British Gulf Santa

The Christmas holiday season in the United Arab Emirates is a unique experience that I've now managed three times, though not without some disorientation and a few small emotional setbacks. And since I'm known in some circles to be an 'epic crybaby', the emotional challenges are to be expected.

For my first Arabic Chrismas in 2008, The Sharjah Co-op Supermarket was the site of my distress when the stock assistant could not decode my request for graham crackers. So be damned my holiday cheesecake, bring on the store-bought Lebanese pastry, but only after a bleary wander around with sunglass-covered eyes to regain my composure. Surely the piles of unwrapped gifts and the long days spent working and siteseeing with holiday visitors could be pointed to as triggers for my breakdown.

During my second holiday attempt, Christmas 2009, the fact of my working on Christmas Day put me in such a foul mood that I was in a constant state of budding migraine, while I still managed the holiday 'to do' list and prepared my students for final exams. Why, I thought to myself, did I ever decide to come to the Muslim world to work? Fortunately the kids' holiday pageant, with all its partridges and pear trees got me connected back to my roots, and a rousing round of 'O Christmas Tree' set me right. More or less.

And this year, though I thought I knew what to expect, I still was caught unawares when, as rumour has it, the library staff were asked to remove their Christmas decorations. And OK, I get it, this is a college for locals only, and to have a local passport means you are a Muslim, and well, in a Muslim institution we need to behave culturally appropriately. All fine. Yes. But when you drive down the Palm Jumeira, the palm-shaped island where every last tourist has to plant his foot, and you see giant inflatable Santas dangling from the balconies, and when Abu Dhabi is bragging over their world's-most-expensive Christmas tree, our college restrictions seem simply arcane.

Work environment aside, I still managed to have a lovely Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and I powered on with appropriate cheer. At a festive Christmas Eve party, I witnessed the funniest of characters. I can't explain how unnerving yet totally amusing it was for my American children, when the surprise Santa opened his mouth - and 'talked British'. This was followed by an at-home Christmas day, on which we cooked local goat with my Mom and brother from America, assembled toys and played host to our Muslim neighbor kids, all the while giving thanks for the goodies under the tree, delivered by the funny-talking British Gulf Santa.

Roughing Up the Muffins

I thought we were in good shape when I woke up this morning, for it's the week before Christmas, there are 9 or 10 gifts wrapped and under the tree, and I am fairly certain that Santa knows what to bring on the 24th. After a look at 8-year-old Liam's breakfast-table head however, on which I rushedly performed a haircut last night, I realized I am just barely faking it. Not wanting him to look like a Dickensian waif in the school pageant this evening, I somehow made him look like a worse and modern version, the neglected private-school child of socialite parents. I wish.

When 6-year-old Rosie, who is perpetually confused about what day it is, comes into my get-ready-for-work zone insisting that she have the Santa hat, I say, the Santa hat has not been purchased yet. That event (starring my other 2 neglected-socialite-kids) is after school, this evening, in fact it's over 12 hours from now, and so Rosie honey, we will get the Santa hat while you are at school, no problem. But no, she says, the show is TO-DAY, tonight is TO-DAY and the Santa hat is for TO-DAY not TO-NIGHT. I say well, look, here is a pair of sunglasses, you were meant to have a santa hat and sunglasses, right? You have half the get-up. This is good, No? But no indeed. Those are boy-colored sunglasses. Dark green. Oh please, Please Rosie, are you serious?

So as I rush through my morning make-up and add 'proper haircut' and 'girl-colored sunglasses' to my mental to-do list, Dickensian (or do you prefer Socialite) Waif number three son Brady, informs me that the lovely home-made muffins and oat-choco cookies I so lovingly baked up long after they all went to sleep, are not healthy enough for the grade five holiday picnic. What?! I mean seriously? So how about a little fruit salad mom? With some roasted sprinkled flax seeds and a drizzle of lemon for freshness. At that point I remember a fairly decent mommy-memoir, though please forgive my not remembering the author's name, where the opening scene is a frantic working mom, unpacking the store bought holiday pie and purposely roughing it up, putting it on her own dish, sprinkling some extra powdered sugar on top, and serving up as her home-made potluck contribution. And so perhaps I'll follow her example, and rough up my perfect and already truly home-made muffins, and tell Brady to explain that these are totally organic, old-fashioned roughed up working-mother muffins. With a sprinkle of flax.

That's Harrassment. H-A-R-R-A-S-S...

Imagine the only blonde in a room full of 17-year-old Arabic boys in a city auditorium in the Middle-East. Imagine the hormones and the stifled cat calls, in a room where the vast majority of pupils, 250 or so, do not have female high school teachers, have not personally met an American or any native-English speaker, and are not permitted by the culture or their families to co-mingle with girls. Then imagine that it's your job, that you have been specially elected, or selected, rather drafted, to sell the government college to these boys, with a microphone and a very big stage and snazzy projected video, not because you have a knack with youngsters, or because you are an exceptional educator, but because you are blonde, you wear the right make up and are perceived to have what it takes to 'attract'. Imagine all this and there you have it, a day in the life on the faculty of a government college in the United Arab Emirates.

A couple of months ago, my male supervisor, a tall and well-tanned Arizona Phd, stopped by my cubicle to tell me with a chuckle, that I'd made 'the list'. So right away I'm thinking, what ridiculous overtime course, or lesson committee, or chaperoning duty is being slung my way. But he went on to explain that it was far more fun and much less labor-intensive that what I had imagined. Or so he thought.

His visit to my cube was followed by this emailed missive from our Dean of English, a short, brusk, 50-something-deep-voiced make-you-cry Scottish woman who truly runs the show. It reads:


"You have been identified as the people most likely to attract new students to join the college system. The key to the ‘why me?’ answer is the word “attract” 

We need the male teachers to visit the girls presentations and the female teachers to visit the boys ( getting the picture now ? ) We have a ready prepared script for you to read. All we ask is that you come along looking happy, confident, and just super thrilled to be there.

If the whole idea of this just scares you to death....talk to me. But really, for you, it will be nothing more than a ten minute guest appearance on stage."


I seriously took the whole thing as a compliment at first. That is, until I heard that a lovely college librarian, also on 'the list', was refusing to participate, on principle. Gee, I thought, am I completely without principles? A mere sucker for a smile and casual smarmy quip? Or was this a well-intentioned college marketing scheme gone just a little sideways?