uae – Wissam Charafeddine

Memoir Part 8 – Abu Mohamad – Sheik Kishk – Summer Vacations

December 27, 2017 WLeave a comment

Abu Mohamad was the Natoor (guard) of the bank over which we lived and where my father worked as a bank manager. He stayed there for the afternoon and all night guarding the bank. In a village like Khorfakhan, that is pretty much the most boring job. I had lived in Khorfakhan for 6 years, never hearing police sirens once. There was literally no crime. As my dad was friends with the head of police, he came to our house occasionally. He was a very obese Emirati man, with a great sense of humor. I always thought as a child to myself: how is he going to run after a robber with his obesity?! I later understood that the chance of that was almost none.

In the afternoons of UAE, everyone sleeps. The sun becomes scorching hot, heating up the black mountains around it, making the city feel like an oven. The ground becomes so hot, that you can fry an egg on it. You barely can open your eyes. The Tropic of Cancer passes through UAE, which is the closest line to the sun on Earth half of the year. Wecan’t even touch the windows of the house. We used to play me and my brother Hamoudi by getting two pieces of ice cubes from the freezer and pushing them into the window and seeing how fast they would melt. If you were unfortunate enough to forget a plastic toy in the car during that time, mind as well you forget about it, because you will find it a coiled piece of melted plastic.

My parents slept in the afternoon. My brother slept too sometimes. I was left alone to figure out what to do. Remember, at that time, there were no cartoons on the one channel TV, no electronic games, and no internet. We would invent games. One of my favorite games was playing Muslim conquest. I would open my big Atlas and plan “opening” one city after another in the World. I just used my imagination, a towel as a cape, and a stick as a sword. I rode the back of the sofa as a horse and fought with imaginary warriors. That actually strengthened me in geography. It took years of playing this game before I finished the whole Atlas, hence occupying the whole world! I actually kept playing that game all the way till when we immigrated to Windsor. It is a game that grew with me, and there was a day when I thought I have to stop this, otherwise, it becomes some sort of schizophrenia. Not only that, but I had three generations of imaginary princes. Mohamad AlBaqir, then Jaafar AlSadiq, and then Mousa AlKazim. Yes, these were the names of my imaginary Muslim warriors, same as the names of the fifth, sixth, and seventh imams of Ahlulbait. I didn’t know them well at that time, but I got their names from the books we had in our library.

So back in Khorfakan in the mid 80’s, when I got tired of all my imaginary games and had no one to play with, I resorted to going down to Abu Mohamad and chatting with him. He would let us play in the empty bank. We were the children of the Bank manager at the end of the day! So he thought he could not get in trouble for it. Abu Mohamad used to listen to Sheik Abdulhamid Kishk. An Egyptian blind scholar who was one of the best speakers in the 20th-century Islamic world. His lectures were prohibited in UAE, as he was a pillar of the Muslim Brotherhood, but Abu Mohamad had cassettes of Sheik Kishk’s lectures. We would listen to him together, and he would pause and explain to me what the Sheik was saying. I think that was one of the things that shaped my childhood and primed my devotion to Islam and Islamic work later in life.

One of the perks of working as a bank manager at the National Bank of Abu Dhabi for my father was that he received a paid family vacation every year. The bank covers the costs of tickets to our selected destination. Hence, we alternated between Lebanon and America every year, for most of our relatives were in Lebanon and in Dearborn, Michigan.

Since no one in the family remembers when were those travels, I will have to check my mother’s old passport, which I will include in the next chapter.

Memoir Part 7: Bomb on the Beach

November 19, 2017March 17, 2021 WLeave a comment

Between the mountains and the sea, the breeze goes back and forth, alternating in the direction between night and day, elevating some of the torture of the hot perpendicular rays of the sun in the daytime, and the other torture of the high humidity at night.

We played on the Kournish Thursday nights till we were exhausted. We either went back home biking, or we met our parents in whichever house of a family they were spending time with that night.

