Chinese chicken pigeons

Do you have beard brushes?  No, sir, these are for women only.  But I can use them to brush my beard.  No, sir, they are for women.  And he smiled of course.  You have anything for itching beards?  He gave me Claritin, on the box in the tiniest of letters it says it is used for skin allergies.  Do I have a skin allergy.  The one month bush didn’t itch in the Danat Resort’s splash pool.  I should just keep it submerged in water.

I crossed the border before the 5.40am sun rose over the craggy Hajars and kept the a/c off.  Two days earlier I arrived at the hotel just as my old car wheezed and died 20 yards from a parking spot.  The concierge fellas were nice, told me all the garages were closed on Friday but they’d help me find someone Saturday morning.  It’s the thermostat, I’m sure of it.  I thought, hopefully, that the Pakistani named Farat had repaired it.  He hadn’t and now I faced a troubling decision; find someone in Al-Ain and wait the entire day in the hotel or at the mall or attempt to get it back to Buraimi and take it once again to the man who doesn’t even have a garage to work in. 

In two weeks time I’ll go to Abu Dhabi and apply for an Afghan visa but there’s no way I’ll take this car.  I can take a taxi or rent a car and I don’t know about either choice now.  Will I have to stay in the city and wait for the visa to be processed or will it be done in a day.  Ramadan will have begun, lord have mercy, travelling in the heat, having to hide thirsty gulps of water so I won’t offend the suffering who sometimes look like they’d rather hide for a thirsty gulps of water.  A Nepalese businessman told me--have I wrote about this here, I don’t remember--but he told me he had received two bookings from Saudis for the third week in June.  Ram said they like to eat so they come here.  Ram worked in this country for seven years, working for a family as driver, gopher boy, sex slave.  They like to eat.  Ya, during Ramadan.  A Middle East culture rarely permits such choice, they police themselves rather closely, but this year, I don’t know what they are thinking.  I will be a good Muslim, I will not complain, I will abide, but Lord, at the end of the day, will I be any better off, financially, no.  Spiritually?  To God only, I’m afraid. 

I like my beard brush.  It works more like a pronged massage as I do circles and vigorous rubs in the itchier areas. 

It was Groucho Marx who said “I refuse to join a club that would have me as a member” and so I removed myself from two large Muscat fb groups.  Too much policing, too much mothering, too much censoring, I tolerate it not as much the ‘managers’ of the pages tolerate my opinions and sense of humor, so that’s it.  I put it here as more of a historical footnote, for some of the folks on this page demonstrated incredible support for me when I went to Nepal.  I’m saying goodbye not because I don’t appreciate your kind hearted sentiments, I say goodbye to the Gestapo manner in which the page is managed.   

High clouds build up in the East.  Yesterday a terrific sandstorm swept the children and parents out and off of the Resort’s manicured lawns and chaise lounges.  In the Indian Ocean 1500 miles off the coast a low depression spins northward, will it go after Muscat, a city reeling from water shortages and a government media who won’t report it, funny, acting like the Chinese, we don’t want to foment rage so we won’t inform anyone of what’s going on.  What’s going on, a planned water supply from Barka is behind schedule, like two months behind, and neighborhoods are going dry.  The blue water tankers that supply those who aren’t connected to city lines ply their extortionist means, charging four to five times the rate, putting the poor man with a fixed budget at risk of not having water when it is 120 degrees outside.  Fine, we don’t need to shower or shave or shit.  We drink bottled water.  And in Al-Ain yesterday and the day before rolling brown outs.  Thank god my a/c is working now.  I could live without it, I could simply remain in my bathtub wrapped in wet towels.

The pigeons sense my presence through the tinted sliding door and take off leaving their eggs unattended.  Why do pigeons act like such chickens?  Why do they give up protecting their offspring so quickly, it reminds me of the Chinese crew that survived when their ferry capsized leaving all but 14 of the 400 senior citizens to die in a cold and dirty Yangtze.  Chinese chicken pigeons they are.

O let there be rain.