I Have Iraq in My Shoe (34 page)

As scheduled, the flight landed in Erbil just after midnight, in the early hours of December 31. It was dark and rainy. I was tired and cranky. And hungry. And desperate to get away from my pervy seatmate. The second the seat belt sign went off, I placed my first call to Dadyar, who had said, “You call, I come.” Remember how he said that? With the dismissive waving away of my printed out instructions and details?

There was no answer. I redialed his number. Twelve times. Twelve calls, during which I disembarked the plane, took the shuttle bus to the terminal, and stood in line waiting to clear customs. Dadyar finally called back while I was waiting with my luggage, and in a panicked voice said, “HELLO?” I said, “I am at the airport.” He said, “I am coming!”

It could have been worse. He might not have called back. I might have had to attempt to take a taxi home, without any cash handy. He showed up a half hour later and was apologizing profusely and saying, “I think you coming tomorrow!” I said, “You didn’t answer your phone. Were you sleeping?” He told me that no, he hadn’t been sleeping, but had instead been hanging out in Ainkawa with his friends.

When he dropped me off, I wearily told him that I needed to go to the store in the morning to get food, as I didn’t have anything to eat in the house. I said, “Please be here at nine o’clock.” He sort of shook his head and said, “Ohhhhh, no nine. Half past?” I was already annoyed at his incompetence, and wanted to get to the store early, so I repeated, “No, please be here at nine. I really need to get to the store.”

Nine in the morning and no Dadyar. I stood at the window, watching the rain pelt the empty street and thinking, “Seriously?” I finally had to call him at 9:20 and say, “Where are you?” to which he gave his standard “I am coming.” He showed up at 9:30, just like he had wanted to.

I climbed in the car and asked, “Why weren’t you here at nine?” and he said, “Ohhhhh, not get bed 4:00 a.m., very tired.” So I had to ask why he had gotten to sleep so late, and rather than even trying to lie about it, he told me that after he dropped me off, he went back to Ainkawa to hang out with his friends.
Me Tarzan, man. Do what I want.

I was only happy after Dadyar had dropped me off at the villa, then driven away. I was fully stocked with food and wine. Never mind that my TV and Internet weren’t working, as seemed to be the case each time I returned from a prolonged absence. I would call the IT department later. I could start my new year off just fine, as long as I had cheese and wine. And accidental rhymes.

*
 Okay, that’s not actually true. It is listed under “handbags,” but “handbag” is really just another name for “purse.” Who is this woman to tell me that my purse is not actually a purse, but a carry-on bag??? The number of question marks used when writing about these things is directly related to the number of veins popping out of my neck at the time of confrontation.

    
ASTOUNDING
    
ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF PART 5

Total spent on overweight luggage: $3,870. I mean, for crying out loud.

Debt eliminated: $33,453—the silver lining!

Countries traveled: 7—Austria, France, Croatia, Greece, England, Sweden, Jordan.

Pairs of shoes purchased: 13. This sounds like too many, but it’s not. You’re not the bosses of me.

Soul mates met: 0. Curses. Foiled again. Back to square one.

Cultural tolerance level: 1. This place is on my last effing nerve.

Soon after Christmas break, we had another week off. The various Islamic holidays and school breaks had been a selling point when Warren pitched this position to me and had been one of the few things he told me that did not require embellishment. I had decided that I needed to explore a little bit more of the Middle East. Aside from a brief trip to Jordan in November, all my other vacations had been to European countries in my attempt to balance living in Iraq with my idea of Western normalcy. Since women are hassled less in Middle Eastern countries if traveling with a man, I thought it would be both smart and hilarious to travel with my friend Josh. Josh was one of my favorite people in the universe, and he loved a good adventure as much as I did.

We would be Fancy-Shoe-Wearin’ Female and Outrageous Gay Male, the American Superhero Duo, on a Middle Eastern Extravaganza in the Sultanate of Oman.

A
sultanate
. So exotic. I wanted to take Flying Carpet Airlines to the sultanate but had to take the flight out of Erbil on the more traditional, less exotic Gulf Air.

