elktown

Coda

2005-07-17T21:47:00.000-04:00

A note from Alaleh.

You start to forget all the shit, and just remember things like this.

Good night elktown

2005-06-30T00:02:00.000-04:00

Well, we've had some laughs; we've had some tears. A few lessons have been learned, though probably not very many.

It's time to close up shop for a while. I've been surprised and thrilled by the traffic and the continuing positive response that elktown has gotten, but I never intended the site to be permanent. The blog was conceived as part travelogue, part personal diary, and it was compelling to me so long as it was about something. Now that my Middle East adventure has come to an end, I've started to lose interest in writing elktown, and I figure… if it doesn't interest me, what hope does it have to amuse anyone else?

Life is returning to normal for me – at least, as normal as it has ever been in the ten bounding years since I left home. In my experience, blogs about normal life are like balloons without enough air. One elktown correspondent put her finger on it: Normal life is eating at the local Applebee's. A blog about eating at Applebee's would absolutely suck. I want elktown to go out on top, while it still has some life in it.

The website will stay on the web, if you ever feel like browsing the archives. And if I ever have another grand adventure, I'll pick right up where I left off. I don't foresee such a thing, though. I have a dim sense that elktown's likelier future is less as travelogue and more as diary – specifically, I can envision it serving one day as a clearinghouse for my family life, one day when I have a family of my own to write about and photograph.

Maybe by then, blogs will seem as anachronistic and outdated as hula-hoops. Or maybe elktown will be a holoblog or a blogobot or something futuristic like that. Who the hell knew what a blog was a year ago? And who knows what's coming?

Thanks for reading. I could only be a writer because you were readers, and I've always so wanted to be a writer. So from my heart, thank you and thank you again. Please stay in touch.

Eric

PS One more photo. This was an apartment building in my neighborhood, and it sums up the duality and bizarreness of Dubai about as well as anything, I guess…

Turkey roundup

2005-06-29T00:21:00.000-04:00

A few last photos that didn't fit into any other category.

A really wide view of the Bosphorus, with Istanbul Asia visible on the far bank. Click on the photo and expand it for full effect.

You might have heard that Turkish rug merchants can be aggressive. I'm here to tell you: Believe everything you hear. These guys are persistent to the point of deviousness. This was a rug show we had after our tour – one guy made a speech while his little rug trainees ran around throwing carpets into a pile on the floor. The carpets really were quite beautiful, but the salesmen who gripped my arm afterwards seemed not to understand quite how little money is in my rug budget. He thought I was playing coy as a bargaining position, but I'm not coy – just poor. I think the guy finally got the point that negotiations were doomed after he opened with an offer of $12,000 and I countered with $15.

I love this photo for its after-school-special quality. We were inside the Sulemaniyeh mosque – our third grand mosque of the day – and everybody was a little bit sick of our tour guide's droning, repetitive spiel, and of mosques in general. ("This is a mosque. The religion is called Is-lam. Is-lam. The people are called Mus-lims. Mus-lims.")

So this little Muslim baby and this Asian tourist woman really took a liking to each other. It was all very multi-cultural and cute.

One small view of the Topkapı Palace. The palace is huge, famous for its luscious harem chambers and its precious artifacts and jewels. But the harem chambers were closed for repair and the jewels were ho-hum, or maybe I was just burned out on touring. So Julia and I sat outside on a terrace overlooking the Bosphorus, and I made fun of her English accent, and she made fun of all Americans, and particularly the ones on our tour bus. The wide-angle photo of the Bosphorus, above, was taken from the terrace at Topkapı Palace.

Just for the record, the Americans on our tour were indeed a couple of jackasses.

The entrance to the Grand Bazaar in Izmir. This was personally satisfying to me, as I've long argued we should put a giant sign saying "GOD" above the entrance to Pentagon City Mall.

A family on a buggy rides to the airport. I'm sure a lot of buggy jokes are possible here, but I'm just going to leave it.

I explained the rules of American football to a couple of Turkish guys using this chessboard. The queens were the quarterbacks, knights and bishops were running backs, and pawns were linemen. A small sugar cube represented the ball. I demonstrated some basic plays. Even after my excellent show, they persisted – bizarrely, in my view – in their belief that soccer is just as good a sport as football.

A protest in Istanbul against Coca Cola. These men yelled and shouted violently and we left just as the police in riot gear were arriving. I don't know what they were so mad about. Coke is a delicious and refreshing beverage.

A statue in Izmir. This guy was a journalist. But look at the way he's pointing that gun! The Turks thought this guy was a bad ass! Now there's a culture that respects good journalism.

I'm a journalist, by the way. To my great disappointment and frustration, I was not issued a gun at my last job covering the Medicare bureaucracy.

A re-creation of traditional Turkish life, from a museum I saw. I took the photo because this is the life I want. Seriously, this man has got it made. The wife is looking after the baby while the dude just chills, wearing a kick-ass hat and smoking a shisha.

For those that complained that I didn't take enough pictures of myself, here's the second one. This is me (in a mirror) after the Turkish bath. You strip down nekkid and they swaddle you in these towels.

A few words about the Turkish bath. You lay there on this heated marble slab, cooking like a fish in a pan. Your sweat puddles around you and tries to boil away. Then the Turkish guy comes and beats you and cracks your bones. You grunt and moan and try not to cry. Then he puts a ferocious mitt on his hand and grates away at your skin like it's a moldy old cheese that he's trying to salvage. When most of your skin is rubbed away, he beats you again with a giant soap stick, then asks for a tip.

It's awesome.

The synagogue hunt

2005-06-28T11:21:00.000-04:00

One throwaway line in my Turkey guidebook about the "Jewish heritage" of Izmir sparked my quest to track down the city's ancient synagogues. According to that one tantalizing sentence, a number of old, old synagogues still existed somewhere in the city – just where was not clear – and I was determined to find them. I don't know whether my ancestors prayed at those particular temples. But even if not, they prayed somewhere similar, and nearby. Those rumored synagogues felt like a link to my past and I wanted to see just one.

The guidebook suggested the name of the neighborhood to start the hunt – Kemeraltı. So I did the only smart thing: I misread the name and spent an entire day wandering in the wrong area. I saw a sign for "Kadifekale" – hey, it starts with K, so it must be the same! – and I followed it. I followed it up, and up, and up, and up. And up and up. I climbed for hours and hours. I silently cursed my ancestors for building their temples in such a shitty, inaccessible place. It would have been so hard to have a temple a little closer to the beach, for God's sake?

But Kadifekale turns out to be the name of an ancient fortress, built by Alexander the Great at the very top of the tallest hill in the city. When the phantom temples turned out to be this giant fortress, and I stood there in the late afternoon, covered in sweat, fuming at my own stupidity, looking again at the guidebook and realizing that my people did, in fact, build their temples near the water – well, I yelled out some words that do not bear repeating. Let's just say that some wild cats nearby seemed startled and ran away.

Truth be told – that's a bit of an exaggeration. I was plenty pissed off, but it was very short-lived, because the neighborhoods I climbed through were beautiful and fascinating. Those were most of the pictures I posted yesterday, and the photos don't do justice to the style of that area. I'm not sure I would have had the heart to do all that vertical exploration without the phantom temples motivating me.

So, early the next morning, I plunged into the real Kemeraltı. This is the oldest part of Izmir, and just like in Paris (and New York), the oldest neighborhoods are the most labyrinthine. Tiny streets interconnected at every strange angle, built hundreds of years before Toyota Land Cruisers and other whale-sized vehicles were first dreamed of. Now those mazed streets are the perfect hosts for Izmir's central bazaar.

Again I wandered around and around. I asked countless strangers about the synagogues and received countless blank stares. At one point I bought some lemonade from a guy, but it turned out to be pickle juice and I came this close to spitting it out explosively right in front of him. I choked it down and nearly cried, it was so nasty. Then I plunged on.

And right around the corner, there it was, Bet Ilel synagogue. I was elated – for three seconds. Then I looked closer –

It was a long-abandoned ruin piled high inside with every kind of garbage imaginable. But now I knew I was on the right track. And I knew the word for synagogue in Turkish, which sped up the search process considerably.

I found three more synagogues in quick succession. I had finally located Havra Street, the street of the ancient temples, buried deep inside the bazaar. All three synagogues…

…were closed.

The Shalom synagogue was tucked in next to a shoe shop. My hopes shot up when the shoe man unlocked the door and scurried inside, but he blocked me when I tried to follow. The courtyard of the temple was filled with shoes.

I reluctantly left Kemeraltı. I had a lead on one more place – the Beth Israel temple on Mithatpaşa boulevard, in Karataş. I was less enthused about this place, because it is a 20th century temple, brand-new just when my great-grandparents were leaving the country.

Again I wandered off in the wrong direction, and again I uselessly walked uphill for hours. And again, I walked through beautiful neighborhoods and saw many interesting things, and again, my stupidity proved worthwhile. I saw a giant elevator that they built back in 1907, when elevators were new and cool.

I rode it up and had a beer at the top. The view was lovely – that's Mithatpaşa boulevard down below.

And voila, there's the temple, right at the foot of the elevator. They probably built it so the Jews who lived at the top of the cliffs had no excuse to miss shul down below. I zipped back down and found the temple in short order.

This one was bigger, more beautiful, and even more spectacularly locked and barricaded away.

I asked to come in, and the guard literally slammed the door in my face.

The day was sliding away from me, my last day in Izmir. The quest to see the inside of an ancient synagogue verged on failure. In desperation, I headed back to Kemeraltı for one last try. (This time, I took a cab).

And wouldn't you know it – the door of the Sinyora stood open.

I entered the courtyard. It was breathtakingly beautiful in the late afternoon light.

Tom Cruise kills Oprah!!

2005-06-27T14:12:00.000-04:00

View the horrifying scene here!!

Izmir

2005-06-27T11:56:00.000-04:00

Izmir is Turkey's third-largest city, tucked into the hills against the Aegean sea on the country's west coast. I rode a ferry and then a bus for ten hours to get there.

All the guidebooks advise against spending much time there. Izmir is Turkey's Cleveland – a pleasant enough city, industrial at its heart, lacking touristy qualities of any kind. There's just nothing special to see there – and that's why it's the ideal place to see what a Turkish city is really like. I wandered around for two days without visiting one "attraction," and it was completely, totally absorbing.

But Izmir wasn't just a random choice, either, and my time spent there was far from a meaningless diversion. Izmir was my family's ancestral stomping grounds.

My mother's father was born into this region in the early 20th century, when this was still the Ottoman empire and a haven for Jewish families who had escaped the Spanish Inquisition a few centuries back. My great-grandfather must have sensed World War I brewing – a war that, in the event, brought much upheaval to Turkey and its Jews – because he escaped to America shortly before the war broke out. His wife and baby joined him a few years later. The baby grew up to be my grandfather – "Papou" is the word for "grandpa" that they used in this small part of the world, which we still use in Atlanta today. My great-grandmother lived until recently. She was 99 years old, saying wise things and cracking jokes in ten languages until the very end. Their origins lay in these narrow streets.

Izmir's industrial and commercial districts are packed into a small, flat valley opening into a busy Aegean harbor. The residential neighborhoods rise into the steep hills that ring the valley like a horseshoe. Here was my first view of the city – downtown – with the hilly neighborhoods visible in the background.

Even more than Istanbul, Izmir is a city of trees and vines and green spaces.

As I wandered through downtown, the surrounding hills were always a presence, and I couldn't seem to take my eyes off them.

Finally I gave up and started climbing.

I climbed and climbed.

The neighborhoods above the city were home to all manner of interesting things.

A strange buggy and a small society of wild cats.

A small sculpture of a boy and his dog, on a cupola overlooking the harbor.

A shop selling naked mannequins. Actually there was a street with about seven of these shops. It is more than possible that the entire Middle East buys its naked mannequins from this one street in Izmir.

Everywhere, on every corner, in every cafe, men sat around playing strange board games.

Kids play in a fountain in the shadow of a lovely mosque…

… while other kids waste a perfectly good basketball court.

It turns out Turkish rugs aren't just for tourists. Even the tiniest, ricketiest old apartments were hanging lush rugs out to dry in the sun.

I ducked behind an old building and came unexpectedly into a clearing:

A bit further up, I ran across something I never expected to see – the abandoned ruin of a mosque.

"1301 – 1885"… Clearly there's a story here. Erdem, can you translate this?

I climbed up higher and got one more view. This one needs to be viewed in full-screen mode… click below, then let the mouse pointer rest on the photo for a second. Click on the "expander" button that pops up in the lower right-hand corner.

How bazaar

2005-06-27T10:20:00.000-04:00

Turkish bazaars have it all – shoes, guitars, glittery bling-bling. During my hunt for the synagogues of Izmir, I explored every corner of the city's central bazaar. I particularly liked the food street, where everything was set out in such inviting heaps and piles.

This is how people actually purchase food in the Middle East. This is the alternative to Safeway. Way, way cooler. You can buy…

Fruit!

Nuts!

Olives!

Spices!

Panties!

Wait, how did that get in there?

Hogs!

Kebab!

Cow heads and other mystery parts!

And, of course, fish. Look closer at the fish table.

See the Evil Eye peeking out from under the fishies? That's a Turkish good luck charm, and it's everywhere. They really believe in that thing. It supposedly wards off the real Evil Eye by reflecting it back upon its evil owner. I don't know if there are similar charms to ward off Stink Eye and Crook Eye.

Blue mosque

2005-06-24T06:25:00.000-04:00

Forget whatever I might have said about the Jumeirah mosque. Istanbul's Blue Mosque is the most beautiful building I've ever seen.

My first view, walking out of my hotel:

I had no idea those minarets were attached to anything so spectacular. My second view, the next day:

I was awestruck.

Inside the courtyard:

A group of Japanese tourists were doing some strange kabuki shit with their hands.

Let's go inside.

A man prays…

…and a child plays:

Later that night, I went back and watched the birds swoop from spire to spire. They spiraled up and down along the minarets, like the ladies I once saw gliding up and down a double-helical staircase at a castle in France. The birds put me in mind, for some reason, of the streamers that coiled and danced around the maypole at the Renaissance Fair when I was little.

Hagia Sophia

2005-06-23T05:06:00.000-04:00

Picture it: Constantinople, 537 A.D. The hot new thang was a little religion called Christianity. Rome was out. The Byzantines were in. Constantinople was sizzlin', baby, and it was time to flaunt it, oh yeah!! It was time to build the greatest church in the world!!

Fast-forward a thousand years. Now the saucy young upstart on the scene – a sort of 50 Cent for the 15th century – was Islam. The Muslims were hot, baby, they were so money and they didn't even know it! They captured Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul, and it was nobody's business but the Turks', and the rest was musical history.

