Sylvia's Journal

We are firmly into a holiday schedule of ‘late to bed’ and ‘late up.’ The day after tomorrow this will have to change back to early to bed and early rising. I can see why people like retirement – no need to be anywhere early.

Our medical tourism trip also turned out to be a gastronomy trip. We have hundreds of pictures to prove it, including this morning’s Arabic brunch with three kinds of goat cheese, olives, olive oil and a herb mixture with cumin, coriander, anise, sesame seeds, and black pepper, to roll the cheese in.

We checked out the beach across from the brunch place but found it too crowded for the steep entry fee and then made our way down to the faux-Venice area called Jumeira Madinat, where the small ferry boats called ‘abras’ replace the gondolas.

We discovered there was a theatre and bought tickets for the day’s show (When Harry met Sally). I thought it would be a Dubai adaptation but it was the real thing, pictures of New York as backdrop. If you’d seen the audience you wouldn’t have guessed you were deep in the Arab world. It could have been New York or London.

Sitting with his back to the faux canal and the color-changing Burj al Arab, Axel finally had his medium rare steak with a glass of Shiraz before we go back to mutton and pomegranate juice. It was one more thing we could scratch of his Dubai wish list before heading back home. There are a few more things left and all of them have to happen tomorrow: one more PT session for Axel, my wrist and knee stitches out, a visit to the nature reserve where the flamingoes are, and maybe one more Indian lunch (or dinner).

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We were able to talk to a real life person at Safi, finally, and changed our return ticket. Now we don’t have to rush the taking out of stitches on Saturday morning. Axel is also able to squeeze in one more PT session that way. We are taking the next flight to Kabul which departs a few hours after midnight on Sunday, to resume our lives in this other universe.

We returned to the textile district to find the Capital Gen. Trading store open. The place is all ribbons and threads and buttons and bows, revealing the secret of how the bejeweled and fancy Indian clothes are made. It made me wish for an atelier with a thousand little boxes, drawers and spools to fill with the notions that were stacked up in the shop. I tried to anticipate what I might possible need when back in Kabul and fashioning clothes out of the fabrics I am bringing back.

The artist in Axel reveled in the colors, textures and patterns of the ribbons for sale. While I was selecting buttons and bands he clicked away. I think this will become a new card series.

We had a lovely vegetarian thali lunch in a restaurant where multiple stainless steel dishes and goblets were already arranged on the tables, waiting for customers so that the filling could begin. An army of wait staff attended to us, constantly filling the dishes with more dhal, curried potatoes, yoghurt curry, cauliflower, sweet carrots, puris, naan, chapattis, green sauce, red sauce, slices of something made of pulses, deep fried balls of something else, and refilling our lhassi goblets.

We looked left and right at other eaters to learn that we had to say ‘no’ when waiters ladled more stuff in the half empty dishes. We finally got the hang of saying ‘no’ more assertively but by then the damage was done. Stuffed and sleepy we left the premises in search of a strong cup of coffee to revive us.

We explored the adjacent restored Bastakiya section of town, named after Basta in Iran from which its original inhabitants hailed. It is now a beautiful but somewhat lifeless reproduction of its earlier self that, nevertheless, contained some unexpected treasures. One of them was a gallery annex hotel with a series of moving exhibits about lost homes, homelessness (from Iran) and the juxtaposition of piercing eyes with mouths that cannot speak. It was a contemplative place, the quietness only interrupted by the polyphonous call to prayer finding us defenseless in the shaded courtyard.

For dinner we joined a cast of thousands enjoying dinner, shisha, coffee and tea by the side of the Creek on the Shindagha heritage site. It’s a different pace of life where children don’t have to go to bed at 7 PM; on the contrary, many happily participated in an open air kids show when we got there at 9:30 PM

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We discovered a wonderful French café, the French Connection, right behind our building. We spent a long quiet morning there in spite of Bat Man showing on the large TV screen. With free wireless internet Axel was able to take care of some business while I made it about halfway through the Elephanta Suite by Paul Theroux, thinking it was an India travelogue, which it isn’t, but a nice read anyways.

