Sylvia's Journal

We arrived in Dubai with a planeload of the kind of men you don’t want to anger: crew cuts, biceps and jackets with a lot of pockets. My neighbor was watching a gun show on his portable DVD player. This is the problem with the security and military industry: you add testosterone to testosterone, a flammable mix, even before you add drugs and guns. I suppose the only good thing is that alcohol is not allowed.

We breathed deeply on arrival, even though the air was humid or air conditioned. When we stepped of the plane I was finally able to relax – this is the problem with stress, you don’t notice it until its source is removed.

By the time we arrived at our hotel we were too pooped to get back into a taxi to find the restaurant I had been fantasizing about and so we stayed in.

We ate a late dinner at the Bedouin bar & Restaurant. Axel’s Bedouin burger with turkey bacon was good, my prawn risotto less so, mostly because of the pieces of mystery meat (looked like Spam but how could that be?) that floated in the soupy risotto, side by side the shrimp.

We drunk each half a liter of ice cold draught Tiger beer which constituted about half the bill of the overpriced meal, but who cared? We were free and on vacation.

I marveled at women sitting at a table next to ours. They were out on their own; imagine that, without male companions, and without veils, and drinking wine! To find this very ordinary scene so extraordinary makes me realize in what a distorted world we live.