Call To Prayer

After the 13-hour flight, passing through immigration, and the 40-minute ride from Abu Dhabi International Airport to our hotel on the Corniche, Amo and I checked in.  Too tired to start exploring the city, we decided to have dinner in the hotel's restaurant, curiously named The Hamptons.  There are certain times while abroad when you realize a bold or naïve person has named a place after another, more famous place in America.  There's a Brooklyn in Australia.  It's a suburb of Sydney.  I'll never forget seeing it on a highway sign.  No possibility of coincidence; the very unique name was originally seventeenth-century Dutch

("broken line") pounded into something else by centuries of use in New York.  What was the thought process there?  Nothing about New South Wales says Brooklyn.  It just seems funny and wrong.  To be fair I've always thought the naming of Athens, Georgia and Paris, Texas to be pretty charming.  Perhaps Europeans feel differently when they see those names on road signs.

And I don't think the namer of The Hamptons restaurant at the Hilton Corniche Residence in Abu Dhabi had anything else in mind but, you know, the Hamptons.  There are many things very fine and great about Abu Dhabi, but not much of it has to do with the delights of eastern Long Island.  The hotel beach clubs here are functional but decidedly not fabulous -- there are just too many factors, climatic and cultural, working against them -- and guide books tell you straight up to avoid the public beaches.  And the more some tourists make like they're in South Beach or Ibiza, or the Hamptons, the sadder they seem.  As for names, there's so much other inspiration here.  Or do they just get tired of naming things after pearls and desert flowers?

(The shop down the road named Rodeo Drive is more on target.  They know from shopping around here.)

Anyway this was the third dinner I'd had in a row.  I'd had two dinners on the flight as we lost part of a day going east.  The morning, and breakfast, just sort of evaporated.  I was eating dinner at 10:30 PM mostly because it seemed like the thing to do.  The quiche I ordered was pretty tasty, but I noticed that most of the vegetables on my plate had been frozen.  There had of course been nothing but frozen veggies on the flight.  Now I was starting to get concerned that vegetables in Abu Dhabi would in general be limited in availability and poor in quality.  In my jetlagged mind, this theory made too much sense.  This is a desert after all -- what if they just can't get good veg here?  I was entirely wrong of course.  Never mind.  Silly me.  That's another story.

It was at this time I found out our hotel is dry.  No alcohol served at the restaurant.  No bar at all.  There are bars in hotels in Abu Dhabi, but not ours.  We had already planned ahead, buying a couple of bottles of wine and some rum at the duty free in the airport.  But though alcohol is legal in Abu Dhabi...  Well, that's about it.  It's legal, not much more.  You begin to realize that possessing it and enjoying it is a "thing."  It's not an option in most restaurants that aren't in hotels.  You have to strategize, know where and how to get it, and go out of your way.  It all has to be licensed, signed and sealed.  Those who sell it must declare they are not Muslims.  (No one would think to lie about such a thing for profit.  Sharia, Islamic religious law, exerts tremendous authority here as in all Muslim nations.)  If you are stopped by the police with alcohol in your car, and you aren't on the way home, you can be arrested.

I had a virgin Piña Colada with my quiche.  I had been awestruck by the heat and humidity during our brief moments outside after arriving.  It was 96 degrees out though late at night.  The fruity drink went down pretty well.

We went right to bed after dinner.  We were not so much exhausted as stretched a bit thin by the flight.  And up for adventure as we were, the various enormities of suddenly living in a foreign culture were starting to weigh on us.

4:45 AM.  The pre-dawn call to prayer sounds.  Just like that we are wide awake, just like that we're in another world and no mistake.  We are situated quite low in the hotel and apparently there is a mosque right outside.  The loudspeaker on its minaret makes it seem the call to prayer, the adhan, is occurring right in our room.  It's amazing.  It's captivating.  It's loud.  You don't come out of a half-sleep, or some dream in which it was incorporated, slowly realizing what you're hearing.  No, first you were asleep and now you're as awake as you ever will be, and you're being called.

