Cul de Sac
Sitting in a hotel bar n Manama, Bahrain. A cold, tall, dark Guinness and a neat Jameson's in front of me. So worth the wait. Two twenty something year old Filipino gals n sequined short shorts and a long haired, soft looking man on keyboards singing cover tunes. Doing The Carpenters Sitting on Top of the World. What's the word. Yeah. Surreal.
I walk in and they're on break. I came to write, drink, smoke, and watch El Classico, Real Madrid vs. Barcelona. They go back up on stage and the really cute one points at me and says, "Welcome, Sir." I nod my head slowly, sort of a tip of the hat gesture with my hand out in front of my face.
After six weeks of living in my flat at the oil college, not seeing a woman, except in their black Caspar the Friendly Ghost get ups, not drinking, not being in a bar talking with friends, smiling at girls, today feels really like entering a dream. Here on the opposite side of the earth in an Irish styled pub. The cute one is continuing to smile at me, gets to the end of John Denver's "Country Roads." The song ends, the final soft keyboard riff is laid down, held, tones fading, and she looks me in the eyes, pulls the wireless microphone to her bright red painted lips, says "Take me home." Soft clapping. Things are getting stranger. Now I'm starting to understand how it comes to pass that so many of my colleagues are married to Thais and Filippinas. There are maybe eight to ten other people in the place, which may explain why it seems like she looks this way frequently. In all probability, though it sounds me to think so, there is a pretty good chance that every other man in this place is perceiving the very same dynamic taking place vis a vis the cute one and themselves.
Waiting at customs on the King Fahd Causeway connecting Bahrain to KSA. World's most expensive bridge.
Three of us came over today from KSA. A Brit, Nathan, my friend, Jim, from the state of New York, and myself. Took about one and three quarter hours to get here, most of that time spent in five different queues, immigration, customs, toll. Manama has a decidedly different feel from the Eastern Province. Looser. Less stiff. The hotel is nice, feels downright opulent after the utilitarian, spare feel of the KFUPM campus. A lot of this difference is probably due to the fact that the women here are visible, part of the ambiance, smiling, approachable. Talking to the two Filippinas at the front desk was the first time I have spoken to a woman, seen a smiling woman up close in seven weeks. It is the kind of thing you don't really notice in the rest of the world. And then you get used to it and don't really notice that you haven't had that kind of energy until you are exposed to it again. Then you realize that you miss it and then you anticipate missing it again. Like that trick knee that you forget is not right until you tweak it, then you miss having it work pain free until it slowly fades into the rear view mirror.
The archipelago that is the Mamlakat al-Bahrayn, the Kingdom of a Bahrain, became an independent nation in 1971 and was officially declared a Kingdom in 2002. It is a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy ruled by the Banu Al Khalifa, the family of the Khalifa tribe. It is composed primarily of one island 11 by 34 miles in area. The demographic make up is 46% Bahraini, 45.5% Asian, and 4% other Arab. The majority of the total Bahraini native peoples are Shi'a, yet the ruling family is Sunni, thus the impetus for much social upheaval and recent political unrest. Since the time of Alexander, who spoke of establishing his home in the main island here after his conquest of the known world, the term Bahrayn indicated the entire gulf coast of the Jazeera Al Arabiya, the Arabian Peninsula, from Basra in present day Iraq to the tip of Oman that forms the southern opening of the Gulf. Bough Herodotus and Strabo believed that the Phoenician peoples originated from this island which today is a firm member of the GCC, the Gulf Cooperative Council, and a strong ally of the Al Sa'ud family, the rulers of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. During the recent Arab Spring the Saudis sent troops across the Causeway to support their brethren royals with great apprehension that another royal monarchic family may lose power.
