Two of everything

A new friend came over to my apartment after I gave her a heads up that my apartment is dullsville. She walked in, observed my twinkly blue lights, drawings piled high on my table and photos of my friends on the wall and told me she didn’t think my apartment was boring at all. She gave me some tips on moving my furniture so my couches and chairs aren’t jammed in the corner. She advised me to wrap twisty ties around my TV cords so they don’t look so chaotic and throw colorful scarves over everything to brighten the mood. 

She also said I might want to think about doing something with my spare room, which is empty except for a suitcase.

Also, she said if I were interested in having a boyfriend, my apartment didn’t exactly say welcome. Mine wasn’t the sort of living space, she said, that would make me feel open about being in a relationship. The pictures of my friends on the walls gave the impression of someone who likes to be independent and admires other independent people. Really, I’m just interested in portraits and unique characters for writing and drawing purposes.

We went into my bedroom and she said, “I can tell which side of the bed you sleep on.” It was the side that wasn’t occupied by clothes and books. If I wanted to welcome the idea of having a boyfriend, I might want to start making the whole bed hospitable and buying another lamp to put on the other bedside table. I don’t think I’m going to buy a lamp and clear off the bed for my phantom boyfriend, but it’s an interesting idea.

My friend looked at my drawings, which often feature couples, and she told me they would be great to put up on the walls. Also, I might want to get into the habit of buying two of everything: two candles, two lamps, two vases, whatever, and put them side by side. I immediately thought of the couple in the French movie Delicatessen: a weird and wonderful movie. The female character’s vision is so bad and she’s so clumsy, she buys two of everything because she expects to break one of everything in her home. She attracts a retired circus performer who plays the saw to accompany her cello music. I guess that “buy two of everything” trick worked for her.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

I started a cleanse that forbids consumption of meat, fish, dairy, caffeine and sugar.

Not only has my food gotten more colorful as a result of my new eating regimen, but so have the images in my mind after watching Pedro Almodovar’s “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.” During my Fellini craze, I fantasized in vain about having a part in one of Fellini’s movies, but realizing the impossibility of this, I’ve progressed to wanting to be in a living director’s movies, namely Almodovar. I like the strong female characters in his films, the vibrant colors, the humanity and the humor. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is vastly different from Talk to Her, Bad Education and Volver, the other films of his that I’ve seen. I suppose all of them have his signature splashes of color, but “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” is a comedy both clever and slapstick. I think I laughed the hardest at the scenes involving the gregarious taxi driver who equipped his taxi to meet his passengers’ every need.

I could see some influence from Fellini and Hitchcock, but “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” was still like nothing I have ever seen. My guy friend who watched it with me also loved it. I may be depriving myself of coffee and chocolate these days, but good movies should always be in ample supply.

After watching the movie, I played with my camera and asked my guy friend if he ever felt like filming anything. He said all the time, but most people don’t like to be filmed. I told him that I like to be filmed, but I can’t act. My friend informed me that the best directors can get a good performance out of anyone. Hmmmmmm. If that’s true, maybe a part in an Almodovar film isn’t entirely implausible.

Fun and games, grit and grime.

The boys in my class held the edges of a big parachute and shook it, making waves in the rainbow material. The delight on their faces grew when I threw a heap of colorful balls on the parachute. Plastic balls bouncing over an undulating parachute provided an exhilarating burst of color. Some boys crawled underneath the parachute for the thrill of being in a multicolored, chaotic hiding place. I joined them underneath the parachute and sang the ominous Jaws theme, my announcement that I was a shark and all of them had better scramble or else be eaten by me. Well, my “Da duh da duh da duh” must not have sounded very frightening, because my prey turned on me. The boys decided they wanted to be sharks too, and performed a swift attack, jumping on me from all angles until we all lay buried under a floppy parachute, my glasses sitting at an odd angle on my face and my barrettes falling out of my hair.

This is a typical day for me. I find great joy in my work and I love the boys in my class. Entering class one day, a boy turned to his friend and said, “Miss Meri is drinking milk!” as if that were big news. If only the comments people made about me were that innocent and true. 

Lately, I've been interrogated by co-workers about my interaction with a male co-worker, who happens to be British. Apparently, it’s unbecoming for a woman to be seen walking down the hallway talking to a man. Telling these women that my life is none of their business and I don’t need to explain or defend myself does nothing to quell the prying questions. These interactions have left me exasperated and wishing I could click my heels together three times and magically go home to Portland, Oregon. I suppose I should consider the source, before I let any negative comments get me down. 