There are five daily prayers in Islam and the corresponding adhan is called out before each one:  dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset, nightfall.  In the past, a cleric would climb the minaret of the mosque and make 

the call with his voice.  That must be something to hear, and perhaps I'll get a chance to hear it the traditional way somewhere on this trip.  These days it's mostly done by loudspeaker, and can be pre-recorded.  (It's also broadcast on Muslim radio and TV.)  You can listen to an adhan by clicking here.  It was recorded in Saudi Arabia and is probably close enough to how it would sound here in the Gulf region.  But the one at the nearby mosque which we've been hearing most often is more melodic and fluid and lovely.

To my ears the adhan sounded at first rather like a prayer itself.  Its lilting tone works on the ears in the same way as Gothic chants and Om Nama Shivayas.  In actuality it's a testament.  The words are:

Allah is the greatest

I bear witness that there is no deity greater than Allah

I bear witness that Mohammed is the messenger of Allah

Make haste towards worship

Come to the true success

(The pre-dawn adhan adds the line:  Prayer is better than sleep.  Indeed!)

There are mosques everywhere here.  There are three in one intersection near our hotel, and another visible a block away.  Aside from the fact that most of the population is very devout, I think the reason for this is that in Islam, prayer is daily maintenance.  While skipping the highly ritualized prayer is tolerated, still at least one is more or less mandatory each day as a means of spiritual and moral focus.  Therefore the pragmatical need for a lot of places to pray.  There are mosques attached to gas stations in the desert.  For those who can't make it to the mosque, there is plenty of consideration.  There are prayer rooms in every mall.  Each hotel

room has a handy quibla, the direction towards Mecca faced by the devotee, on a sticker fixed to the ceiling.

And one very quickly gets used to hearing the call all the time.  We're now in a different room than on that first morning, on a different side of the hotel, and the call is not as immediate anymore.  In some ways I miss it.  But you can't go for long without hearing it as you are out and about.  For those with Western ears, nothing places you in the Arab world more effectively and totally.  You might be at an ATM, or walking out of a Subway with a sandwich, but you hear the adhan and suddenly falcons are swooping, caravans troop across the desert, a sandstorm is blowing, domes and minarets loom.  Mind you it can be intimidating too.  You wonder if you should stop walking, or hurry up, or make some gesture of respect.

While researching this I came across a blog written by a Muslim American.  She complains that news broadcasts, even NPR, will invariably use the adhan as an audio intro for any story about the Arab world, whether it involves religion or not.  Though I agree with her about avoiding gross generalizations, I can easily see why news programmers make such choices.  You hear the adhan and there is no doubt about place.  And it's hard to avoid.  Islam is so dominant in this part of the world, and one hears the call so often.  The malls, the fast food joints, the manifest desire for Abu Dhabi to be the Hamptons or Beverly Hills stand in stark contrast.  Babylon is chanted down.  

Or is it?  Is all the materialism of this place really at odds with the fervor heard in each broadcast of the call? I haven't quite worked it out yet.  But if there's one thing Arabs are known for throughout history, it's commerce and trade.  Maybe Gucci and Starbucks just fit right into that centuries-old continuum, the complex weave of intersecting trade routes and cultures here in the Gulf.  People might have been selling leather bags and coffee here a thousand years ago while that call sounded.

Aside from all that it sounds nice.  I know I'm really coming off like a tourist here.  You know, someone else's proud tradition, someone else's fierce testament, is my romantic soundtrack.  That comical truth hit me the other day when we poured some technically legal chardonnay and had a toast while the call echoed in the warm pink air at sunset.  Perhaps it was such a moment that inspired our President to call it "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset."

Amo happens to share that sentiment with him.  Amo is not a Muslim.  Nor is he.  If you find any of these statements contradictory or controversial, maybe we will stick to talking about the weather.

Flight

The flight to Abu Dhabi was set to leave JFK at 10:40 p.m. on a Saturday night.  Etihad Airways, 13 hours overnight, on our way to a three month excursion into the unknown.  Neither of us had ever been to the Middle East nor even close.  But we had been too busy packing and arranging things for the last couple of weeks to get freaked out about it, or really study our guidebooks.  We were in a state of placid upheaval.

As we were seated I was curious about the passengers and the airline itself; wanted to see how they would compare to what I had already read and heard about the United Arab Emirates.  Most of the passengers seemed South Asian rather than Arab:  this did not surprise me as I knew that the working and middle classes in the UAE are dominated by immigrants from the Indian Subcontinent.  There was no one at all in the economy class (the "Pearl Zone" -- I think first class is "Gold Zone") in the national Emirati dress of dishdashas and burquas; the other Arabs aboard were in more conventional dress.