We would play soccer, build castles, find dead fish, occasionally helping fishermen pulling their nets from the sea, creating obstacle courses with bicycles, throwing stones, discovering new things, attacking abandoned houses after creating myths about them to scare ourselves, eating berries off the best berry trees in the area, and if we met a new boy, we would discover him and it would be a very exciting Thursday night for us. We would gather around him asking him questions, listening to his stories, till there was nothing more to know about him. It was like an initiation to friendship. I experienced that myself moving from one city to another when the students in a new class would gather around me and shower me with questions. In few minutes, you would make 10’s of new friends and few best friends.

If you grew up in UAE at that time, you grew up knowing and loving Sheik Zayid bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founder of UAE, and the ruler of Abu Dhabi, as well as the President of UAE. He was commonly named Baba Zayid because of his fatherly love and figure to all the Emirates. He was one of the wise tribal leaders who is only remembered for his positive accomplishments and kind leadership, true to the Arabic and Islamic issues. UAE was very stable and growing fast during his time.

During that time (1983-1986), there were two major events in the Middle East: The first was the Iraqi-Iranian war which took place just across the Persian Gulf (we called it Arabian Gulf). The second was the Israeli occupation of Lebanon all the way to Beirut and the birth of the Islamic and Lebanese resistance in Lebanon. Both these wars had direct effects on my family and our surroundings.

While playing on the kournish one Wednesday night (because our school had that Thursday off coincidently), I, Hamoudi my brother, and Islam my Egyptian friend, found a little yellow metal container that looked like a fire extinguisher being washed ashore by the dark salty waves. Anything that entered our space, new and different, got all of our attention, having nothing else to entertain ourselves with on that stranded pseudo-island.

It was heavy, and we started playing with it. It had writings in English, and picture instructions that showed a picture of an explosion at the end. I told Islam to throw it away because it seemed dangerous, but we couldn’t resist following the instructions. While implementing the instructions step by step, unlocking the head cover, pulling some strings, up to pressing a red button, we were laughing out loud, thinking that we found a bazooka.

Well, less than a second from us laughing and Islam pressing the red button, it seemed that a year passed. Although much of the details have been blocked in my memory due to the shock, all I remember that there was a big explosion. Lucky enough the bomb was directional and it flew right into the sea before it exploded inside in the ocean and covered the surface of the sea with a huge field of fire, that was meters high.

I also remember that I was running as fast as I can. Islam was running too. Hamoudi was nowhere to be found. Islam’s hand burnt because he was the last person holding the bomb before it went off. We ran about a mile far. Then we looked around us for Hamoudi nowhere to be found. We were looking at the fire. Did something happen to Hamoudi?! And then we see his silhouette with the fire behind him, running towards us. For some reason, Hamoudi pretended that he was dead after the explosion. But when he received no attention because no one was there, he got up and ran towards us.

Hamoudi arrived, and all of us were breathing crazy hard, then we looked at each other, covered with sand, and water (due to the big splash in the ocean of the explosion), we cracked up and started laughing hysterically. We decided to go to the little police office on the Korneich and inform the police.

We went in, and an Emirati police officer with a big belly in front of him was sitting in the airconditioned room watching TV. He probably has never dealt with any situation ever. Khorfakan is a very quiet safe city with a small population. We were little scared of talking to him, but he was smiling and joking with us. We told him that we found something that looked like a fire extinguisher and we played with it, but it exploded. He said he was wondering what was that loud explosion sound. He promptly called more units using his two-way radio.

In few minutes, after people heard the explosion, people gathered at the kournish, as well many police units arrived. We were looking at people talking, making up rumors and theories. Us being in third or fourth grades, could not really tell the people gathered that it was us who found and caused the explosion. The police shut down the kournish, and they combed the whole beach finding multiple of these devices. We later knew that it was dropped from ships carrying weapons to the Persian gulf. Islam went home because he needed some medical attention for his hand. Me and Hamoudi went home and decided not to tell mother so we don’t get a good old Arabic beating for being trouble makers.

