Majlis - The Boys II

Eighteen months ago I generated an entry called "The Boys," from a tourist's perspective. After more than two years here, my appreciation, respect, and admiration for the locals is firmly latched onto an indefinite positive slope. The trajectory of anyone's experience living and working abroad would hopefully be configured as such.

Last night, my boss and myself were invited to a majlis with four colleagues from Paris working on our project. The Arab Gulf social order is very much segmented by gender and the majlis is the revered space for men to gather for many purposes. The urban majlis is filled with large formal armchairs and brightly lit with rugs. The head of the majlis has a group of family members, neighbors and others linked by business or other ties that meet regularly to drink coffee and tea and smoke while discussing any number of topics. In Islamic architecture, the entrance of a home is the majlis for the men and the upstairs is the harem for the women with ornate screens that does not permit one to view who is in the harem and what is taking place there.

This particular majlis belongs to a local who breeds and races camels and who also collects salukis (the Arabian hound) and falcons. The majlis is a 3-sided tent with rugs and back-rest lining the space with a special corner allocated for the falcons on their posts. There's a pit at the entrance with a fire keeping coffee and tea hot in brass and aluminum kettles. We arrived after an 80-minute drive after dusk due to some logistics complications in town and were shown the pens with the camels. The females are separated from the males. Camel breeders keep a majority of females so there and a half-dozen or less males as the stud factory. We met a new mother whose udder was wrapped to prevent her baby from eating all day and night. We met a pregnant camel who is due in a month in a separate pen. The males are kept in compartmentalized pens about 20 meters away from the females and they are just getting into their prime mating season with the onset of winter. They want nothing to do with that activity in the long summers.

We viewed the camels by flashlight so no photos this time. We were then invited into the majlis and served traditional coffee and dates. We met the head of the majlis' brother and his two sons and other men and their children. We asked the young boys about the women and girls in the family and where they were and the standard response was; "not allowed." We knew this but it was fun to hear an 11-year old's response and to discern his entitlement to his uncle's space, hobbies and weekend activities with the livestock. The boys are in training with their falcons - teaching it to be released and fly back and to hunt. They participate in competitions and learn their craft as cultural heritage passed on by their elders. These are some snaps of our beautiful evening.


This is one of about 8 falcons in the majlis, wearing a hood (falcon burqa) and tied to its perch. This is Mohammed, who is 8 years old and handles his falcons with stealth and command and was wearing a khaki thobe from Syria as opposed to the white the others wore. In the first snap, Mohammed has taken his falcon's hood off which demonstrates how calm the bird feels in his control.






This is Khaled, Mohammed's 11-year old brother, who engaged with us as a raconteur, telling us about lunch at his grandmother's every Friday, training his falcon, attending English school and plans to have only one wife because it's entirely too much work to have more than one. I can't help but wonder what he hears in the majlis or when all his siblings are together since his father has more than one wife.

We were treated to fresh camel milk. Fleeting concerns about pasteurization were not to be entertained as Mohammed handed me my bowl and showed me how to scrape the foam up with a date and pop it all into my mouth. When I expressed that I liked it, he was jubilant, like some sort of national triumph for an American to have enjoyed such a treat in his family's majlis. The milk was light but very tasty and slightly salty. I will try it again and again if it elicits the same response. Here it is next to the coffee and tea pots:


After the milk, two men brought out a huge round platter wrapped tightly with foil. It was set on the majlis floor on top of plastic and surrounded by drinks. The foil was lifted and an entire roasted baby lamb was surrounded by the head, kidney and liver tidbits, and golden raisins adorning the saffron-scented rice. Plates and cutlery were brought for the guests but all the men ate with their right hand, deftly clumping the saffron-scented rice into bespoke portions. They pulled the meat off with their fingers and tossed it unto our plates. After a few minutes they all seemed to be done and retired while most of us westerners kept picking at the serving plate. The boys were quiet on the other side of the majlis, waiting for the adults to finish before they got their turn, a custom that teaches respect for elders at a very young age.



The snap of the head is quite gruesome and I didn't eat from it. In a more formal setting with a sheikh, the person of honor will be offered the eyeball and it is very ungracious to refuse it. Luckily, I didn't rank last night! We were invited to come back with some daylight to enjoy seeing the camels and to meet the salukis, who were at an exhibition this weekend.

The top is down on my Jeep. It's going to be a good winter.

Eid Al-Adha 2011

The Eid Al-Adha holiday starts tomorrow, which means it's been 70 days since the end of Ramadan. There won't be another event that shuts down the bars again until the feast of Lailat Al Miraj in mid-June. On a quick business trip to Dubai this past June with a big night planned at Nobu, I heard about Lailat Al Miraj when Nobu's reservation system sent me an email indicating that it would be a dry dinner in respect of the holiday, which was reason enough to change the reservation. This week, everything closes for 2-3 days and our offices are closed for 10. But alas, yours truly is still emerging from the post-summer, post-Ramadan, post-Eid Al-Fitr steamroll and will work about half of it to ensure my head is above water for the balance of the year. I am going in/out of Paris monthly through next spring so not having to deal with the airport at this peak time is a slight relief as is knowing that I have an ongoing exit in the works for 6 months; several days on a cardamom plantation in Kerala await.

After the 3-day Eid closure, I am facing the state Customs authorities at the airport. A few weeks ago, I cleared something from Beirut at the airport and it was a serious learning experience. One pulls into the parking lot and a lanky Egyptian (they're all Egyptians working in the clearance/duty dept) latches onto you, following you into the Customer Service counters. You cannot do anything without one of these spontaneous fixers despite having a copy of the waybill, commercial invoice and identification as the consignee in hand and the ability to speak English with the Filippina handling all the internal paperwork in Customer Service. She tells him the clearance fee through the glass which I hear perfectly as I am standing in front of her and he repeats it to me. I hand him the cash so he can hand it to her. Then I go to another section where he is the go-between on some other fee and I am instructed to return the next day so my shipment can be collected from the cargo hold and brought to the front.

So I complied and came back the next night, calling my Egyptian fixer on his mobile to make sure he would earn his go-between fee to point me to my shipment. More papers and stamping and then he called for a lower caste of worker to follow me to my Jeep with the box. On our way there, I noticed a new Lamborghini in tangerine being unwrapped on a flatbed tow by workers wearing gloves. I wondered what Sheikh or uber wealthy local was importing a new toy and if I might see it on the road one day.
















Above pls note the circa 1925 Orientalist (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism) etching by Charles William Cain, "On A Baghdad Roof," I picked up in London last month. It appealed to me for the outdoor harem it seems to depict as well as fond distant memories of my former Manhattan rooftop garden. I was taking the Eurostar to Paris and wanted to avoid the (20%) VAT so I arranged for it to be shipped to the Gulf. Assuming it would be more reliable than the building where I live, I provided my work address and have hit all kinds of bureaucracy as a result thereof. The state has assumed that the shipment is a commercial transaction because of the address and it is therefore subject to duty and cannot be released. In tracing the shipment, the exception status noted that the shipment had passed government clearance and is now subject to duty payment by recipient. "Government clearance" is likely code for the religious authorities deeming that the print can enter the country, it being borderline lewd with the topless Arab woman depicted on the roof with her attendants. Next time, I pay the VAT and drag it to Paris. Eid Mubarak.