The music being piped into the cabin was a rather pleasant "world ambient" mix.  I wouldn't buy such toothless music for home consumption (I listen to a lot of ambient but I'm very picky about it), but I heartily approve of its use in public instead of the usual cheesy R&B.  At such times I feel we are living in a world for which Brian Eno fought hard. 

13 hours would be the second longest flight I'd ever been on.  I was curious to see how Etihad would stack up against Qantas.  I have pretty good memories of my two Qantas flights across the Pacific four years ago, especially compared to the state of things on the soul-sucking American carriers.  The main reasons for this:  food, free booze, Volcanix, and Qantas socks.

The food thing is simple.  Those Qantas flights four years ago are the last time I've gotten anything to eat on a plane.  It's amazing how much a thoughtful little meal or snack, however stale or bad tasting, can smooth out the rough parts of flying.  The free alcohol thing doesn't have to be explained either.  (On my Qantas flights I enjoyed a good amount of Aussie red wine to get me in the spirit of things.)  I also found out then, as if anyone would doubt it, that Tetris is a great way to kill time on a long flight.  The version of Tetris that Qantas had licensed for its in-flight entertainment system is called Volcanix -- it features blocks which occasionally explode and complicate things in a very fun way, but it's essentially the same game.  I played that thing for hours.  Better than any relaxing drug.  I played it so much that the films I tried to watch bored me (but Garden State and Collateral would have bored me anyway) and I turned them off to play more.

  

The socks were the mystery bonus.  They came bundled in a cloth bag with a sleeping mask and toothpaste.  They were Aussie navy blue, one-size-fits-all -- which on me made them ankle socks -- and oddly shapeless but soft and comfortable with a very loose weave, perhaps being very cheaply made.  I guess they were meant to be some comfy socks to put on and wander about the cabin in case you didn't want to scuff up your regular socks, or you were ashamed of your feet.  Whatever their original intent I kept them and wore them for many years.  (Amo gave me her pair too.)

Okay, so for this Etihad flight:   food -- check.  No chance of being denied a meal on a 13 hour flight.  We got two meals, and they were not horrible, though of course they initially messed up Amo's request for a vegetarian meal.  For the culturally curious there was seemingly not much in the way of Middle Eastern fare on the menu.  We got pasta, frozen vegetables, risotto, and salad.

The alcohol we were worried about.  Etihad is based in a Muslim nation, one that is for the most part dry except for a few hotels and specially licensed bars.  I don't know if this sounds bad, but I really don't like to fly without drinking.  Whatever you may think of alcohol's limitations as self-medication in everyday life, it sure does take the edge off the very real anxieties produced by hurtling in a metal machine five miles over the ocean.  Takes them off in a very real, very practical way.  Anyway, we were pleasantly surprised by having drinks offered to us.  Hell, they could have charged us considering a lot of their clients don't drink, kind of like a tax on being Christian or whatever, and I probably wouldn't have minded.  But it was free.  

The really charming thing was the surprising discovery of Etihad socks!  Yes, the stewardesses 

gave us each a cloth bag bundled with the same items as Qantas, including the weird socks.  Presumably made by the same supplier, but instead of navy, they were a buff or cream color, the same as the Etihad stewardesses' scarves which hang down from their caps in a strangely half-assed concession to Muslim veils.  I guess?  If I'm wrong about this and these half-veils are some great tradition someone please let me know.

(Note:  the synergy in the picture, with the Etihad stewardess in front of the Sydney Opera House, is entirely coincidental; it's the first pic of an Etihad stewardess I found on google.)  To complicate my judgment, all of the stewardesses were Filipina.  As I would soon come to discover, most of the hotels, fast food restaurants and retail stores of Abu Dhabi are staffed by immigrants from the Philippines.  Maybe the half-done look of the scarves had something to do with this bit of culture clash -- in fact I noticed a few of the Filipina stewardesses removed their scarves during bulk of the long flight.

