The Ghost in the Cloud Chapter 10: Truth and Falsehood

The Ghost in the Cloud Chapter 9: Faces in the Night

Saeed, the Driver

This is a picture of Saeed our driver who takes us out to the base where we work. I’ve been driven by a number of drivers in the nearly two years since I’ve been here and I regard them as my cultural tutors. I love to sit in the front of the van and get to know them and find out what I can about their lives and their culture. If you are a follower of my blogs (like I have masses who read what I write here) you may recall a posting about Samir who lost his job driving for Al Gazhal and I how much I hated to lose him.

Before Saeed was hired, his brother Salem (which is pronounced almost exactly like solemn) was our driver. I liked Salem too except for the fact that he kept falling asleep while driving. The speed limit on the road to the Sweihan base is 120 kilometers an hour. It is a rather boring drive, I’ll grant you that, but he would regularly drift off to sleep and the van would start to swerve until a happy motorist would announce it to him with a blast of the horn and a few friendly gestures.

Salem had a string of complaints to HR about it over the nearly two years he had been driving. But, for whatever reason, HR didn’t do much about it. You know how it is with these teachers, they just complain about everything. They seemed to think that Salem was such a nice guy or something. And he was. But he was going to get us all killed eventually. He denied that he was falling asleep, “O, it was a gust of wind, or a teacher asked me for something and I was distracted.” He started wearing shades and turning his rear view mirror to the side so the teachers couldn’t see his eyes. But while I was sitting next to him one day I felt the van swerve and I looked over at him and there he was with his eyes completely closed, totally asleep. “Hey, Dude! I think you better wake up there” I said calmly. He startled out of his sleep and corrected his driving. Soon after that Maureen, our lead teacher at the base, collected all the complaints she could find on him and went to HR about it. Salem was given a warning and a few strategies for staying awake. These strategies obviouly didn’t work since he fell asleep with Maureen sitting right there in the passenger seat next to him this last time. After that we were told that Salem would be fired. The problem was, no other driver had a pass to the base so we had to stick with him for a few more weeks until his brother was given clearance. But, in case you were worried for Salem, as I was. He wasn’t fired after all. HR decided to give him another assignment driving on shorter routes. I assume that means he is driving people who are not such complainers.

Anyway, Saeed, Salem’s brother, doesn’t fall asleep. His English skills are very good and he seems interested in talking to people. He told me early on that he really wanted to practice his English so he liked talking with me and has asked me to correct him when he doesn’t say something right. He is from India, but his family is not of Indian descent. He is Yemeni Arab. His grandfather left Yemen in the early part of the twentieth century because at that time, Saeed says the economy was especially bad. Saeed says that his grandfather went to work as a secretary of the treasury for a king in the area where his family still lives today, though there hasn’t been a king there since sometime in the 1940’s.

His grandfather had to leave his land behind in Yeman when he left for India. Saeed says that his father went back to reclaim that land many years later, but when he got there he found that the government had given it away. Saeed explained, “The government people ask him, why you not take care of your property? Why you leave it all these years?”

I told him that people who abandon their houses in the US can lose them too if someone else takes care of the property and puts a lean on the house and is willing to pay the back taxes. But for Saeed’s family, I suspect that the loss of property for his father represented a loss of a dream of returning to Yemen and to a possible income and life there. If the land had still been there for them, Saeed might have been raised in Yemen and his life would have been very different.

Saeed has a fiancée back in India. It is an arranged marriage that their fathers formed for them when he was little. I had a lot of questions for him about that. “So do you love her?” He tried to explain to me that this is just how it is done. This was expected of him. That is how it has always been done. I explained to him that in Western countries we marry who we want and we marry for love. He knew that of course and I had said it, I guess, just to point out the contrast, or just to see what he would think. I asked him, when he married her, would she come here to the UAE to live with him. He said that she would not be coming to the UAE, that he would see her when he went on leave every year.

“So, she will have children I guess, and you will be in the UAE--and she will work?”
Saeed said no, she wouldn’t, that it was considered a great shame for her to have to work. A husband is expected to provide for her.

I tried to sum this all up: “So you will marry her, not because you love her, but because your fathers arranged it, and you will only get to see her once a year, and you will send money home to support her?” (I don’t know what Saeed actually makes, but I doubt that it is even two hundred dollars a month).

