else I’d missed – what else would have registered high on the weird gauge for six-months-ago Adam. The chickens.  The out-of-place wealth.  The gender rules.

I had inadvertently reengaged my weirdness gauge, and suddenly a world that I had grown accustomed to looked and felt weird.  I felt wobbly.  Unstable.  I needed something normal, and just then, Leah opened the passenger door.

“Did you see the accident?” She asked, as I put the car in reverse and very carefully backed out into the street.

I drove us towards home while she peeled away the superfluous layers of Muslim-approved clothing that she's required to wear to work, and as we sped by her school, she pointed her finger out the window towards a Land Cruiser that was twisted around a stop sign.  “Look over there.” 

Amongst the wreckage was a renegade tire that had rolled about 20 yards from the accident. It was the very scene she had described to me.

“And he was laughing when he got out?” I asked.

“Yeah.  You know, he’ll probably get a new SUV tomorrow.” 

I flashed back to a conversation I had with an Arabic colleague on my first day of school.  What, I asked him, do the kids do for fun around here?  And in the tone you might use to explain your preferred brand of detergent, he explained that they wrecked their cars.    


At first I thought he was joking, so I smiled and waited for him to reveal the truth.  No really, he said, they try to flip their SUVs.

And you know what I said to him?  I said, "Weird."

Now I've been here for six months, nothing strikes me as weird except how much my definition of weirdness has changed. 

_____

I spent the last couple of days trying to look at my current world through my old eyes to see what kind of weirdness I’m considering normal now.  Here is a list of things that happened in just a few days that no longer cause me to raise an eyebrow.  In fact, if I hadn't started writing this particular blog, I wouldn't have recognized them as being even a bit peculiar.  My definition of weird apparently has a bit of elasticity to it.

1. I was driving next to a rickety truck with a camel in the back when a Porche whizzed by on the shoulder of the highway at well over 200 miles per hour. (Normal here)
2.  I asked a security guard at my school to kindly unlock the gate so that I could get to the restroom. (Yes, our school has prison gates) When he unlocked the gate, six students jumped out of a closet nearby and escaped the school (Not an everyday occurrence at my school - an every couple hours occurrence.)  
3.  I counted three Bentley’s sitting in the driveway at the mansion across from my apartment.  (Sometimes there are 4)
4. I gingerly bumped noses with my entire class as they left, on purpose. (Formal Emirate greeting)
5. I parked my Hyundai between a Ferrari and a Mercedes. (The next car over was a Jaguar.)
6. I played the song Amazing Grace on my harmonica to a class full of Muslim kids and they went nuts for it.  (I'd exhausted my entire repertoire - Amazing Grace was the only thing I knew that I hadn't played yet.)
7. I hitched a ride with a student.  If that's not weird to you, then this will be. Before he would let me out of his brand new Land Rover, he insisted on dousing me with a bottle of Arabian Oud.  A bottle of this stuff runs just under $1,000 USD.  The bottle is about the size of a cigarette lighter.
8. I poured camel milk over my cereal. (Got camel?)
9. A student who speaks exactly zero English stood up, unannounced, and tried to impress me with his English skills by singing the song Mr Boombastic in its entirety during the middle of class. (He sounded just like Shaggy with an Arabic accent.  All my students think Shaggy is the bee's knees.)
10. I checked on hotel prices at the Burj Al Arab.  $2,400 USD per night.  I briefly considered seeing if any of my friends wanted to throw in and try it out. (It's on a man-made island in the middle of the Sea.  They fly you out to it in a helicopter. My weird-o-meter might be broke, but this country sure isn't.)
11. I paused at the grocery store to decide between buying regular chicken eggs or quail eggs. (You can also buy dove at the grocery store - not the facial soap, the bird.)
12. I read the word خروج and it made sense to me. (Arabic for Exit - pronounced like you're hawking a loogie, twice)
13. I conducted an entire class while sitting cross-legged on the floor.  (I was also shoeless)
14. My students encouraged me to pray in school and tried to drag me to the Mosque. 
15. I realized that if these scenarios are no longer weird to me, America will be weird to me.  

_____

In a land where the Bedouin went from nomadic desert wanderers to the richest people on earth in a span of 50 years, there's bound to be some strangeness.  Is it weird?  Well, to quote Leah, "It would be weird if we didn't see this kind of shit every day."