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Foreigner
The late afternoon sun reflects off of the clean white tiles of the Dubai motor vehicle testing and registration center. People of all types bustle and shift about the room trying to navigate the various steps and stops required to keep their vehicles road legal for another year. I’m sitting on a hard blue plastic chair waiting for the number 571 to flash up on the red LED display, announcing my turn. 583 and 570 stay illuminated. In my flannel shirt from Esprit and my Lucky Brand jeans, I stand out. Not that these brands aren’t widely available or worn. It’s the combination and the way they are worn that makes the difference. I am the American in the room. Another flannel patterned shirt passes by but the dress pants and sandals announce that he is not American and the Asian man’s dark skin and slight figure make his race and home country an obvious neighbor to the UAE; maybe India, Bangladesh, or Sri Lanka, but probably Pakistan. Around me are turbans, dish dashas, Arabic accents, and well sculpted permanent 4 day beards. I am the outsider, the foreigner, the barbarian.
My number is called, the gentleman at the counter is uncommonly kind for a government worker. He smiles, he jokes, and he is efficient. In New York I would consider him new or more likely, daffy.
I pass to the adjoining room where I sit on an identically industrial plastic chair and watch a man pass by in wayfarer sunglasses, black skinny jeans, a gray dress shirt , pointy black boots, and a mop of unruly black curly hair that could be confused for a mullet. He greets the counter worker, “As-Salāmu `Alaykum”, the common Arabic greeting. I’ve recently started to adopt the greeting and the previously stoic, cold, and unavailable Emirati nationals have become much more open, much more friendly, and much more available. After three and a half years, I realize how much the ignorant foreigner I have been. The number 571 flashes on the LED hung over counter 11. “As-Salāmu `Alaykum”, I say as I approach the counter, hoping my pronunciation is good enough to be understood.
E.G.
That Estonian Girl 