When we arrived home, my mom ran to the door and she was shocked and terrified. She hugged us and made sure we were ok. She said that the police called and asked them to bring us to the police station to collect our statements. My father came back, and he was a little angry for us “causing trouble”. If you are a boy in an Arabic house, you never want the police to call home and ask for or about you. It is a tabboo. The police first asked that we go to the hospital to be checked. Then we went to the police station so they would take our statements. My father, being the Manager of National Bank of Abu Dhabi in Khorfakan (basically where all the police salaries are banked), knew everyone, and received so much respect from the police officers. They were cracking jokes about us, and about Lebanese and bombs.

This remained as a single memory that never will be erased. And we were lucky that we survived it. Death brushed our hair on that day. Our lives would have been completly changed if Islam was not pointing the bomb to the sea. The sea saved us.

Memoir Part 6: Islam, hanan, and Death of Ayman

November 12, 2017October 8, 2018 WLeave a comment

Islam Yakout Mohamed Mursi

One of the names that I will never forget. My brother from a different mother. A dark-skinned Alexandrian boy from Egypt with an amazing sense of humor, as it is common among Egyptians. Islam had no siblings, and I was his best friend. His family treated him like I am his brother. I was one of them. The kindness and compassion that his parents overflowed with to me were heartwarming .. one of the things which made me who I am today.

Let me talk to you about al-hanan… an Arabic word that translates to a mix of kindness, love, tenderness, kindliness, care, warm-heartedness, and a million other words that cover every bit and piece of those feelings. It translates as language, but it doesn’t translate as an emotion to the West. This word is not translatable to English because it is not about language. Language is there to symbolize something that exists. The famous Arabic poet, Nizar Qabani expresses his yearning to the hanan in his letter poem Five Letters to My Mother:

I am alone.
The smoke of my cigarette is bored,
and even my seat of me is bored
My sorrows are like flocking birds looking for a grain field in season.
I became acquainted with the women of Europe,
I became acquainted with their tired civilization.
I toured India, and I toured China,
I toured the entire oriental world,
and nowhere I found,
a Lady to comb my golden hair.
A Lady that hides for me in her purse a sugar candy.
A lady that dresses me when I am naked,
and lifts me up when I fall.
Mother: I am that boy who sailed,
and still longes to that sugar candy.
So how come or how can I, Mother,
become a father and never grow up.

From the hanan of my parents, to the overwhelming Charafeddine hanan, rooted deeply in the history of our family from Ahlulbait, the family of the Prophet that has been cloaked with tragedies, and manifested in my Grandmother, to the hanan of the parents of my frirends Islam and Firas, to the hanan of the warm salty beach that carresses the white sand softly, to the hanan of the sounds of Azan jumping playfully on the rocks of the mountains of khrofakhan … to the hanan of the oldmen eyes siting at a cafe bench watching us pass by … we were submerged with Hanan.

I never will forget an incident that happened to me when once I went to buy my Mother something from the supermarket. While coming back, I decided to take the side streets among the communal popular old houses. These streets are usually sandy and only lit by the small lamps above the metallic doors. I got a little scared for it was dark. I started running. While I was running, there was a construction metal piece coming out of the ground that hit my feet. It cut me right between my toes. I was bleeding. I dropped the merchandise from the bag. I collected them gently back into the plastic bag while limping on a bleeding foot. In that condition, one of the doors nearby opened. A middle-aged woman came out with thick glasses and Egyptian style hijab. She said: “What is wrong ya Mama?”

The word Mama entered my ears and comforted all my nerves. I didn’t need to speak, and she didn’t wait for an answer after seeing what answered her inquiry. She came to me and looked at my feet, and held my hand and pulled me to her house like a panicking mother. She was talking to me, but I don’t remember what she said anymore. But I remember she gave me a glass of water to drink and she was cleaning my foot from sand and blood, applied antibiotic (red medicine we used to call it), and bandaged it. She offered to call home, but I told her I can just walk home. I left. Never saw her again, nor I know her name. But she gave me another injection of hanan that would last me a lifetime.