Saeed smiled while driving, “Yes. What is it like for you?”

Well at the moment, my life isn’t so different from Saeed’s, when it comes to sending money home and not getting to see my family, I just make more money and have a few more options. “Well,” I said, “we choose our own husbands and wives and we do it for love. Our women are expected to work now, but forty or fifty years ago, it was a little more like your culture in that we expected the husband to provide for his wife and family. But the world has changed in America quite a bit since then. Husbands couldn’t afford to be a sole provider anymore and their wives had to work. Some women wanted to work because it gave them freedom, but some expected to be supported and were very angry about having to work. Many men did feel shame for a while, but now it is normal. It was not an easy adjustment, but we did change. It is no longer shameful that a wife works. It is expected now.
Saeed nodded, thinking. I said to him, “the whole world is changing, Saeed. Cultures change, economics change, people change.” Saeed just kept thinking.

Not long after this, we passed two workers. I couldn’t tell if they were Indian or Pakistani. They were picking up trash along the road on the base. It was about 110 degrees out and I knew that they had been, and would be, out there for hours and hours. “Now there’s a job.” I said.

“What you mean?” asked Saeed.

“Picking up trash on a hot day like this for hours and hours.” Then I added, “What do you suppose they make a month?”

Saeed said they most likely made somewhere between 100 and 150 US dollars a month. Such things make me upset. I know that the UAE has fixed a 48 hour work week, which is supposed to be for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week. But I also know that workers are often forced to work much longer hours and employers often have legal ways to get around those laws.

At ADU, the cleaners, the Emirati DCS students told me, make about 100 US dollars a month. I have seen the same workers there in the morning and in the evening until around 9:00 at night. Mohammed, our shuttle driver to town drives every day. He is on a yearly leave right now, but it disturbs me to think that he has to work every day and never a day off. The security guards that used to be at the University (before the new security company won the bid for the new contract) worked very long hours and I don’t know if they ever had a day off. One of the cruelest things I have ever witnessed was seeing one of the guards, let me call him Noor, would sit in an armless chair in the empty hallway between the men’s side and the women’s side of the building to make sure that there was no gender mixing. He was there from morning to night, sitting. He was not allowed to read a book. He wasn’t allowed to do anything except sit for 14 hours a day, every day, in that empty hallway, in the florescent light and watch a few teachers passing by from one side to the other. I remember once the painters at ADU spent a week painting that hall. The fumes were very noxious. I was a painter once and I have to tell you that I have seldom worked with such strong fumes. Poor Noor had to sit in that hall with the doors closed and with no ventilation the whole time.
I don’t understand how managers can be so thoughtless, so inhumane, or so sadistic. It is often justified by the fact that the workers are making a great deal more money than what they could get back in Pakistan or India. Well, it is like George W. Bush used to say, they are willing to work those jobs that Americans won’t do and are grateful.

Being American, I grew up with a belief that all human beings are created equal, that anyone could become president, that no man is subservient to another. It is not so here. Indian and Pakistani workers are almost entirely powerless and have few rights. One of the teachers here tells a story about how she was in an accident where she was at fault. The only problem was that the person she hit was a Pakistani who was visibly frightened. When the police (all police are Emirati and are paid highly as civil servants) showed up she had to convince them that she was the one who was responsible for the accident. If she had not said so they would have hauled the Pakistani off to jail.

Don’t misunderstand me. I love the Emirati. They are a kind, gentle, hospitable and generous people. They are good people. But there is a strange disconnection that happens when it comes to “Labour.” When people see the pictures of the Burj Dubai, I think most people will be impressed by the money that built it, as well as be awed by looking at the tallest building in the world.. But when I look at it I see it as a monument to cheap labour. (Labour is the UK spelling.) In the nearby city of Musaffah are Labour Camps. This is where they house the Indian and Pakistani workers. Some of the buildings are in long rows like chicken coops. It is not a pretty place. I went there once to get a blood test for my residency visa. It is not too far from ADU. Being a westerner, I was sent to the front of the line and rushed through. It bothered and embarrassed me. My ticket number suggested that I had perhaps a hundred workers ahead of me.

