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.