Creepy Christian evangelicals are too much in abundance here for my comfort. I met B. last year outside the primary school where I was waiting for my son to return from a class trip to Dubai where he and his classmates had fun at Wild Wadi amusement park, a popular spot for American movie stars to visit, Brad Pitt and Angela Jolie recently spotted, and Jacko spotted there a few weeks ago wearing a white lycra full-body suit, looking very skinny, only his eyes and mouth exposed.

B. was kind of furtive in his probing questions and retreated when I said I attended the Catholic church here. I suspect my pastor, Fr. Matthew, a tough Indian that brooks no BS, has warded him and his ilk off. He was not too overbearing, civil enough not to gush with obsequious pleading for my lost pagan Catholic soul. He said that he was in charge of religious curriculum, ordering and getting books, but I don't recall the name of his Christian fellowship organization or whether he even mentioned it, but I suspect he is associated with the center of Protestantism here, the Oasis Hospital, which has Arabic translations of the Bible displayed throughout the hospital on the walls of the waiting rooms.

After he boasted that there were 257 congregations of about 20 members each throughout the Emirates, he asked me how many attended the Catholic Church in Al Ain. I had to pause because I really didn't know, there are so many. At least one thousand I said.

G. and I discuss Christian evangelism frequently. Recently we were discussing conversion, how the evangelicals get their hooks into lost souls, unsuspecting though they may be, but willing nevertheless. Recently A. has succumbed. She is a very sweet woman but has proably felt the alienation that comes with the expat life here. The other day she was distributing an invitation to the parents of the families in our building of flats. It was a small well-designed invitation to "A Night with a Purpose", the title of the talk was "THE PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE". G. agreed with me that it was like a Salvation Army soup kitchen kind of affair. But G. thinks that evangelicals have conformed to the times with a kind of popular psychology self-help appeal, that they are sophisticated in their tactics, Stalinism he calls it. There was also "Free Dinner, Music and Video".

When I arrived last year I made a number of taxi rides before I got a car. Here is a journal entry I made about taxi driving:

28/8/04
A Barbarian in the Emirates

I have noticed more new taxis than 10 years ago when I was here last. All of them are Nissan Corollas, the sub-compact size. They are painted white and gold and the taxi sign on top is green, in the shape of the brace symbol pointed to the sky. Most of the drivers are Pakistanis and Afghanis. Today a driver cautioned me with 'shahwaya, shahwaya' (slowly, slowly) about closing his door, which was rather old and squeaky, without the usual cushioned airtightness of a new car. A paltry flow of cold air came from the vents and the driver pushed the button on the meter to engage his taxi at the initial charge of 2 dirhams, which is about $.50.

The American who gave the lecture for the cultural orientation to the Emirates used a Dutch scholar as a reference and explained why taxi drivers go at breakneck speeds. I had attributed their addiction to speed to their lack of education in the basics of physics, the laws of centripetal and centrifugal force, the latter which they seem to defy when they are driving around a roundabout. According to this Dutch scholar, they are actually in breach of the sociological law of "reduction of ambiguity", which would predict that moderation be applied to their habit of speeding in order to avoid a rear end collision. However, I have observed that they do not apply the foreshadowing thought processes involved in the application of the basic laws of physics to the concept of "assured clear distance". On the contrary, they rely on the unpredictable laws of divine will which they manifest in the expression 'Enshallah', God willing, Deo volente. It is not used as an expression of some event having been direfully fated, nor in relief that something that could have happened did not in fact, but simply as a reflection on the Heisenbergian world we live in, a manifestation of the uncertainty principle. One time a driver even remarked 'Enshallah' when I told him to make a right turn after a hump in the road at the entrance to my residential area at a very low rate of speed. I was amazed at the brio in which he uttered it. As if he implied that even a simple right turn involves the divine will of God!

I think J.P. Sartre put it the best when in l'Age de Raison he states that evil is only in equilibrium at full speed, like a bicycle. I remember as a boy first learning how to ride a bike, not on a little one with training wheels for wimps, but on a 26 incher whose pedals I could just barely reach. I went at a speed I could only go at, fast.

G., H. and I went out to see only the 'mild side' (according to H.) of Al Ain last night at about a quarter to midnight and had a playful taxi driver increase his fare by taking a circuitous route to the Hilton. But what was an extra two and a half dirhams ($0.75) especially when the price of a liter of petrol has gone up and taxi drivers earn no salary except what they earn from fares after the monthly payment to the owner of the taxi, who, according to H., are largely women?

