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Eastraveller

~ Every day I learn him, every day he doesn't learn.

Eastraveller

Tag Archives: Living in the Middle East

‘I never forget a face’

07 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by traveller in Friendship, Life in the Middle East, Travel

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Tags

Cultural differences, Faces, Living in the Middle East, Memory, People, Personal, Strangers

I used to think I have a reasonable memory of faces.

I remember random faces from the past, strangers that never crossed my path in other ways than through some meteoric quirk, quickly shot down in the sea of their anonymity.

An old Irish gentleman I once saw in an airport calling the waiter ‘boy’. 

An American marine drawling invitations to prayer on the edge of a swimming pool.

A Saudi driver emerging grim-faced from a coffee shack on the side of a dusty road.

A crying toddler, the English father slamming down his thick book in simmering fury at the disturbance, the Spanish mum fading under a sun hat, grandma singing softly to herself .  

They are all revered exhibits in my inner museum of strangers.

But coming to the Middle East has dwarfed my museum to the dimensions of someone’s old shoe box left near the Prado.    

What I used to label as a reasonable ability is in reality quite sub-standard. People here never forget a face. They say they don’t and they don’t. Ever.

I went to a little Red Sea resort a year after first spending a couple of days there. The waiter put down an empty lemonade glass and greeted me with a wide smile.

“Hello! You were here a year ago! You like hummus!”

As indeed I do so I proceeded to create new memories of my appetite.

I once left a bag in the corner shop. A month later, I went back and the guy handed it back to me as if we’d parted 5 minutes ago.

People here care about faces. They scrutinise every centimetre of unknown skin until it is so firmly implanted in their memory that the combined bulldozers of time and new- foreigness can’t possibly dislodge it.  

In Egypt I once spent a morning walking around extremely busy Islamic Cairo.

Later the same day, I happened to be back in (roughly) the same area.

A guy I had never seen in my life stopped me:

‘You’re back! Why?’

‘How do you know I’m back?’

‘I never forget a face.’  

 

7 things about living in the Middle East or Versatile Me

28 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by traveller in Life in the Middle East, Travel

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Are you married?, Cultural differences, Icebreakers, Living in the Middle East, Personal questions, Relationships, Shops, Taxi drivers, traffic, Versatile Award

Cairo moto coupleLadies and gentlemen,

Now for some breaking news! It appears that my ramblings have not gone unnoticed in Riga as its smartest, funniest expat (who lives at http://expateyeonlatvia.wordpress.com/) has nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award! 

So I am to:

  • Thank the person who gave you the award& Include a link to their blog

Thanks again, http://expateyeonlatvia.wordpress.com/:)!

  • Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly& Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award

I tried!

But versatile as I am, the process of cutting and pasting links& then letting people know they have been nominated had me labouring fruitlessly for about half an hour and then was duly abandoned.

So instead, could I nominate everybody who reads this post for the Versatile Blogger Award? I know it’s not quite how it’s done but I would love it if you could please take me up on this and spare me the misery of endless drafts going to the bin due to excessive pasting.

Living in the Middle East has taught me that rules are optional so instead of telling you 7 things about myself I thought I’d tell you 7 things about living here.

1. There is no such thing as bad coffee (unless you are having it in a hotel for breakfast which is a universal curse so it doesn’t really count)

2. Most men go to the barber weekly

3. The most usual icebreaker is ‘hello, are you married do you have kids how old are you?’  

4. If you think a shop is too small to have what you’re looking for you’re probably right. What you don’t know is that the owner knows somebody who knows somebody who will have it ready for you somewhere.

5. Traffic rules are entirely optional.

6. Nobody uses street addresses. Ever. A typical taxi journey involves the driver staring at you wordlessly as you mumble a street name, then stopping next to a man who’s crouching on the pavement eating pumpkin seeds. The driver asks for directions, the seed eater stares wordlessly. Then he shouts at somebody who’s making a falafel nearby. Who calls his cousin.   

7. ‘With my family” is the default answer to most questions the inquisitive traveller might ask about weekends, holidays or any other form of free time

Where the shops have a name

15 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by traveller in Life in the Middle East

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Tags

Farmers' market, fresh, Living in the Middle East, shopping, trust

ImageOne of the things I love about living in this part of the world is that I buy my bread at the bakery and my vegetables at the market.

Shops have different names and they sell different products. No more sterile shopping in a well lit supermarket aisle, pushing a huge trolley into somebody else’s huge trolley like in some manic game of bumper cars. No bored cashier with a badge at the end of the chain waiting to make my plastic wrapped prize click.

That baker is a charmer. He smiles widely every time I go in and claims his day has just got massively better for seeing me. One time I walked in while the staff were having lunch and they all insisted I join.

The guys in the market sing above their shiny, fragrant, fresh produce. You buy your tomatoes in a whirl of song, laughter, energetic entreaties and colour.

One day I went to the corner shop and didn’t have any change. The owner went out to change my banknote leaving me alone in his shop. Another customer walked in, took a packet of cigarettes from the shelf and left the money on the counter.

Where the shops have many names trust is just one of them.

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