Here we are in Dubai. We arrived last night (that’s yesterday afternoon to most Hyperbole readers--Dubai, during the summer, is 8 hours ahead of EDT), getting to our new house at nearly midnight. Jet lag meant that we were all pretty awake, of course.

It’s a strange business, arriving in a house you’ve never seen and knowing that that’s your house for the next two years. Exciting and scary. I wasn’t worried that the house wouldn’t satisfy--we’d spoken to the previous tenants in some detail.

But I wasn’t ready. This place is insane. Part of a large section dominated, we think, by expatriates from the US and elsewhere, it’s a four-bed, four-bath townhouse with a monstrous kitchen and huge common areas. I am terrible at eyeballing these things, but my speculation is 4000 square feet. It dwarfs anything we’ve ever lived in. It’s actually sort of daunting, because things are so far apart. I’m typing this in the living room while the girls nap upstairs, and it seems like they are fifty miles away. It’s true that we can’t see the ocean like we could in Tunis, but you won’t catch me complaining.

We went to the grocery store this morning and were flattened by the availability of products. It’s all there. Dubai is without any indigenous industry, and so they import everything. And I mean everything. Things will be comfortable here.

Except for one thing--the heat.

It’s easy to look at the numbers--high humidity, temperatures above 120 degrees in July and August. Sounds bad, sure. But you have no idea. I didn’t. I’d experienced intense heat before, having spent a couple of Augusts in Phoenix, AZ. But it’s a dry heat, and that makes a difference, as I now understand.

When we left the airport, it seemed hot and humid, but somehow not really that bad. I’m not sure why. When we drove home, and then got out of the air conditioned van, however, these notions of “not really that bad” were eliminated. My glasses immediately fogged up, and I started sweating as I lifted Mercedes out of the car. It was 11:45 PM.

This morning, when Reeve got us up at 5:15, I went outside. The dawn heat just walloped me. The sun wasn’t even really up yet. But walking from these insulated, air conditioned areas into heat like this is like running the gauntlet. The moisture hangs in the air, waiting to envelop you completely, sealing the heat inside a wet blanket that you can’t shake. This is still before dawn.

We caught a cab at 9:15 AM. The sun was out completely, of course. It was at this time that I finally hit upon the word that I think best captures the heat--punishing.

We’ll spend the first few months inside about 98% of the time. Two percent of the time will be spent getting from air conditioned buildings to air conditioned cars and back.

All of this contributes to a really palpable sense of unreality about this place. I was speaking to the driver, a Jordanian, who was bringing us home from the airport. I asked him how he liked living here after three years, and he paused, commented that it was comfortable and easy in many respects, but that it was so artificial. “Natural” is a sham here, because “natural” Dubai is all sand and heat. Dubai really only became a city in the past twenty-five years. There is a history for many of the Emiratis, former Bedouins. But it’s not centered in a place where hotel stars go up to seven instead of only five, and where they construct palm tree-shaped islands in the middle of the sea so that they can build more luxurious resorts to lure tourists from everywhere. This is a construct. A nice one, but it’s not real. It’s like Phase One of the Matrix, where everything is gorgeous and nice, except for this glitch where the computers accidentally made it hotter than the depths of hell.

We’re going to like it here, I think, and I think it’s going to do good things for Hyperbole, because there’s going to be a lot to see and say. I’ll do periodic work on my impressions of the place as time goes by.

FYI--I’m connecting to the internet via a dial and surf per minute charge setup, so I won’t be on a ton, making email and Hyperbole a bit sporadic at first.. Hopefully things will settle into a routine soon, and I’ll have my high-speed connection by early next week.

Here is my half-assed, short-on-detail journal of our trip to Dubai. I’m writing this from our hotel in Frankfurt, Germany, where we’re spending the night. We’ll be here until 2 PM (German time) tomorrow (Wednesday) and then we arrive in Dubai at 10 PM (Dubai time).

We got here around noon after flying all night. Here’s how it went:

7:30 PM (Washington time, Monday night)--Check in at airport. No problem. As smooth as things can go with 2 kids and 500 pounds of luggage.

