American Soldiers in Dubai

Flying home from Dubai last June, our flight was delayed twelve hours, causing me to miss a connection when I arrived in the US. Julie called the travel agent who the school uses, insisting that we needed to get home by a certain time. The only way for this to happen was to fly through Kuwait instead of the direct flight home that was scheduled. The Kuwait airport—which we have flown through before—is literally overrun with American soldiers and contractors. Our plane home to Atlanta was even more inundated with military soldiers, personal, and contractors. While I had noticed Americans in Dubai, I had never presumed they were soldiers until I was flying home on a plane full of them.

For many Americans, military service provides the main access to visiting Dubai. The city never quite caught on with American tourists because of its location half way around the world. So, a stop before, during, or after a tour of duty is how many Americans are left to see the city. Since the city is so Westernized, it provides an ideal location for a short sabbatical away from the stresses of wartime.

The funniest time I noticed a group of soldiers came recently on the top of a dam outside of Hatta, a fort town along the UAE-Oman border. I was there with my class on a field trip, touring the Hajar Mountains and rugged landscape of the UAE for Social Studies. Our bus stopped at the top of the dam and the boys had the chance to walk along the upper wall of the dam and see who could throw rocks hard enough to reach the water below. Ten minutes later, a convoy of Landcruisers made the same drive up the hill to the top of the dam. As they drove across the dam to turn around at the other side, each SUV was filled with four American soldiers. They were on a Desert Safari, the customary trip visitors to Dubai make with an hour of dune-bashing followed by an Arabic meal at a “Bedouin” camp. It was a bizarre feeling of Americans about the same age as myself ending up on the same dam in the middle of nowhere on the Gulf Peninsula.

More commonly, it's seeing a small group walking around the mall or out at a hotel restaurant taking advantage of the alcohol available at these establishments. There have been several occasions Julie and I have been out with friends while a group of soldiers indulge in the food and libations available. We were recently at a friend's birthday party at a Mexican restaurant near the airport as four soldiers downed Budweisers and ate chips and salsa. At malls, they do what most people do when they first get here, take pictures and take the novelty of this place in in its entirety.

Even more that the Kuwait airport, the Dubai International Airport is the primary transit point for soldiers who have a week off of duty or are traveling home. While not as noticeable as Kuwait because of the higher volume of passengers in the airport, it is definitely present. This presence ranges from Halliburton employees (the Houston-based oil company who has its partner office in Dubai), paramilitary (a la Blackwater) to actual soldier. From what I have read, Terminal 2 is even more active with very frequent flights between Kabul and Baghdad. With this shipping activity and multitude of freights, it has turned this airport into one of the busiest commercial airports in the world. So, one can imagine how the UAE has profited from the military presence in these neighboring countries.

Besides military freight and soldiers that pass through the country, Dubai serves as a primary logistical hub for war-related cargo that ships to Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the start of these wars, Jebel Ali Port has become the US Navy's most frequented port outside the US. Nearly all of the supplies shipped into Iraq or Afghanistan are re-exported through Dubai first. So again, it does not take a far stretch of the imagination to discern how Dubai and the rest of the country is profiting from America's meddling in the region. Lastly, given this close understanding on these military matters, I assume that the UAE is further benefitting from the American surveillance efforts that are based in the UAE and are directed towards Iran.

Whatever the UAE's interests and interactions with the US on these political, economic, and military matters, I look forward to coming home and talking to people who have seen Dubai and seen it from a soldiers' perspective to hear what their impressions about the Emirates were.

monestaries, monkeys, momo's...

The mountains stood like two bookends around our trip. The only time we saw the Himalaya was looking across the aisle to the other side of the plane through the small cubby-window. The stood above the clouds and felt even more distant than they actually were. We saw plenty of what locals would call hills (any mountain without snow) but no true mountain views. Pokhara, the lakeside town famous for its Himalayan vistas, clouded over the full three days we were there. We were left to play the game we played in Tacoma with Mt. Rainer: look at where you know the mountain is until some silhouette or a peak peaked its way from the clouds. In Pokhara or otherwise, it never happened. Julie even started thinking that it was a big conspiracy, supported by the photo-shopped posters and postcard industry and tourists wanting to know what they're “missing” behind the low-lying clouds. Furthermore, trekking was out of the question for our short trip and the lack of gear we desert-dwellers have. We declined our final chance for guaranteed mountain views on a plane or helicopter tour scaling the full range until Everest since this selective grazing of sky-travel is not in our travel vocabulary. So, the Himalaya was relegated to the realm of metaphor, a metaphor of the mysteriously unseen.

While this metaphor easily leaps towards a religious reading, it only half fits for the multitude of shrines and temples enveloped our time, senses, and sight. The religious performance and visual culture that we observed employed a wide array of color, interactiveness, and artistic craft to convey an incredibly rich symbolic universe and cosmology. So, while these practices are being performed for some mysteriously unseen “Other,” they were as ordinary as to have McVitie's Digestive Biscuits in the Buddha's begging bowl at one monastery or monkey's taking and drinking a pilgrim's Mountain Dew at another and as widespread as having shrines wedged in intersections throughout Kathmandu's grimy, exhaust-filled streets.