When they cruised on in to Istanbul, the first thing the Muslims did was convert the Greatest Church in the World into the Greatest Mosque in the World. And so it remained until the Turks made it into a museum in 1934.

Now, as you might expect, the Greatest Church/Mosque/Museum in the World is a bit of an architectural mishmash. It's also pretty run-down. Mark Twain called it "the rustiest old barn in heathendom," mocking all my attempts at colorful description with his total brilliance and proving one more time why he is considered the greatest American writer, and not I.*

So here are a couple views of Hagia Sophia that make it look like a mosque:

And here it looks like a church, complete with flying buttresses:

And here it looks like a battered old factory that will soon be converted into trendy lofts or an Urban Outfitters showroom:

And here is a picture of a tree:

I didn't really understand Mark Twain's "rusty barn" comment until I stepped inside the old barn. Birds swooped back and forth between the eaves. Dusky sunlight poured down in shafts through tiny, high-up windows. Horses nibbled lazily on hay piled behind the altar. Just kidding about that last one. But seriously, it's exactly like a rusty old barn, and though I haven't traveled through all of heathendom, I doubt you could find a rustier barn. Twain's comment is dazzlingly, annoyingly perfect! Damn you Mark Twain, you freaking genius!

With all the Arabic writing everywhere, it's easy to forget the thousand years Hagia Sophia spent as the Greatest Church in the World. But then you run across this:

And with all this religious imagery, it's easy to forget the seventy years Hagia Sophia has spent as the Greatest Museum in the World. But then you run across this – the most Touristy American Guy in the World:

You can't see it in the picture, but he was also wearing sandals and knee-high white socks.

* I'm not even well-read enough to have found this quote on my own. I read it in the Turkey guidebook. And honestly, I'm not even cultured enough to buy my own guidebooks. They must be donated and loaned to me. Thank you Kathleen, Andrew, Melissa and Tiffany!

Turkey

2005-06-22T09:20:00.000-04:00

My last act in the Middle East was to see a different face of it.

I always knew that the Gulf region, where I'd been living, was not representative of the greater Middle East. Culturally speaking, the Gulf (UAE, Saudi, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait) differs from the Mediterranean region (Jordan, Syria, Israel) as much as Texas differs from Canada. Throw in Iran, Egypt, Turkey – Iraq – …each a culture unto itself, and you've got yourself quite a little rainbow.

But I didn't really understand this on a gut level until I visited Turkey. Leaving the desert and all the madness of my job and stepping into Istanbul, with its trees, cool air, and kind people, was like… it was like… I can't think of a good analogy… well, it was just absolutely f#©&ing great, and we'll leave it at that.

This is the view from near my hotel. It's the Bosphorus Strait, bisecting Istanbul, slicing the city neatly between Europe in the west and Asia in the east, winding northwards into the Black Sea towards Russia and southwards into the Turkish Sea of Marmara, out again through the Dardanelles into the Aegean Sea, and onwards to the Mediterranean.

(Interesting side note: Western Istanbul is, indeed, in Europe, while the bigger eastern part of the city is in Asia. The two are connected by several bridges, one of which was recently closed down so that Serena Williams could use it to volley tennis balls with some Turkish player. Bang, into Europe; smack, back to Asia; pretty clever, isn't it? When I heard that story, I realized that one of the sub-themes of my travels has been tennis in strange places.)

Another view. You can see the Yenikapı ferryboat harbor.

Istanbul's "Old Town" is a hilly neighborhood called Sultanahmet. It could not be more lively or beautiful. My first morning there, a brilliant sunny gorgeous day, I was walking down the street near two schoolgirls, about 11 years old or so, in their cute little uniforms. Out of nowhere, they turned to me and said, "Hello!"

I thought they were trying to sell me something. I mumbled a reply.

"What's your name?" one said brightly. I told her.

"Well, have a great day, Eric!" the other one said, and they both smiled big lovely smiles as they walked away down a little side street. I was dumbfounded at first. Then I was dizzy happy.

This guy was actually watering the sidewalk. They all were doing that. I don't know why, but who am I to complain? If it ain't broke, etc.

Turkish sweets are world-famous, and justifiably so. Little confectionaries were on every streetcorner. One place had a particularly interesting little treat – figs stuffed with walnuts and sugar. It was called…

No word yet on whether it works as well as the real stuff.

Now here's an innovation that could really take off in America.

These guys are professional Juice Dudes, and together they form the Juice Brigade. They whip out little cups and squirt juice into them from hoses connected to the giant Juice Tubs they carry on their backs. Is it quality Juice, you ask? I don't know.

Near my hotel was a giant oval-shaped walking park. The oval shape, it turns out, dates back to the park's history as a Roman chariot racetrack. Smack in the middle of the oval were two Egyptian obelisks, thousands of years old, covered with hieroglyphs. All that history in one place was exhilarating for me, having just come from Dubai, where buildings from the 1990s are considered old, and a big old clunky tower from the 70s could pass for an ancient relic.

Plus, they're just so damn pretty.

Photo survey - win big prizes!

2005-06-20T09:10:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the slow pace of posting over the last few days. I used up all my "overset" (my saved-up stuff) and now I actually have to produce more. Oh, the great burdens of publishing.

Don't worry, I've got lots more coming this week.

In the meantime, please do me a favor? I'm doing a survey, for my own personal experience. Please browse through the archives and tell me which was your favorite photo. Email me; you've got the address.

This is not a purely selfish request. THERE ARE REWARDS INVOLVED FOR TIMELY RESPONSE TO THIS SURVEY!!!

One more Q&A with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani

2005-06-17T07:09:00.000-04:00

Question: Is it permissible to talk to a non-Mahram girl with the intention for seeking consent to marry her in future?
Answer: Due to probably committing sins is not permissible.
Eric: The Grand Ayatollah is nothing if not realistic.

Question: Can we sing with our self like I am going somewhere and singing a song? And what about marriages can we sing?
Answer: Songs which do not enter the category of Ghina are permissible to be sung.
Eric: What about showtunes?
Eric: Oklahoma!

Eric: The hardest questions Grand Ayatollah Sistani gets are the ones about how to integrate the ancient holy practices of Islam into the modern world. For example:

Question: I had a hair replacement where an artificial scalp was placed on the central bald part of my head. Now while doing wudu’ (ritual cleansing), I can’t do mas-h on central part of my head. Is there any other alternative?
Answer: Wiping artificial hair is not in order, if there were empty position the fourth front part of the head, he may wipe it, otherwise it is obligatory to remove the artificial hair if it were possible; if there were no time, tayammum would be obligatory.
Eric: And The Man delivers.

Salma and me

2005-06-15T09:23:00.000-04:00

A very interesting dialogue has cropped up in the comments section of the posting “Jumeirah mosque.” I’m posting it here in full, along with my response.

Salma said...
Hi Eric,

This is Salma. If you remember, we met at the Jethro Tull concert.

It's about your earlier posts talking about Islam...

Get the difference right between "discussing", "disecting" and "disgracing" something.

You seem to be devoid of respect for the religions, cultures and people around you. Fools find it easier to mock a religion than to understand it. Broaden your perspective and get a real sense of humour, please! People like you are responsible for the rising hatered in this region towards Americans.

I hope you mend you acts or I would be forced to report about your blog to the authorities.
6:06 AM

Anonymous said...
I think Eric is doing something many others are afraid to -- go to the Middle East as a Jewish-American man from the midwest. He's learning about a different culture, living it, AND showing and telling those of us back home what he's seeing and feeling. Some of it is humorous, some of it is bittersweet, some of it is opinion. I diagree with some of his opinions, but I don't believe those opinions are out of disrespect. The great thing about America is you can express all that, no matter who you are. I know Eric has taught me a lot about Dubai and the surrounding area, so I thank him for sharing it with us all.

Salma, perhaps you can educate us all about what you found hurtful so that all of our perspectives can be broadened and we can understand the Middle East and Islam even more.
4:17 PM

Anonymous said...
You watch your ass, Salma.
10:20 PM

Salma said...
While exploring a new region one does come across several unexpected things which makes him react in various manners. But expressing them in such a manner with the use of explicit words is absolutely unacceptable and is regarded as disrespect and mocking a religion, no matter which part of the world it is.

Humor is acceptable as long as it doesn't cross it's limit and becomes lewd.

I appreciate your growing interest in the Middle East and Islam. Every religion has certain guidelines regarding various aspects of a human life, which have certain valid reasons behind them.

It does not have to do with me being a Muslim and protecting Islam. It is about being a human being and standing up for what's right, no matter what religion I belong to.

And about watching my ass... Well, may be people who sit on their brains should use it more often!
6:59 AM

Anonymous said...
Excuse you, Salma. People find all kinds of things funny, and I can't for the life of me figure out what is so damn offensive about this post.

Be you a Muslim or not, you obviously overreact over insigifnicant and quirky posts. I am an intolerant son of a bitch, but Eric sure as heck isn't. Feel free to flame me now for my obviously misogynistic post (due to my use of the word "bitch").
Rummell
8:49 AM

Eric said…
Hi Salma. Of course I remember you. You are a very memorable person!

I have several things I want to say in response to your comments. First of all, I don't appreciate being threatened. You are perfectly welcome to go to the authorities to complain about my website, if that's what you feel you must do.

But as long as you're in the mood to report offenses against Islam, you might as well report everything. Don't forget to mention how drunk you got that night at the Jethro Tull concert – and not for the first time, you said. You were so drunk you were walking into walls, and while I'm no Islamic scholar, I'm pretty sure that this behavior is frowned upon by the same authorities to whom you wish to report me.

I guess you don't have to say anything, come to think of it. They can just read about it here. I pride myself on telling the full story, as all regular readers of my website know.

Of course, that's a total lie, that part about "the whole story." The truth is that I've deliberately omitted some very important details from my stories so far.

The most important of these is that I'm Jewish.

Not only did I obscure this fact on my website, I even lied about it in person. I did this exactly one time. Usually when people asked me about my religion, I simply said it was a private matter, and that did the trick. But the night I met you, you just wouldn't let it go; you kept pressing me... Are you Catholic? Christian? Finally I gave in and I just lied to you; it seemed easier and safer than to keep dancing around the truth.

But I tell you, I've regretted that moment ever since then. It churns my stomach every time I think about it. It's one thing to keep quiet about being a Jewish guy living in the Middle East – that's what they mean when they say that discretion is the better part of valor. But it's something else entirely to deny your identity, to flat-out lie about it, especially when in my own father's lifetime, millions of us lost their lives for nothing more than owning that identity. The same identity I declined to own when talking to you. What gives me the right to deny it when I have so much less at stake? It almost makes me sick to think about it.

I did it because I sensed, even after knowing you for a few minutes, that you were just the kind of person who could threaten me this way, and I was nervous about you. In fact, after I stupidly gave Bhavna my website address that night, I realized how nervous I was that you might see it, and I took the whole thing down for almost a week. Regular readers might remember this – another lie.

Later I came to regret my distrust; come on, she's just a nice kid, I thought to myself. Now, ironically, you've made me feel just a little bit better about what I did. You are the kind of person I suspected at first. I don't think you're a bad person, Salma, just young. I wasn't any model of wisdom when I was 18, either. There's nothing wrong with you that some age and maturity won't cure, I think.

Or maybe not. Maybe even as an adult you will hate and fear Jewish people, like so many other adults in your region. Because the truth is that my fear of letting my religion be known was not simply paranoia; it was wise in a place so overwhelmingly hostile to my people. God only knows the trouble I might have faced had your "authorities" found out about me. Losing my job and getting deported might have been the lucky outcome.

And that brings us to Islam, I guess. Despite what you might think about my “Ali Sistani” postings, you need to know one thing very clearly: I respect Islam far more than Islam respects me. I respect the Muslim identity far more than Muslims respect my religious identity. I found the Muslims I encountered very admirable in many ways. I deeply admire the sincere piety I sensed from almost every Muslim I met. Islam is a humble religion. It’s genuine. The devotion of its adherents is plain to see, not just one day a week but every moment. A lot of religious people in my country talk a great game, then conspicuously fail to practice what they preach. In religious matters, many Americans live in the great gulf between word and act, and this, more than anything else, is what has turned off a lot of people I know from religion in general. Though there are, of course, Muslims who act this way, there seem to be genuinely fewer of them. When Muslims talk about God, they seem to sincerely mean what they say. Not just sometimes, not just a few of them, but almost all of them. That really, really impressed me.

Of course, you already know that I don’t think Islam is perfect, because you caught me making fun of it on my website. But you’re missing the point: I think nothing is perfect. I joke about everything. I wasn’t making fun of Islam because I disrespect it. I’m just a joker at heart.

Sincere religion is good for the spirit, but so is humor. I don’t think good things, like faith, are somehow above the lightheartedness that makes life great. I don’t have trouble laughing and believing in God at the same time.

We Jews are especially known for being jokers. If I hadn’t been afraid to get my ass hauled into the “authorities” for being a Jewish guy teaching in the Middle East, you would have seen plenty of mockery of Judaism on my website. Just so you don’t feel I’m singling out Islam, let’s throw a Jewish joke out there:

Moishe took his Passover lunch to eat outside in the park. He sat down on a bench and began eating. A little while later a blind Jewish man came and sat down next to him. Feeling neighborly, Moishe passed a sheet of matzo (a flat, bumpy cracker) to the blind man. The blind man handled the matzo for a few minutes, looked puzzled, and finally exclaimed, "Who wrote this shit?"

There are about ten thousand more where that came from. Three seconds on Google will find them. Most of them somehow insult Judaism, and remember – they’re all written by Jews.

Salma, you don’t have to like my jokes about Islam, but nobody is forcing you to read my website. Everything is grounds for humor here, and if you don’t like that, then too bad.

But that can work in your favor, too. You were at your best when you made that joke about people sitting on their brains. I loved that! So instead of threatening me with the “authorities,” why don’t you write a response to this, including a joke or two? I’ll publish it, even if the joke is at my expense. That’s called freedom of speech, and it’s how we do things in America.

Eric

Inside Jumeirah mosque

2005-06-14T08:32:00.000-04:00

Let's step inside.

First, here's a crudely stitched-together photo of the entire interior. Mosques are designed to maximize floor space, and the effect of all that carpet stretching away beneath such intricate dome and archwork is stunning. This photo is actually about 12 full-size photos sewn together with a primitive photo-editing program. It's obviously not perfect.

To help you visualize: The space you're looking at is a big square, and you're standing in the back left corner.

A slightly closer view of the arches on the left side of the interior square, with the altar in the background. The man in the pink shirt helps you keep your bearings.