G. had made the remark while we were drinking Argentinian red wine in his flat that the names of the taxi owners displayed in the taxis were sometimes women's. H. quipped that they were either widows, or divorcees ("I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee" H. said in Arabic) whose husbands left them with some compensation by buying them a taxi to earn money. Taxi drivers pay for gas out of their own pocket and maintain their taxis themselves. Our taxi driver was grinning while we bantered in Arabic on the way to the Hilton and was probably amused, a brief interlude, these taxi drivers usually driving their taxis for 12 hours a day. I sat in the front seat without my seatbelt on, it being a foolish policy I have of not putting it on if the taxi driver isn't wearing his, a kind of misguided statement of solidarity, a pact with death, in the event of a fatal accident in which neither he nor I would escape, he immediately transported to heaven, to the houris and the wine he's not allowed on earth, and I, to purgatory to be purged of my sins, like having my bags checked in customs before getting on that flight to heaven. However, according to statistics I read in the Gulf News, taxi drivers get in very few accidents.

It was G.'s idea to go to Paco's at the Hilton since he had never been there, the Horse & Jockey being his preferred watering hole, an English style pub at the InterCon. We went to the Peach Garden instead because it was too late to catch the singers at Pacos. The Peach Garden, attached to the Hilton, was like a dandut bar in Jakarta or a cave in Paris, rectangular in shape with a bandstand at one end. The Filipino band was on break when we arrived. I had been enticed to come by H.'s remark that the Peach Garden had whores, Chinese, Russian, Iranian and Ethiopian. (H. remarked that the latter are very passive in bed.) However, I didn't see any women at all except the waitress and the three Filipina singers who were thinly clad in black shiny leather and thick soled high-heeled boots. (H. said that Thursday night was when the whores came out.) There were about two dozen young men sitting at tables or standing at the small bar along the wall. In the background loud music was playing, a refrain repeating in an obnoxious defiant way, "shit, shit, shit". G. said he was having a hard time focusing, so I told him to focus on the belly buttons of the singers.

The Filipina singers were actually quite entertaining, appealing to the crowd by singing a song in Arabic that engaged a member of the audience in doing a little male belly dancing on the bandstand. They also sang "I am an Egyptian" and the classic "I love rock 'n roll, put another dime in the juke box, baby." At the end of the set one of the singers came to our table, her belly button at about eye-level. I took her hand and told her I enjoyed it. H. asked her if she knew any motown, but she didn't seem to know this music despite my adding, "Detroit?" and H. saying, "Marvin Gaye?" This didn't surprise me, Filipinos in general knowing only the most popular white American music and especially disco, though one of my Filipino nephews likes Nelly.

H. suggested we go to Pizza Hut, which is open till 4 in the morning, and so we dragged G. along reluctantly. We ordered the pizza, but G. remained adamant, he had to get home despite H.'s protests that he had to catch a taxi with me since both of us were going to our respective flats in the same building. Nevertheless he left us and H. and I ate the pizza.

By the time we left Piza Hut it was past 2 a.m. and there were few cars and fewer taxis. H. was going in the opposite direction so he suggested I go to Main street to catch a taxi. We parted ways and as I began walking down Main street I heard the beep of a taxi and got in. In Arabic I told the driver my destination and that I had only 6 dirhams, 'manaseer gadeem, endee sittah dirhams fukit', the usual price being 10 dirhams after 10 or 11 o'clock when the drivers turn their meters off. He smiled in assent and took me home.

A memorable quip of Peter's after Graeham told a story about the discovery of a species of kosher pig discovered in Papua New Guinea: "For Christians it's the Holy Grail, for Jews the kosher pig."

After 6 o'clock Mass I went to pick up some shirts in Sanaiya, actually one roundabout away from the Sanaiya (the industrial zone) roundabout, near the oryx roundabout. There is a long row of shops and then a wall about a block long before I pulled up to the curb in front of Al Waseem Laundry, which is right next to Al Arabi Laundry, both of them sharing a wall. I could see from my Honda into the brightly lit shops and the two laundry workers in each of the shops looking at my Honda while they pressed down on the clothes they were ironing. The Pakistani in Al Arabi, the friendly one with whom on one occasion I hadn't felt shy to speak in what little spoken Arabic I know, looked a bit dismayed that I entered his competitor's shop. My wife and I had originally sent our laundry to him. The last time was before summer vacation. When we had returned we went to a neighboring tailor shop and he motioned me to come in. He had one of my wife's dresses that we had failed to pick up before we left on vacation.