The plane had an in-flight system similar to that on Qantas.  (I've never flown Virgin, so its fantastic in-flight systems are only rumor and legend for me.)  And sure enough it had a serviceable version of Tetris.  No exploding blocks though.  I dove right in.  Amo was a little miffed that I didn't want to watch a film with her.  Her idea was to start the same film on our personal systems at the same moment.  I wasn't sure if watching the same film on two separate tiny screens on the back of others' chairs while wearing headphones would constitute quality time.  (Though maybe it'd be cool to do this type of thing on a proper soundsystem, play several copies of the same film at once with slight delays to see if one can get dialogue in a film to do a Reichian pulse?)

This flight became a really weird non-ordeal.  The seats have much less legroom than Qantas and I was of course pinned behind a guy who leaned back all the way.  I'm very tall and this left me with almost nothing.  But for some reason I was chilling.  One very poorly made rum drink, and some pasta and frozen veggies, and I was good to go.  In fact I can't believe how few games of Tetris I actually played before I was ready to pass out.  Note that I do not use the term "sleep" for that state which overcomes me on an airplane.  It's more a mere lack of consciousness.  And then comes the inevitable time warp.  You're zooming toward Asia, toward tomorrow.  They turn the lights out in the cabin after dinner.  You don't know how long the lights are out.  You wake up seemingly every five minutes to shift your legs.  You pass out again, sort of wake up again, have hours passed?  You hear clinking off in some murky distance which indicates a meal is on its way.  Ah, breakfast!  Wait a minute, it's going to be 8pm in Abu Dhabi when our flight lands.  Hmmm.  Sure enough, it's more pasta and frozen veggies and a salad.  I'll have to wait until afterwards for coffee.  Should I have a drink or not?  (A Bloody Mary perhaps?)  

I realized we were across the terminator line and the sun was up.  I could see very bright

sunlight peeking in through some of the closed window-shades.  We were in the middle and therefore had no control over the shades.  I wondered where we were.  For the entire flight, the animated map of our journey on the entertainment system had not been working correctly.  But I figured we must have been somewhere over Africa.  I got up to wait in line for the bathroom and kill some time.  I looked out over the forward part of the Pearl Zone cabin as I waited.  More passengers were awake than asleep; most of them were on their little entertainment systems, and most of them were watching Bollywood films.  What's funny is that every little monitor had a different Bollywood film playing, but most of them had the same cast.  I think I saw Shahrukh Khan about a dozen times at different stages of his career, sometimes dancing, sometimes shooting a pistol on a motorcycle with a girl clutching him, in a weird colorful video collage in the dark Pearl Zone.  Folks, if you didn't already know, it's a Bollywood world, and we Westerners with our action films and cheesy R&B just live in it.  My time in Abu Dhabi has only reinforced that truth.  

Amo had watched a Shahrukh Khan film too; I can't remember the title, and I wouldn't know how to spell or pronounce it if I could.  But peeking over her shoulder it was obviously a somewhat sophisticated film-within-a-film, a kind of late-career satire of his own fame.  Later I asked her if it was good and she said it was.  I remarked on how good looking he is.  She agreed wholeheartedly.  I asked her if she would dump me for him.  She said he's too short.

The head became available and I went in.  Instantly I gasped.  Outside the porthole, there below me, was Africa.  It was astonishing.  Brown and yellow mountains, valleys and plains stretched away endlessly under a perfect blue.  Little puffs of perfect white clouds cartoonishly, almost joyously raced past in the miles of air below us from time to time.  I could see rivers reflecting the sun like veins of light.  I was so captivated I just stood there for a while.  Then I did my business and looked again out the porthole.  Everything had changed.  The vista was even more breathtaking.  We were over an enormous crystalline body of water, the horizon curving to remind me that indeed this is a planet, with a vast peninsula receding into a distance.  I'm not sure which one.  I wondered at the time if it was the Sinai, but my perspective may have been overwrought by my amazement -- can one see the entire Sinai peninsula from a jetliner's toilet window?  I don't really care; I'll always remember it anyway.  And I love puzzling over things like that, love living with mysteries.  Spending time looking at maps and trying to work them out.  And I will be just as delighted if I find out one day.

Reluctantly I left the head and returned to my cramped seat.  It was dark as ever in the Pearl Zone.  Everyone was awake, but everyone was staring at their videos.  I had the melancholy realization that even with the chance beckoning to look at this world on a brilliant day from five miles up, most people would rather watch TV.