My friend Lynne (we call her bad Lynne) came for a whirlwind visit to Dubai. She was on her way to Cairo, then bravely trudging into rural Egypt to volunteer on an international Habitat for Humanity project. Well, her do-gooder self needed to be tempered with at least a brief taste of decadence, so I did my best to show her the “true” Dubai.
It all started with a night in our majlis, which is our inner courtyard. Traditionally "majlis" is a term for a room in a private home used to entertain family and guests. Probably, there would have been a separate majlis for the men, and another for the women. Perhaps the men would gather and smoke shisa and the women would gather and talk about the men? If you come to visit Stan and I here in the desert, we will greet you in our majlis. You’ll likely be buzzing from the lights of the Dubai International Airport, so we’ll bring you down gently, allowing you to sleep off your jet lag. I always pick up some mezze (hummus, vine leaves, olives) from the local deli; we have some wine and enjoy a night under the stars.
Thankfully Lynne slept well, not sure what to credit that to (??) so we were off the next morning to check out the Dubai Mall – it is the world's biggest you know! But who knew Lynne has such a designer fetish? By a stroke of good luck (??) we found ourselves parked next to “Fashion Alley,” so when we emerged from the car park we were blinded by serious bling. Giorgio Armani, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Manolo Blahnik (who we much preferred to Jimmy Cho) you name it and the fashion house is represented in the Dubai Mall. And we browsed nearly every one of them. Chanel won the Friendliest Staff Award (they must be SO BORED) with Tom Ford following a close second. We came out of T. Ford narrowly escaping the purchase of a salmon-colored silk blazer for Stan and smelling like musty leather. The French-Canadian waiting on us was tres généreux with spritzes of Tom’s fragrance line.
Day three lead us to the only mosque in Dubai officially open to non-Muslims. Four days a week at 10:00AM, the Jumeriah Mosque opens it's doors for the Open Minds Open Mosque program. This is where we listened to a British volunteer (pictured above modeling one local style of dress) from the Sheikh Mohammed Center for Cultural Understanding, which sponsors the Open Minds program give her take on Islam in the UAE. She intimated that she is married to an Emirati, and since she had an Arabic name (but an accent reminiscent of Eliza Doolittle pre Henry Higgins) and was white, we assumed she had converted to Islam when she married. That's a lot of assuming on our part, I know. Here's a taste of what she shared with us:
• Adam and Eve turned up in Saudi Arabia 40 years after being ousted from the Garden of Eden. The Kaaba, at the center of Mecca, marks this spot today.
• The women here actually like to wear the black covering (called an abaya in the UAE) over a full set of clothing, often jeans and a long sleeve shirt for modesty, even in the summer heat, because it actually makes them feel cooler. Yep. It’s true. They like the little shadow they make for themselves.
• Women in the UAE cover their faces because it is a throw back to the Bedouin days when they did so to protect themselves from the sun and the sand. You see, it’s really about beauty.
• We all have an angel sitting on our left shoulder recording our bad deeds. And another on our right shoulder keeping track of our good deeds.
• If you die on a Friday, or during the holy month of Ramadan, you get the express train to heaven.
• Islam recognizes all the other “religions of The Book,” however Islam is the most recent edition because Mohammed declared himself the last prophet of God.
• Non-Muslims aren’t allowed to enter other mosques in Dubai simply as a matter of practicality. We might not know the rules. For example, I might walk in with my shoes on followed by someone who would then have to say their prayers, nose to carpet, where I had walked.
• Women aren’t required to go to the mosque to pray because they have more duties than men. It is a convenience for us gals. We are the lucky ones, we can pray in the prayer rooms in the malls, which are rumored to be larger than the entire women’s section of the UAE’s largest mosques!
• Women are expected to pray in a separate room at the rear of the mosque, or behind the men if they DO venture to the mosque at prayer time. This is simply because if I were to stand next to a man saying his prayers, my stunning beauty might shine out from under my abaya and the poor devotee would never be able to concentrate on God.
Lynne commented, with Left-Shoulder Angel taking note, “That woman sure drank the Kool-Aid.”