Now imagine walking up to the man in the pink shirt, and standing where he is, underneath that arch. Now look straight up, into the very center of the mosque.

This is an even cruder merge of 12 full-size photos. But it gives you a sense of the grandeur of that central space. You're looking into the underside of the giant central dome. It's much, much bigger than it appears in this photo.

Now let's zoom in on that triangular corner underneath the dome.

I love how Arabic script is used decoratively. It reminds me of the enormous tapestry I saw, depicting three rearing horses in white, gold and silver. The images in that rug – big enough to have a decent pickup basketball game on – were composed entirely of tiny Arabic script. Hundreds of verses from the Qu'ran.*

And here's me lying on the floor under the dome, looking up.

More decorative detail:

Imagine walking down this aisle along the side of the mosque, until you're standing under the mini-chandelier at the far end, by the window. Now look up.

Here's the altar, which is not really an altar. There is no raised platform, and the imam faces the same direction as the worshipers – Mecca. His prayers are broadcast into the entire neighborhood via a microphone connected to speakers on the outer spires.

The imam of Jumeirah mosque collects clocks.

We got a prayer demonstration.

It was narrated by a woman who really reminded me, for some reason, of Princess Leia.

"Help me, Obi-Wan."

I couldn't help taking a picture of the enormous gaggle of westerners feasting their eyes – and cameras – on these exotic Muslims. They reminded me of the crowd at the zoo when the pandas suddenly make one of their rare ventures out of the cave.**

Kneel, kneel, bow, snap snap snap. Funny, right? Yeah, people taking all those photos – they sure do look ridiculous!! Ha, ha! Cough cough.

All the western women had to wear scarves, and these two ladies really pulled it off, I thought. Very Jackie O.

* This is not meant to suggest that I want to have a basketball game on the Qu'ran. It is merely a description of size. I clarify because I would feel terrible if my blog sparked riots in Afghanistan.
** I am not comparing Muslims to pandas!! I'm making fun of the westerners, not the Muslims, get it? And the irony is that I was just as bad -- worse, actually -- then everyone else, right? I'm sensitive because of this.

Jumeirah mosque

2005-06-12T20:27:00.000-04:00

The most beautiful mosque I've ever seen.*

A pavilion for the ritual washing before prayer. To get there, you walk this lovely path:

Can you see why I love this photo so much?

It is Jumeirah, after all.

A few decorative touches.

The front porch, so to speak.

Inside the front porch.

You realize, I took about 14 photos of this bird and his friend. But I'll spare you and only post one.

* This was written before I saw Turkey.

51st State Dept.

2005-06-10T15:59:00.000-04:00

I was just talking to a guy on a bus. He says, "You are from Germany?" Me: America. Him: Which part America you are from? New York? Canada?

Godspeed Homer

2005-06-10T02:49:00.000-04:00

This is me with my favorite English class. Three Persian girls, one Persian woman, a Chinese Emirati, an American man and a cartoon character. Not bad for diversity.

Camera phones – not the greatest picture quality.

Here's Alaleh, a hilarious and brilliant girl. She asked for my Homer doll – a brazen thing to do, considering that I've had it for five years and it's been my teaching prop since my very first class. She asked me for it, and on the spur of the moment, I gave it to her. I was surprised as soon as the words left my mouth, but I don't regret it. It was touching to see her clutch that thing – in the two hours after she took it, she didn't let it out of her arms for one second.

It also means that one day, Homer's going to live in Iran, a destiny I would not have envisioned for him when Liz gave him to me all those years ago. If President Bush has been pondering the best way to achieve regime change in Iran, let him look no further. Homer will be our Trojan Horse, a sort of cultural D-Day storming across the Straits of Hormuz. Stand down the armies, Mr. President; Homer's going in. American culture is arriving in Iran and the country will never, ever be the same.

And when the mullahs fall one day, and Fox Iran starts broadcasting Simpsons reruns 8 times a day, and Muslim, Christian and Jew dance together in the streets of Tehran -- you can tell your friends that you witnessed the very moment, the very instant that America entered the Iranian bloodstream, never to be displaced. It's breathtaking, isn't it?

What happens when I am forced to hang around a mall with nothing to do – Episode II

2005-06-09T03:22:00.000-04:00

Anybody seen Star Wars III yet?

All is calm and serene in the peaceful little land of the animals. Think of this as the untroubled planet of the Ewoks, or Wookies, if you will.

The delightful, fuzzy little animals play happily together. Think of the adorableness of the Ewoks, combined with the lovability of the Wookies – multiplied by a billion.

But in a galaxy not far, far away, an evil power is rising. These droids – or clones – or storm troopers – or trade federation separatists – or whatever they were, honestly, I couldn't understand one single goddamned word of the first two Star Wars movies – these evil toy robots are gathering their thimble weapons and conferring menacingly.

You better believe there's going to be trouble.

Another helping of Q&A with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani

2005-06-08T04:03:00.000-04:00

Let's talk about sex, Grand Ayatollah!

Question: Can husband and wife have sex with each other while looking at each other in a mirror?
Answer: It's permissible.
Eric: Freaky!

Question: Is play between husband and wife allowed, like touching, feeling, kissing, sucking?
Answer: No problem if he makes sure it does not bring about janabah (major ritual impurity).
Eric: Oh wow, I wonder what that is!

Question: I want to know the ruling on oral sex?
Answer: It is obligatory precaution not permissible; it's very disgust if she agrees.

Question: Is oral sex by husband or wife allowed?
Answer: It is permissible provided no liquid swallowed.

Question: When I am unable to do Muta’h* (temporary marriage), am I allowed to masturbate?
Answer: Masturbation is not permissible under any circumstances.
Eric: And at last, there you have it: suicide missions explained.

Eric: Did I go too far with that one? I think so.

Question: If my wife wants me to masturbate in front of her, is it then allowed?
Answer: You are not allowed to do it with hand, but your wife is.
Eric: Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is like a wonderful, magical combination of Dr. Phil and Dr. Ruth.

Eric: With the statecraft skills of Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

Eric: He is also, in many ways, like God.

Question: What is an orgy?
Answer: It's forbidden.

* Temporary marriage means one night. It's so Muslim men can sleep with prostitutes.**
** Seriously.

A conversation through the looking glass with Miss Julia

2005-06-07T03:07:00.000-04:00

J: Why is this bus still sitting here?
E: I'll just read a book whilst I wait. Spot on.
J: I paid my money just like everybody else!
E: If things go pear-shaped, I'll just have a go back, then.
J: This is crazy.
E: Naff.
J: It's ludicrous!
E: Buuuu'h... I don't mind. I don't seem to mind a't'all.

Burj dreams

2005-06-07T03:05:00.000-04:00

Some facts about the Burj:

The Burj was, until recently, the world's only seven-star hotel. Now it's one of two. The other is in Abu Dhabi. So that's something for Nermal to think about next time Garfield mails him there.
The Burj is meant to resemble a giant sailboat. It does, in fact, look like one, evidenced by the fact that my friends and I once saw a real sailboat on the Persian Gulf and we all remarked, at the same time: "That boat looks like the Burj."
The Burj has a giant cross on the sea-facing side. Yes, that's right: A. Giant. Cross. That's "cross," as in, Christianity, and "giant," as in, it's possibly ten times taller than that red metal tower that they use to launch the space shuttle. It is definitively the biggest cross in the Middle East, and possibly the biggest in the world.

How did such a giant cross – a GIANT cross! – get to be built in a country so Islamic that it shuns toilet paper, on the grounds that the name of Allah could possibly be written out in doo-doo?* The answer is that the Burj's South African architect snuck that cross on there, and not a single person noticed until it was done. The sheikhs only realized it when the architect bragged about it after the fact. He was quickly jailed.

Don't worry, they eventually let him go when they couldn't think of a reason to hold him. Now it's the funniest part on the Jumeirah tour. For God's sake, the cross is pointed right at Iran, just a few steps across the Gulf! And of course Saudi Arabia, that beacon of unwavering good sense, is plenty pissed off. Many of Dubai's license plates have a drawing of the Burj, much like the Statue of Liberty on New York plates. Saudi won't allow those cars to enter. Way to go, Saudi! That'll teach those Christians!**

You can see the outline of the cross opposite the Starship Enterprise there. You'll recall that the Starship Enterprise helipad also serves as a tennis court, fondly known by me as The Highest Court in the Land.***
The Burj has an underwater seafood restaurant. So that while you eat a fish, its surviving relatives can watch you.
Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors has an ice cream treat named "The Burj." It's a giant, heaping mound of ice cream.
You may recall that I once swore, near the beginning of my Dubai adventure, that I would enter the Burj, so help me God. As it turns out, God wasn't in a helping sort of mood on this one.

It never happened, though not for lack of effort on my part. I wasn't able to get a reservation, even for dinner. I'm simply not Burj material, people. For the gaping chasm in stature between the Burj and myself, the Burj might as well be the moon. I won't be visiting either one. The Burj has become a symbol for unquenchable yearning, an unattainable ideal of perfection floating on a plane of existence I will never even understand, let alone experience. Also, $52 seems really steep for a door charge.

So here's my final shot of the Burj, glimmering in twilight. The photo was taken with my face pressed up against the iron gate, my arms snaked through the bars so at least the camera could taste the pleasure of visiting the Burj grounds. Adieu, Burj. You cold, beautiful bitch.

* Unconfirmed but highly plausible.
** Cursed infidels!
*** Yeah, I stole that joke, OK? What are you going to do about it?

What happens when I am forced to hang around a mall with nothing to do – Part I

2005-06-06T08:51:00.000-04:00

Deira City Center Mall in Dubai is probably as large as the National Mall in Washington, DC. Remember that 1963 photo of all the people at the civil rights rally listening to Martin Luther King, Jr.?

Now imagine all those people waiting in line at Starbucks.

I hate malls, especially when they're this crowded. But this mall experience was to prove a fateful one. So, I'm walking by this knick-knack store and suddenly I stumble upon one of the most bizarre sights of my young life. There's a UFO, hovering right there in front of my face. An honest-to-God U-F-O.

A UFO!

It buzzed around the enormous central corridor of the mall. I was digging frantically for my camera. What you are about to see are actual photos of a UFO, taken by me, Eric, and displayed now to you. These photos have not been doctored in any way.

Okay, they have been doctored in one small way.

The UFO seemed to be controlled by a bored-looking alien with a remote control.

Dear God, it's attacking the children!!!

It attacks me!!! Mayday!! Mayday!!

I go down!!

The UFO escapes!

Still more Q&A with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani

2005-06-04T03:02:00.000-04:00

See more Q & A with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani here, here, and here. And the special "Sex Ed with the Ayatollah" edition is here.

Question: Are shaking of hands with girls allowed?
Answer: It is not permissible.

Question: I wanted to know about friendship norms in islam about females ?
Answer: Friendship with her is not permissible. Because in such friendship man is not immune from sin.
Eric: This is essentially what Billy Crystal said in "When Harry Met Sally."

Eric: Here's one for you ladies:

Question: Which part of strange man’s body is it allowed for a woman to look at? Is it allowed to look at his breast? On the tv in the western countries its very oft, that the men show their bodies till the belly ?
Answer: Looking of a woman at a stranger’s (ajnabi) body is forbidden, if it is with lust and fear of falling in sin. It is not even permissible to look without.
Eric: If I may translate, Grand Ayatollah: Don't look if it will make you horny. And don't look anyway.

Question: Is it allowed to kiss a child?
Answer: Itself has no problem.

Question: Can I buy a second hand American car?
Answer: No prohibition order has been issued by His Eminence.
Eric: The Ayatollah himself drives an Audi, however.

Question: Please specify if any music is allowed in Islam?
Answer: Music is an art that has spread far and wide during these days. Some varieties of this art are permissible while others are forbidden; therefore, it is permissible to listen to the first while it is forbidden to listen to the latter.
Eric: And that clears that right up.

Villas of Jumeirah

2005-06-02T08:47:00.000-04:00

Remember Jumeirah Jane? She got her name because she lives in… wait for it… Jumeirah.

Jumeirah is a beautiful beachfront land of villas, villas, and more villas. These villas are handed out free to Emirati citizens, along with a lifetime supply of free medical care, education, gas, electricity – basically whatever you, as an Emirati, need, your country's oil reserves are paying for it. It's not a bad deal, especially if you're a man and thus do not spend your life cloaked behind a giant black burqa, peering through a little eye-slot.

Many of the villas in Jumeirah, though owned by locals, are rented out to Westerners. You can tell where the expats live because the villas have gardens, with temperate-climate trees, and lots of bouganvillia plants. The locals, on the other hand, plant palm trees. Evidently the Prophet Mohammed said that a man with a palm tree will never go hungry, and 13 centuries later, people are still taking the advice.

A western-style villa:

And the Arab style:

Deep Throat

2005-06-01T10:10:00.000-04:00

By now you've surely heard that Deep Throat has finally been unmasked. But you haven't heard the whole story. Not by a long shot.

There's Deep Throat, courtesy of the Washington Post. But what the liberal media haven't told you is that my dad dated Deep Throat Junior -- let's call her "Lady Deep Throat" -- while in high school.

That's right -- Deep Throat's daughter, seen in the picture above, was courted by my very own father. My father met Deep Throat, and though he surely suspected something, he managed to remain quiet all these years. It is also worth noting that Lady Deep Throat never married -- or as my father put it, "After me, no other man could fit the bill."

Everyone's hoo-hawing about The Washington Post and its famous Watergate reporting. Well, whoop-dee-doo. The Lady Deep Throat/Randy K. angle has been totally ignored by the Post and the rest of Big Media. This nexus of scandal and intrigue goes unmentioned in the so-called "mainstream media." To get the real story, you must come to elktown.

More ...from the Etc. files

2005-06-01T05:14:00.000-04:00

Flowers growing in a sand bank near my apartment.

Public landscaping.

The many uses of the American flag.

I love this photo.

The Hyatt dwarfs a nearby mosque. Viewed from above, the Hyatt spells out "Dubai" in Arabic.

Snowblowers in a mall parking lot. Only God knows why.

The wharf on Friday – the Muslim holiday. None of this stuff is locked or guarded, but nothing gets stolen.

Rearing horses sculpture.

Abu Dhabi

2005-05-31T05:11:00.000-04:00

Remember those old Garfield cartoons? Nermal, the intolerably cute kitten, would visit the Garfield residence, full of sunshine and adorable good cheer. World-weary Garfield would invariably threaten to mail the little cutie off to the remotest possible destination… the end of the world… the place symbolizing the most isolated, secluded, primitive locale on earth… Abu Dhabi. Oh, it never stopped being funny, did it?!

Imagine my surprise when I actually visited Abu Dhabi a few months ago, and found it to be… a little different than I expected. The truth is: This is a place where a cat could really get down.

