Modernity unfinished

Here's one I wrote a few weeks after I arrived, but forgot to publish until now:

I love writing about the ways this Arabian city draws such heavy influence from the West and America. I haven’t stopped marveling over the hilariously American brands – Kenny Roger’s Roasters! – found everywhere and copied into Arabic script, or the bizarre westernizing impulse that inspired Emiratis to design one of their malls in the gilded style of fifteenth-century Florence. Such modernity wrong-footed me a little after I had psyched myself up for months to prepare for severe culture shock. The culture shock was flying so far, only to step off the plane and drive by the same old KFC on the way to my new apartment.

But once in a while I experience things that remind me that modernity here is just an illusion – or at least, incomplete. Here’s a small example: Waiting at a taxi stand one night, two friends suggested I tuck in my shirt; we were evidently headed to some shi-shi hotel. I unbuttoned the waist button on my slacks and unzipped a few inches, trying to be discreet while tucking down my tails. My friends, Americans and normally very chill dudes, started hopping up and down and making noises of warning and severe discomfort.

OK, I’ll admit it, unbuttoning your pants in public is on the borderline of etiquette even in America. But come on, if you do it quick, and hide behind a planter, and you’re wearing boxers and you’re careful not even to let those show, you’re not going to cause a fuss. But my two friends, veterans here and wise to the culture, told me afterwards that I had run a very serious risk of major trouble. A local woman could have raised the alarm, and what I had done could have been considered against the law.

Another American teacher got caught by an Emirati policeman one night while in the front seat of his Jeep, giving his Swedish girlfriend a passionate kiss goodbye before she left town. The cop was ready to arrest him. His salvation was that he’s lived here awhile and has made the effort to learn Arabic. White boys speaking Arabic are a rare and charming thing to the Emiratis, and the teacher talked his way out of what could have been a huge problem.

Sometimes it doesn’t work out so well. My former boss told me a story his brother brought back after living in Dubai. A British woman he knew, living in Dubai, married a local Arab man, an Emirati. The Arab husband went off to Britain on a business trip and left his wife in Dubai. The husband came home from the trip early and caught his wife having an affair. Then he did exactly what Emirati law allows him to do: He had his British wife locked up and threw away the key.