Alternate reality at the local pub

A lot of adjusting to the UAE has been getting used to those alternate reality moments. You know what I'm talking about. They're a staple of classic sci-fi or fantasy. The hero steps through an archway/ducks into a wardrobe/unlocks a passageway and all of a sudden there is a shimmer or an eerie musical cue--and everything is the same...yet different. Close but not quite. Archetypal. Not real but based on someone's idea of reality. The UAE is like that. Sometimes I forget I'm across the world and not in some large, coastal, mall-filled city in Florida that didn't make it on the map. Then I hear the call to prayer or see guys swirling around in long white robes and ghutras--and I remember I do live on a gulf. It's just not the Gulf of Mexico.

Last night is a good example. It was Germany's birthday (a colleague who also lives in the Dorm), so a bunch of folks went to the Sheraton down the street, which is also the site of the nearest bar. The bar in said Sheraton is a pub, actually. And, well, it looks like any other pub, except...different. Based on someone's idea of Pub, with dark wood and ceiling fans and comfy, leather club chairs (Everywhere! There wasn't a regular chair in the place.) A central bar with an artistically worn surface. Beer signs. Huge plasma TVs playing soccer. A menu that featured burgers, fish and chips, Guinness onion soup. The only difference was the name. Rather than the Camel's Hump or the Oil Well or whatever, it's called Third Avenue. (For no apparent reason. It's located on Sheikh Zayed I Boulevard. But I've already talked enough about how address-challenged this city is).

Anyway, because it's Ramadan, the place didn't open until 7 p.m. and we were the first ones there. By the time we left, it was packed. With exactly the faces you'd expect in a big-city pub on the equivalent of Thursday night: young, mostly white, well-heeled-looking groups of men and women, drinking, chatting and (alas) smoking. It might, in fact, be the last pub in the world in which one can smoke now that both England and Ireland have gone smoke-free. K leaned over to me halfway through the evening and whispered, "Can you even tell we're in Abu Dhabi? We could be anywhere." She was so right.

Then we stepped out into the steamy evening and walked back towards the corner of 9th Street.
The sidewalks were crowded with people going about their business as if it were mid-morning (Fact: you can get a dentist appointment or go car shopping at midnight during Ramadan.). All the signs were in Arabic and English. Mosques were lit up florescent green (also for Ramadan?) with a little red light on top of each minaret like a cherry on a sundae. And we couldn't have been just anywhere. We had simply emerged from an alternate reality back into reality reality.

It's interesting to cross cultures so many times in a day, as opposed to just once upon arrival in a new country. The period of adjustment becomes more pliant. Traditionally, you land somewhere and proceed to adjust. Some adjustment periods are longer or more stressful, but it's a linear march from clueless to clued-in. Almost 7 weeks ago, I landed and am adjusting and re-adjusting, depending on where I am, what I'm doing and what it looks like. It hasn't made the process harder or easier, just weirder. In fact, I think it will always be like this. I'll never get used to The Way It Is in the UAE (as I did in Cameroon) because there is no one way.

I wonder if that's how people feel when they come to the States because we, too, are a country of countless cultures and aesthetics. Or maybe I feel this way simply because Abu Dhabi has patterned itself after American-style cities (wide roads, skyscrapers, apartment high-rises, etc.), so I feel at home even though I'm not. What do you think?