Nermal, while in Abu Dhabi, you will…

Stay at the fabulous Royal Meridian hotel!!

Dash along the traffic-choked streets of downtown!

Dine at a dazzling array of American fast food joints!!

Have all your optical needs met, and drive this fabulous Jaguar!!

See a blockbuster Hollywood film!!

Frolic at Snow World!!

Nermal, you look a little tired after your incredible stay in Abu Dhabi. Just don't forget to pray. Don't worry... by law, there's a mosque every 400 feet!

More Q&A with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani

2005-05-27T05:59:00.000-04:00

Question: Our hen have drunk water from circles where drinks water the dog. May I eat meat and egg of this bird? Is it haram or not?
Answer: It's permissible.
Eric: Yoda sent this one in by email.

Question: If a person has a lot of doubts in Wudu’, prayer, Ghusl etc. what should he do?
Answer: He should not pay heed to his doubt and keep on considering it as valid (Sahih).

Question: Is it allowed to eat at McDonald restaurant?
Answer: You are allowed to eat those meals which do not contain meat. And you can eat meat also, if the seller is a Muslim and that the seller has made sure that the meat belonged to an animal that had been slaughtered according to Islamic conditions.
Eric: What about Wendy's?

Eric: And finally, here's one that comes up a lot where I'm from:
Question: If a dog falls into a well and was brought out alive, will the well be pure for ablution?
Answer: It is allowed.

Falconry

2005-05-26T02:59:00.000-04:00

We spent half the day in Doha tracking down the falconry shop. When we finally got there – way on the outskirts of the city – we waited two hours for it to open. Finally, we approached it:

Al Jazeera means "the river." The TV network of the same name is also based in Doha. Interesting side note: The Bush administration wants Qatar to sell off al-Jazeera to private investors. Bush is evidently pissed off that the network is too anti-American, and he wants to punish it by choking off its support from the Qatari government. The irony: Jazeera is continued too pro-American by many in the Middle East, including all of the Saudi oil barons who would certainly buy it instantly if it were put on the block. So privatizing it seems likely to make it much more anti-American. Wait! you say. The Bush adminstration, not thinking things through? I'm not buying it! Well, here at elktown – we report, you decide.

Anyway, back to the falcons. There was a strict "no-pictures" policy. So I waited until the guy turned around for two seconds, and I snapped off one (shoddy) photo. Sorry, this is the best I've got, but if you've got another source for live falcon photography, you go there instead, OK? Maybe they've got some falcons at the Burger King.

We were particularly taken with their little hats. They're just too precious! Like little German WWI soldier dolls! But then we learned that their job is basically to gruesomely hunt and slaughter lesser birds. Not unlike the German WWI soldiers, come to think of it. And those hats are the only things standing between the bloodthirsty falcons and their prey. In other words:

Falcon with hat: sweet precious angel.
Falcon without hat: vicious killer.

They are released from the roof of the Burj every hour, on the hour, to circle the building and drive away gulls. With extreme prejudice.

Beaches

2005-05-25T04:43:00.000-04:00

The beaches here are just fantastic. One day I saw these pretty boats, merrily going on their way.

Then a whole flotilla sailed into view. Wow! Iran will think twice before invading us now!

A camel dude was hanging out at a different beach.

I love you, Jack Stack

2005-05-24T12:44:00.000-04:00

If this won't make a KC boy homesick, nothing will. And check out the accompanying article.

Build that thing

2005-05-24T04:30:00.000-04:00

Dubai is an ambitious little SOB. They're in a bit of an "imagination bubble" at the moment, in which no big idea is too absurd not to be taken seriously. Last year somebody proposed – as a joke – building an entire miniature city suspended in the air, inside a glass bubble. The newspapers were filled with letters alternately gushing over the idea and decrying it as impractical. I'm not sure which response is stupider.

Here are some of the proposals that actually made it off the drawing board:

"The Palm"*

They built this island in the shape of a palm, right there near the Burj. Lots of expensive beachfront property – not a bad idea. Serena Williams can boat over to Sting's place in like, five minutes.

Everything's going great, except all the sand keeps washing out to sea, and the hammerhead sharks just won't seem to mind their own business. Overall elktown verdict: awesome.

* Photo credit: I don't care.

"The World"

This resort-to-be is still in the early stages of sand dumping. The photo is a rendering I found on a billboard. The idea is to build a little world map out of sand, just off the coast, near the Palm. You can buy whichever parts of the map you want. If they don't sell, I heard the sheikhs are going to distribute them to everybody using dice, a la the board game Risk. Then everybody builds hotels. Sort of Risk meets Monopoly**, I guess.

I heard that before his run of bad luck, culminating in his relocation to the spider hole, our pal Saddam had bought up large parts of "America." That'll teach us, Saddam!***

Overall elktown verdict: Too political. If I want to conquer the world, I'll play a computer game.

** I always like to be the thimble!
*** Hey Saddam, how did that work out for you, by the way?

"The EMAAR resort"

If you buy a penthouse at one of these places, you get a free BMW. I've always wanted a BMW.

Overall elktown verdict: Nice enough, I suppose.

"The Aviation Building"

Never one to make a point subtly when it can be pounded home with the emotional force of a shrieking horde of chimpanzees, the Emiratis designed their aviation training building in the shape of… a giant airplane!

ELKTOWN says: Fly away, little fella!!

A Q&A with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani

2005-05-23T04:48:00.000-04:00

The following is absolutely real, copied from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's website, along with my comments. These are questions that real people have submitted over the Internet, along with the Grand Ayatollah's real responses. I could not, and would not, make this up.

Question: I want to ask about talking to ones fiancee on telephone, is it permissible or not?
Answer: If talking is free of provocative words and if there is no fear of falling in sin, there is no objection.

Question: I was wondering if it is haram (forbidden) to go to a party where girl's as well as boys attend. The girls may be dressed inappropriately but no drinking is involved?
Answer: Based on obligatory precaution, it is not permissible, unless illicit act is not carried out.
Eric: So, Grand Ayatollah, you're saying we can go to the party, as long as we promise not to shag?

Question: Please could you let me know if a plastic surgery is permissible in Islam?
Answer: It is permissible.

Question: While taking bath, it’s said that one should not keep head under shower for more than one minute, is it true?
Answer: It’s not in order.
Eric: I'm not following you, Grand Ayatollah... Are you saying we're not allowed? Or just that it isn't necessary? Because I really love a hot shower. Does the Qu'ran say anything about how hot the water can be?

Eric: Grand Ayatollah, if you're reading this, could you clear up this point?

Question: What is the definition of Zina (adultery)?
Answer: Zina does not take place without penetration.
Eric: Frankly, that leaves a lot of wiggle room.

Eric: Maybe I could have phrased that better.

Question: Is playing a chess allowed?
Answer: It is absolutely unlawful.

I've been saying it for years

2005-05-23T02:05:00.000-04:00

An exceprt from slate.com:

Barbecue is one of the last bastions of local prejudice in American life: Every state in the South—and some in the Midwest—thinks its barbecue is the first, most authentic, and best in the nation. If you want to see hatred, just put a Texan and a North Carolinian in a room and ask them who makes more righteous barbecue. A Democratic presidential candidate could fracture the Republican South with a few well-placed barbecue ads.)

On Wednesday morning, I skipped breakfast and flew to Kansas City—the northern mecca of Barbecue America. I hopped in my rental car and drove directly to the headquarters of the Kansas City Barbeque Society. KCBS is a funny group—a lark that has turned into a major cultural force. Founded more or less on a whim in 1986, the organization now oversees 177 annual barbecue competitions and certifies 6,000 official judges. In the height of summer barbecue season, there are half a dozen contests around the nation every weekend, some drawing hundreds of teams that compete to make divine pork shoulder and brisket with a perfect smoke ring (the pink outer layer that develops in a well-smoked piece of beef). KCBS has vastly increased both the quantity and quality of home barbecuers, which in turn has increased the quality of barbecue everywhere.

KCBS does not take itself too seriously. Its slogan is "Barbecue—not just for breakfast anymore." The office is crammed with pig memorabilia, including a print of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" with a pig in the starring role. It's called "The Squeal."

They do take meat very seriously, though. Stephanie Wilson, who edits the KCBS newsletter, the Kansas City Bull Sheet, offered to take me to a couple of barbecue lunches. Stephanie lit up when I asked her about her own barbecuing. (She also lit up: She, like many barbecue masters, is a cigarette smoker—appreciative of smoke in all its forms.) Stephanie talks about barbecue the way Washingtonians talk about politics. She can discourse learnedly on different kinds of 'cue and recalls past meals with Proustian exactitude. Stephanie is a vivid example of the recent explosion of barbecue culture . A decade ago, she was someone who occasionally liked to eat barbecue. Today, she is half of a championship barbecue team called "Tom and Josh's Orgasmic Slabs." She and her partner enter 22 competitions a year, spending $500 and up per competition and driving their Lang 84 mobile smoker hundreds or thousands of miles every weekend to compete. She was leaving the next day for a competition 400 miles away on the Missouri-Tennessee border. In 2004 alone, she said proudly, Orgasmic Slabs won the Michigan State Barbecue championship, the Colorado Triple Crown, and the Blue Devil/Sunflower State Championship. Their pork took first at the Iowa State BBQ Championship; their chicken was fifth at the Jack Daniels World Championship; and their sauce took second place in the mild-tomato category at the American Royal—the "World Series of Barbecue"—in Kansas City. (Along the way, she has appeared on the Food Network four or five times, she thought.)

Barbecue is Stephanie's business, her hobby, and her family. When she was growing up, her mother smoked brisket. "She was smoking meat when smoking meat wasn't cool." Her brother had started the Orgasmic Slabs, and she joined the squad after his death. Her sister is on the team. Stephanie's 13-year-old son is a junior member and cooks in "kids barbecue" contests.

All the talk left us starving—plus I had been fasting in anticipation of the trip—so we headed over to Oklahoma Joe's, the newest and by many accounts finest of Kansas City's many barbecue institutions. The original Oklahoma Joe's has been operating for nine years in a Kansas City gas station. A few weeks before, a second branch had opened in an upscale mall area. That's where we went.

While we waited on line to order, I pondered a great existential question about modern barbecue. The Chowhound ethos, which has pervaded barbecue as it has other cuisines, teaches that food should be grimy to be great. Proper 'cue, therefore, can only be found in a floors-slick-with-grease country shack, the meat cooked lovingly over archaic equipment by an ancient, surly monster with an impenetrable Southern accent.

But Oklahoma Joe's was the dead opposite. Oklahoma Joe's looked unpromisingly like any other mall restaurant—T.G.I. Friday's-style memorabilia on the walls, televisions playing ESPN mounted over the bar. After we got our food, owner Jeff Stehney sat down with us. A nerdy 44-year-old, Stehney only discovered his barbecue passion after graduating from the University of Kansas and working in sales for Kraft. In the late '80s, he joined a competition barbecue team, Slaughterhouse Five, which won championship after championship. Stehney decided to open his own place.

Stehney was all business. He walked me step-by-step through the tricky economics of earning a profit at a barbecue place. He spoke managementese, had no trace of a Southern accent, and wore a button-down shirt. Yet he makes transcendentally great meat. The brisket we ordered was moist and incredibly smoky. His ribs were even better, crusty on the outside, with meat that pulled right away from the bone, as a perfect rib should.

Stehney invited me and Stephanie back to the kitchen. He grabbed a "burnt end" that had just exited the smoker and asked one of the cooks to chop it up for us. The "burnt end" is, after jazz, Kansas City's most important gift to civilization. Some great Kansas Citian of the past realized that the ends of a barbecued brisket were the fattiest, saltiest, smokiest chunks of meat on God's own Earth. Every barbecue joint in KC—and practically nowhere else—sets aside its burnt ends, chops them up, and serves them with a little sauce. It is a profound experience to eat them. Stehney, Stephanie, and I stood around this particular burnt end and snacked it into oblivion. Stehney talked obsessively and eagerly about the precise way to cut a rib, and the exact temperature at which a burnt end reaches perfection. Listening to him, it was obvious that barbecue passion has nothing to do with grittiness or ancient traditions, that you can be a barbecue genius in a suburban strip mall as easily as on a dirt road.

The burnt ends stacked up in my belly and suffused my whole body with a comforting warmth. Stehney, burnt end clasped between thumb and forefinger, entered a kind of reverie.

"I grew up in Oklahoma, but I had no experience with barbecue until college. One day, we went into Kansas City, and some friends took me to Arthur Bryant's. I thought it was the worst crap I had ever tasted. Some years later, I was at a friend's bachelor party and someone had brought Arthur Bryant's, and I tried it again, and I realized ..." He trails off, unable to put into words how important this life change was.

He paused and continued. "So, you have to go to Arthur Bryant's. If there is one place you have to go in Kansas City, go to Arthur Bryant's. Go to Arthur Bryant's."

Goodbye Potomac

2005-05-20T03:42:00.000-04:00

The Potomac river.

And Georgetown.

A few American faces

2005-05-19T01:32:00.000-04:00

The paparazzi still will not leave my sister alone!

They follow her even into bed! Those dirty bloodhounds!

It's wedding time. The groom tries to wink at me.

Tim's brother has a total John Lennon thing going on. I dubbed him "Ladykiller 2010."

Her place card said, "Guest." But…

"Call me… 'G'."

Such a picturesque scene. The love, the flowers, the American flag – it could bring a tear to your eye. Great picture, Kelly Anne!

And CONGRATULATIONS TIM AND TRACEY!!!

Iconic French things

2005-05-18T03:21:00.000-04:00

Some things you can see only in France.

Outside Notre Dame.

The Latin Quarter in the early morning.

Classy metro.

Bikes at Place St. Michel.

This is how I knew I had really left the Middle East.

In the Middle East, women are "respected" by hiding them under black cloth. In contrast, this is how France shows it respects women.

The Seine has a big island in the middle, called Ile de la Cite. There's the very tip of the island, where we used to sit and watch the boats. That's my favorite spot in Paris. In the background is the Louvre.

Quai walk

2005-05-17T06:08:00.000-04:00

That's pronounced "Key Walk," for you American boobs.

After Notre Dame, I strolled along the Seine. It was real purty.

That's the Louvre in the background. Let's take a closer look at those guys. They're so French.

Looks like it was a great conversation.

When I was in college, they built a new dorm. While they figured out what to name the place, they just called it "New Hall." Eight years later, it's still called "New Hall." What are the odds that they'll finally come up with a name soon?

Well, here's one clue. This is the Pont Neuf – at 400-some years old, it's the oldest bridge in Paris. The name means "New Bridge."

