Dubai, Jet fuel, and Coffee

I left Portland this past week, and then soon after leaving Portland I left America. I had half a week to pack up my entire existence, except for the existence I could carry across the globe for a new job assignment in Oman. A red-eye flight from PDX to Reagan Int'l in DC, and on from there to a land of frankincense, desert palms, and uncertainty. Overtones of uncertainty surrounded this trip from the beginning... but I was certain I needed to go.

I think it was last night I left Baltimore Airport...but that doesn't seem quite right. Baltimore, London-Heathrow and Dubai blurred together in a single tired memory. Was it this morning I had left America!? or was it another state of mind in another region of space time!? I couldn't be sure with all the timezones crossed, and all the crossed eyes that looked so lost en route to somewhere else. I left the states with even more questions unanswered about where I was going, both in the immediate sense and with life in general, but I also left with an overwhelming desire for freedom from those nagging, anxiety-ridden questions.

I'm jet lagged to the extreme as I write. Normal contemplative thoughts can bend quickly from the physical and warp into the metaphysical. I'm running on the fumes of my soul's jet fuel and in the middle of an 8 hr layover in Dubai, a surreal, and idiosyncratic port of entry into an alternate reality called the Arab world. I've been here before, but through a different portal, and on a different mission.

Dubai airport must have been inspired by an Escher painting, with its never-ending series of escalators that criss-cross in directions that defy reason, traversing vast spaces under a majestic glass dome firmament etched with mosaic pattern constellations. Gardens and fountains stretch before the wary eye of the intercontinental bedouin, like an oasis in the desert after days of sleepless travel. An electric dream-palace, a sunrise glowing at the edge of the airport's carapace, warming the soul in an otherwise cold, dreary, restive night of uncertain travel. A shopping mecca rises up as the airport's crown jewel, a pantheon of materialism beaming life into the Bedouin spirit that aimlessly wanders through Dubai to their destination. The spectacle offers a welcomed retreat on the long journey. Space and time are condensed in this crowded hustle-and-bustle of merchants and consumers swapping currencies for gold, i-pods, tobacco and whiskey. I have to convince my eyes that this is real and not a mirage, I'm in a sheikhdom that left the solitude of the desert long ago.

Cacaphonous chatter is heard from all directions, a human zoo with speakers of diverse tongues, their speech dancing and vying for dominance in the otherwise sterile ether. As soundwaves of human utterance pass and collide, the languages herald the arrival of businessmen from different continents, of indentured servants from the subcontinent, and the groaning lingua franca of the incontinent, intercontinental, modern-day nomad slow-cooked in economy class for hours on end, en route to a place that cannot be properly located on any continent. It's the Jazirah, the Arabian Peninsula, betwixt Africa, Europe and Asia. A crossroads of cultures and North Americana capitalism pumped full of steroids and oil.

I ordered a cup of Turkish coffee at 3 am local time, asking if I could pay in American. The Phillipino barista nodded, and rang up an overpriced Cafe Americano... it was just the same to me. So I sat, contemplating, sipping at a drink with vestiges of an American military campaign fought deep in the heart of Europe. American GI's in WW2 watered down their coffee to match the strength of a cup back home. Their drink took the familiar name Cafe Americano. Hmmm...maybe the Barista knew what she was doing. I needed to drink up and embrace my heritage. Turkish coffee would have gotten me through the night, if it really was night. Bio-rhythms argued that it was still daytime. The activity of the airport and the dazzling lights agreed, while the rotation of the earth did not. The concept of time takes on a dramatically different feel when living a nomadic existence. I felt like a nomad, enduring a long, sleepless journey taken on faith. It had been a solid week since my life had been overturned, when I accepted an assignment in Oman. I had been running at full speed ever since, and the adrenaline keeping me going was nearly spent, fast depleted fumes of jet fuel were all that was left. Dubai was an oasis, a bubble in the fabric of space-time, a welcomed relief on the journey before continuing onward to Muscat.