Given the diversity of religious practice, it carries an odd accessibility that easily draws outsiders to the country's religious heritage.

Amidst early Hindu practices, Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, was born in Lumbini in the sixth century BC. Gradually, Hinduism thrived even though the Buddhist presence never totally disappeared. Kathmandu (and the rest of the country to a lesser extent) served as a century's old crossroads of trade between Tibet/China and India. Like other trade routes, the melding of Hinduism and Buddhism (and other local religious practices) is obvious (as well as how they're separated and marked off from each other as well...). While never antagonistic towards Buddhism, Hinduism remains the most common religion, especially after the Kathmandu Valley was partitioned in the fifteenth century. Theese city-states—Kathmandu, Patan, and Baktipur—each with their own Durbar (Palace) Square and and adjacent temples. Craft became a major source of competition between the kingdoms with temple building exemplified by the tiered pagoda style (which originated in Nepal) and the Newari brick-architechture accented by extensive wood-working. After a devastating earthquake in 1934, many of the palaces and temples were destroyed but the rich rebuilding demonstrates the continuation of the craft.

For the spiritually-inclined visitor, this history presents a spiritual marketplace which accommodates everyone from Western Buddhists seeking a teacher or the casual prayer wheel spinner. For me, as I had said before, it was the color, craft, and interactive nature that really stood out as we toured the Kathmandu Valley and the west to Pokhara.

Color

Our first day, we made the walk from Thamal in downtwon Kathmandu to Swayambhunath, set on a hillside slightly above the city. The story goes that the valley was once a lake. One day, a lotus flower appeared, or was “self-created” (the meaning of Swayambhuna) on the lake. As the water receded, this hill was revealed where first a smaller shrine and now the magnificent stupa was built. On top of the white dome rests the Buddha's eyes staring in each cardinal direction. Up from there are thirteen steps leading to the umbrella on top of the stupa. Tibetan prayer flags were tied from the top of the stupa down to the surrounding temples and monasteries. After making a few ceremonial circlings of the stupa, we walked to the monastery on a connected hill. The area between the stupa and the monastery was overrun with prayer flags. The trees were draped with them with what seemed to be a chaotic fashion. The slight breeze left a silent canopy overhead. It is one the most beautiful man-made things that I have ever seen.

Interactive

Swayambhunath, and the other Buddhist sites we went (Bodhnath, the “Golden Temple,” and smaller alley-way temples and shrines) had the most interactive religious ritual I have ever experienced: spinning the prayer wheels while circling any stupa. Julie and I usually separate ourselves at other's religious worship, trying to remain perfect and distant strangers. The prayer wheels, however, were intoxicating. We would circumnavigate the the central stupa of shrine several (or more) times, not just staking out a spot to watch what was going on from the outside as we had done before.

At other times, the interacting with the space was more of just observing the activity that was going on. Pujas were always being offered at temples with marigolds, rice, yoghurt, and coins (the funniest—from a Christian mindset—being the “Temple Money Changers” shop outside of Durbar Square in Baktipur). The Kumari, a living goddess who reigns from the age of five or so until menstruation, made a shy appearance from her window in her house in Kathmandu's Durbar Square. We even got to see a mandala being created in Patan.

Craft

The final highlight was the architecture and design. Julie nor I had ever travelled to Asia. So, the tiered-temple design and the courtyard's that surrounded them were all new to us. Travelling elsewhere, I have noticed how integral a courtyard is in integrating worshipers into a sacred space. In Nepal, the courtyard's surrounding temples served a similar purpose. The best example of this space was at Bodhnath where the courtyard area was enclosed between the shops and temples and the white stupa. You would circle the lower part of the courtyard before entering any of the monasteries or temples or climbing up to the the second level of the stupa.

Besides the more general space, all of the Hindu temples and many of the old houses had intricately carved doors and windows imbedded in the brick facade. Stone animals or statues were nestled inside road-side shrines or at the entryways to towering temples. On the Hindu temples, the roof joists and struts were decorated with incarnations of Hindu gods (usually Vishnu or Shiva), scenes from daily life, or explicit sexual acts (with multiple partners, bestiality, monster on monster, and elephants in the missionary position with interlocked trunks).

Although Nepal was not as cold (or mountainous) as we might have hoped, the trip provided respite for our listless and desert-worn bodies. Besides the joy brought from our engagement, the past month and a half had been a bleak time for us. The light bulbs in the bedroom had burned out months before. We could not change the lights since the last time we moved the bed, the frame cracked and needed to be taped to together. In the kitchen, two of the three fluorescent lights flickered their way towards burning out. When our “Super General” TV was on for more than ten minutes, the screen went blank besides a centimeter and a half line down the middle of the screen, a problem that only a slap like The Fonz could fix. Finally, our car's fuel line is believed to be caked with dust the grime from desert life. The only way to successfully and consistently start it is to fill it up with gas every few days.

The momentary change of winter to summer and Tommy's problems with customs in Dubai left us unenthusiastic, to say the least, about finishing the school year. Nepal gave us what we were looking for, a change from life here. At this point in our traveling career, all we needed was a hotel booking with a transfer from the stress-free airport for our first night and plans to meet up with a Wooster acquaintance. Other than that, our trip was left to the planned wanderings and whims we usually leave our traveling to.