I felt that I had betrayed him in some way, snubbed him. Actually, when my wife and I had gone to Sanaiya the last time to have the shirts ironed I did not see the two Pakistanis and went into Al Waseem instead. My wife, who communicates impeccably in broken English, asked where "the other guys were", the two Pakistanis. "On holiday," one of the laundry workers said. This seemed plausible because the Keralites are celebrating Onan. It didn't occur to me that I was not talking to Pakistanis but to two Indians.

After having paid for the freshly pressed shirts, the Indian in Al Waseem said, "Come Al Waseem!" I felt rather sheepish leaving Al Waseem, making sure not to look at the Pakistanis in Al Arabi.

Yesterday I sat with M. in my kitchen while my wife and his went to the sitting room to sing karaoke with the children. We each had a can of Foster's and we discussed German politics and working with Muslims. He is a dental technician and works in the Tawam hospital dental clinic. He has been in Al Ain for at least 11 years and has increasingly worked longer hours without getting paid overtime since his original contract made no provision for this, so he is overworked to say the least. My wife later that night insisted that the contract had changed to allow this provision. He was not convinced though my wife works as a medical technologist at the same hospital.

I don't get the kind of flak he described about not being a Muslim because I work under a regime of strict political correctness that forbids political discussion in the classroom, religion is 'haram', verboten. Also, might I add, certain subjects must not be mentioned, and alcohol is one obvious one. In fact, last year Howard told me the reason why one of the new teachers last year was fired, which happens rarely, but this teacher confessed to Howard that he had mentioned one day in class a home remedy that his grandmother used that included a shot of whiskey. I mentally winced at the stupidity of the incident, but then the guy was apparently completely naive, had never taught in the Middle East before, especially in this kind of austere Gulf country. In any case, students anywhere prey on stupidity.

M. made jabbing motions with his finger as he described the verbal poking a young Sudanese women was the victim of from her fellow Muslim co-workers, largely Palestinians. She had not been wearing the 'hijab', the head covering, before the ribbing and had finally "caved in" according to M. because she is presently wearing it to work and apparently has come full circle back to Islam after having lived most of her former years in England. (I believe any full circle, volte face, with regard to religious conversion has an element of discomfort from the clash between a disavowel of modernity and strong religious beliefs, particularly among Muslims, I would wager, because in comparison I think born-again Christians seem more comfortable with modernity.)

Work is the usual conversational fare between my wife and M. but last night M. and I drifted into German politics, Islam and eugenics, the first time I had really talked with M. alone, my first German friend, and so I have gained insight into one man's European view of Muslims since Germany has a very large number of Muslim immigrants, the largest proportion being Turkish people. The social welfare system, according to M., must end because there is not enough money for the social largesse to be spread around, especially to certain unscrupulous immigrants who know their rights as political refugees and take advantage of the system to fill their pockets and line their nests in the form of housing and appliances that they are given and also, virtually interest free loans to start businesses. I mentioned that, from where I was from in the States, there is the second largest population from the Horn of Africa after Minneapolis. He immediately asked me if they were "pending" political refugees, or political refugees (full-fledged, I suppose). I did not know, but apparently, according to M., pending status refugees should not receive any largesse from the state, that their cases are still pending (I suppose for full status).

Merkel signifies the former East Germany and does not want Turkey to enter the EU, she being a protegee of Schroeder apparently, according to M.. M. agrees that it would be disasterous for Germany to allow Turkey to be admitted as a member state of the EU and the Turks are pissed off at her. Muslims in general and Turks in particular are "breeding" more than Germans M. claims, and implying that this was a religious policy similar to what happened when a certain English king (was it some Richard?) decreed that English noblemen bed down with every Scottish peasant woman on her nuptial night before her husband. I recalled that this was depicted in Mel Gibson's film Brave Heart.

Primogeniture is a confounding subject for me, especially how religion comes into play in a matter concerning blood, genetics, a messy subject. M. explained what I already knew about the matter but I allowed him to go on in his diatribe against the Muslim horde (I guess with population control in China, there is no longer "the yellow peril"?). But I am being unfair, he did not mean to imply this kind of the-Protocols-of-the-Elders-of-Zionist claptrap because when I mentioned Haider, he dismissed him as a racist who didn't even want immigrants at all in Austria. Furthermore, he said he didn't know about the Jews when I mentioned them with respect to primogeniture and how one is only Jewish through the mother not the father. He confirmed that yes it was the opposite in Islam. The father could marry any woman of whatever religion, but a non-Christian man marrying a Muslim woman had to convert to Islam, which is the case with two of my expat friends, one married to a Syrian, the other to a Pakistani. (And what of gay marriage? I heard a long time ago that gay men can legally get married in Alexandria, Egypt. But I don't know whether this is true.)