Take a closer look at the face carvings. I'm telling you, these carver dudes had a sense of humor.

And finally, my favorite moment along the Quai…

Look, I told you about my thing with birds, OK? I love the little guys. And they don't come prettier than these. Just like everything in Paris, actually.

Paris

2005-05-16T02:57:00.000-04:00

Ah, Paris!!

My flight to the U.S. stopped for four hours in Paris – more than enough time to grab a train into the city and have a look around.

I lived there for a year, back during my "I disdain photography" phase. I've come to view my behavior at that time as bordering on criminal: In a year spent living in the world's most photogenic city, I took not one single photograph. Honestly, I could just shoot myself.

So I resolved to make up for that lost year in 30 minutes. Here are the results.

My first view upon crawling out of the subway:

I can't describe how happy I was at this sight. Senses blooming, heart filling with joy; you know, that sort of thing.

I never realized it before, but there's an Archaelogical Crypt underneath Notre Dame. I'm sure the torches and hieroglyphs and skeletons dangling from rusty wall chains would have made for a great photo. But the crypt was locked.

A closer look at the stonework of Notre Dame. Those medieval masons did a pretty good job, I would say. But beyond the technical skill, what impresses me the most is that those dudes – literally from 1,000 years ago – seemed to share our modern sense of hipster style.

For example, this little scene is interesting: Why is the one guy looking in a different direction than all the rest? It's just like the cover of that Beatles album where one of the guys is out of step with the others. You know what I'm talking about.

Also, check out the naked baby riding the horse above Saint #4.

Another example might be this funky mama, who wouldn't look out of place on a fashion runway next spring in Milan.

I was reading this concert billboard when I glanced up at the statues above. The nearest little guy seemed to be looking directly at me, like he had just turned and seen me standing down there and was not entirely happy about it. It creeped me out.

These gargoyles were actually intended as water runoff spouts. Why wouldn’t that work on modern buildings? It seems a bit more awesome than our current system.

I love when they fix these old things.

This guy is about to bust out the thumbs-up sign.

Peace out.

Set and rise

2005-05-13T02:44:00.000-04:00

The sun rises over the Mediterranean coast of Syria.

I'm back in Dubai, and next week this website will be up and running again every day as elktown enters the home stretch.

Update, August 16

This picture has more resonance than I realized at first. Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and parts of Turkey -- in other words, the eastern coast of the Mediterranean -- are known as the Levant. Levant is the French word for "rising," so called because from the western European perspective, this is the land of the rising Mediterranean sun.

I'm re-reading "From Beirut to Jerusalem" by Tom Friedman, in my last free hours before law school, and he describes the beautiful Levantine culture of pre-civil war Beirut. It dovetails with my impression of my Lebanese students, who tended to be a bit more stylish, open and flirtatious than my students from the Gulf region. Though all Arabs, the Lebs were Levantine.

Back to Dubai

2005-05-09T11:19:00.000-04:00

My U.S. trip is over, and it was everything I hoped for.

To have such people in my life, I am very, very blessed.

I wanna hold your hand

2005-05-03T12:45:00.000-04:00

Now, just because they'll kill ya for being gay in the Middle East, don't get the wrong idea. It's OK for men to hold hands, or even grasp each other's thighs in public. You see it all the time.

Even President Bush is getting in on the fun:

But there's a line between diplomacy... and canoodling. Don't get carried away, Mr. President!

I mean, we want lower gas prices and everything, but didn't the American people decisively vote against this sort of behavior last November? If George and Abdullah fall in love, they won't be able to get married in 48 states.

As usual, Tom Toles of the Washington Post has the last and best word:

Comin' to America...

2005-04-28T03:14:00.000-04:00

TODAY!!

American vacation

2005-04-27T02:48:00.000-04:00

I'm leaving for the U.S. tomorrow, and people, I simply cannot tell you how much I've been looking forward to this. My time in Dubai has been a roller coaster... definitely worthwhile, and often incredibly fun, but very trying sometimes too. I'll post some darker stories after I come home for good, in August.

Four months in Dubai has felt much longer to me than the ten months I spent in Paris. Obviously, Dubai as a city isn't comparable to Paris, but I don't think that's why it feels different. Just like in Paris, I have friends here and plenty to do to keep me busy. It isn't the cities, but I who have changed.

27 is very different than 21. In those six years I've become a new person, and one of the big changes, I've realized, has been my level of attachment to family and friends. My family knows we've always been close, but it's fundamentally different now that I'm an adult. I've missed my family -- my extended family on both sides, but especially my mom, dad, and sister -- far more powerfully than I did when I lived in France. Back then, I missed them like a teenager, which is to say... not that much. At least, not so much that it bothered me.

Missing your family as an adult is almost a regression. It's like being a child again. A small child feels the absence of family very sharply, and so have I.

Anyway, I'll be in Washington, DC between Friday, April 29 and Monday, May 9. I am so excited to see my family and my friends, I can't put it into words. If you're an out-of-town friend or relative, can you please give me a call sometime that week? Day or night is OK. I know it's crass to ask in such an impersonal way, but I don't care, because I want to talk to a lot of people and I won't have a chance for three more months after this. I would call out, but I don't know your schedules, whereas you know mine: I'm basically free all eleven days. Call me at (£0%) 7&4-7*^9***. And check back in to the website -- I'll try to post a few times. And if anybody wants a souvenir from Paris, where I'm stopping, better ask me real soon.

***Internet freaks: Do not call.

American culture, like the Lord, works in mysterious ways

2005-04-26T02:23:00.000-04:00

In the TOEFL English textbook, there is a grammar problem about Joan of Arc. I was teaching this problem recently to two students, a Lebanese boy and an Emirati girl. The girl was draped in a full-body abbaya, only her eyes visible, but like all the local girls I've taught, she was extremely high-spirited and very charming.

"Who's Joan of Arc?" they asked. I explained – a 14-year-old French peasant girl who led an army to kick the British out of France. She believed she heard the voice of God, I said. The Emirati girl nodded.

But the young man snorted. "A girl? Leading an army? No way."

I didn't really want to discuss it and was ready to move along. But the conversation grew unexpectedly heated when the young woman interjected fiercely from behind her veil.

"I believe it!" she cried, her eyes wide. "Why couldn't she do it? She led the army because she was chosen by God!"

Pause.

"Like Buffy."

This time they've gone too far

2005-04-25T04:23:00.000-04:00

The latest casualty in America's war against fat people:
Cookie Monster.

Cookie has fallen victim to our paranoia about obese children. Now he will be some sort of "fruit and vegetable monster." He will no longer sing, "C is for Cookie – it's good enough for me," but instead will sing "A cookie is a sometimes food." Oh, those bastards.

And the worst part is Senator Doctor Bill Frist, one of the great assholes of modern times. Just as he thought Terri Schiavo's sad life was somehow his business, he now feels it's his job to intervene on Sesame Street. Here's what he said: "Even Cookie Monster is learning to control his cravings. His sage advice opened our eyes to the simple joys of a tasty cookie, and now reminds us that moderation is the key to healthy living."

How's this for moderation, Doc: I hold you directly responsible for the death of Cookie Monster! You (expletive linked to)!!!!

Also, does anyone else find it disturbing that the banana that Cookie will presumably eat has a face?

Flacks* and their snacks

2005-04-23T05:37:00.000-04:00

I love it when I can bust out with a rhyme in the title. Johnnie Cochran, that one was for you, man.

Anyway, I read in the washingtonpost.com this morning about Cookie Monster and his diet. I want you to know that I already wrote on this topic, but I'm saving it for publication next week. Elktown has never gotten scooped yet by the Washington Post, and we're damn well not going to start now.

But there were some other things in the Post article that I didn't know, which were pretty funny.

We learn that Ronald McDonald has come in for a promotion at McDonald's. He's accepted the position of "Chief Happiness Officer." I hope he got a good pay raise, because that sounds to me like a big increase in responsibilities. Here's what he had to say:

"'It's great to know you can have your cookies and eat fruit, too,' The Ronald said, via e-mail. 'It's cool to try different foods and fun to stay active and fit. The way I look at it, it's what I eat and what I do and I'm lovin' it. Let's do lunch!'"

Chester Cheetah also weighed in with his thoughts on good health:

"'Although it ain't easy being cheesy,' Chester says, also via an e-mail statement provided by his company, Frito Lay, 'it is easy to balance your diet. Keep up the good work Cookie Monster, we are proud of you.'"

You want to know something? I don't think those messages were written by Ronald and Chester at all. Call me cynical, but I suspect that some well-paid flack deep within the bowels of the McDonald's (and Frito Lay) corporation is really writing those messages. Imagine! A flack impersonating beloved children's figure Ronald McDonald! These flacks, have they no shame?

Or maybe these suspicions of mine are simply bubbling up because the thought of Ronald McDonald sitting down at a computer keyboard and plunking out emails with his grotesquely oversized clown fingers is too disturbing to even imagine.

* ELKTOWN does not condone the use of this derogatory term for public relations professionals. Any usage of the word "flack" is strictly coincidental.

No escape

2005-04-22T09:55:00.000-04:00

I fled to the Middle East to escape him. But no matter where I go, he follows me:

The truck was parked right in front of al-Manama supermarket, home of the lambs' brains.

More interesting yet is the Chili's-mobile:

How I chased it! It was a freaking bus! A Chili's bus! But this is the only picture I could get. And of course, there's our van, the finest in the Middle East. Yeah, that's right, we ride around in this thing, OK? You got a problem?

Scott, this is what your name looks like in Arabic:

Spell it out

2005-04-21T15:44:00.000-04:00

Can't let the day go by without a little wackiness. I was checking my email a few minutes ago, and the proprietor of the email cafe came over to say hello. I had mentioned my visit to the U.S., so he always asks me when I'm going. This time he sits down next to me and starts whispering.

He has a heavy accent, so I couldn't understand him. Something about his crazy friend wanting something from the U.S. He was asking me to get it for him. "What is it?" I asked. His voice drops to a whisper. He looks around furtively.

He leans over and opens Microsoft Word on my computer. Then, right there on my screen, he types out "v-i-b-r-a-t-o-r."

The wisdom of taxi drivers

2005-04-21T03:19:00.000-04:00

Most taxi drivers here are quiet and efficient, though they tend to drive like maniacs. Once in a while they want to chat, and this is rarely a good thing.

A few weeks ago, I got into a raggedy-ass cab that had clearly driven down to Dubai from al-Sharjah, our northern neighbor whose role model (and sugar daddy) is Saudi Arabia. Sharjah is the Wahhabist emirate: no drinking, no loitering, and so help them God, absolutely no cavorting. And ladies, don’t get caught without a full-body abbaya! And don't ride in cars with men, obviously, unless you like jail.

Anyway, this cab was from there. Why did I get in it, you ask? It was hot and I couldn't find another cab. You're right, you're right, I shouldn't have.

So immediately, the cabbie – and I won't lie to you, he bore a remarkable resemblance to Osama bin Laden – immediately the cabbie starts to chat me up. It takes about twenty seconds for him to get to what he really wants to ask me: What religion are you?

This is not an issue I discuss around here. But I don't have to lie, either: I tell him that I'm religious but that it's a private matter. He persists. This is something I haven't encountered in Dubai, though it could be more common in al-Sharjah – evangelical Islam. It isn't pleasant. On and on he goes, Prophet Muhammed, the Qu'ran, and so forth.

Finally he gets to the part that really sticks in my memory. We're driving along, sailing around bends in the road at frightening speeds, nearing my office. His pushy religious lecture is making me more and more nervous. Then he quiets for a second, and says, "You, me, we die in one minute."

… … …

… oh, f-u-c-k.

So, that was not a pleasant moment for me. There were a few seconds of white knuckles and no breathing. But then he was chattering on in his broken English, and I realized what he meant. "Any of us, we could die at any moment," he was trying to say. "We must live life to the fullest… blah blah blah." That sort of thing. He was actually a very nice guy, the way even the most insufferable evangelical Christians usually are. But I was sweating when I got out of the cab.

The Wonderful Journalism Ethics of the Middle East, Part III

2005-04-20T05:30:00.000-04:00

As you've no doubt heard, Britney Spears is with child. The news hit the Middle East like a tidal wa…
uh, like a… like a very big, important piece of news hitting a region.

It made every front page I saw: The good ones (Gulf News), the shitty ones (7Days), the unintelligible ones (six dozen Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Hindi papers). Britney Spears is clearly a cultural touchstone. The world cares, is what I'm saying, people.

Yet not all the coverage was sweetness and light. 7Days – the Harry Potter of newspapering, conjuring photos out of thin air – was actually quite vile towards Britney. "There is little evidence suggesting that Spears is anything other than trailer trash. In another life she would be on Jerry Springer," they wrote. And that's no opinion page – that was the news article. What we in the journalism business call "the separation of church and state" – that is, the total partition between news and opinion writing – is not functioning here, apparently. Much like the real separation between church and state, come to think of it.

This failure of journalism ethics is bad enough… but could it be even worse than we think? Could the sheikhs actually be trying to undermine American global power by chipping away at the very underpinnings of our society… the ideals we hold most dear… our precious celebrities? They couldn't be that nefarious… could they?

One more word about Britney

2005-04-20T05:25:00.000-04:00

This fantastic news out of Louisiana – or wherever Britney and her baby daddy live – has had a profound effect on me. As many of you know, I have been in a deep funk ever since January, when Brad and Jen announced their split. The knowledge that Britney has created new life has finally lifted my spirits. Someday this youngster will entertain us! Either with her musical talents, or by spectacularly flaming out in the public eye, or even by getting dangled off a balcony! The possibilities are endless!

So our celebrities have delivered (as it were) again. Out of Brad and Jen's suffering has come joy. One tabloid chapter closes so another can begin. It's the great wheel of American celebrity, turning. It's the endless chain of being, et cetera, and so forth. Are you as moved as I am?

(Thank you to my celebrity correspondent, Liz J., for alerting me to this momentous story, far in advance of the Middle East news cycle.)

Shady Ramadan

2005-04-19T12:56:00.000-04:00

That's the name of a student in one of our classes. Just say it to yourself a couple of times. Shady Ramadan. If I was an Arab rapper that would be my name.

Modernity unfinished

2005-04-19T05:35:00.000-04:00

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.

Why the SAT is like geopolitics

2005-04-18T04:37:00.000-04:00

Since this is my own personal website, I don't have to be politically correct. So I'm going to lay it out for you: Arab students are much, much harder to teach.

Now listen: This doesn't mean I don't like Arab students. In fact, the sweetest students I've had – the ones you just want to hug sometimes, but you don't because you don't want to be fired or arrested – have been Arabs. Arab students can be immensely lovable. But Arab students, especially in large groups, are near impossible to handle sometimes. They are just so chattery, to use a soft word. Many of them never learned to sit still and listen to a teacher.