I was also totally enchanted with their unit of currency, the Omani rial. When researching the exchange rates online, I discovered that the abbreviation was OMR. This was just so close to the overused texting/cyber slang of “OMG,” and I also discovered that things in Oman were fairly pricey, so that led to the natural decision to call the currency the “Oh My Gods.” As in, “How many Oh My Gods is that silver dagger?”

My Gulf Air flight required a stopover in Bahrain before continuing on to Dubai. I had booked business class, because it was really only a few hundred dollars more than economy. In the recession days, back in my old life in Seattle, I would have gasped at the idea of spending over “a few hundred dollars” on a plane ticket, much less an airline upgrade, but I was fancy now.

I met Josh at a Costa Coffee shop in the Dubai airport. After some excited squealing and fierce hugging, I released him so he could go secure the rental car. Then we were off on our Middle East adventure. The travel information Josh had stated that women should cover their hair when driving in and around Oman, so as soon as we crossed the Emirates-Oman border, I wrapped my head up in a pashmina scarf.

The first gas station we stopped at was called an “oasis,” which we both found hilarious. It was a far cry from the clichéd Middle Eastern mirage “oasis” of a shimmering pool of water, flanked by waving palm trees. This oasis had a food mart. Josh pointed out that I was garnering some unwanted attention from all the Arab men who were at the gas station. I couldn’t get away from the damned zoo, even with my “sexy” hair covered. Josh dubbed the men “Stare Bears.” Ellen and Jen were going to love that.

Josh was an American travel writer for MSN in Sydney, Australia, and had done all of the legwork and planning for this trip. He secured two nights (free of charge) at an über-deluxe seaside resort at Zighy Bay on the Musandam Peninsula of Oman. It was ridiculously posh, right on the Gulf of Oman with a staggering backdrop of mountains and a beautiful expanse of unspoiled ocean. We enjoyed a beachfront pool villa, complete with two resort bicycles and a personal butler. We didn’t actually use the butler for anything, but we rode the bikes around the sandy paths and up to the spa villa, where we had massages and spent time in the steam room.

Part of the deal of being granted opulent, luxurious free digs was having to schmooze with hotel management for at least one of the two nights.

The woman (we’ll call her Kersten) we had dinner with was Australian and had only been with the resort for a few months. She was in her forties, single, slightly paunchy, with long, stringy blond hair and a round moon-shaped face. She showed up twenty minutes late to meet us and then proceeded to dominate the conversation by one-upping anything Josh or I said.

She went on and on about her frequent trips into Dubai, where the men would “literally stop on the street” to talk to her. “I mean literally, stop their cars—the light would turn green, and they’d be there, stopped, to talk to me.” I didn’t doubt that the men stopped to talk to her, as she was blond and Western, and most Arab men thought all Western women were whores. It wasn’t necessarily a compliment if they stopped to talk to you. She also made a point of telling us that she knew “loads of sheikhs. I’m friends with heaps of them.”

Josh and I were both curious as to what a sheikh actually
was
. I mean, you hear the word, and can visualize what they look like, but are they royalty? What makes a sheikh? Kersten explained that it was sort of a combination between royalty and a political post. The sheikhs presided over various regions and had a lot of money and power. They sounded to me like the modern-day equivalent of dukes and lords from Middle Ages Europe. Anyway, Kersten was friends with heaps of them. She was also overly flirtatious with the married Muslim chef Ali. She crowed about getting private cooking lessons from him, and then mentioned the annoyance of having to meet his wife, upon the wife’s request. I said, “Oh, wow, you hadn’t met his wife? And you were getting private cooking lessons from him?” I was no fan of conservative Islam, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t exactly culturally sensitive of her. But what did I know? She knew loads of sheikhs.

Painful as the meal was, it was free. And tasty. Josh was thrilled to death with all the typical Middle Eastern mezze like hummus, tabouleh, and baba ghanoush. Ali could definitely cook. I really hoped that was all he was doing at the resort, but I didn’t want to be Moral Judge & Jury Judy on my vacation.

After paragliding off a cliff down to the beach at the resort on our last day, we had to pack up, wrap up my hair, and head back out on the road. We were going to Muscat, the capital of the sultanate! We enjoyed the passing scenery of many sandy outposts, a few farms (complete with Omani scarecrow dressed in a caftan and headscarf), and we passed through several small towns.