The Ladies II

I was invited to a Bedouin wedding on the first evening of the year at the Four Seasons. In the ever-confounding conundrum of fashion options, I was grateful not to be blonde and chose black, low-slung tuxedo pants and heels and gave slightly more attention to makeup, hoping for the best. The only things I could predict were the absence of champagne, men, and an evening that would be over-the-top in typical Arab excess and generosity.

Upon arrival, the Concierge directed me to a red carpet to a side hall that I had noticed when I entered the lobby. I entered without my invitation, and was asked to turn over my phone to ensure that no photographs would be taken. I pretended not to understand as my boss was getting off a 14-hour flight and joining me later and I needed the phone. I saw the coat room was filled with some of the most embellished abayas I have seen to date as I made my way to the the receiving line. At the head of the line was the mother of the groom, the woman who had invited me, dressed in a silk strapless gown, with beautifully coiffed hair I had never seen before as I've only known her in an abaya. As I kissed her on each cheek like a European, I realized I should have stayed on one side for the multiple kiss greeting. I was introduce to my host's daughters who were equally in spectacular gowns, hairstyles, jewels and henna applications. As I made my way down the line, the help working the wedding were censing us with frankincense and wiping reeds dipped in luxurious oils on my wrist.

I found an Indian colleague from Kerala dressed in a sari and we took seats on the periphery, between huge speakers that were already blaring and making it a challenge to hear her despite leaning into one another to speak. Once seated, there was much to absorb in a room of 400+ women.

A wedding is where a single Arab woman has an opportunity to flaunt her suitability as a future daughter-in-law to mothers of single men in attendance. The front of the room had an ornately decorated stage with at least a dozen flower arrangements in urns and a boudoir-like sofa covered in white rosebuds against a wall of orchid arrangements. Perpendicular to the stage was a runway that created a T-junction for the wedding ritual and ceremony.

I think when the receiving line duties ended, the music got louder and a parade of younger women in very fashionable, expensive gowns ascended the runway and danced while bills were thrown at them - literally, the married women seemed to be throwing money at them. By then I realized that just about every woman was exhibiting elaborate henna applications starting at the fingertips and running up the hands, arms, shoulders and running across the top of the back, suggesting hours and maybe days of preparation when taking hair and makeup into account. The bolder and more elaborate the henna on the hands, the bolder and bigger the baubles on display.

With no men permitted in the room, the staff working the wedding were all East Asian women including the photographers, videographers, sound person, waitstaff, coat check, and the unfortunate souls crouched on the margins of the runway all night scooping up money into shopping bags. There were about a half-dozen presentation trays of savories, pastries, beautifully wrapped chocolate truffles and pralines, dates, and miniature fruit made out of marzipan accompanied by Arabian coffee, tea, juice, avocado smoothies circling each table for four hours. It took two persons to carry the bountiful trays. If that wasn't enough or of interest, on the table were bowls of mixed nuts, Jordan almonds and more savory pastries and miniature sandwiches. I didn't know how long this would continue and paced myself to sample just a few things but always taking something.

After about an hour of the single ladies dancing under the money by boss slid into her chair with no evidence of having just completed a trans-Atlantic journey crossing eight time zones over the course of the evening and next day; she was equally thrilled to participate in her first Bedouin wedding and luckily didn't have to call me as I would have never heard the phone ring.

The procession on the runway evidently shifted from the eligible ladies to the families being joined in marriage as my host was on the runway with her daughters. I noticed that she reached into a beautiful clutch to throw bills at the previous groups on the runway and her wrist action seemed to have perfected a now-patented toss, much like the royals are taught to wave. I kept wondering where the bride was and if the collected bills were redistributed for more throwing to satisfy a ritual. My host seemed to alternate carrying her clutch and ascending the runway with a big smile and a toss of a pile of bills and carrying a bigger Chanel bag that was more of a satchel. After a while it seemed that these ladies were throwing original bills and there was no recycling taking place. I was later told that sometimes the cash collected at a wedding is given to charity.

The room got quiet, an announcement was made and the doors flung open to reveal the young bride, wearing an ornate white gown with an equally ornate white hood covering her face. She very slowly walked into the room, ascended the runway and eventually took her spot on the rosebud sofa; a journey about 10 meters in length that took about 30 minutes to complete, all under the most frenzied tossing of money yet. Lots of kissing and well-wishing throughout the procession and the videographer training a zoom lens on the quivering bride's face, displayed on big screens at either side of her stage. I don't remember exactly when they took her hood off but her shoulders and the top of her back revealed exquisite patterns of dark brown henna that had to have taken more than a day to apply.

Once seated on her rosebud sofa, the bride was photographed for about an hour in all kinds of poses with more parading on the runway by guests and family members congratulating the moment with more cash throwing. After a while, she seemed to breakdown in tears; we couldn't guess if she was exhausted from all the preparations or overwhelmed by the ritual and this milestone moment. What must have been her mother and aunts thrust their thumbs and index fingers at the corners of her mouth to force the smiles while the photos with the family members were taken.

The photographs stopped and I had noticed a lot of traffic in the room that had otherwise been focused on the runway raining money. We then noticed that the abayas were all back on except for the groom's family. This meant that the groom and his father, elders and brothers were entering the room. Sure enough, the doors flung open again and there was the bridegroom. As they ascended the runway, I think they were flanked by the women in the family, the only ones in the room still exhibiting their strapless gowns and henna work. The money continued to fly in a frenzy over this party and now our host was holding the Chanel satchel, not the clutch. When the bride and groom were joined on the stage with the rosebud sofa, the rings were exchanged, each offered by the corresponding parent and then they were married. No kiss. No Imam. No blessing where heads bowed in unison.

