Me: Uh-huh.
She finally stopped shuffling the cards, then picked up Awat’s photo and concentrated on it. She asked me to close my eyes and try to empty my mind. I had never been able to do that. Thoughts were always spastically ricocheting through, especially when I was trying to quiet them, making sure there was never any stillness. And if it wasn’t thoughts, it was a song, “Wiiiide opeeeen spaaaceeees…”
Sahar said, “If you are unable to empty your mind, just think of a mantra, over and over, ‘What’s my future, what’s my future…,’ okay?”
I said, “Okay,” and was grateful I wouldn’t mess up the reading with the nonstop yammering in my head.
We sat in silence for a good couple of minutes, which pass by very slowly when the only thing you’re permitted to think is, “What’s my future, what’s my future…” She finally said, “Okay, you can open your eyes.” And then she looked at me with her head sort of cocked to one side and said, “You are a very, very interesting person.” Clearly, she had the gift.
She began telling me things she saw ahead for me, but I was impatient to get to the Awat issue. She finally pointed to his photo and said, “You have a very special connection with him, but it is not romantic. It is almost as if you want to take care of him, to teach him things.”
She was really good.
“I’m not saying this because of the age difference, but it’s as if you want to mother him.”
Ew, no.
“This is not the man for you. He is very special, yes, but you need someone who has had more life experience; someone who is more spiritually…you see what I’m saying?”
I actually did. She was making sense.
She continued, “You have a very old soul, with a lot of life experience in your consciousness, and although you connect with people, and you’re busy, busy, I’m also getting that you’re very popular, but there is a sense of loneliness. There is a theme within your consciousness, which is lonely. You haven’t found anyone on your mental, spiritual, intellectual experience, so he could be younger or older, but no one is on that wavelength, because you’re a very old soul; you need someone who has depth.”
She asked me what I did to unwind, to have me-time, and I explained, “Well, I actually do a lot of me-time stuff. I write…,” and here she said, “Perfect, we’ll come back to that, because I know you said you were a teacher, but for me you are a writer, you write, you are published, la la la la la, everything. The first thing I saw when you sat down, there was a book over your head.”
I had not said one word about writing. I didn’t mention my copywriting, I didn’t mention my blog writing, and I didn’t mention the book I had begun to write about the Iraq experience.
Holy crap.
She would say “la la la la la” either as conversation filler or when she could sense I wasn’t really fully understanding what she was talking about. Like when she said I was a time traveler, and my eyebrows involuntarily raised a bit. She went through the rest of the hour telling me intriguing things and making suggestions on how I could clarify issues in my life, but I was still fully hung-up on the love question.
If not now, when? When will this happen for me? Tish Durkin met her great, glove-fitting love in Iraq. Why couldn’t mine be there too?
Sahar went back to Awat’s photo and said, “This is not your guy. I don’t mean that he’s shallow, but when you play a piano, you want to be able to play all the keys. With this man, you would just be playing one octave. I don’t think you have met your match yet in this lifetime.”
She paused and said, “Here, help yourself,” and handed me a box of tissues. She said she saw me being “completely settled” in life (career, love) in the next eight years.
Eight years? God, that was so far away.
I believed Sahar and was completely on board and had no doubt she was right when she said I would meet The One in the next few years.
“You have nothing to worry about; I don’t see any conflict as far as religion or culture. He will be very grounded, a very old soul connection; you’ve missed each other through several lifetimes…”
I was sobbing uncontrollably at this point. She was right; there had been a sense of loneliness, for quite some time. Before I met Awat I had doubted I would ever meet anyone I was both attracted to and felt a strong connection with. I had probably piled all my expectations onto that thin thread of a connection, without stepping back to ask myself if it was really all I was imagining it to be.
“There will be a beautiful man for a partner, you will want for nothing.”
Could you maybe give me a little more information, though? A hint, like what color hair does he have? Or, what city does he live in? An email address?