The mosque was so close to our house like I mentioned before. Upon hearing from my teacher that praying in the mosque is 24 times better than praying at home, I started rushing to pray in the mosque everytime I hear the Azan. I went to the mosque so much and was the youngest person praying in the mosque, that the Imam visited my father to inquire if there were problems at home that I am fleeing from. My father expressed while laughing that there is nothing wrong at home and that I just loved praying in the mosque.

We learned French and English at the Emirates School in addition to Arabic off course. The French didn’t go well. The teacher gave up and quit. We stopped learning French, but still learned English, rarely used in the U.A.E. at that time.

One of the teachers was really proactive in the school, and she formed the Scholastic Police. She got us hats and scarves. Being the oldest class in the school, and I think I am talking third grade now, we were naturally the Scholastic Police. We were supposed to patrol the school and ensure that students didn’t go to the back of the school during lunch or recess and that they stay in the field. She nominated me as the captain of the police since I was very popular among my class and had good grades, but I refused. I wanted to reserve the right to be a bad boy. Being captian of the police brings too much attention. She appointed Mohamad, a boy whose father is an Emirati Sheik and his mother is a Filipino. Mohamad was the richest kid in school and his father was feared for being a deputy minister so no teacher would get Mohamad mad. Once Mohamad was sick, and we went a field trip to visit his house. It was a huge mansion with unlimited toys. Anyways, soon enough, we were using our positions in the Scholastic Police to allow our friends to go play in the back of the school. Nobody would listen to Captain Mohamad since he really had no real leadership. The whole idea backfired on the teacher, and the Principal canceled the Scholastic Police. We kept the hats and scarves.

Wissam and Mohamad in Emirates School — Me with the shorts, and Mohamad, and you can see his Scholastic Police Scarf

I had an Egyptian classmate called Ayman. Ayman went to buy something from the store with his bike, and a car struck him and he died. We were too young the understand the concept of death, and it was pretty much my first experience with it. The school went into mourning. Teachers were crying, and they played Quran in the school for few days. They were monitoring us to see if any of us are traumatized or deeply affected, but we weren’t. Nevertheless, we were under so much pressure to be deeply affected! Sitting in the field listening to Quran while our heads are down, Islam leans towards me and says: “pretend that you are crying”.

I don’t know how to pretend emotions. It is one of my problems I guess. My face shows what I truly feel. This has caused me so much trouble in life, but I like it. Early trouble is better than late trouble. I really don’t feel the tragedy of death, since it is inevitable. What is 100% predictable, cannot be surprising. I have always, and still do feel that way. The only concern I had was that Ayman borrowed my notebook on his last day of school. I was thinking it is impossible to get it back then. I never tried.

We had nothing in Khorfakan but each other, as friends, to keep ourselves busy and entertained. There was no TV, except one channel that played cartoons for a maximum of one hour a day. There were no electronic games. There was not one single swing in the city or slide. Soccer balls were rare. My father bought me one from Dubai. There was no theater, no gym, no soccer fields, no arcades, no parks, no toy stores, no children clubs. There was nothing but the mountains, the ocean, and your friends. Friends became an integral part of seeing and experiencing life. This became a deep characteristic of me. I had a hard time shed it away later on in life.

We would climb the mountain or play at the beach. We would bike to each other’s houses. The city was safe. We would just leave our bikes on the street, and they would never be stolen. We never needed chains. “Muslims don’t steal”. That is what we thought. We thought that stealing, adultery, murder, and paganism were things before Islam. There was so much trust.

Next time I will tell you when we played with the bomb till it went off on the beach!