In the afternoon Chuck’s brother and wife picked us up for a spin around town. We alighted at a southern California sort of café (Australian really) that served fantasy cakes and shakes. Sitting only a few hundred meters away from the (out of sight) beach, we enjoyed the perfect summer weather looking out over the road that runs along the entire Dubai coastal section called Jumeira. You can be in Jumeira and still be miles away from being in Jumeira as everything along the beach is called that way.

From SoCal we went to the heart of the Indian textile quarter in Bur Dubai when the siesta was over and all the shops that were not on Eid holiday opened. Life starts to pick up around 5 PM as evidenced by the increasiing number of SUVs parked in the city nearby parking lots.

I thought I had seen the fabric-of-all-fabric stores but found a gazillion more. Axel had a field day with his camera, capturing the dazzling colors, while I indulged into buying two lengths of raw silk, and fantasized about dresses and jackets. We hunted for a notion store to find buttons and ribbons but, just as in Kabul, such stores are hard to find, and those we did find were closed for the holidays.

We met up with newfound friends for a lovely Thai seafood meal. We discussed so many serious topics (about art education, the higher education politics of Afghanistan (is there such a thing?), gender issues and what money does to motivation to educate oneself), that I was exhausted after the meal.

We still haven’t heard from Safi Airlines whether we are leaving on Saturday or Sunday but the end of our stay is coming into view, and so is winter. This is hard to imagine as the climate here is as close to perfection as a climate can be.

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Another one of Axel’s fantasies came true today. We celebrated the first day of Eid with the rest of Dubai at the far edge of the Jumeira’s beaches sitting under a palm tree with our books, near a restaurant that served a cold beer with lunch. We had bought ourselves a day pass at the Sheraton Beach resort. Our entrance fee entitled us to all the facilities plus two slatted wooden chaises with a mattress and a large beach towel. We also got the use of a hurricane-grade umbrella that needed to be wheeled in place with a cart.

We decided, maybe for the last time, to take the metro to this paradise. It required lots of walking and took one and a half hour from our apartment to the beach. Public transportation is so inconvenient that it barely competes with the ubiquitous and reasonably priced taxis.

After sunset we walked along ‘The Walk’ which is right up there with ‘The Address,’ ‘The Place,’ and other generic nouns that serve as labels for places that are anything but generic. First we strolled, with numerous Eid revelers, against the traffic jam that consisted of white and silver SUVs filled with turbaned men in their heavily starched dishdashas or women in their gauzy, bejeweled and sometimes titillating black cloaks.

We sat down at the Marina’s waterfront for a mediocre meal in one of Dubai’s many restaurant chains doing more people watching; families that had surfaced from their lamb feasts and walked, ever so slowly, along the promenade – much like the post-Thanksgiving lethargy – except in the US everyone slides in front of the TV. Here the preferred response to such fullness appeared to be smoking the shisha, having fresh fruit juice, coffee or desert.

We joined in the fun, skipping the shisha – there was enough second hand smoke to go around for everyone – with some Yemeni coffee and a concoction made from dates and a little bit of flour that was much better than its Anglosaxon cousin the fruit cake.

And now we are back home watching music videos that feature Indians dressed as Americans in 70s garb, including hairdos and glass styles, singing and teasing each other in rooms that have a matching décor. The only thing that is not in harmony with everything else is the high-pitched screeching of the female singers. It is all part of preparing Axel for our visit to India over Christmas. He’s a little wary about his first visit to the subcontinent, fearful of the intensity of the place which you can experience here in the textile quarter.

And so we will spend our last few days here sticking our toes in the Indian waters so to speak. We are lodged in the middle of where most of Dubai’s Indian population seems to have settled. We will try out a few Indian eating establishments that cater to the locals for little money and then see if Axel still wants to go there next month.

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We finally made it to the Belgian Café that is located in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Festival City. Dubai is divided in specialized sections that are called ‘Cities.’ There is the now very familiar Healthcare City, Knowledge City (where most of the foreign universities are), Media City where the media companies are, Internet City where the internet companies are and Festival City where, supposedly, festivals are.