I had arrived at Sahar’s out of breath and apologizing and was leaving the same way: out of breath from crying and apologizing for using an entire box of her tissues. I later discovered I had been PMSing, which excused some of the crying. Not all of it, just some.
I exited Sahar’s flat in the dimming light of the late afternoon and turned south onto Edgware Road to walk back to my hotel, breathing and moving slowly, trying to absorb everything I had just been told. By the time I reached Oxford Street, my emotions had wrung themselves out, and I was able to laugh at the fact that Edgware Road was almost entirely composed of Middle Eastern businesses and restaurants, including one called Slemani (yet another spelling of Sulaimani). Now that was cosmic humor at its best.
Chapter Thirty-five
The Joys of Travel
For Christmas, I gave British Airways $150 in luggage fees. Now I am Santa. How was it possible that, after all my research and planning and weighing and packing and weighing and repacking and my Balanzza, I had to pay overweight luggage fees on my way back to Iraq yet again? How, I ask you!
Remember when I was all excited about Viking Air, the far more reasonable alternative to Austrian Airlines with their outrageous $1,400 round-trip flight and stupid incongruous twenty-kilo maximum allowance? The sticklers at the London-Gatwick Viking Air counter made certain I did not travel unscathed.
Stickler: Right, now, we’ll need to weigh your hand luggage.
Me: What?
Stickler: Your hand luggage, your carry-on bag, we need to weigh it.
Me: (reluctantly placing my purse on the scale) Okay…
Stickler: Right, that’s eight kilos. You’re only allowed five…oh, but I see you’ve your laptop in there. Well, just take the laptop out and carry it by hand when boarding the flight.
Me: Okay, and then I have this carry-on…
And I try to give Stickler my small Tumi duffel that most certainly does fit into the overhead compartment:
Stickler: You’re only allowed one piece of hand luggage.
Me: I thought I could have one purse and one piece of hand luggage.
Stickler: Yes, but that bag is too big to be a purse, so it is your hand luggage.
Stickler was telling me that the purse I was carrying, the one that was slung over my shoulder in purselike fashion, was “too big to be a purse.” I wanted to tell her that her teeth were too big to be teeth, but there they were, sticking out of her gums, barely being covered by her lips. I was fuming, as not only was I struggling with the mild language barrier of the American “carry-on luggage” versus the British airline parlance of “hand luggage,” but Stickler was now dictating what constituted “purse” versus “hand luggage.” If I had my druthers, and a decent Internet connection, I would have directed her to the online website where I purchased my “hand luggage,” and she would find it listed under “purses.”*
So I had to check both my overweight suitcase AND my small Tumi duffel, which should have been my carry-on bag, or hand luggage. All in all, my extra baggage weight totaled ten kilos (twenty-two American pounds). I was instructed to go over to the now-all-too-familiar counter, where I would pay the airline extortionists. I should have at least received some sort of frequent-overpacker punch card. One more punch and you’l
l receive a Balanzza luggage scale! What? You already have one? Then how…never mind. The nice British man, who was not employed by a particular airline and therefore was not a legitimate candidate to bear the brunt of my rage, checked his computer screen, then my slip of paper, and ruefully informed me that each extra kilo costs 10 pounds sterling. So, I had to pay 100 pounds ($150) because my purse was apparently not really a purse. Chloé doesn’t make hand luggage! I wanted to scream at Stickler and her mouthful of piano keys, while I was simultaneously screaming at myself: Oh my God, when will I learn to travel light?
Probably never. This just continued to happen, and yet I persisted in packing heavy bottles of “special” mouthwash (Crest), which I could not get in Iraq, and heavy bags of “special” trail mix (Trader Joe’s Sweet, Savory & Tart Mix), which I also could not get in Iraq. Not to mention the shoes I had been partial to lately were of the platform variety, and the platforms weighed roughly three times what normal shoes weighed. Heavy shoes. BLAAT! Gatwick didn’t have an Xpress Spa.