Nathan is an interesting man. He, like so many that I work with, is a bit over sixty, has been working overseas for more than thirty years, has a Thai wife and a seven year old girl that he supports back home, meaning back in Thailand. He regales us with fascinating tales, does a perfect impression of English as open by an Arabic speaker, is insightful and long in the tooth on experience. He tells of his years in Jakarta before Suharto was overthrown, reminding me constantly of scenes from the film "The Year of Living Dangerously." Of how riots broke out and all of Chinatown, close to his flat, was burned to the ground. "Jakarta scares the hell out of me," says this tall, large man who grew up in a tough, blue collar part of North London, the son of an Irishman and an English mum. His memories of his mother include her refrain, "Now you're being the perfect Irishman," meaning, apparently, completely without motivation or drive.
The three of us hung at the hotel bar for about two hours and I made sweet love to two beers, the first a blonde German darling, light, effervescent, lovely, and the second a black Irish sweetie, a tad heavier, but still tremendously attractive, think she went by the name a Guinness. Water to a very thirsty man. Then in the pool, then a cab to Warblers, another British themed bar to watch the Liverpool vs Manchester United match, the prime reason why Nathan crossed the King Fahd Causeway with us today; following the game he headed by cab back to KSA and Jim and I walked back to our part of town and then around a really surprisingly lovely, artsy high end restaurant district nearby where we had a swanky meal on a rooftop place called Passion. The few blocks here reminded me of a precious, beautifully lit, decorous part of Mexico City, somewhere around the Coyoacán and San Angel neighborhoods. The balmy, semi-moist evening breeze wafts the rich aromas from the tastefully styled, lush gardened eating establishments on both sides of the surprisingly quiet, hardly a soul in sight, streets, so narrow that two cars couldn't pass each other in them.
Guess I crossed another country off of my list of countries in the world to visit. Oh oh, the electronic keyboard is rolling out e opening chords of Hotel California. I can check out anytime I want, but I can never leave. So, what, only two hundred and some more countries to go 'til I've visited them all. It is starting to settle in, this expatriate life. There is some sort of amalgamation of culture here, made up of wandering souls self exiled to places not their own. Or, perhaps, self exiled more like FROM their own points of origin rather than TO any place. Exiled to any place, which for now is this place, this odd collection of pieces of cultures syncretized into a borderline eerie melange of sounds that shouldn't be coming from where they emanate from, sights borrowed from afar, smells that bring with them bits of distant lands, all mixed and folded into an international, multiple personality, hydra headed cultural casserole.
Irish beer and whiskey. Filipino musicians singing Classic American tunes. Spanish futbol on the TV. Indian masala lamb curry in my stomach. Flashing colored lights alternatingly lighting up parts of the room in green, yellow, and red. Flags of all nations hanging around the perimeter of the room. A Bahrani man tending bar. An American, me, typing away on his tablet. Couple a British guys talking at the next table. Now it's "Rolling on the River" gaudy Filipino style. It's like the place where traveling businessmen go when they pass on. Heaven or hell? Hmmm. What's the line from "The Usual Suspects"? "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people that he doesn't exist.
The set just ended and she comes over here and shakes my hand and we talked for a bit. Her friend comes along too for a bit, holding on to my hand a bit too long. The cuter one is an undergraduate nursing student from the Philippines here for two weeks doing singing engagements. She asked me how many nights I'm staying here, encouraged me to stay for the rest of their show. It's her birthday, you see. And later she will be blowing out the candles on the cake that is now in the fridge. She lives with her auntie and wants to stay in he Philippines because she loves her family. Fair enough.
So its one to one at the half. The bands again on break. It's ten minutes to midnight. I feel fatigue but am unable to ascertain what kind of tired I am. The metaphor that stays either firmly planted at the forefront of my consciousness or just below it for the last three weeks is that of a cul de sac. This image seems, more and more, to symbolize, to maybe crystallize, more and more, my experiences here. Interacting with Saudi businesses, the bank, every office on campus, my students, is a cul de sac. I am learning to expect that for every task which I attempt to accomplish here, getting a phone, establishing a bank account, getting my work lap top to work, which, after now roughly eight visits to the office fixer, think Radar from television's MASH, the IT guy in the building, and the techies up on the Jebel (the tallest part of the hill that KFUPM is built on-Jubal being Arabic for hill or mountain), still is non-functional, that I will need to make at least three visits or tries. Usually, after a sortie to check a task off of my list I end up squarely and precisely back where I started. A cul de sac.