So, my fellow teachers and I have developed a strategy. We each developed it independently, and so we were happy to find out the other day that all of us do it. This is the strategy: When you walk into a class full of Arabs, just kick one or two of them out right away. Pick the mouthiest kid and boot him. If he begs to stay, all the better. But no chance.

Most of the time, this isn't necessary. But if they're particularly squirrelly, you just do it, no agonizing, no pleading. The rest of them shape up right away. It's a cliché you've probably heard too many times, but they really do respect authority – especially the boys. Their dads kick their asses – figuratively and in some cases, literally – and as soon as you remind them of their dads, they will shut up and listen to you. And the meaner you are, the better they like you. I swear to you this is true. I've torn kids' heads off in class only to have them practically bow to me afterwards.

Now the geopolitics: We decided the Iraq war can be viewed as a very simple case of our strategy in action.

"Saddam, what is your problem? How many times have we warned you not to talk while we're talking? I asked you to open your book to page 47, and you're still trying to develop nuclear weapons! I'm not going to ask you again!"

"That's it, we've had it with you, Saddam. You're done here, buddy. Take your pencil, calculator, and your uranium-refinement centrifuge technology and get out of my class. No, I said right now. Report immediately to the barber/delouser."

And voila, everyone else will behave for the rest of the class.

Corniche

2005-04-15T06:05:00.000-04:00

Doha is shaped like a horseshoe, with the Persian Gulf filling the interior to form Doha Bay. Around the edge of the horseshoe is the corniche, a 9km walkable beach park. Arabs seem to love parks just as much as Americans, and this is a great one. It was packed Friday morning.

Gary Porter and the Mystery of J. Lo

2005-04-14T06:02:00.000-04:00

My Chechen student had some trenchant things to say about the latest celebrity news. We were flipping through 7DAYS, Dubai's trashiest little rag, and he sees a picture of Julia Roberts.

"Do you know who that is?" I ask.

"Angelina Jolie," he answers promptly. As his teacher, this irritates me. Angelina?? It's obviously Julia!

Next to Julia is Brad Pitt. "What about that, do you know who that guy is?" I ask.

"Uhhhh... Bobby," he says. "Bobby... Beautiful." He has unintentionally created the finest nickname for Brad Pitt in history.

We turn the page and read an article about J. Lo, who has announced that she no longer wishes to be known as J. Lo. Evidently that was all a big joke that we, the public, just never really got. Now it's "Jennifer Anthony." She's not a diva, OK? It's time for the "real Jennifer" to take the spotlight, she says. Don't be fooled by the rocks that she's got, people.

M absorbs the article quietly and then offers an almost Buddha-like wisdom. He points at her picture and says, "Eric. She wery, wery... wery stupid."

Jessica Simpson news

2005-04-14T06:01:00.000-04:00

If you search "Jessica Simpson" on FemaleFirst.co.uk, here is the list of articles that pops up:

Jessica Simpson Mocked Over Buffalo Wings Comments
Jessica Simpson cringes when watching 'Newlyweds'
Jessica Simpson Kept Telling Herself: I'm Beautiful
Jessica Simpson Hospitalised After Collapse During Oprah
Jessica Simpson trusts Nick Lachey completely
Jessica Simpson frightened of dolphins
Jessica Simpson Feels For Pitt And Anistons Relationship
Jessica Simpson spent years trying to stretch legs!
Jessica Simpson’s mum used to stretch her legs every night
Jessica Simpson's Dad Joe Has Sold His Soul To The Devil Say Critics
Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey's Marraige On The Rocks
Jessica Simpson's bully hell
Jessica Simpson 'to renew vovs' [sic]
Jessica Simpson urges 'be role models'
Jessica Simpson 'wants to run round the house naked!'
Jessica Simpson boosts S. American economy
Jessica Simpson 'I'm addicted to sex!'
Jessica Simpson: Bond girl?
Simpson confesses to picking nose
Jessica Simpson cancels tour dates
Jessica Simpson toning up as Daisy Duke

How am I supposed to get any work done when there's this much fascinating material to get through on the Internet?

Doha II

2005-04-13T06:04:00.000-04:00

The architecture in Doha is fascinating. In Dubai, architects do ultra-modern. In Doha, they've made an effort to meld the modern and the traditional. The style here is western words set to an Arabic tune.

A close-up on the dome:

Close-up:

A villa:

More roundabout art:

The Qatar post office:

And my favorite building:

East of East

2005-04-12T05:06:00.000-04:00

I had one very dizzy moment a few weeks ago while exploring a new neighborhood near my office. I saw four men kneeling towards Mecca, but my mental compass started spinning when I realized that east was not the direction I thought it was. I got very lost before finally realizing my mistake: In Dubai, Mecca is to the west.

I got my bearings, but it provoked a few hours of that sensation I wrote about a few weeks ago: the feeling of being very, very far from home.

A Doha parking lot

2005-04-11T05:02:00.000-04:00

Our hotel in Doha had a balcony, and when we stumbled out onto it on Friday morning, we were greeted by one of the most interesting sights I've ever seen.

It's very common to see small groups of men at prayer in public. But as a non-Muslim, it's very, very difficult – impossible, really – to catch a view like this. Most mosques in Dubai are walled off and the privacy of the grounds is jealously guarded.

This is an overflow crowd, though you wouldn't know it by the perfect rows the men fashioned. An ordinary parking lot, with dumpsters and cars strewn about, was utterly transformed.

They spilled deep into the back lot.

Every man has his own prayer rug.

In perfect, almost startling unison, the men bowed…

…and then knelt.

Doo-hoo

2005-04-08T08:47:00.000-04:00

I made a one-day visit to Doha, Qatar about a month ago. Our nickname for Doha is "Doo-hoo," and the word has now come to mean the hinterlands, anything far away, remote or small-time. Did you park your car in the sandlot five blocks away? You're out in doo-hoo. Have to take a business trip to Omaha, or Shreveport, or Gary, Indiana? Doo-hoo.

The original Doo-hoo was not half-bad for a day trip – definitely much better than Gary, Indiana. I ate the best Arabic food of my life, that's one thing. And the architecture there is fundamentally different from what I've seen in Dubai. All in all, it was a day well spent. I'll post a couple pictures next week.

In the meantime, this is a view of a minaret from the sandlot behind my apartment.

...from the Et Cetera Files

2005-04-06T03:33:00.000-04:00

Random photos, both strange and beautiful. Well… mostly strange.

These are the Thai women who work at the Thai food counter at the mall. Sometimes I want Thai food, and when I do they make a big fuss over me. "Teacher, teacher!" they shout, placing their hands together, as if in prayer, and bowing furiously.

Other times I don't want Thai food, but to get the food I do want, I have to walk by the Thai women. Those days are more problematic. "Teacher, teacher!" they shout. "Teacher!! Why no Thai food today? Cashew chicken, five minutes! Teacher, where are you going?"

You may have noticed that they are posing with a baby in the photo above. A customer was pondering the menu and rooting through her purse, and she actually gave her baby to the Thai women to hold. Let me repeat that, because it is fairly astonishing: She gave her child to the restaurant workers to pass around. For, like, ten minutes. Mom, is motherhood really that much of a grind?

I have to admit: The Thai women and the baby seemed to get along very well. The kid was probably used to being handed to strangers, and the Thai women are naturally very social. There's absolutely no evidence that the child ended up as part of a curry dish.

Dammit America! (a rant*)

2005-04-05T04:27:00.000-04:00

I went to the Gulf Education and Training Exhibition this morning. It's an enormous regional conference featuring schools and educational programs from all over the world. You wander through the pavilions, marveling: "Look, there are the French schools! Oh my, there sure are a lot of Canadian schools! My goodness, how will we ever find time to visit all the British schools?" And I didn't even go in the Asia and Middle East areas, which were huge.

But then your reverie fades, and you say, "Where are the American schools? I see Grambling State University, of Louisiana. A fine school. And there's Southeast Missouri State University, of Cape Girardeau. Good of them to show up. But where, in heaven's name, are the rest of the American schools?"

I absolutely hate that we don't seem to be even trying to compete for the world's talent. You could make the argument that if we're already the prime destination for the world's best students, we don't need to spend too much effort recruiting. But that's bullshit, for two reasons. First of all, I think I continue to see McDonald's advertising, even though we can be reasonably sure everyone knows about this hamburger establishment. Second, we're wrong to think that we're still the world's unquestioned first stop for education. Our population of foreign students has plummeted since 9/11, while the student populations of Canada, the UK, Europe, Australia and China are soaring.

This is how you lose the War on Terror in the long run.

Students who come to the U.S. fall in love with it; how could they not? Students who want to come here but find the door slammed in their faces harbor lifelong resentments. These are the kids who will grow up to become the ruling classes of their own countries. This is how reputations are won and lost in the world.

America's reputation in the world has certainly changed since 9/11. But from what I see here, it isn't primarily because of the war in Iraq. It's because we're snubbing this region. They want to love us and live in our country, but we give many of them the finger when they try.

I hear students talking about their desire to study in America, often followed by their regret that it no longer seems possible. I see students heading for Germany and Australia instead. These kids -- future opinion makers in the Middle East -- want to join our team. We should want them to. I'm pissed off for the same reason I was pissed off that we were the only country without a pavilion at Dubai's Global Village. It sends a message loud and clear: We don't give a shit about you. These are the messages that speak louder than anything President Bush can say about how much we love freedom. I think Bush was right to want to bring democracy to Iraq and the rest of this area. Much as I don't care for him personally, I admire his instincts on this and he may one day be seen as visionary.

But from my little perch here in the liberal part of the Middle East, we're not making the right moves. Our country comes off as huge, attractive and uncaring. Sometimes even a little hostile. Anybody who's ever been snubbed by an attractive but arrogant person -- whether a member of the opposite sex or not -- knows how infuriating it can be, how belittling.

Almost every influential person you hear about in the Gulf region either lived in the U.S. as a student, or studied at the American School of Beirut. Back then, we welcomed them, and that's why we have friends in the Gulf today. We're not going to have these friends tomorrow, I think. Couldn't we make a showing here at these conferences? Would it be so much trouble? If a tiny little Missouri bootheel school can make it, we don't have any excuses. Goddammit, it just bothers me.

* Tomorrow: Back to silly jokes and pictures.

Haircut II: The Scalpbuster

2005-04-04T06:42:00.000-04:00

Haircut II went much smoother than the original. I'm happy with the result, and nobody had to unbutton my shirt to get there.

Kathleen, you'll be happy to know that the dog-petter scalp massage of Haircut I was taken to a whole new level in the sequel. This time, the guy practically attacked my scalp, like he was pissed off at my scalp for some offense and was determined to make it pay.

It was like the drive-through carwash. First they rinse off your car, then they spray it gently with cleaning products. Then, without warning, the rotating brushes of fury descend, beating and smacking against your car so that you can feel the thudding in your feet. It's violent and frightening. This scalp massage was like that. It was awesome.

The guy's hand was like an out-of-control ceiling fan falling on your head. It was everywhere all at the same time. It felt almost kung-fu. I think this guy could have kicked even Jackie Chan's ass, if the contest were barbering.

Then the guy worked on my neck with a vibrating neck-massage thingy. Everything got blurry as my eyeballs bounced and churned in their sockets. It was the best haircut ever.

Five bucks. My horse race winnings covered it!!!

Tough man... tender chicken

2005-04-01T06:48:00.000-05:00

We at elktown bid a fond adieu to Frank Perdue, 84, chicken magnate, who invented the slogan, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken." My entire life's experience suggests that this is a deep truth.

We would also like to point out that Perdue's famous slogan was mistranslated into Spanish, so that billboards appeared all over Mexico proclaiming, "It takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused."*

So let's take a moment to ponder Perdue's achievements. Gaze into his face, above, just as the Mexicans must have, and consider: In his remarkable career, the man must have aroused billions of chickens.

* Source: the Internet

Pictures?

2005-04-01T06:42:00.000-05:00

I need your help, readers. Sometimes I can't see the pictures on the website... is this a UAE issue (crappy networks, affects me only) or a photo-hosting thing (affects everybody)?

If you happen to be browsing the archives, and you see pictures that won't load, could you leave a comment below and tell me which ones? Or if they're fine, let me know that. If the pictures are broken, I'll fix them, but it takes lots of time and I don't want to do it unless necessary. Thank you, my estimated five loyal readers.

I'm so hungry I could eat a...

2005-03-31T06:11:00.000-05:00

Now, I know most of you think I'm living in a barbaric third-world country. I bet some of you even suspected that the refreshments at the Dubai World Cup would simply consist of the losing horses set out on steaming platters with giant mugs of mead.

Well, that's just not the case, though once Liz and I, after seeing a bullfight in southern France, stumbled on the bull's severed head out in front of the town's butcher shop. Such a barbarous country, France.

In fact, the food at the Dubai World Cup was top-notch. I was so impressed, in fact – my normal diet consists of falafel and chicken pita sandwiches – that I transcribed the labels along the buffet. In this, I met some resistance from the chef, but intrepid reporters can't back down from this sort of fearless coverage. The readers of elktown deserve to know what was served, and here it is:

Beef carpaccio with rocket leaves and parmesan shavings
Grilled medallion of venison with shallots and fresh chanterelles
Paupiette of sole fillet poached in a chardonnay broth, flavoured with fennel and coriander
Pan-roasted of Guinea – Fowl, sautéed foie gras and stuffed red cabbage with oven- dried figs
Lamb Noisette a la tapenade, with cassoulet of summer beans and pommes Parisian
Salmon Galantine rolled with julienne vegetables and anis
(I skipped this one.)
Prime rib of beef with Yorkshire pudding
Roasted smoked chicken breast with pine nut and wheat salad
Grilled salmon fillet with champagne sabayon lump eggs
Roast leg of veal with roasted figues (Is this different than a regular fig? I don't know.)

I sampled most of these and found them satisfactory.

I didn't write down all the desserts. They were all variations on this theme:

Carmelized hazelnut and chocolate mille feuille

I also was convinced to bet on a horse, though a few of you know that I normally prefer to throw away my money at poker. And wouldn't you know it – my horse, an American of course – won! I won the amazing sum of 22 dirhams!

In American dollars, that converts to the tidy sum of… let's see… six bucks.

Horse wear

2005-03-30T02:09:00.000-05:00

As I said Monday, the horses at the Dubai World Cup didn't interest me so much. Here are some more photos of people – and their hats – watching the races.

I did watch the horses for a few seconds.

Go Seabiscuit!

But back to the real action.