On the flight into Erbil I had the aisle seat. The middle seat remained unoccupied, and a Kurdish man sat at the window. As usual, I was polite but not friendly to the other men. Friendliness was too often mistaken for wink-wink, wakka-wakka, and I preferred to be thought of as slightly bitchy as opposed to the hooker alternative. The flights were mostly men, with the occasional hijabed wife and screaming child thrown in for good measure. I had been polite to my seatmate, had reminded the flight attendant that neither of us had received dinner rolls like everyone else, and had helped him pass his garbage to the flight attendant after the meal.
My shiny, new Elle UK magazine was resting in the vacant middle seat as I stifled cackling laughter while watching an episode of 30 Rock on my iPod. I was interrupted by a finger poke from the seatmate and looked over in his direction. He was looking at me expectantly and motioning to my Elle magazine, which had a heavy-lidded Kate Hudson gazing at us from under pastel-hued eyeshadow. I finally understood that seatmate was asking if he could look at the Elle magazine.
There was little to no chance that this guy was at all interested in celebrating “25 Years of British Elle!” Or “Fashion Graffiti!” Or seeing how Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana create sartorial magic in their Milanese studio.
I immediately soured; our prior pleasant airplane olive branch was thrown out the emergency exit. He wanted to perv on my magazine. I shot him a disgusted look, spat “No,” and shook my head violently before grabbing the Elle and tucking it safely into my purse under the seat in front of me.
I was being unfair. My American male coworkers had also asked me if they could have the fashion magazines when I was finished. I had laughed and called them perverts. My tolerance did not extend to the Middle Eastern men. I just knew they had been raised differently.
Women were all whores. Never trust a woman.
A week before leaving Iraq to go back to the United States for Christmas, I had planned out my return and prepared (or rather, tried to prepare) Dadyar for my airport pickup. I was to be arriving at an awkward time, just after midnight, in the early hours of December 31. This would have been confusing to the average bear, which meant I needed to take extra pains to explain it to Dadyar.
I printed off a page calendar of the month of December and drew a circle in the space between December 30 and December 31. I held the page up in front of Dadyar and said, “I am arriving after midnight on December 30, so technically very, very, very early on December 31.” I also printed out my flight details, which listed the flight number and flight arrival time, as 00:20, December 31. Dadyar glanced at the papers and, with a dismissive wave of his hand, said, “You call me, I come.” I said, “Yes, but it’s important to me that you understand when to come,” and I went over the calendar and the flight details again. I did not feel confident about his comprehensive skills.
As scheduled, the flight landed in Erbil just after midnight, in the early hours of December 31. It was dark and rainy. I was tired and cranky. And hungry. And desperate to get away from my pervy seatmate. The second the seat belt sign went off, I placed my first call to Dadyar, who had said, “You call, I come.” Remember how he said that? With the dismissive waving away of my printed out instructions and details?
There was no answer. I redialed his number. Twelve times. Twelve calls, during which I disembarked the plane, took the shuttle bus to the terminal, and stood in line waiting to clear customs. Dadyar finally called back while I was waiting with my luggage, and in a panicked voice said, “HELLO?” I said, “I am at the airport.” He said, “I am coming!”
It could have been worse. He might not have called back. I might have had to attempt to take a taxi home, without any cash handy. He showed up a half hour later and was apologizing profusely and saying, “I think you coming tomorrow!” I said, “You didn’t answer your phone. Were you sleeping?” He told me that no, he hadn’t been sleeping, but had instead been hanging out in Ainkawa with his friends.
When he dropped me off, I wearily told him that I needed to go to the store in the morning to get food, as I didn’t have anything to eat in the house. I said, “Please be here at nine o’clock.” He sort of shook his head and said, “Ohhhhh, no nine. Half past?” I was already annoyed at his incompetence, and wanted to get to the store early, so I repeated, “No, please be here at nine. I really need to get to the store.”
Nine in the morning and no Dadyar. I stood at the window, watching the rain pelt the empty street and thinking, “Seriously?” I finally had to call him at 9:20 and say, “Where are you?” to which he gave his standard “I am coming.” He showed up at 9:30, just like he had wanted to.