Memoir Part 3: Idols, Khor Fakkan, and Fujairah

March 4, 2017March 15, 2021 WLeave a comment

We learnt Islam in schools from Kindergarten. We memorized the short Surahs (chapters of Quran) and recited them like Christmas carols. We heard short stories of the prophets and day dreamed about them. And we studied the Seerah (personal history) of the Prophet at a very young age and it was our bed times stories or in some cases, fantasies.

3806 — The story of Prophet Ibrahim destroying idols and leaving the ax on the biggest idol was depicted by illustrations such as this in children’s book.

One of these short stories is the story of prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) and how he destroyed the idols of his people during their festival, in which he pretended to be sick to be left behind. Another story was the Prophet (the prophet here forth will mean Prophet Mohamad) destroying the idols surrounding Kaaba after the “Opening of Mecca” (the word opening – fateh in Arabic – is used for Islamic major conquest).

You have to be a son of a United Arab Emirates native male to be considered an Emiraty or to have the UAE citizenship. An Emirati mother won’t do, nor is being born there. It is a tribal society with all the pride and prejudice that come with its definition. Only about 11% of the country’s population are Emiratis. The majority actually (0ver 50%) are a working class South Asian … that is Indian, Pakistani, Bangali, Afghani, and others. We as foreigner Arabs were called “expatriates”. Most Emaratis and expatriates had servants, and so did we. We had a servant whose name was Leila, from Sri Lanka. In my opinion, it was just a modern form of slavery. The abuse of human rights inscripted in the work contracts for those servants is shocking, although the economic value to them is great.

At any case, Leila was a hindu, and I walked to her room with my brother Moe when in Ajman when I was about 7 years old, and found her kneeling down to one of the african antique wood sculptures my mom bought for our living room. She was practicing her religion, but given my little child indoctrination about idol worshipping infidels, and the influence of all the “idol destroying” heroes of my childhood, add to that a lack of education about tolerance, I found it an opportunity to do what Prophet Ibrahim did, and me and my brother Moe attacked the idols and smashed them across the wall, destroying them, and shouting “ALLAHU AKBAAAR”.

Leila cried, probably not because of our blasphemous act, but maybe because she thought she will get in trouble. My parents had a confidential talk with her. But then, we had a good traditional warm from the oven slipper beating (Arabs don’t use grounding as punishment) by our Mom for destroying her living room ornaments.

In 1982-1983, a new branch of National Bank of Abu Dhabi was opening in a small village called Khorfakkan, and my father was promoted to be a branch president and requested to move to it. A very important chapter of my childhood started in this small city surrounded and pushed by mountains into the dark blue of the Gulf of Oman. I was moving to Grade 2, and my brother Moe was entering kindergarten. There were no private schools in Khorfakkan. The closest city with a private school (25 minutes drive) was Fujairah. The tales of two cities unknown to most humans at that time started for me and my brother Moe.

Memoir Part 2: Jesus, WOW, and Ajman

January 25, 2017March 15, 2021 WLeave a comment

With a look of despair, Jesus looked down at me from his big wooden cross that was

65_18mar2015231217 — Abu Dhabi Rosary School Sisters

mounted on the wall next to the principal’s office at the Rosary School in Abu Dhabi. That was my first encounter with Christianity. My parents, wanting to give me a better education, enlisted me for Kindergarten in 1980, into a catholic school that was known for its rigorous education. The headmaster was a Lebanese nun, so my parents–being Lebanese themselves–got along really well with her. I don’t recall anything afterwards except bleeding from my ear.

Oh, you want to know about that?! Ok, so at this point, this will turn PG-13, so if you have any children around, stop reading aloud (it would actually be weird if you are doing so!). Here is the story: I did something wrong. I wrote the letter WOW in Arabic from bottom up (Yes! We do have a letter WOW in Arabic, and we also have a letter YAA!!!!, but you will never learn these cool letters because they come after the letters KKHAAA and TDHAAAD and GHghayn so you will probably give up early on in the Arabic alphabet before you get to them). Apparently, there was an international agreement that I missed that resolved to