8:00--Get to gate. Our gate was next to The Smoking Lounge in Dulles airport’s international terminal. We sat right next to The Smoking Lounge. The Smoking Lounge at Dulles is a glass room, where smokers and non-smokers can stare each other down through a haze of smoke and dirty glass. Or….I assume that the smokers can see us non-smokers. I suppose it’s possible that, in fact, The Smoking Lounge is made entirely of one-way mirrors, so that the smokers stare at themselves, oblivious to the fact that they are an exhibit in some sort of Bad Habit Zoo.

It was fascinating watching the action inside The Smoking Lounge, I admit. Some people come in there so that they can wait for their flights, casually smoking while listening to music or reading or chatting. Others stop in, smoke a cigarette without sitting down, and then walk out--sometimes leaving their children outside, faces pressed against the glass, waiting while Daddy finishes his cigarette. Others smoke as many as they can, one after another. In the course of twenty minutes, I saw one woman smoke seven cigarettes. But the most hilarious smokers of all are the ones who come at a dead sprint, baggage in hand, knocking down the elderly and the disabled in order to get to The Smoking Lounge, puff one out at light speed, and then rush out to get to their gate before the doors shut. That’s dedication. In any case, The Smoking Lounge is a fine place for some fascinating sociology graduate work.

9:00--Board plane. United apparently has abandoned its standard policy of preboarding people with small children or who need extra assistance down the jet way. The explanation we received was that some of their customers “had some issues” with that preferential treatment.

Forgive a short rant: Fuck those people. What rational person would complain that people with toddlers or infants should not get to go first down the runway? What, does it violate the Equal Protection Clause? Go to hell. And United can kiss my ass, too, for caving to these sorts of assholes, who undoubtedly are the same jackasses who board the plane no matter whether their row has been called or not. It doesn’t even make sense from a loading perspective--people with kids and folks with wheelchairs or crutches or walkers slow things up, and if you get them out of the way the rest of the boarding won’t have to wait while someone like me spends fifteen minutes trying to get Mercedes to sit down while finding a spot for the carryons. What bullshit.

The flight went OK, not great--Mercedes only slept for two hours, which hasn’t helped the jetlag adjustment so far--with a nap for all of us upon arrival, four hours in the last 24 for a two year old ain’t cutting the mustard. But we’re hanging in there. Ironically, Reeve had her best night of sleep in weeks. Go figure. Melissa got about fifteen minutes and I got zero. Awesome! I watched a chunk of “Chicago,” but not enough to have an opinion. I also watched a lot of “Daredevil” with no headphones. Much better without sound. Still awful.

11:00 AM Tuesday, Frankfurt time. I was led to believe that the Frankfurt airport was really nice and shiny. Whatever. It’s fine and all, but nothing special. Blessedly, our hotel is connected to the airport. We slept for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Mercedes wanted more, but we have to try for some normalcy.

8:00 PM--Back from walking around Frankfurt for a while. It’s OK, nothing great, nothing bad. Well, we had a great Hefeweizen. And there was Nutella shop, where one can buy all things Nutella, so I got a Nutella Cappucino and Melissa had a Nutella Milkshake. I wonder if Nutella is happy about the Kobe Bryant business? Anyhoo, we also were forced to eat a sausage, largely because Germans seem to survive on a diet consisting largely of sausage and Nutella, and there was little else to be had.

I feel incredibly helpless in Germany, because the language is nearly as foreign to me as Arabic or Chinese or anything else. The only German I know is “blitzkrieg” and “schadenfreude”. I tried to work that into my interactions with people, even if the conversations were in English, which they all were. “Excuse me, can you tell me how to blitzkrieg downtown on the subway?” “Hello, where is the best place in Frankfurt for schadenfreude?”

Also, I sang “Danke Schoen” several times.

8:45 PM--bedtime.

Break…..

3:00 AM, Wednesday: Finally got back to sleep after three hours of wakefulness from Reeve, during which time Mercedes got up and we all raided the mini-bar and watched the news that them Hussein boys have finally gotten their comeuppance.

11 AM, Wednesday: Oops--meant to have breakfast, but we all slept until eleven and woke up in a panic because we want to be at the airport in 45 minutes.

2:30 AM, Thursday (Dubai time): I can’t sleep, it’s 2:35 AM in Dubai. Jet lag is great, great stuff.

Next entry: first impressions of Dubai.