Abu Dhabi p. 1

At the Souk Central Market, everything smells like all your best and deepest daydreams

I had meant for this blog to not be so centered on me as it should instead be on other things: pictures and stories. But then again, the self would always find ways into things, like how some people would say the best things are those that are personal, those that are close to the heart (discussions on how much of the self should be in something is a different topic altogether, something reserved, say, for a theory class). Among the most common faults of young writers, noted one of my professors, is that they can be excessively self-indulgent.

To our defense however, it is mostly because we are young, and we know only ourselves (charot) and why the hell not, when it is the only way we can make sense of the world that we have been given (extra charot)?
And so this is a practice in going beyond the self, this blog, and so now I'm contradicting myself in the only way that the young know how to, by being a damn hypocrite, and writing a very personal post. bleh.

On to Abu Dhabi:

Abu Dhabi was beautiful, like a dream. My little sister and I had woken up so early as to be down for breakfast by six, hogging an entire booth that could seat six people all to ourselves so that we had a convenient view of the restaurant entrance, and enough room to duck and hide in whenever we needed.
We took food sparingly, not intending to eat, gazing with heavy hearts at the beginnings of a perfect morning outside. I had ever seen a brighter, bluer sky, and the horizon was a calm yellow that spread farther than the eye could reach. Wind was blowing down from the east like a friend, the date trees nodding in their curt refusal to awaken.
    "It's a beautiful day." We would sigh. Often we would distract ourselves by eating, but it was to us merely the plucking apart of the food and putting it into our mouths and thinking how strange it feels, now that you put all of your thought on eating, how this strange thing, all rough and soft and small, could nourish you.

   It was difficult to imagine how we had gotten there a few hours previously, in the dead of night, our heads wrapped up in all the manner of scarves and panic.
    "Would you like a taxi or a limo?" Was what we were asked once we stepped out of the airport. I don't know what would have happened if we had opted for the latter. We took a taxi to Yas Island. It was midnight, and the roads were empty save for one or two other taxis hurrying other jetlag-stricken nomads to their beds.

   We stayed at Hotel Rotana, groaning whenever our minds strayed to how much this unintentional exposure to luxury cost us. We groaned at the softness of the beds, the warmth of the water, the light from the windows, we groaned inwardly at how lovely and gracious the staff were to our rehearsed plight, that we were there on a quest.
    "J-- is our father's name. We are here to surprise him."
    "Ah, so you are here to surprise your parents!"
   "Oh. Oh yes." It was my sister who had said this, my sister who had choked, my little sister whose thoughts raced swiftly to our mother who was continents away, my little sister who heard the first ominous answer, and it had been answer enough for the both of us, but we had needed to see with our own eyes, and so we set about to sleep, dreading the next morning.

    We told no lies. But we had said it differently, with voices hushed and shuddering with excitement. We had decided that we were not deceiving anyone, and so we told the lovely staff a partial truth, and were it not for their help we could not have found what we had traveled so far and so suddenly for. They kept our secrets, and for a day we found in them quick and loyal friends. I could only hope that someday they too, could know the absolute truth, although I don't know if that helps anyone at all.
    "Quite an adventure you've had," said Aquino from reception, one among several who had assisted us so discreetly, and when he found out that I wrote to scrape a living he said that I should write about this adventure, and so now I am. I wish we could have been friends for longer.
    "Write about our story, too!" quips Vio, another from reception. And I said that I would. Stories about these friendly faces behind desks, so far away from home, always need to be told.

Later that day my sister and I would find ourselves, more than once, brooding in the stairwells. We did not think it possible for our hearts to break in such a beautiful place.
    "This is not how I imagined visiting Arabia." I said at one point. The Arabia of my dreams was different, the Arabia of my childhood dreams. The Arabia of a thousand and one stories. The Arabia of deserts and magic and djinns and characters all in love and adventure and deceit and victory and irony. Instead we had found ourselves in this Arabia not as spectators but as characters ourselves, within a story. Of what exactly, I know not, only that we were helpless and exhausted and betrayed, and upon journey's end we had gotten exactly what we had intended to. We don't know who was victorious in this story. We only knew that we wanted to go home.

The only lies we told were of a salvaging nature. There was no deus ex machina for us then.
    "Our flight is at seven." We did not want to stay any longer.
    We left Hotel Rotana and our Father at four in the afternoon, and headed to the central market instead, where things unfolded in a more satisfying and touristy manner, as it should have been (Pictures and stories of a more cheerful note in the next post). It had been a long day. Too long, in fact.
     "It's a beautiful city." My sister sighed heavily. We were in a cab hurtling towards the city proper.
     "It is." We were in a beautiful city, and to leave was our only desire.