More pictures and then the side doors flung open to a huge banquet of fish, lamb couscous, chicken kabobs, pasta, salad, Arab mezze and three tables of dessert and pastries; it was 11:30pm.

Then the cake. The bride and groom cut a cake on the stage and then the help distributed individual ornate miniature cakes, about 10cm in diameter with decorative yellow marzipan frosting. On our way out at about 1am, we thanked the groom's mother who told us the happy couple was indeed happy as they were in love and not agreeing to an arranged marriage. Near the coat check station, there was a photo studio set up with a smaller couch and an ornate back-screen where a young girl was being photographed, mimicking the poses the bride had made during her photo shoot. We asked our host to pose with us and we did a group shot, that she cannot give us at the office as she is not wearing her abaya in it and cannot risk that a male colleague will view it.

A cultural feast to launch the new year indeed. I've reached into my 3-week memory bank to transcribe the event at 40,000 feet over Turkey and Eastern Europe as I go to Paris for a week. It's glorious weather in the Gulf right now so traipsing through freezing rain, albeit in the City of Lights, does not have the appeal that a week in London in early November had. My boss and I got off that 7 hour flight and went straight to Harrod's; I'm going straight to the hair salon this time.

Pearl of the Desert

Christmas was an interesting non-event. A mass of ex-pats jumped on planes to make it home to big snowstorms in Europe and the US while some of us stayed in town to hold down the fort with an eye to adventure travel in the near future.

I decided to host a small dinner party on Christmas Eve, although nothing about the dinner was particularly Christmas-like (except the cocktail napkins), much to the surprise (and perhaps disappointment) of my guests. I served salmon with a fennel reduction over black linguini which isn't offered in any restaurant here so I think the lack of a Christmas goose, egg nog or decorated sugar cookies was excused. At the table was an American, a German, a Pakistani, an Iranian and me. I wanted to invite some local male colleagues with their wives but after learning that the spouses know as much English as I know Arabic, I couldn't extend the invitation.

One of the interesting things to note when one moves overseas is the choice of "essential" things that "must" go into the luggage. I probably brought too much because I cringed at the idea of having to look for things I already owned and pay a lot more money for lower quality or comparable examples. One of the items that had to come with me were my antique sterling fish fork and knife set. When visiting Hamburg, Germany about a decade ago, a friend taught me how to eat fresh fish properly with these implements; my initial attempts were met with a look of disdain, much like that of an Asian demonstrating their nimbleness with chopsticks to a western rogue. I decided to serve salmon because I wanted to set the table with my widely-traveled fish implements. That's when my inner Mrs. Dalloway kicked in.

Despite only being in my furnished apartment less than two months, I found myself on a mission to set a proper table for this small dinner. Some of the standard-issue kitchen items in the apartment were unacceptable so I had to find proper wine glasses, chargers (since I couldn't find a decent placemat), linen napkins, coasters, candlesticks, dripless candles... this was a small dinner but it's preparation was a huge sourcing exercise, especially in a culture where BIG, ORNATE and COLOR inform the product development; it seemed an impossibility to find unscented, plain white pillar, votive and taper candles..."less is more" is not a sensibility here.

Christmas Day was gorgeous...beautiful sunny weather. I went to a spa with a colleague to indulge in a frankincense facial, a nod to the Three Kings, which was as close as I got to acknowledging the holiday (except for the cards I sent mid-month for the first time in 10 years). We arrived early and enjoyed the overly-designed lobby in the hotel with a coffee. After a brief wait in another gargantuan lobby at the spa, we were each taken to equally huge treatment rooms with Arabian-inspired decor and a bell outside each door. The petite, Thai facialist with flawless, porcelain skin described the treatment I was about to receive in enthusiastic broken English and when I asked her if she used the products to achieve her gorgeous skin, she answered "No. Yoga." Christmas indeed!

Over the next 90 minutes, while I lied on a table and she slathered a wide range of fragrant botanical products containing frankincense and Moroccan rose on my face, I conjured up an award-winning barter...this delicate creature charged with cleansing my pores is an incredible athlete, walking along the water at 5am and practicing yoga for 2 hours thereafter. She needs a proper space to practice Hatha and I need a private teacher. As luck would have it, she lives within walking distance of my apartment so I came home and arranged for all the furniture in a 3rd unused bedroom to be removed and it will soon be my "no excuses" sanctuary for daily practice with a certified pretzel.

Frankincense has a fascinating ancient history - called the pearls of the Arabian desert, milky-white droplets of resin are found under the cut bark of the boswellia sacra tree, which is indigenous to the peninsula. For more than 4000 years, the fragrant white smoke of frankincense has scented Sumerian temples as the perfumed smoke was revered for taking the peoples' prayers to the gods; frankincense was presented on the 12th night to Jesus because it symbolized divinity; the Roman historian Pliny described it a "silver incense;" Alexander the Great was plotting an invasion of Southern Arabia to control the trade at the point of origin and only his death stopped him. The incense I noticed throughout the offices upon arrival is frankincense, burned in censers to purify and protect against evil spirits.

Frankincense was censed in the receiving line of a Bedouin wedding I attended New Year's Day evening...stay tuned for that tale.