write the WOW from top to bottom. I was called to the blackboard. I think that was the first public performance in my life. After I finished writing the WOW, the teacher stared at me in anger! She fumed! I couldn’t understand why. It is the first letter of my name, so I was sure I wrote the right letter. – She came up to me and snatched my ear with her fingers, pulled, twisted, and squeezed with the all the might that the Lord Jesus Christ has bestowed upon her. Her fingernail went into my flesh and I bled. Well, now I write my WOW from top to bottom, so well done Sister! My father actually came to school and all I remember is his stance at the door with his black suit and his manly full moustache next to the headmaster, while the teacher apologized to me in front of the class. I don’t know which experience was more traumatizing to me: the public ear-pinching or the public apology of my teacher who will continue to teach me for the rest of the year in humiliation!

As a branch manager of the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, a newly expanding government bank in a newly formed country (1973 was the formation of the United Arab Emirates), my father had to move a lot, accepting promotions and managing new branches.

In 1981, we moved.

Sand and beach … that is what fills my early childhood memories in a place called Ajman. Amidst that canvas of sand and salty beach under the scorching sun, I can barely recall other memories. They are all happy images of playing on the beach between the sand and the sun. I went to the Ajman Model Elementary School in first grade. I recall nothing from the school, except my box of pencils and instruments that had the Arab World map on it.

You see, we were raised with the notion that all of the Arab World was one world which we were the citizens of. We have been submerged into concepts of Pan-Arabism and Islamic identity from childhood, and this was the way in which we perceived the world. This ideal happy vision of one Arab world, with no borders, intertwined itself like a vines over our innocence. Both chattered together once we were at an age that required a passport.

Wait, I have a memory that I think I should not skip: of when I broke the idols and shouted “Allahu Akbar”. Here is the story.

Memoir part 1: Electra, Blondes, and Snapchat

January 19, 2017March 15, 2021 WLeave a comment

Electra …. My parents were living on a street called Electra when I was born in Abu Dhabi in the winter of 1976. Well, there is no such thing as winter if you are living the United Arab Emirates, but for the UAE residents, if you are not getting a heat stroke, then it is probably Winter. The street name is probably the only memory I have kept from my parents talking about my birth. It was, and still an interesting name to me. Sounds electronic, psychedelic, minimalist, and perhaps little erotic. A kind of prolific name for my future. Electra is definitely not Arabic … and if it was a girl, it would be probably a blonde thin girl that looks like emmm… perhaps Uma Thurman.

There is a completely different stereotype of a blonde in the Middle East and a blonde in the U.S. While, and I completely disagree with it, nevertheless I see the humor in it; The blonde in the US is a reference for that over privileged, unintelligent, blatantly stupid, overly confident, white girl. In the Middle East, it is a reference for the Western beautiful classy sexy and clean, yes clean, woman. There is an irrational obsession with love of blondes among my people in the Middle East. Although the contrast is high when you place a blonde, lets say next to Abdulrazak, a Bedouin friend of mine … but you rarely see it happen. It remains a fantasy for the vast majority of the dreaming teenagers of Arabia. People are always fascinated with the less familiar.

I don’t remember much of my first 5 years old naturally … and recording a video at that time was something that only the TV station had a capability of doing. If you could afford the heavy machine that is the video recorder at that time, you would have to pay a lot for it, carry it on your shoulder like a bazooka, and it will break soon… believe me … it will break. I say that to the privileged Snapchat generation today who have no value given to the recorded media (hence it disappears in 24 hours forever). The memory of their lives is what they preserve in form of videos and photos, and their brain memory will not keep up with time, and there is a value in one’s history and background. Many of what we experience during our lives have its roots in our history and childhood, and sometimes it takes reflecting back all the way to understand ourselves today. Well … just when taking videos and photos became readily available, kids now are choosing to take photos only that disappear. Hence, if you ask a teenager today about any of his or her childhood pictures … they probably have none … unless their parents have Facebook! I will probably come back to hate more on Snapchat later on. For now, let’s jump to the 80’s.