Even some of the men were hatted to the nines…

That guy in the hat… that's a dude!!

For God's sake, pull the plug!

2005-03-29T06:34:00.000-05:00

Congress convened late last night to pass an emergency law, which the president then ran to the Oval Office in the nude to sign. I heard.

The law says that every last freaking writer in America must offer his two cents about Terri what's-her-name down in Florida. My God, can't anybody think of something different to write about? The Internet has become as screechy and single-minded about this topic as a crazy streetcorner bum talking to himself. Please, please, change the subject! There's a perfectly interesting celebrity child molestation case going on in California, can't we talk about that? And has anybody checked in on Elian Gonzalez recently?

But elktown will comply with the law. So here is my opinion on Terri: She should be allowed to die in peace, OK? And I'm going to take this opportunity to tell all my loved ones, my friends, and George W. and Jeb Bush -- the entire Bush family, for that matter, including all possible future presidents -- that should I ever find myself in Terri's sad situation, and you are tempted to save me in the name of God and Republicanism, please refrain. Pull the plug!

This is my living will, witnessed by all of you out there in blog land. If I am nonresponsive or comatose... permanently...
pull the plug!

If I am dependent on a feeding tube, breathing tube -- honestly, I'm talking about any sort of permanent tubing here -- pull it!

If I am vegetative, jello-brained, or really, if any part of my body has morphed into anything that can be legitimately compared to food... pull the plug!

If I'm alive and conscious, but have grown bitter or unamusing...
pull the plug!

And if I ever turn evil -- even if I'm perfect health --
pull that plug, baby!

Thank you for your attention. If any notaries are reading this, could you leave a comment below making this official?

Off to the races

2005-03-27T07:44:00.000-05:00

We have one day off per week – Friday – and that gives Saturday morning the feel of a particularly nasty Monday. I woke up this Saturday morning totally unready to start a new week.

But things improved when I got to work and saw that my afternoon schedule was cleared. I finished at 3pm and immediately headed off for a shisha. Just as the buzz was settling in, my phone rang, and it was my boss. This is almost never a good thing. The buzz started to evaporate.

But my streak of Saturday luck was actually just getting started. The boss offered me – for no apparent reason – a free ticket to the Dubai World Cup, the world's richest horse race.

Liz, I should have paid more attention when you tried to teach me about horse racing, that time we watched the Kentucky Derby a couple of years ago. I was seated at an extremely fancy table with a bunch of advertising execs/horse racing gurus, and I dared not open my mouth, except to sip the free champagne.

So, instead of floundering in the horse-related aspects of the evening, I focused on something I found much more interesting: the beautiful, freakish hats the women wore. As some of you may know, I'm not exactly in the polo set. So the subculture of rich people and their spectacular hatwear meant nothing more to me than a scene I vaguely remembered from Pretty Woman.
But this hat thing is real, people.

This is Nicole, owner of the evening's most beautiful hat. I was watching her for a while, then suddenly she came and sat down at my table. I told her how much I liked her hat, and in her response, she turned out to have the evening's most beautiful accent, too. "Well, aren't you raaahhther chaaahhming," she said. Her voice was the balancing point between pretentious upper-crust and Cockney. South of England, she said.

Here's a different version of the same hat. It's less successful, in my opinion:

I call her Dangly Sue.

This is the Cat in the Hat. She practically begged to pose for a photograph.

This is Jumeirah Jane, one of Dubai's most famous archetypes. Jumeirah is a neighborhood – Dubai's "good neighborhood" – a beachfront paradise of palm trees and fabulous villas. Every western expat except me lives there.

Jumeirah Jane is the rich, bored, western housewife whose husband works 130 hours a week at the bank or the oil company or wherever. She fills her days with shopping and grooming and Danielle Steele novels. It's a joke that everybody here understands, and that's why I was so surprised and excited to actually see Jumeirah Jane entering the racetrack. Look at her shopping bags, her antler-esque hat, the way she is thrusting her ticket at the lowly ticket boy. Snapping this photo was like catching a glimpse of the Loch Ness Monster.

That is not meant as a put down of either Jumeirah Jane or the Loch Ness Monster.

Sad news with a silver lining

2005-03-25T02:56:00.000-05:00

I don't know if it was news in the U.S., but several days ago an Egyptian, possibly tied to Al Qaeda but probably not, blew up a car bomb in Doha, Qatar. One man died and twelve were injured. This was important to me for a couple of reasons.

First, I was in Doha about three weeks ago. The suicide bomber attacked a theatre where Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was showing to a packed house.

Second, the man who was killed, Jonathan Adams of Britain, was the director of the play and an expat living in Doha. He was a teacher at an English school in Doha, and only a few years ago he taught at a similar school in Dubai. In fact, one of my current students actually knew him, took a drama class from him.

I'm a teacher; I've directed plays. I feel like I understand this guy. He was watching the play he directed, sitting next to his wife, and when he heard a noise backstage, he went to check it out. Then a suicide bomber blew him up.

This is a very ugly story, but there is a silver lining. The next day, Qataris turned out in large numbers -- thousands, maybe -- near the site of the bombing to protest terrorism. According to the British Globe and Mail newspaper, banners at the demonstration read "Western expatriates we love you. Your security is our concern."

"'We love all Westerners and we don't want this to happen again in our country,' said Khalifa al-Tamimi, an employee of state-owned Qatar Petroleum. 'Whoever did this is illiterate and uncivilized. Surely this is not the work of Qatari people.'"

This rally was organized by the government, for the purpose of reassuring western wallets that they will continue to be safe in the Gulf region. Dubai's rulers would have done the same. But the sentiment among the people was genuine, I'm sure of it. Dubai reminds me of New York in the way that people have generally come to accept -- even value -- the almost radical diversity of the place. Westerners, even Americans, feel welcome here, at least so it seems to me. This is the sort of mindset that will need to become dominant in the Middle East if we're going to win the "War on Terror." But maybe it will, in the long run... I was really encouraged to read about the big rally in Doha.

Congratulations on your new job, Kelly Anne!

2005-03-24T04:54:00.000-05:00

Don't be alarmed. I'm pretty sure the dust is harmless.

You can find other 'good luck' images here.

Dubai will buy and sell you

2005-03-24T03:53:00.000-05:00

But first, they've bought London's famous wax museum, mentioned on this site a month ago as the home of the unfortunate "Brad and Jen" sculpture that had to be brutally chopped apart.

Well, now Dubai owns Brad and Jen and everybody else, and I think it's quite clear why. Imagine Dubai's leaders: a bunch of old men, filthy rich and terribly repressed sexually. Now read this sentence: "[The wax museum] hit the headlines in 2003 after unveiling a new model of Britney Spears, equipped with heaving breasts that beat in time to music."

That sentence -- and much more! -- available on the Internet. This information arrived via an anonymous tip to elktown. Thank you Deep Throat.

News roundup

2005-03-22T06:21:00.000-05:00

Headlines from the Middle East and around the world

And here are today's top stories. First, of particular interest to Kansans:

UAE to negotiate free trade deal with Oz.*
Bible Bashers arrested in Dubai for passing out Bibles. Actually, I think this is a mix-up. These people -- jailed here for 12 days -- were passing out the Bible because they love the Bible, not because they want to Bash it. I think the correct terminology here is "Bible Thumpers."
Name of Dubai's ruling sheikh misspelled on a prominent sign inside Dubai's World Trade Center. No word yet on how dead is the guy who screwed that up.
Camel milk chocolate on the way to market. I've had camel milk, people. If you own stock in camel milk chocolate: sell.

And finally, from the homeland:

Satan possesses turtle, burns down pet shop. So things are exciting as always in Indiana. Ironically, the demonic turtle's name was Lucky. Lucky was unscathed by the fire, perhaps because he is evil incarnate and is thus impervious to flame. This theory is bolstered by the article's chilling conclusion: "Turtles can hold their breath quite awhile," Dora said. "He may have taken one breath just before and held it through the fire. Except that the fire went on and on for hours."

Thank you Tim for forwarding this. For you skeptics, here is the irrefutable evidence:

* This is real. Check it out for yourself.

More adventures with the Chechen

2005-03-22T06:04:00.000-05:00

M usually takes the initiative in our class from the moment I walk in the door. Most days he's burning to grill me on some point of language -- God, I love this kid -- and such days always begin with, "Eric, may I say you question?"

My favorite was this one: "Eric, what does it mean, 'Fire in... the hole'?"

My first thought, for the fleetest of seconds, was that 15-year-old M was somehow a veteran of some monstrous streetfight in Grozny before he escaped, hurling Molotov cocktails at Russian tanks before diving into a sewer pipe, or something.

The truth, of course, is that M loves video games -- lives for them, really. His desire to explain to me the fine points of WarHammer 40,000 and Half-Life 2: Counter-strike form the basis of our study of English, in fact, and I'm not sure how I would fill ten hours a week without such halting (but fascinating) conversation.

(Once we were reading a book and a character appeared named Roger. "Eric, may I say you question? What does it mean, 'Roger that?' What does it mean, 'affirmative?'" The old cliche is that a generation of kids learned English watching John Wayne movies. I think we may have stumbled on the new cliche.)

So, evidently the digital soldiers of Half-Life 2: Counter-strike yell "Fire in the hole!" before launching their proton grenades and laser boomerangs and so forth. Now, let's be honest: I'm a nerd about both video games and the history of language. So I spent ten minutes explaining (with illustrations, of course) the origin of "Fire in the hole" -- my understanding is that it was a term miners used to warn each other, before evolving into a generalized warning of impending explosion. M seemed to agree that his video game pals usually used the phrase just prior to something blowing up. Learning the shop talk seemed really to thrill him.

The funny part was his original interpretation of "Fire in the hole." In the Chechen language, the words "fire in the hole" apparently sound like "garlic on your belt." When the little soldiers shouted that at each other, M thought the garlic might be some strange American weapon, like it was in the "Blade" vampire movies.*

* And don't tell me it's farfetched. You know Batman had shit like that on his belt.

Gary Porter and the Chechen Boy

2005-03-21T02:14:00.000-05:00

My favorite student is a Russian-speaking Chechen boy whom I tutor for two hours every day in English. I absolutely love this kid. These two hours are the highlight of my day, every day.

The British textbook we use is lame, so we have to improvise. We're supposed to say things to each other like:

"How much is a hamburger and chips?"
"It's 3 pounds 50p. Would you like some tea?"
"Cheers."

Well, I'll be damned if I'm going to let him talk like that. So instead we make up characters to sit at all the empty desks and ask each other questions about these imaginary friends. Personal details are heavily influenced by the student's (call him "M") favorite hobby.

Eric: Who's that over there? (points at empty chair)
M: Bob.
Eric: What's Bob's last name?
M: Half-Life 2: Counter Strike.

So today, in addition to Bob Half-Life 2: Counter Strike, we were joined by Jim ("Jeem"), an out-of-work Spanish teacher living in L.A., and Tim ("Teem") a plastic surgeon from Las Vegas who plays with his sons in his spare time.

In the fourth chair sat "Gary."

Eric: What's Gary's last name?
M: Him last name "Porter."
Eric: "His"
M: His name Gary Porter.
Eric: "is"
M: Him name is Gary Porter.

And so on.

Eric: What's Gary's job?
M: Magic man.
Eric: Interesting.
M: Yes.
Eric: What languages does he speak?
M: He speak English only. But -- (mimes tapping wand against head) -- plink, now Franch. Now Germany.
Eric: Nice.

Eric: Where does Gary live?
M: He live London, but school in magic world house, something.
Eric:
M: Him train, palace.
Eric: Hmmmm.

Eric: Does Gary have family? (These are the standard questions.)
M: He have parents, but them dead. Them killed with... Bad... Magic Boy.

M is grinning. Something is itching at my brain here.

M: Eric, you know Gary! You heerd him.
Eric: I don't think so.
M: Magical man! (mimes making pen disappear, pulling coin out of ear)

Damn, is this a famous magician I haven't heard of? Let's see... there's Doug Henning... and that guy who lived in a cage above London... ah yes, must be that guy.

M: Eric, Gary Porter!

When the answer hit me, I was standing at the board. I laughed so hard I had to sit down. If it hasn't hit you yet, consider the fact that Russian speakers tend to get their "g's" and their "h's" mixed up...

Gulls Two

2005-03-18T06:05:00.000-05:00

The trick to gull photography is going where there are hundreds of gulls flying around, pointing your camera in that general direction, and shooting photos until your index finger goes limp.

I don't want to be immodest here, but you should know the truth. About fifteen minutes into the photo shoot, I made an astonishing – perhaps revolutionary – breakthrough in the science of gull photography. More birds means more photos, I realized. I needed to steal the gulls away from the other, less Type-A tourists. The solution was popcorn, which I immediately purchased and started throwing. It worked – the gulls abandoned the others and swarmed me. Ah, sweet success.

But just like Da Vinci and Edison before me, I soon understood that such light-speed progress brings problems of its own. It's very difficult to throw popcorn and snap pictures at the same time, especially when the popcorn is sold in a conical container that narrows to a point at the bottom, and thus will not sit quietly on the railing.

Salvation came in the form of a Lebanese couple, both doctors, who saw me bumbling between my camera and the popcorn and took pity. Soon the doctors were enthusiastically lofting popcorn and I was snapping away. We continued that way for what might have been a half-hour.

An epochal length of time stretches between the twitch of your finger and the click of the shutter. A bird could fly the length of a school bus in that lazy moment. So there's no aiming for gulls. You shoot at the air, and the gulls swoop down and pose, or they don't. In about 80% of shots, they don't. These are the other 20%.

Enlarge this one. The gull on the far right is looking at me. He's on to me!

There's the popcorn.

Creek all week

2005-03-18T06:02:00.000-05:00

A month or so ago, I took a stroll along Dubai's creek. It's a river-like piece of water, though it's really just a jutting inlet of the Persian Gulf. I got enough decent pictures to fill up a week on this website.

Each day I'll post some more. Because there are quite a few – I mean really, there are a lot – I'm going to set the main page to post only one day at a time. Otherwise it will load so slowly, it would be quicker for you to just fly here and see the Creek yourself. So if you haven't checked the site every day – and yes, you are forgiven for that – be sure to check out the list of posts on the right side of the screen.

Every picture here is clickable for a bigger view. Best thing to do is right-click the picture and select "Open in New Window." Some of these are, by far, my favorite photos I've taken since I got here.

Gulls One

2005-03-17T06:05:00.000-05:00

The rest of my Creek pictures are of one subject: the lovely hovering gulls along the creekside.

First, let me pull back the curtain for one second. The selection of photographs on this website is heavily edited. For every picture I post here, there are about four or so that I trash – sometimes more. It's sort of sad when you think about it… such torrential editing should mean that the remaining photos are really something special, and this is plainly not the case. Oh well. As Scott so eloquently said, your alternative is the Burger King. That still cracks me up, Scott!