At this point women sort of just freak me out. Can't really see interacting intimately with a woman past much of a point that would provably make me seem like a scared kid or a gay man. Just don't feel any fire burning. Like opening the door on a wood stove to see a cold, empty firebox. I'm probably at a point in my life where I may at some point in the not too distant future be ready to lace up my boots and go out into the blizzard to look for kindling buried down under the snow. Purposefully preparing and readying a batch of kindling for a go at a fire inside of me seems about as familiar right now as the rest of this Hollywood set of a scene around me.
Now they are belting out the Journey song, Don't Stop Believing. Now let me tell you, this song takes me back. I am in high school again. I am young, infatuated, heady, optimistic. My girl loves Journey, drives an MG midget, the same car my father had when I was very small. Testosterone and the mirage of a perfect, LA Law future is all I can see. Soon I will move to New Orleans to go to school and we will part. But in my myopic vision I am unable to see past the immediacy of my hand in hers, of our simple grins at each other, the certainty of our love for each other. From this vantage point I just know that we shall conquer all of the issues that the older folks, our parents, seem unable to navigate through. Bring it on. Certainly I possess the answers, the short cuts, all of the ways of being that others just have not tried.
Working hard to get my fill
Everybody wants a thrill
Payin' anything to roll the dice
Just one more time
Some will win, some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on, and on, and on
The show continues, it turns out to be her birthday, the cute Filippina singer, who does have, I must admit, a beautiful voice. The two of them take turns doing solos, covering John Legend and Beyoncé, Whitney Houston. There is a fun little number where she invites an Arab man up to dance with her on the small, parquet dance square immediately in front of the barely raised stage. He has a thick, black mustache, is handsome, is wearing a full length thobe and a blue grey baseball cap with no insignia. He boogies with and around her, she and her singing mate putting their hands together above their heads, clapping, attempting to rouse the small crowd. He points his index finger up towards the sky, doing his best John Travolta, and his buddies laugh, clap, self congratulate. A birthday cake is brought out and she says, grinning, she is "sixteen" and blows out the three candles, the Indian waiter taking the cake back through the swinging doors into the kitchen. Another sleight of hand achieved, the trio moves on into the next number, not missing a beat.
The man at the table some feet behind me drums his fingers in time to the music, all of it synthetic. The expression on his face telling a story of a woman left behind, of some far hope for one of the singers on stage or another drink between smokes, or maybe for the life he used to enjoy a long time ago in a galaxy so very far away. Perhaps for this man, as for so many of us, our emotional position here, our hands wrapped around a tall pint and a dwindling cigarette, this is the place we continue to return to. Perhaps it is this slice of life that perches on the window of the night that happens during the ninety minutes before the barmaid yells out the last call, that never leaves this one universal tone which resonates with a piqued alienation from others and from ourselves, a lonely hour and a half marinated in self loathing and a desperate search for an understanding or for some form of resolution, however small, to the existential sword hanging dangerously close above us. And in this way, according to the immutable socio-physical laws of the cosmos, the appropriate metaphor again becomes the cul de sac. We move from country to country, woman to woman, bar to bar, and as the bell is rung for last call we seem somehow surprised that all of our fears, all of our anxieties and insecurities, our entire conscious mind, has come right around the deceptively small road that though we continue to drive it hard and fast and straight ahead, vying for some motion away from our point of beginning, is in actuality a circle which brings us back to our start. It is a cul de sac.
More like a scene from Apocalypse Now, on acid, star flares roiling down around me in red and green smoke, flashes of yellow bursts in random groupings, some electric guitar crashing down hard, all distortion, maybe Hendix's Star-Spangled Banner, something, probably the wrong language, issuing forth from all people present, people who are most likely all lip syncing anyhow, even the barmaid and the Brits at the next table, maybe even me. All of it, like at some moment now or soon someone will yell loudly over the nonsensical cacophony, "OK, CUT! That's a wrap people. Let's try it again in the morning."
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