Top Secret Santa

The Christmas season has a kind of weird twist to it in the Kingdom. It's not that Christmas is outlawed or anything – some Muslims celebrate Christmas and it's not against the Islamic faith – it's just that it's heavily discouraged. At the University, it's more or less a hanging crime to mention Christmas around the wrong people.

In the University, we are almost encouraged to report each other for any misdemeanor or supposed slight. If someone hears you say something like 'Merry Christmas' or, God forbid, you should say it to the wrong person, you could be called into HR for a talking to.

For the past couple of weeks we have been conducting a Secret Santa project in… well, secret. Every week we give our victims Secret Santas two gifts, each signed with a "SS" instead of "Secret Santa" in case the note should fall into the wrong hands.

We fall silent when someone who has reported us before for 'intolerant behavior' (the irony is not lost on us) walks by.

I've been leaving my Secret Santa booby traps of food in front of her door so that when she opens it she inevitable steps on it. You have to make your own fun in the Kingdom.

For the final gift I have gotten her a ball pit. Like a child's ball pit a la Chucky Cheese. She is going to freak and this is the most exciting thing that I can look forward to around the Christmas season.  Going to Christmas parties are not any kind of fun without my family around.

Where Do You Belong?

                I have an answer. An Answer to the question you have all been wondering.  Are you a Magdan? Or a Savannite?

                These two accommodations seem to predict the kind of person you are going to be. Recently, we had a new teacher come to the Kingdom and she was trying to decide which accommodation to move into. We had to brainstorm many ways to try and decide this fateful question (sorting hat, tarot card reading). We finally decided on a couple simple multiple questions to ask her. Now you can see for yourself what kind of person you are:

1.) When you ask the doorman to bring the washing machine to your apartment so you can wash your clothes and he doesn't do it for five days, you:

    a) Freak out because there is only one washing machine. When you get it, keep it in your room and pretend you don't have it.

                b) Email the CEO, HR, and your mother all about it. Three times.

                c) Go downstairs and strangle him with his own mullet.

                d) Do your laundry by hand. Like a boss.

2.) When you see cockroaches in your building, you:

                a) Scream. Blame the Kingdom. Deny the existence of cockroaches in your own country.

                b) Email the CEO, HR, and your mother all about it. Three times.

                c) Get a cat.

                d) Kill it and move on with your day.

3.) You cooked too much food and you don't want to deal with leftovers. You:

                a) Throw it out

                b) Email the CEO, HR, and your mother all about it. Three times. Blame the Kingdom. Deny the existence of leftovers in your country.

                c) Call everyone in the building because you know they will descend upon you like locusts.

                d) Pack it up and leave it on someone's doorstep Ding-Dong-Ditch style.

4.) Someone leaves food on your doorstep Ding-Dong-Ditch style. You:

                a) Scream. Blame the Kingdom. Call in sick to work.

                b) Throw it out.

                c) Eat it. Obviously.

                d) Pay it forward Ding-Dong-Ditch style.

5.) When someone sends out an email about a religious event that you don't participate in (Christmas, Eid, etc.), you:

                a) Call a meeting and lecture everyone on religious tolerance.

                b) Track down the person in charge of entire email service and make their lives hell.

                c) Read it and forget about it.

                d) Sign up to participate.

6.) It's raining outside. You:

                a) Make sure all the windows are closed tightly.

                b) Call a meeting and make everyone come. Blame the Kingdom. This never would have happened back home.

                c) Do a rain dance. Obviously.

                d) Call everyone up to stand outside under the gazebo and sing Christmas carols with you until the post-rain sandstorm sweeps in, and then skitter back inside like over-excited kittens.

If you answered mostly C or D, congratulations! You should join us in Magda! If you answered mostly A or B… I'm sure you have many other amazing qualities…

In the end, the new teacher commandeered the bus that was supposed to take us somewhere to unload all of her stuff at Savanna. Instead of going somewhere we had planned on going, she made us wait around until she was done. We decided that Savanna was a good choice for her.

Dealing with Grief in the Kingdom

For those of you who don't know, my grandmother recently passed away. I was very close to my grandmother and it was a really hard time for me, especially because I was constantly doing battle with the administration to get leave to go see her.

When I first heard she was sick, I wasn't too worried, because she's been in the hospital before and, to me, my grandmother has an iron-clad will. In my mind, nothing short of a volcano could alter the fact of her existence on this earth.

When I first understood her condition to be serious, I had a seriously terrible time dealing with it. The first night, after getting the news I went out on the roof of my hotel and sat under the desert moon. I guess I figured if it was my grandmother's last night on earth I would like to see something she could see too.

I wrote a list of everything I was going to miss about her – which was a long list, to be honest – and I ended up sleeping out there because there was a beautiful desert breeze going.

Here is a little excerpt from my ruminations of my Yiayia:

Things I will miss about Yiayia:

- The way she always says 'dearheart', like she had to mash together two different endearments in order to adequately express her true affection

- The way she would forget I don't speak Greek and would tell me things in asides that I'm sure were hilarious.

- The way she had such a tender heart and the suffering of even the most removed person affected her so deeply.

