Gulf encounters

Monday, August 27, 2012

Let's enjoy the Indian summer

I've been back from my holidays for over 10 days now, it's about time I got back to writing. Truth is, I've been putting it off because I didn't know where to start... And I still don't! So I'll just recap the summer as I remember it:

The beginning of July was a bit boring as everybody left to their summer destination, and I was probably one of the last leaving on July 14th. Arriving in France on its national day, I was welcomed by fireworks! And dull weather, which felt nice and fresh anyway. After that we had a lovely sunny week, during which we received some visit and toured around the West region (Pornic, Nantes, Saumur) as well as Paris. We also attended a couple of weddings in Vendée.

And when Richard's holiday was over, and he flew back to Saudi Arabia, mine wasn't over yet, and I headed to Mexico City. I spent a rainy week there, enjoying the food and the mood, and assisted to a very dear friend's wedding, which was a great party.

Pornic

Nantes

Nantes - Carrousel

Noirmoutier

Paris - Montmartre

Paris

Paris from the Eiffel Tower

Paris - Louvre

Paris - Notre Dame

Disneyland Paris

And before I knew it (although I had a 36-hour trip to realize), I was back in good ol' Al-Jubail! Most of the people were still away though, so I had an extended holiday/vegetation/lazy/boring time, which is now coming to an end (thanks God!), since next Saturday is back-to-school at the International School.

Last week-end we took a quick trip to Kuwait, which was nice, even though I didn't like it as much as the first time we went. Probably because coming back from Europe, the differences were just too obvious, and also because it struck me that this "culture" based on extreme consumerism, showing off luxury clothes, handbags and cars and pretending people are only worth what they own is just so wrong, and I wonder how the next generations are going to turn out.

For instance I couldn't believe that in all three malls we went, it was impossible to find a single bookstore! There used to be a Virgin Megastore but it closed at the beginning of this year, and apparently it hasn't been replaced by any other store of this kind, so I don't know where/if Kuwaitis buy DVDs, CDs, books, magazines, etc.

When we went to the movies, we noticed that there is only one movie theater company, which has huge cinemas with a lot of screens, but all over the city there were no more than 12 movies to choose from, 2 of which were in Telugu (spoken in India), 1 in Tamil, 1 in Hindi, 1 in Arabic, so we were left with: Batman, Spiderman, Expandables, Interview with a hitman, Brave, and Madagascar. It basically means that, either because it's the only kind of movies that Kuwaitis like, or because the country doesn't want them to see anything else, there's a possibility that they don't know anything else than these American blockbusters: mass culture at its finest!

Anyways, we still had a nice weekend, and Richard had an incredible Flight Experience, practising taking-off, flying and landing a Boeing 747 in a flight simulator.

In Kuwait, you gotta get used to the good stuff from a very young age

Six Starbucks and zero bookstore in a mall: Kuwaiti logic

Only the finest (which happens to be French!)

Richard's flight experience

In the middle of a cloud

And now, even if school is starting, we're lucky that the temperatures remain high, so we're just going to enjoy our Indian summer!

Good luck coming back to school / work / business as usual ;)

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The West end(s) in Bahrain

Last Friday we attended another event of Bahrain Summer festival: we saw the musical "The Sound of Music", a very old one which I had never heard of before, even though it was made into a movie in the 60's, which won quite many awards at the time.

It's based on the story of Maria von Trapp, a young Austrian orphan who enters a monastery to become a nun, and then is sent to work as a tutor for the 7 children of a widowed naval commander, and she teaches the children how to sing (and live) and she falls in love with their father and they get married (sorry for the spoiler!). The background story is that of the Anschluss, or how Austria was annexed by Hitler in 1938.

As to the performance itself, it was great, probably as good as if we'd seen it in the West end. The performers were excellent, the sets looked beautiful, and this time the auditorium was full, so I didn't have to feel bad about the artists (which I do otherwise...).

The musical opening on a scene of nuns singing in a convent: we're definitely on the right side of the causeway!

Maria in her mountains

Mr. Von Trapp

The Von Trapp children

As the Bahrain Summer festival was over, it was time for me to take off to my French summer! Check out what I had for brunch last Sunday:

Appetizers...

... and main!

Wishing you a wonderful holiday, Ramadan Kareem to the muslims, I'll be making the most of the French summer, attending weddings, going for walks, sightseeing, and having croissants for breakfast every day!

Thursday, July 12, 2012

A burning topic

It's so difficult to read valuable information about Islam, which I've been longing to do since I arrived here. I mean, the moment you land in Saudi Arabia you realize that reality is - fortunately! - much different (and probably much more complex) than what you'd been reading in the media or seeing on TV. Short parenthesis: when I first heard a call to prayer here, it scared me, like I was suddenly perceiving danger (as when hearing fireworks in Mexico!). Anyway it came to my mind that somehow, I had always associated this sound with scenes of war or terrorism, and that's why I perceived it as something negative.

But then, as time passed by, I realized that most Saudis are very nice people, and I felt the need to find out more about their education, beliefs and customs. I learnt some things at my Arabic course, but I never really dared to ask too many questions, since anything could have been misinterpreted as criticism against their religion.

I also tried to read the booklets that they give away in airports or in some mosques, but they only turned out to be very strong, bad written, proselytic tools to try to convince Christians to turn to Islam.

And my salvation came at the local Jarir Bookstore a couple of months ago, where I found this:

No God but God - Reza Aslan (2006)

And it answered all my questions! It was written by a brilliant Iran-born, American religious scholar, who explains everything in a logical, fairly objective, very well-written presentation of what Islam is. Starting from Mecca in the times preceding the birth of Mohammed, to Mohammed's life, the emergence of Shiism, local wars, diverse interpretations of the Qu'ran, Sufism, until the decolonization, 9/11, and the present, which Aslan describes as a Reformation of Islam.

I can only recommend the book to anyone who would like to learn more about this topic. This is the kind of books that, if read by whole generations, would lead to greater tolerance, and peace.

"God may be One, but Islam most definitely is not"

"The tragic events of September 11, 2001, may have fueled the clash-of-monotheisms mentality among those Muslims, Christians, and Jews who seem so often to mistake religion for faith and scripture for God."

Edit: this seems to really be a burning topic, I had to rewrite some parts of this post so it wouldn't be censored... What a shame...

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Discovering Doha

I know it's been ages since my last post... Truth is, there wasn't much worth writing about: end of the school year, everyone going away for the summer, hot weather...

But last weekend we drove to another of our neighbour countries: Qatar! Not much different from other small Gulf countries we've visited so far (Kuwait, Bahrain), it's a very young country with a lot of desert and many beautiful modern developments in its capital, Doha. There's still a lot under construction but you can tell it's going to look pretty nice when everything is finished for the World Cup.

We experienced a terrible sandstorm there, hardly got lost at all (Doha is not such a big city!), ate nice things (the Turkish restaurant was particularly good), laughed a lot about silly things (I found many things in Qatar particularly confusing), and we visited the beautiful Museum of Islamic Art and the nicely renovated souq Waqif (I refrained from compulsively buying all the appealing Arabic crafts my eyes fell onto).

And one of the reasons we went to Doha on this particular weekend was that Cirque du Soleil was performing their "Saltimbanco" show in Qatar for 3 days. We had a great night, the show is pretty impressive, with a beautiful set and costumes, live music, and acts including adagio trio, chinese pole (very impressive, especially when the artists hang from the pole horizontally, as if they were human flags), trapeze, juggling, boleadoras, bungee, Russian swings (maybe the most impressive) and much more.