The workers here are dirty, smelly, and always look unhappy, even though that may not be the case at all. Mostly they are curious when it comes to westerners. They dress in traditional workers clothing which look like tan or white shirts that come down to the knees and what look like matching pajama pants with sandals. Their heads are wrapped in scarves and they are often bearded. They look like they would be very handsome men if they were washed and dressed in clean ironed clothing and wore deodorant. Mostly it is that they have almost no money, and of what they do have, a good deal of it is sent home to care for wives and families that they never see, much like what Saeed will do, I suppose. It is this lack of money that, more or less, seals their unattractiveness. It does not matter that they may have a fine chin, or straight white teeth or big brown eyes, that they are tall and straight and a have a thick head of hair. They are invisible at best; they are nameless faces lost in those crowded labour camps or that you see in bus windows on the highway while they are being shipped off to work on villas or skyscrapers; building monuments to and for men of great wealth like the pharaohs of Egypt long ago.

It bothers me that so many people in this world live this way. Or to think that many more are even far worse off that these who are the lucky ones and have work and income. I cannot rescue them from this kind of a life. What I can do is to see them as people, as fellow human beings who are my equal, and treat them with dignity as I would wish to be treated.

The Science Lesson

I have observed that people often fall in to two groups, or let me call them hemispheres of being: the Science and Math hemisphere; and the English and Art hemisphere. There are a few rare and rugged individuals who have managed to balance both hemispheres of being in their lives, and they are truly blessed and able to produce the most wonderful blendings of those realms into satisfying incarnations and creations. But the vast majority of us fall into only one of these hemispheres of comfort. We may explore the other hemisphere just to find out about it, or because we need something in that other land: but when the electrical voltage we experience there becomes too painful, we retreat to the comfort of our hemisphere. For right or wrong, it is what we do.

My hemisphere is that of English and Art. I like English because of stories, poetry and metaphors; and I find it ties in neatly with Art as well which is at once self-expression and at the same time it is striving after the need to express the transcendent as well. I also prefer my hemisphere because there is room for error. My hemisphere is relaxed and gives room for breath. It is tolerant. There is often more than one right answer and sometimes even many right answers. My hemisphere actually celebrates when it finds a multitude of right answers. Herman Melville’s ambiguity in a book like Moby Dick is pure genius in its levels of possible meanings. Math and Science people tend to hate this. They prefer absolutes. They like one right answer and they like to be able to count on the fact that it is fixed, solid, and that it provides a sturdy foundation on which they can build reliably.

There are times, however, when there may be more than one right answer in the science and mathematical hemisphere. This is no problem for those of us of an Eastern or non-western mindset who are content in the awe of great mysteries and all that they might mean; but multiple correct answers can create the most painful migraines for a Scinence/Math person. Is light composed of photons or waves? The debate goes on and on.

When I was in grade school and in a science class studying the difference between rotations and orbits in the context of the solar system, I ran across a science quiz question that had two right answers. “How many rotations does the moon make as it orbits the earth?” Being lousy at science and a failure in school in general, I didn’t expect to pass this test. But I thought that I had this answer right for sure. “one” I answered.

When we got our quizzes back, I failed as usual, but when we went over the answers and we got to the question: “How many rotations does the moon make as it orbits the earth?” I was shocked to see that I got it wrong. I raised my hand in protest and actually had the audacity to tell the teacher that he was wrong. “No he said. It always faces the earth. It doesn’t turn.” “Yes, I returned, “it always faces the earth so it does turn or else we would see the backside of the moon.” I proceeded to draw a picture on the board to prove my point showing the moon at four points around the earth. Each time it was facing the earth, but relative to itself it was revolving as it went. “See, it makes one rotation per orbit.”

“Ah,” he said sounding wise, “I see what you are trying to say, but no it doesn’t rotate or revolve” he insisted. When I objected again, it was quickly becoming apparent that he was going to exert his authority as a teacher, and that I was becoming insubordinate and that I was supposed to be silent and compliant. I felt furious inside, but I returned to my seat. On the one hand, what did it matter? Even if I had got the answer right, I had so many answers wrong anyway it wouldn’t have made a whole lot of difference to my score. Failure was failure and I had had so many failures in school by then that I knew my place and exactly what I was, all too well, by then. He was an adult and a teacher; all the power was it his hands.