The same woman who has become suspicious of my nonexistent love life paid me a backhanded compliment on my first day of work when she said she was sure I was English and not American because all Americans were ugly. She then contorted her face and hobbled around the room like a hunchback to show me what she meant.

I’m finding the rules of the culture so difficult to conform to. I have the most boring social life, and yet I’m characterized as some kind of party animal. In the staff room last week I was warned by a well-meaning co-worker to “Be careful,” even though I was simply sitting at a table, waiting for my third cup of coffee to kick in. Well, my co-worker told me that a certain notorious Arab man whom I've never met has a hankering for Western women. 

Another co-worker wearing an abaya nodded her head and warned me that “fornication is illegal under Islamic law.”  “What fornication?!” I wanted to scream. “I live next to a deserted wasteland filled with abandoned school buses. Abandoned school buses aren't exactly conducive to fornication. And really, did you seriously just use the word fornication?”

I tell myself that I've been through challenging times before and that I’m a strong woman. I used to box and was pretty good at it. I've knocked the wind out of sparring partners twice my size. I can get through this.

I’m going to leave you now with a funny cat video. Au revoir.

Dog Sitting in Doha

If I could communicate telepathically with Jasper, the dog I am dog sitting, I imagine he would be singing jaunty little songs about us being the best of friends. This isn’t a dog-friendly community I live in and most of the children have not been taught to love dogs, so unfortunately, Jasper gets taunted regularly on our walks. When this happens, he cries and hides behind me, but when there are no children around, he resumes the skip in his step.

Once I sensed trouble before Jasper did. A bunch of children were loitering outside the Iranian school, but they weren't close enough to pose much of a threat to Jasper. Knowing what was coming, I tried to warn Jasper so he would hold his ground when the children started in with their jeers and taunts. I looked down and spoke in a conspiratorial tone, “Jasper, when these children try to scare you, I want you to bite them, okay?” Sure enough, the children started in with their howls and yelling and using their hands to mimic shooting. Jasper freaked out and hid behind me, as usual.

We went back to my apartment. I tried to take an afternoon nap and Jasper snuggled up beside me. I told him that he would need to toughen up, no more being scared of cats or the sound of a plastic bag rustling, and when I tell you to bite someone, you do it, understand? It took a while for that to sink in, about as long as it took for me to fall asleep, because he jolted me awake with a bite on my arm. He was just being playful, but I banished him from my room and closed the door.

He still acts like a puppy and is definitely more of a handful than I had expected. Although I must compliment him on his fashion sense, I’m not happy about what he did after finding my brand-new shoes. He knocked them down off a high shelf and then chewed them beyond recognition.

It doesn't do any good to try to avoid the children by walking Jasper at night. They are out at all hours, playing in the parking lot with no adult supervision. I think these children never go to bed. Their parents must say to them, “Okay kids, put on your dark clothing and go play in the parking lot in the dark. I’ll be inside watching TV.”

Tonight the feral children ran up to Jasper, yelled at him and then ran away. They made a game of it, but I’m not exactly sure what the objective was. It was either to see who could get closest to the dog or who could scare him the most, but thankfully, a woman walked by and I was able to enlist her help. She yelled at the children in Arabic, something I wish I could do.  Unfortunately, she also scared Jasper, which is not hard to do. Hopefully, whatever that woman yelled will stop those kids from harassing poor Jasper.  He has enough problems as it is. 

Where'd You Get Those Cheezits?

Tonight I ate Krispy Kremes and watched “The Perks of Beinga Wallflower” with an American friend and her teenage daughter. I had read the book when I was in high school and remembered how popular it was, how it was one of those books everyone my age was reading. As I reached the custard center of my donut, my friend’s daughter explained the inner workings of the eighth-grade social scene. I found her descriptions of some of her classmates fascinating, especially in light of my interest in the young adult genre of literature.

I thought it would be especially difficult for a teenager to become acclimated to living in Qatar, but she’s doing just fine. She enjoys playing games of “Spot the Americans,” in which she approaches people looking suspiciously American and inquires about their nationality. I would like to play this game from a distance, but I’m not bold enough to approach total strangers. Still, I think it might help to break down some of the rigid antisocial attitudes in this city.

Sometimes this game produces something useful, like information on where to buy imported American snack foods. After seeing a man eating from a box of Cheezits, she approached him and asked if he was American, followed by a blunt “Where’d you get those Cheezits?”

Don't you just love teenagers?