Furthermore, I baited M. with the racist remark I was told by an expat in an airport before I arrived for the very first time in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia. M. had spoken of the time he was stationed in Fort Bliss, Texas for a course he had to take in weaponry of some sort, that soldiers from all over the world were there including those from Arab countries. (M. inserted the interesting remark, with a knowing smile to himself, that Americans sell weapons systems all over the world, "even if the other country doesn't need them".) The course for the German soldiers was one year in length; the same course, with the very same course material, was three years in length for the Arabs. This expat told me that I would find that teaching Saudi men would be comparable to trying to teach a rock how to shit. I had to repeat the phrase to M. because of the unusual comparison. M.'s face broke out in a wide grin and he attempted to hide it with his hand.

On my mention of Haider I had to mention the great story of John Velender's that appeared in Exquisite Corpse [see the sidebar for a link] about expat paranoia. The narrator recounts how, similar to Kafka's character that finds himself changed into a cockroach, he finds himself looking into the mirror to find Haider staring at him after a strange encounter in an elevator in Amman, Jordan. It is a succinct portrayal of that common expat experience of paranoia.

It was getting late and I had to drive my son's South African friend back to his house.

Yesterday I went to the Men's campus to play soccer. Most of the players are North Africans as in Magrebis from Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. We had eventually eight to a side and then had substitutes rotating every ten minutes ostensibly because no one had a stopwatch though I offered mine for use in the form of my mobile phone which has that function.

I had been told the last time we played to bring both a white and blue shirt so I wore my old UAE university shirt and brought a white v-neck t-shirt. At one point after the play had started a newcomer joined us on the pitch (playing the width of the 'gros tena', a term used for pitch in Magrebi Arabic that I learned yesterday when I heard it for the first time) and I offered him my white shirt but quickly realized that I shouldn't have proposed that he take off his shirt in public like that so I changed shirts and wore my white v-neck.

Said knows that I speak French but Omar another English instructor from the Magreb hadn't realized, so he was surprised since he knew at least that I was American. I rattled off in French that yes one would think that I was Canadian since Americans don't usually speak French. Said was kind in saying "and more Americans are learning how to speak French and Spanish." Later when I spoke with Grahem about his remark he laughed at the magniloquent generosity of his statement, at least implying that he was giving some credit to Americans I suppose. But, perhaps Said was being ironic, I can't really tell since he always seems to have a very polite demeanor, no sign that one would get from, say, a New Yorker whose tone of voice would parallel the irony at the same time as uttering the ironic potshot.

The Algerian who repeatedly declared that he never made mistakes in playing, "Je ne fais pas de fautes", the last time we played was not as adamant yesterday in his pride of knowing how to play football though I have to admit that he was right when I spoke with him after the practice last week that his team mates were not practicing one of the basics of play--looking up to pass the ball to an open team mate. I was sitting next to him in one of the stadium chairs whilst everybody else was sitting with a number of chairs between us and them. He was so adamant last week that he had allowed a goal to be scored against his own team out of a sense of showing his outrage though I felt like saying he was cutting his nose off to spite his face though perhaps that idiom might not have been understood by all. I also, to a lesser degree, felt like saying that only the Pope is infallible though that definitely would not have gone over at all, let alone understood.

We were all pretty exhausted as the heat is still pretty intense at 30 degrees C if not more, we started playing at about 5:30p.m. and stopped at about seven when the sun was going below the top of the stadium we were playing in. I walked out with a portly Pakistani or Indian guy who is quite a jester. I had said good-bye in Arabic, a common enough phrase to learn, "ma'asalamah" and he asked me if I were Saudi and I quickly riposted that I didn't realise that my Arabic was Saudi (I did live in Saudi for a year and that was enough) and we both broke out in laughter (like in Tutuola where Laughter is personified as if almost a kind of loa taking possession or appearing out of the thin air between two interlocuters). Another player I hadn't met, a Magrebi?, said that he thought I was Inglezi (English) and I offered my hand and asked him if he wanted to bet. He clasped my hand and I said "you lose, I'm American." He said "you look English." I suppose it is unusual for an American to play football. I don't play in the heavy footed style of Americans who have taken up the game late in life and are consequently clumsy on their feet. I am proud to say I was taught by an Englishman, a Jesuit priest in fact that had played semi-professionally at one point in his life, Fr. Reddy.