- The way I had to cross out the 'effected' I wrote first instead of 'affected' in the last one because she was an English teacher and she would be appalled at the bad grammar.

- How she used to carry a box of Dunkin' Donuts on her lap, on the plane, all the way to Africa, just because my brother and I were missing them.

- How she kept everything in tiny jars and tins in her pantry and never wasted a scrap of anything useful.

- The way she acted every time I showed her how to use Facebook, like I was the best teacher in the WORLD and she finally understood everything.

- How her love was unconditional and usually came with food.

- The way she loved to read

- The way she loved to paint

- The way she loved everyone.

At about 5am, the sun rose and the call to prayer made it more or less impossible to sleep.

The next couple of days were not easy. I kept on getting updates on my grandmother, nothing good, and I kept on slamming my head against the brick wall of administration to try to get the leave in time to see her. I made regular trips to the prayer room in order to cry in the corner.

Finally, I got the email. The one that said she had taken her leave less than two hours ago.

My first instinct was to go someplace quiet – typically I head for the bathroom. But in general the bathrooms here are too busy to really be a place of solace. So, I headed for the prayer room.

After having a muffled cry in there, I deemed myself fit for the public so I went to the bathroom to wash my face. The second I step out, I run into my friend Mary who asks me, casually, "Are you all right?"

People have taken to asking me that, because everyone on campus seems to know about my grandmother from one avenue or another.

My response, of course, was to burst into tears.

Mary insisted I come to her office for some tea (she's British, it's genetic) and for a talk. But her office, like mine, is also the office of about a dozen other people. So, I found myself in the middle of a room of people, crying my eyes out.

When I first came here, the gender separation thing bothered me. But since then, I've been working in a building with all women and it does something to a person. It's honestly a pleasant atmosphere… most of the time.

So, me, crying in the middle of a group of co-workers not only broke my streak of only crying at work when I work at camp, but also didn't feel so weird. I got a back massage and a lot of candy. I got prayers for my family in three different languages and a lot of dire threats aimed at the administration for keeping me here when I clearly needed to go.

Nancy, a woman from Somalia, told me that in Islam they had a saying – Truly we belong to Allah and to Him we shall always return.

That night, people were constantly coming and going from my room. Everyone wanted to know if I was okay and when my flight home was.

This job is worth doing, I decided, for several reasons. But the most important of which is the people I work with. Or really, the ones I live with. Let's not get too crazy with including the Savanna girls in there.

The Magda girls made me feel like I was with my family and I can't thank them enough for that.

Magda and Savanna

            In the Kingdom, foreign workers typically live in compounds. This was a tradition started by the first generation of American oil workers who came to the Kingdom in the 1930s. They built their accommodations the way they liked it – including the 110 voltage outlets – and basically lived in a Little America. Everyone in the Kingdom was perfectly happy with this arrangement and the practice is still around to this day.

            We are one of the few batches of foreign workers who don't live in a compound. Probably because the company we work for doesn't want to spend the money to build us one.

            On the other hand, the CEO seems very concerned with keeping us happy. Probably because he wants to sleep nights. So, he's been asking us what he can do to make the hotel we live in more suitable. We told him we needed a gym. He said okay. We told him we needed lawn furniture for the roof. He said okay. We told him we needed a lounge. He said okay. We asked for a computer room. He said okay. We asked him for a swimming pool. He said absolutely not.

            But, come on! We had to try.

            I really like where I live, even though I got electrocuted by my own kitchen (see previous post “My Precarious Position as a Cover Teacher”). I love it because the people who live with me are just a blast. There are two accommodations, one called Magda, and one called (let's say) Savanna. In Magda, together, we selected out our gym equipment carefully, we asked for rubber flooring in the gym to do yoga on, and mirrors on the walls. In Savanna, no one is taking responsibility for the gym and so they just have a couple ellipticals in an empty apartment.

            The girls of Magda are all nice and friendly, we band together in the face of adversity. In Savanna, which seems to be made up mostly of older women who complain a lot (note that we have people of all ages in Magda but we have the cool ones). And it's not the kind of 'squeaky wheel' complaining that is more or less necessary in this country, it's the grating, soul-crushing bitching that makes you want to jump out of a moving vehicle just so you don't have to listen to them anymore. Things that no one can do anything about – the weather, the abaya, the hijab, etc.

            We have dinner over at each other's apartments almost every night, and Savana girls go home and don't socialize.

            When I was having the trouble with being electrocuted – and I was complaining about it, like you do – it was suggested that I move to Savanna because they have much nicer apartments that don't have faulty wiring. This was an absolutely repugnant idea and made me think they were just saying that the way you would say 'would you rather jump off a bridge?'. Of course, that wasn't how they meant it, but it made me feel like they thought I was just being difficult. In the end, I got the electric component of my stove replaced – which was what was electrifying my entire kitchen (metal counters, you see).

            In Magda, we've been planning many events (including a Skype party with our cats. Not a joke.) and inshallah, we will have a barbeque on the national holiday coming up on Sunday (we get a four day weekend!) Savanna, well, I don't know what they do with their time. Complain by themselves in their empty rooms?

            Hey, I'm being really culturally accepting here, I have to hate on someone.