In the Desert, Life Goes On

I’ll start this with three random facts. First, a movie that came out in high school called the Kingdom that had a really cool opening sequence, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, and a storyline I’ve since forgetten but had something to do with expats in the KSA. I think there were scenes from a compound community. Next, graduating college and moving my stuff into the storage location for the summer. During the registration process, talking to the owners of the storage building who used to work for Aramco, and sharing where I’d be working myself. Finally, a random MFAH exhibit on early Arabian culture I dragged everyone to involving exhibit upon exhibit of incense burners. These three facts amounted to the whole of what I had thought about the Arabian Peninsula prior to this summer.

Fast forward.

I wake up to find my head resting on the back window of an SUV. My head is groggy, my stomach full, my liver drenched. My ears tune into and out of a Black Eyed Peas song as my eyes focus in on the trees casting their shadows about on walled sidewalks in the cool fall breeze. Headlights of cars whizzing by in the other direction as they come off a turnaround are the first clues that I’m not where you’d think I am, but the Arabic names on the restaurants in the upcoming strip mall all but confirm that. The other passengers in the SUV, all in various states of consciousness, I recognize as project team members, but dressed in formal outfits I hardly recognize. Then I recall the food and drinks at the wedding reception of two fellow teammates, grunt in some form of self-acknowledgement, and finally assured that our boss is firmly at the wheel, fall back again to sleep.

When you rotate, there are two fundamental ways to treat the parallel threads that now weave through the tapestry of life: you can try and sandbox your on- and off- rotation experiences like alternating patterns in a fabric. This is comfortable and easier to do short term; initially the idea was to treat life abroad as temporary, and not get too attached to anything or anyone. That concept became less and less practical with each new immigration stamp in my passport, and before you know it, you become interdimensional, stuck between two times and places, juggling two realities but perhaps never being fully engaged in one.

The other way, I guess, is to try and intertwine the two threads, acknowledging the inherent complexities of being in two different places isolated from one another. I’ll admit that I’m still figuring out how to do this, but for a couple reasons, this is coming to a head now that my rotations look like they will be finishing up soon. I initially avoided this because it takes enough effort trying to juggle workloads from two places, let alone personal lives; but I also thought it’d become annoying to preface everything with a contextual “…well back in doha, which is the town we go to, when I was with my friend/coworker who you might remember…” Maybe I’m not a good storyteller, but maybe there’s something to be said for keeping work and life separate.

But then you find yourself in a wedding in a foreign land where the only people who fill the pews in the chapel are the same people down the hall at work, who might also be your literal neighbors at the compound. Weekends in Doha become fun, weekdays at camp familiar. You find yourself doing things you thought you wouldn’t do: developing a routine, making friends, getting attached. I can hate all I want on the oppressive heat/systems here, but it will be hard, at the end of the day, to turn my back and hate on my time here. And moving forward, these faces and experiences will be the thoughts that dance through my head when I think of the middle east.