Our mussel and Belgian beer dinner was a festival in and of itself. The place looked like it had been packed up and shipped from Antwerp and fitted within the walls of a Dubai skyscraper. As backdrop to our dining experience was the world’s tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa, with its lights pulsating to the music of the water fountains that come to life every 20 minutes.

It was filled with Belgian nostalgia, Flemish ditties written on the walls (niet bij een ander/maar bij elkaar/zijn wij gekomen naar hier/om te genaken/en om te smaken/aan lied, aan spijs en aan bier.), old family photos and thick oak floor boards that creaked just like they do in Holland/Belgium. There were even thick red velvet curtains at the entrance to keep the damp lowlands’ winter air out.

On a shelf were old packages of detergent that flooded me with memories. In my youth many companies sold their products to parents via their children. I was a proud member of the Shell Junior Club (membership card and pin included) and prodded my father on Saturday morning to fill up with Shell so I could get my club newspaper. The makers of washing powders had us hooked on the cartoon adventures of 3 little boys whose names were the products our mothers were supposed to buy (Pre, Pril and some other brand). The so very familiar boxes were part of the décor of the Belgian Café.

Axel ordered the Monday special: unlimited mussels and draught beer for 2 hours. I ordered a bierplankje: 6 small glasses of different kind of Belgian draught beer, cubes of Dutch cheese, salami, mustard, pickled onions and gherkins. We both got a pointy bag with fries and mayonnaise and I finished things off with coffee and Belgian chocolate mousse.

Earlier we had visited IKEA which looks just like the IKEAs I have visited in Holland and the US – the same products with funny Swedish names, lingonberries, caviar in a tube, knackebrot. The only difference were the shoppers, mostly Indian, in their sarees and salwar kameezes. Even the kids behaved the same – excited at first and then utterly bored and screaming by the time the cash registers come into sight. It goes to show that there is such a thing as a universal shopping experience that can attract families with discretionary money to gladly part with it.

In the morning, while Axel was having his last PT session I treated myself to a visit to the fabric store of all fabric stores. The place was swishing with French Chiffons, Georgettes, Cottons from Switzerland and Japan, raw silks from Korea, silk sarees from India, three piece sets of pashmina, wool from Pakistan, French satins and boxes full of end cuts.

Being in a predominantly Indian neighborhood we joined a lunch crowd in an Indian fast-food/take out place and received an orientation to Indian sweets from a friendly man who bought us some sweets as part of the lesson. We were the only foreigners and everyone was very concerned about our happiness. It was the other end of the Dubai eating experience in terms of money spent and contact with the local population.

We are trying to get our return trip changed to accommodate the follow up visit with my surgeon but cannot figure out how to contact the airlines. They appear to have closed for the Eid holidays, which started tonight and continues till we have to go.

Today was a walking test for the new and improved knee. First we took a taxi to a French bread and coffee place about 500 meters from our hotel. After an overpriced breakfast we walked back the long way. The crutch was superfluous but it helps as a sympathy factor so I keep taking it along.

We took our bathing suits and headed out to one of the few public beaches down the coast. For 35 cents we were admitted and for another 10 dollars we rented two plastic chaises and an umbrella that flopped around in the wind but gave us just enough respite from the sun that we could read in comfort.

The water was warm and a muddy blue and the beach was full of obese people from Russia and Germany save a few skinny local girls. There were also a few local women with their men and babies – they remained in their layers of black cloth, head covered, everything covered, while their men and babies took most of their clothes off. Life is not fair for some women here.

To prevent a sliding of morals picture taking is not allowed on the beach, along with a thousand other things for which you can be fined and expelled. Taking pictures would be kind of sick anyways, given the voluminous clientele.

We left in the middle of the afternoon to go back to City Hospital for Axel’s second PT session. His therapist uses needles and goes for pressure points. Not altogether pleasant, but effective, Axel claims. I waited downstairs massaging my tingling fingers and resting my tired leg while continuing the exciting read about the history of the Khyber Pass that Douglas lent me. There are no women in the story and it is all about fighting; this, I think, is no coincidence. Get with it, guys, what is so hard to get about living in peace?