But it did matter. It mattered enough so that I have never forgotten the event even after all these years. O, I am not upset or bitter about it, but it is important, I think, to revisit it since I am a teacher now. It makes me aware that teachers have tremendous power to hurt as well as heal. Sometimes, I think teachers rely too much on a belief in the resilience of their students. “kids are tough” they think, “they bounce right back.” And it can appear so. And yet appearances are not always the reality. They do not always bounce right back although it is expedient for those of us who teach to believe so.

The correct answer to the question is that it depends on your point of view. Standing on earth, we never see the moon turn. It does not rotate. We never see the back of it. But from a god’s eye view it rotates once every orbit. There are two right answers. But he was a science person. Points of view didn’t matter to him. Points of view are subjective and unacceptable except in theorizing hypotheses to be proven. There was only one right and acceptable answer: his.

He should have given me credit for my answer all the same. It was a golden moment for a teacher to give a blessing: to rip away that horrible label: “you’re a failure” that is written in blood and scarred into a child’s forehead. He could have told me that I was bright, that I was smart, that I surprised him with such an articulate and cogent argument to prove my point, that I had potential to be a great scientist. I don’t know why he didn’t. Was it too much work to go back and give me credit and rework all his scores in his grade book? There were no computers back then and it was all kept by hand and it would have made rather a mess of things. But I am inclined to think that it was due to arrogance that he insisted that he was right, and that it was also due to his belief that there is only one right answer to every question.

So what did I learn from this science lesson? For a long time, I learned not to like science, I learned that teachers can be arrogant bastards, and I learned once again that I was a failure at everything I put my hand to. But it hasn’t been until later in my adult life that I have found that I am grateful for this mistake and many other mistakes like it that were made by my teachers. These mistakes have formed my pedagogy as a teacher. They are treasured exemplars of what I regard as the most grave and damaging errors a teacher can make. I have become a gentle teacher. I don’t just see an answer standing in front of me; I see a person looking for affirmation. So I am very careful with wrong answers, a wrong answer is not a wrong person. Teachers might think this is obvious, but it isn’t. When a person is cut down for too many wrong answers, they begin to think there is something wrong with them and not their answers. And so I am careful with wrong answers. If there is anything right at all about the wrong answer I point that out first, and then I make a gentle corrections for part that is wrong, and finally express my gratitude to someone who is willing to be brave, who is willing to try, and who is looking at me with big, hopeful eyes which I would be loathe to disappoint.

Teachers do have to tell students when they are wrong. They will harm them if they don’t, but how it is done makes all the difference. I never shame. I celebrate mistakes. I celebrate them with my students because mistakes are wonderful. Every mistake is a golden opportunity to learn the right way to do it. It may sound strange to say it, but I would advise teachers to never punish a mistake. Grades are bad. Grades are a system of punishment and reward, a reinforcement of a system that stems from a view of the world that believes in the survival of the fittest. It’s weird, but if you ask a teacher which is better: intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation, they all know that intrinsic motivation makes, by far, a better student, and yet teachers are completely addicted to a system of extrinsic motivators.

Teachers often justify it by saying, “but that’s the real world, that’s the world they will be living in and they should learn how to be tough and roll with the punches and get over it. It is, in fact, a survival of the fittest world.” Then many of them comment, “that’s what I had to do. I learned to survive, and adapt. they will too.”

Hmmmm. Well, there is a great deal that could be unpacked in these statements about broken people who unwittingly reinforce a broken world that not only stays broken, but one which will turn around and break more people in a never ending spiral; but I would simply rather point out that the way to prepare children for the rough and tumble world of dog eat dog, is to not maim them before they get there. Rather the teacher needs to build their confidence, inspire them, and make sure that they have the tools not just to survive it, but to change it.

Change the world? Yes, I am an idealist. It is my desire to see love triumph over hate, peace over violence, knowledge over ignorance, generosity over greed, benevolence over malevolence where ever it arises, and courage over cowardice. This is the real agenda in the classroom. O, I will teach English and I will work damn hard at it, but English is only the arena, the game board, the tangible space that is provided where the minds and hearts can meet. Minds and hearts are invisible things. We keep tangible, visible records in the classroom for the scientists who think numbers and reports tell them something. But, as the Little Prince is always reminding us, “It is with the heart that one can see rightly; that which is essential is invisible to the eye.”