Anyway, usually I'm cutting photos left and right. So, you will soon be asking yourself, why the hell am I posting 25 photos on a single topic, each almost precisely like the last? Let's just answer that with total honesty: I love these pictures so much that I simply decided to temporarily abandon my function as editor. F*©& it, I said to myself. I'm posting themall.

I swear, I think I was a bird in a previous life. I can't watch most sports games on TV for more than thirty seconds without getting bored, but I could have watched these gulls fly all day long. All that swooping around... it just looks like so much fun!

No one ever loved life more than I do. But I could give it all up to be a bird again.

Tomorrow… more cowbell. So to speak.

On the water

2005-03-16T06:05:00.000-05:00

When it got dark, the Creekside emptied. I paid a boater a few bucks to boat me around for a while. He offered me some fried nuggets, then put his jacket over his head, like this:

What was in the nuggets? I do not know. They were spicy, very spicy nuggets.

This was our view as we pulled off the bank:

The water-level view gave a better perspective on some of the buildings, including the Pregnant Lady. Many of these pictures are blurry. Staying absolutely still is harder than you would think on a boat rocking greasily to and fro.

You have certain moments where it hits you all over again how far away you are. I started to feel that sense of surreality, giddy and strange, towards the end of the boat ride. These next photos – not the photos, but actually seeing these things – seemed especially otherworldly to me that evening:

Creek folk

2005-03-15T06:05:00.000-05:00

The western bank of the Creek hosted all sorts of characters, including the Thinker…

…and the Boat Maker.

In fact all sorts of craftsmen were working. These boat makers are Omanis (you can tell by their caps, and their love of boats).

This guy was Palestinian:

And this one was Egyptian:

I bought some Syrian glass that looks like this:

People played with their babies…

…and watched the birds.

In the photo below, the couple on the left was Lebanese. They later helped me with my own bird photography adventures. More on that… Thursday.

Creek architecture

2005-03-14T06:01:00.000-05:00

They call this one "The Pregnant Lady."

The Rolex buildings…

…in the sun.

A mosque in the Iranian style. A little Iranian village abuts the Creek here. It's one of the oldest things in Dubai.

Tapestry show

2005-03-11T07:46:00.000-05:00

A tapestry show rolled through town for one day. Nobody was there but me and some French tapestry weavers, though I heard a bunch of the ruling sheikhs were there earlier in the day. These tapestries were absolutely gorgeous. Sadly, my camera ran out of batteries and I only took four pictures.

This one is my second-favorite, and the best one I got a photo of. I met the artist, a refined French gentleman. This one is clickable for a bigger view.

I didn't get a photo of the best one. It was the size of a small movie screen, a depiction of rearing Arabian horses in gold, white and silver. When you looked closely, every image was composed of ornate Arabic script from the Koran. It was unbelievably beautiful. And only $500,000.

You know you're in the American school

2005-03-10T04:31:00.000-05:00

Walking into the American School of Dubai (ASD) is disorienting. It was 16 hours of travel to get to this country, and you take just a few steps and you're back in the USA.

There's just something very American about the design of ASD. The giant track and soccer fields out front, with freshly cut grass – a rarity in this sand city. The poster-bedecked classrooms. The shininess. It's all very comforting, if a little strange too.

But the American-ness of the place runs deeper, right through the personalities of the students. My students at ASD are not all Americans by birth – in fact, most aren't – but they are so American in their attitudes. They're more world-weary, a little less deferential (they don’t call me "sir," like all my other students). They're very good students, and I like them. But it's there – in the way they dress, the way they talk, the way they sit. You can feel a different culture at work in the seams of the class.

Here's my favorite example. I teach a math problem about a girl named Clare, who is six years younger than her brother Adam. How old will Adam be in three years? C-3? C+6?

Our strategy is to make up an age for Clare. "How old should we make Clare?" I ask. Kids almost always say "10," and the ASD class was no different. So we worked through the problem. Adam will be 19 in three years, or C+9. No problem.

I've got a kid in that class named Ray, pitcher for the ASD Indians baseball team (whose logo is a direct and charming rip-off of the Cleveland Indians). As we finish the Clare problem and start to move on, Ray mutters, under his breath but loud enough for everyone to hear, "We should have made Clare 18."

You'd sooner see pigs soaring gracefully through the blue sky than you'd hear such a comment in a class of Middle Eastern kids. I was, quite honestly, shocked. I seem to have become a delicate rose of sensitivity in my ten weeks here. I'll need emergency coarsening when I return. Save me a seat at the poker table.

ELKTOWN: Our Mission

2005-03-09T03:36:00.000-05:00

My dad was right on target when he said elktown needs a Mission Statement. So, with material suggested by several readers -- though primarily, I suspect, Scott -- here is our new Mission Statement:

"The goal of ELKTOWN is to provide you with a complete, accurate and comprehensive portrayal of daily life in Dubai, and throughout the United Arab Emirates and greater Middle East. If, at any time, you are not satisfied with the materials contained herein, then you should have bought your own ticket to Dubai instead of eating all of those unsatisfying meals at the Burger King."

The Mission Statement is totally revisable, so feel free to suggest additions! Also, we somehow need to work in the tag line: "For all your cowbell needs. ELKTOWN: Now with 35% more cowbell." Flacks, budding lawyers, and budget analysts, I need your expertise. Any suggestions?

America where are you?

2005-03-08T13:11:00.000-05:00

An alert elktown reader asked a very good question: Where was the American pavilion?

Well, reader, the U.S. couldn't be bothered to set up a little booth. I don't know whether it was on orders from GWB himself, or whether we're just naturally assholes about this sort of thing, but I think we decided we were not obligated to show up just because every other country in the world found the time.

I mean, come on, even Canada was representing, and frankly that makes us look like shit. Even little Nepal set up shop, though their thing burned down.

On the other hand -- in fairness to my home country -- half the city is already the American pavilion. If every McDonald's, Starbucks, Subway, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Kenny Rogers' Roasters, KFC, Dunkin' Donuts, Baskin Robbins and Cinnabon count as American participation, then we're participating the f@$k out of this thing.

Mission Statement: ELKTOWN

2005-03-08T01:51:00.000-05:00

This website needs a mission statement. Anybody got any suggestions? Comment below.

All the pretty horses

2005-03-08T00:37:00.000-05:00

In honor of Jen M. taking the bar exam, let's have a horse show.

There are full-size versions of these Arabian steeds spread around the city, in the manner of the Kansas City cows a few years ago, or the DC elephants and donkeys. I'll try to get some photos of these too. Which one is your favorite, Jen? I like the second one, in the blue and green.

More technical difficulties

2005-03-07T11:20:00.000-05:00

The web host where I stashed all elktown's photos (following the censorship kerfuffle a couple months ago) seems to be in slow-motion meltdown. It's run by a guy named "Vlad" -- and let's be honest, that's a red flag -- and Vlad seems to be losing control of his servers. Possibly they are going haywire a la HAL 9000.

In any case, the pictures are blinking out all over elktown. I'm transferring them over to a new host, but it takes a little time.

So if you see blank photos in the archives, bear with me. Customer service is our #1 priority here at elktown.

I go to Iraq

2005-03-07T02:23:00.000-05:00

I am welcomed by this man:

And this woman.

The entrance to Iraq:

And right next door… Russia!

This is Dubai's Global Village, a sort of Disney-World-Pavilion-Meets-QVC. Every country puts up its own little station, where it sells its local foods, crafts, and in the case of Japan, little statues of the Eiffel Tower. For example, in the Russia building you find precious tchotchkes like:

and

It's the ultimate in the "under one roof" retail concept:

Dolls and ceremonial knives. Bring the whole family!

Other countries included:

Kenya!

Japan!

Germany!

Somewhat disturbingly, Germany, Japan and Italy were all clustered together at the entrance to the park. I half expected the France and Poland pavilions to be smoking rubble.

Australia!

Egypt!

Morocco.

This photo of Morocco Sleepy Head will stand in for Morocco's façade, which sucked.

Sri Lanka!

Britain!

What the hell is the guy doing to that cow?

A few random thoughts from Global Village

2005-03-07T02:22:00.000-05:00

Would you buy a beverage with this name?

This painting has it all: chess, passion, geometry and ghoulish skulls. Tim, I almost bought it for you as a wedding present.

I miss The Daily Show so much

2005-03-05T04:32:00.000-05:00

Here's a great article about it.

The Gulf

2005-03-03T02:26:00.000-05:00

I was teaching my English class the other day, and I made a comment about the "Persian Gulf." Then I remembered that over here, they call it the "Arabian Gulf." So I said, "uhh... I mean, the 'Arabian Gulf'."

But it turns out only the Emirati locals call it the "Arabian Gulf." In that moment before I corrected myself, I failed to realize that three kids in my class are actually Persian and several more are Egyptian/Lebanese/assorted other. This group begged to differ.

"What do you mean, 'Arabian Gulf?'" they said, practically in unison. "It's 'Persian Gulf'." Eyes instantly widened beneath headscarves on the Arab side of the room. "Arabian Gulf!" one shouted.

This situation was so obviously fraught that even I could feel it going off the rails. I did what I always do in this sort of jam: I started drawing stupid pictures on the board.

It was a picture of England and France, represented by two blobs. In between them I drew little waves and a fish that looked slightly less real than the fish bumper sticker on the back of cars. "Do you know what the English call this water?" I said.

They didn't.

"The English Channel! And guess what the French call it?"

Actually, they call it "The Sleeve," but lying suited my purposes better, so I lied. "They call it the French Channel! Ha, ha!"

The class loved it. They're exuberant kids; that's what I love best about them. If you tell an even mildly funny joke, they roar in a way that American high schoolers wouldn't be caught dead doing. All together they laughed and pointed their fingers and said, "That's so stupid, England and France!" The Gulf was forgotten.

I think only one quiet kid saw the irony.

Wafi City

2005-03-02T06:07:00.000-05:00

Behold! The beautiful mysteries of the ancients!

And coming soon, at the foot of this ancient goddess…

A Calvin Klein outlet, for your retailing convenience.

Welcome to Wafi City, Dubai's most shi-shi mall, where the distant past and the modern day collide in a way that makes you want to cry. The entire mall is based on this Egyptian style. It's really quite wonderful – where else can you get a relaxing avocado face treatment at Cleopatra's Spa, followed by a cool drink at the Pharaoh's Club, followed by a chicken fingers platter beneath Sylvester Stallone's sweaty leather jacket at Planet Hollywood?

Fierce dogs guard the entrance. The Grand Hyatt – a 700-room behemoth that spells out "Dubai" in Arabic when viewed from above – is seen in the background.

Imagine the quality of the merchandise guarded by these fellas!

These would be lovely, shrunken down and sitting on my desk. As the roof of a mall, they're harder to define. I don't know whether to be inspired or appalled.

This is actually the pyramid-and-eye depicted on the back of the dollar bill. The Founding Fathers anticipated this mall as the eventual pinnacle of capitalism. Dollars travel thousands of miles here to spawn, like fish in the ocean.

A brief rest between spending sprees.

Bollywood

2005-02-28T06:42:00.000-05:00

"Bollywood" means Indian movies. It rhymes with "Hollywood," get it?

Evidently India churns out movies faster than Medicare churns out policy corrections. (For those of you out of the Medicare loop, that's very, very fast.) 1,000 movies a year, they say. That works out to roughly three movies a day, according to my space-age calculator. While that might seem impossible, I have to vouch for it: The Indian movie theater next to my office shows three movies at a time, and they change the lineup every day.

How on earth can they make so many movies? The answer is that they do exactly what Hollywood does: They make the same movie over and over. I love looking at the billboards for these movies as they come and go. The Hindi titles are meaningless to me, and yet it's so painfully obvious what each movie is about. Here's what I mean:

"Shaadi Karke Phasgaya Yaar": Sweetheart girl-next-door falls for dangerous guy who doesn't play by the rules!

"Elaan": Group of hot young devil-may-care warriors battles evil super genius!

"Swades": One charismatic teacher refuses to give up on disadvantaged students/sports team/prison group!

Also, just so you know, Bollywood is just the tip of the iceberg. There's Tollywood (Tehran) and Lollywood (Lahore, Pakistan). And of course, Dubai is aspiring to be Dollywood. Google even informs me that there is a Mollywood and a Kollywood, but honestly, I think they're only doing it to seem cool, like Tehran.

Federer

2005-02-25T04:49:00.000-05:00

I saw Roger Federer, the top player in the world, play J.C. Ferrero -- the top player until he hurt himself a couple years back -- in the quarterfinals last night. I had never seen live tennis before, and I don't expect ever to see a better match again.

Federer came out to a huge ovation but immediately started playing like crap, losing the first set decisively. The crowd, though always polite, turned against him surprisingly quickly. But Ferrero seemed to crumble in the second set, losing it even more decisively. Ferrero couldn't stop hitting the ball into the net.

The third (and final) set was a battle royale, full of botched calls, impossibly long rallies and ground strokes so fast I couldn't even see the ball. It went into a tiebreaker in which the lead changed hands at least three times. Finally, Federer won 7-5. I wouldn't have believed a one-handed backhand like that was possible.

My camera doesn't have a fast shutter speed, so these pictures are blurry as hell. But I guess you can go to ESPN.com for good sports photography. Consider these... impressionist images of the world's top player in action.

Tennis at the Burj

2005-02-23T23:59:00.000-05:00

Remember the Burj? Here's another picture to refresh your memory:

See the part that looks like the old Starship Enterprise, jutting out from the top? That's the helipad. But when necessary, it can be converted to other uses, such as when Roger Federer and Andre Agassi are in town:

Photo credit: Getty Images, whatever that is.

Notice that there is no fence or barrier between them and the ground. Don't chase after those balls too far, fellas.

I'm going to see the Dubai Men's Open quarterfinals tonight and tomorrow. Please, please, please let me see Federer or Agassi...

The Glittery Camel

2005-02-23T05:14:00.000-05:00

The glittery camel.

The glittery camel with flash. How he glitters!

Glittery camel gazes nobly at the flag.

Close-up on the glittery camel.

My Oscar picks

2005-02-21T12:37:00.000-05:00

Step aside, Academy. The results are in.

My Oscar picks:

Best Picture: "Million Dollar Baby" (should win: "Sideways")
Best Actor: Jamie Foxx (should have been nominated: Paul Giamatti)
Best Actress: Annette Bening
Best Supporting Actor: Morgan Freeman
Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett
Best Director: Martin Scorsese (should win: "Sideways")

Anybody disagree? Post below.