I wrote to my two surgeon friends, one in Cambodia and one in Egypt about the tingling. Both replied that it will go away once the swelling goes down. I feel a little better now.

We stumbled on a new shopping mall, another gigantic shopping extravaganza with a boardwalk along a marina with larger than life yachts. We had been lured there by an advertisement for a Belgian mussel meal with a hop-based beverage but, to Axel’s great disappointment, Sunday night was a dry night. Our luck! We had to satisfy ourselves with faux beer, accompanying an Italian meal in a Japanese-Italian (‘dual experience’) restaurant – the placemats feature a bonsai tree and an olive tree, very clever.

We watched the movie RED, just about the only palatable movie in town so now that I have seen it I think we are done with movies here, or at least I am. I am not sure what we are going to do the next five evenings here, watching TV and movies probably (like watching Terminator 3 last night, imagine that, me watching our CA guv’nor like that, how desperate can one get. Kabul is more exciting!)

I exchanged my hospital johnnie for my dress, signed the release papers and said goodbye to the Philippina and Indian nurses and the Bangladeshi man who served me my meals (Continental/Arabic/Indian). I left with one crutch, all paid for, though barely needed at this point. I can walk (slowly) without it already. The knee is stiff but healing rapidly. I am not sure about the wrist. My fingers are now permanently tingly, a condition that the surgery was supposed to fix. I am a little worried that the cure didn’t cure me.

With Big Eid in full swing now it is clear that I had my surgery just in time. Everyone is off for the holidays except the skeleton crews that have to keep essential services in the city going. It was difficult to schedule the follow up visit to the surgeon to get the stitches out. The first workday is the day we leave. The SOS people were worth their weight in gold once more by persuading the doctor to let me into the door before the office opens so that we can be at the airport precisely at our 10 AM check-in time.

Axel had physical therapy today. His MRI showed he has a tear in his rotator cuff – something he suspected but that we can’t do much about at this late hour. Someone has got to carry the suitcases back home. He has scheduled three PT visits between now and next week. The first one was today and he was quite pleased with the approach and the possibility of a non-surgical remedy. Our bodies are getting old and tears seem to be part of the living we do.

Axel’s computer also needed some attention from specialists – there is no Apple store in Kabul. The computer has a brand new CD drive. We are done with most of the fixing and we can start to recover. I foresee much reading and watching of movies.

I moved all our belonging from one side of Dubai to another before returning to Axel’s hospital. But he wasn’t quite discharged yet and so I continued without him to my pre-surgery appointments in the competing hospital.

The architect of the American Hospital must have had a mental imagine of a hospital as a shush-shush kind of place. In sharp contrast, the architect of City Hospital had something more lively in mind. It has places to sit and interact with each other and the world, rather than the sit-quietly places and rather subdued atmosphere of the American hospital.

Now it was Axel’s turn to pick me up. We walked across the street to a very fancy mall, for the merely rich and the very wealthy where they also had a modestly priced bento box lunch place. The only redeeming part of the mall was the underground souk representing various parts of the Middle East and Arab world: Egyptian, Turkish, Moroccan, and Syrian that sold the most exquisite wares from the region. We drooled over Kashmir shawls, hand embroidered by very patient people, and didn’t even bother to ask for the price.

The mall and the restaurants were as empty as the American Hospital. This is supposed to be High Holiday time: Eid, cool evenings, and pleasant days, but where was everyone? Could it be that Dubai is no longer the place where the very wealthy congregate?

We took naps until it was time to go to the movies (Eat, Pray, Love) and then did our initial shopping for basic supplies for our remaining 9 days here. And now it is my turn to fast.

As medical tourists we are exquisitely taken care of by Caroline and her colleague Asia from SOS International. We are one of their projects for this and next week but you’d think we are their only project. They schedule our appointments, tell us about the procedures, what to expect, not to do.

For years I have carried the SOS International card with me and MSH paid its fees. I never had to use it. Now I am learning what they are really about, service, awesome service.

Today was the one day this week that we did not have any medical appointments and so we set out to explore more of the city and its thin history.