I climbed in the car and asked, “Why weren’t you here at nine?” and he said, “Ohhhhh, not get bed 4:00 a.m., very tired.” So I had to ask why he had gotten to sleep so late, and rather than even trying to lie about it, he told me that after he dropped me off, he went back to Ainkawa to hang out with his friends. Me Tarzan, man. Do what I want.
I was only happy after Dadyar had dropped me off at the villa, then driven away. I was fully stocked with food and wine. Never mind that my TV and Internet weren’t working, as seemed to be the case each time I returned from a prolonged absence. I would call the IT department later. I could start my new year off just fine, as long as I had cheese and wine. And accidental rhymes.
* Okay, that’s not actually true. It is listed under “handbags,” but “handbag” is really just another name for “purse.” Who is this woman to tell me that my purse is not actually a purse, but a carry-on bag??? The number of question marks used when writing about these things is directly related to the number of veins popping out of my neck at the time of confrontation.
ASTOUNDING
ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF PART 5
Total spent on overweight luggage: $3,870. I mean, for crying out loud.
Debt eliminated: $33,453—the silver lining!
Countries traveled: 7—Austria, France, Croatia, Greece, England, Sweden, Jordan.
Pairs of shoes purchased: 13. This sounds like too many, but it’s not. You’re not the bosses of me.
Soul mates met: 0. Curses. Foiled again. Back to square one.
Cultural tolerance level: 1. This place is on my last effing nerve.
Part 6
Clarity
Chapter Thirty-six
OMG!
Soon after Christmas break, we had another week off. The various Islamic holidays and school breaks had been a selling point when Warren pitched this position to me and had been one of the few things he told me that did not require embellishment. I had decided that I needed to explore a little bit more of the Middle East. Aside from a brief trip to Jordan in November, all my other vacations had been to European countries in my attempt to balance living in Iraq with my idea of Western normalcy. Since women are hassled less in Middle Eastern countries if traveling with a man, I thought it would be both smart and hilarious to travel with my friend Josh. Josh was one of my favorite peopl
e in the universe, and he loved a good adventure as much as I did.
We would be Fancy-Shoe-Wearin’ Female and Outrageous Gay Male, the American Superhero Duo, on a Middle Eastern Extravaganza in the Sultanate of Oman.
A sultanate. So exotic. I wanted to take Flying Carpet Airlines to the sultanate but had to take the flight out of Erbil on the more traditional, less exotic Gulf Air.
I was also totally enchanted with their unit of currency, the Omani rial. When researching the exchange rates online, I discovered that the abbreviation was OMR. This was just so close to the overused texting/cyber slang of “OMG,” and I also discovered that things in Oman were fairly pricey, so that led to the natural decision to call the currency the “Oh My Gods.” As in, “How many Oh My Gods is that silver dagger?”
My Gulf Air flight required a stopover in Bahrain before continuing on to Dubai. I had booked business class, because it was really only a few hundred dollars more than economy. In the recession days, back in my old life in Seattle, I would have gasped at the idea of spending over “a few hundred dollars” on a plane ticket, much less an airline upgrade, but I was fancy now.
I met Josh at a Costa Coffee shop in the Dubai airport. After some excited squealing and fierce hugging, I released him so he could go secure the rental car. Then we were off on our Middle East adventure. The travel information Josh had stated that women should cover their hair when driving in and around Oman, so as soon as we crossed the Emirates-Oman border, I wrapped my head up in a pashmina scarf.
The first gas station we stopped at was called an “oasis,” which we both found hilarious. It was a far cry from the clichéd Middle Eastern mirage “oasis” of a shimmering pool of water, flanked by waving palm trees. This oasis had a food mart. Josh pointed out that I was garnering some unwanted attention from all the Arab men who were at the gas station. I couldn’t get away from the damned zoo, even with my “sexy” hair covered. Josh dubbed the men “Stare Bears.” Ellen and Jen were going to love that.
I Have Iraq in My Shoe Page 22