We took the spotless metro into town enjoying the high ride across what is called refrigerator alley – the Sheik Zayed multi-laned highway that goes from Dubai to Abu Dhabi and that is lined with the weirdest looking skyscrapers.

We picked up the Red Bus at one of the shopping centers that make you think you are in New York and descended at the restored Maktoub palace at the edge of the Creek.

The before and after pictures reminded me of the Murad Khani restorations in Kabul – here someone also saw beauty in what was utterly decayed. The spectacularly restored palace with its summer and winter rooms, its wind towers for natural airco was filled with pictures of the olden days.

Old is not very old here – going back at most two generations. In fact, some pictures were from the 70s when I was in Yemen. The Dubai from then was very much like North Yemen in the 70s. The transformation that happened here is phenomenal (whether you approve or disapprove) and it left me wondering, what happened here and what did not happen in Yemen?

We are starting to ask taxi drivers that question. The answers are very consistent: leadership, or maybe more specifically, enlightened leadership; leadership without greed or coming from a small ego, insecurity, a bully complex or what not. It appears to be leadership from someone with wealth, status and the weight of a power dynasty behind him; no need for games.

I noticed that females were entirely missing from the pictures – except for the room that was called ‘socio-cultural.’ It contained young girls dressed up to the nines after the celebration of their graduation from Quran school. All the others contained only pictures of the ruling elite, from young eager boys handling their falcons to old wizened rulers with their hands on their djambiyas, the crooked dagger that they carry right below their bellies, just as in Yemen.

Axel and I went apartment hunting. The day after his operation, and the day before mine, our current apartment lease ends and we need a new place to stay. We walked round Bur Dubai looking for short stay apartment rentals. Young Philippina or Pakistani clerks, eager to sign us on, showed us around.

We are staying in tonight, having food brought up (Peking Duck, seafood noodles), and watch a movie that Tessa sent along with Anne and Chuck in a care package. But when Anne and I came back up from the apartment complex’ sauna and jacuzzi we went straight to bed. Only the men watched the film. Today was vacation. Tomorrow we are on sick leave.

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Last night we had a late and outrageously expensive dinner (mostly because of the wheat- and grape-based beverages but also because the restaurant’s location) at the Dubai Mall overlooking the famous dancing fountains. The mall closed at midnight and was still full of small children who appeared more awake than we were.

This morning was my day of medical tourism. We took a taxi to a part of Dubai that is called Dubai Health Care City. The place is chock-a-bloc hospitals, specialized clinics, group practices and pharmacies. My appointment was in building 55, which made me wonder whether there were at least 54 other buildings.

I was swiftly diagnosed by Dr. Ali, a young surgeon from Pakistan (I think) who trained in Toronto and at Brigham and Women’s in Boston. He has scheduled me for carpal tunnel surgery on the 11th. He also ordered an X-Ray (done) and an MRI (Monday) to find out what is wrong with my painful knee. If there is something to be fixed in the knee he will do it right after the carpal tunnel surgery on Thursday. And so, this medical visit to Dubai is as much mine as it is Axel’s.

My new orthopod works in a medical group practice that made me reflect on care in Afghanistan. This place has everything Afghanistan doesn’t have: for starters, a large number of well educated nurses. All of them have been trained by the government of The Philippines, after which they left for greener pastures. The education of nurses has thus become a significant subsidy by the Philippine government to the UAE. It really should be the other way around.

And then of course there is the infrastructure of this place – uninterrupted water, electricity, salaries paid on time, internet at lightspeed, integrated machines that check your temperature, blood pressure and god knows what else with one push of a button. All the while I am thinking, why? Is this only about money or is there something else?

After our doctor’s visit we played tourists. We took a bus tour, a dhow trip along the creek and then a meal at one of my favorite restaurants with its cantilevered deck overlooking the Creek.

Returning at our apartment complex I marveled how we could just walk in from the street. No sandbags, no razor wire, no sign that says ‘No Guns,’ no metal detector. Things used to be like that in most places of the world – now this may be the only place left where the assumption of innocence and goodwill is assumed and trusted.