Sophia's Birthday

I obviously don't get British humor.  Twice in the past two weeks, I've jumped in on what I assumed were long running jokes, but which were in fact, not jokes at all.  Or, well, I guess, paradoxically, they are jokes now. Jokes on me.

When we got on the bus to go home one day, some of the male teachers were laughing.  They told one of the my teacher friends that a male friend of theirs was still upset that she had read his aura and told him that his aura was very small.  Well, you know how men are when you tell them anything of theirs is small.  So now, months after the fact, he was still bringing it up from time to time.  She defended herself saying, "It was, it was quite small, that happens you know."  When she said "you know" she happened to look at me and I nodded, simply because that  is what you do when you are conversing with someone and you want to let them know you are listening and have gotten their secret message.  I figured she must have been having a go at the guys by talking about their auras in the first place.  I was sure she wasn't the kind of person to believe in that sort of thing.  One of the male teachers saw me nod and got the wrong idea.  "You can see them too." he said more than asked.  I decided to play along.  "oh, yes," I said, in my most sarcastic tone, "can't you?"  Apparently, the British sarcastic tone is different than the American sarcastic tone, because he clearly thought I was serious.

The other joke actually started the night we went to the beach.  One of the girls, Fozia, was telling a story about her mother, and then one of the boys asked why she said "my mother" because the two girls were sisters and shouldn't it be "our mother"?  I had met these two teachers at separate schools, and I knew they lived in separate apartments, and until then, I had never seen them together.  Though they were both on the shorter side, they looked nothing alike and I was sure they were not sisters. But I also noticed the look they gave each other when the guy had called them out on familial terminology.  I quickly realized what was going on.  They were trying to pull one over on the guys and pretend to be sisters.  The sisters were still both looking at each other blankly, and I figured if no one said anything soon, their cover would be blown, so I jumped in and said, "You know how it is, if it's something you are proud of, you say my mother, but if it's something you don't like about her, you always say her mother.  Just like when parents say "do you know what your son did today?"  He bought it.  It set off a whole other conversation about times we got in trouble as kids.  Crisis averted.  I gave the "sisters" a knowing glance and slight head nod. Later that night we got into stories about how siblings torture each other, and I was amazed at the creativity of these two who earlier hadn't been able to save themselves with quick thinking.  They were telling ridiculous stories, where one would start and the other would finish the story.  I thought they were doing a great job improvising.  They were even making up hairstyles for each other.  "When she was little she had this awful perm done..."  "She used to have this pair of shoes that she bedazzled with all these jewels... you needed sunglasses just to look at them they were so bright and sparkly."  A few times, I thought they had gone overboard inventing stories so crazy the other was sure to deny it and blow their cover.  But they never did.  I was sure they had those guys convinced that they were really sisters.

About a week later, Fozia asked me to help throw a last minute surprise party for the other girl.  We had one of the other teachers take her out to a restaurant and got her key.  Then we blew up balloons and stuck them around the room and had a cake and "crisps" and got everything ready.  Then we tried knocking on all the doors of the other teachers, but because of traffic, they were late getting back and by now it was after 10pm on a work night so most people were asleep.  But we managed to round up five or six of us, and we had a great time yelling surprise (a little late because we were all trying to figure out how to light these candle things and she came in when we all had our backs turned) but it was all very good.  Then the girl had a present for the birthday girl and I thought, oh no, I didn't know! So I hadn't gotten her a present or anything, and by the looks of the other girls standing around empty handed, no one else did either.  When she opened her gift she said, "oh, wow, aren't these the shoes you bought yourself last week?  and isn't this the shirt I picked out for you?"  They both laughed and the other girl said, "yes, I know, I'm the worst sister ever!"  And suddenly, I thought, oh, of course, they are sisters!  No wonder she went through so much effort for her birthday, and had a key to her place, and bought her a present.  Now I felt supremely foolish.  They really had been sisters the whole time, and here I was thinking I was in on a private joke!

To make up for the sort of thrown together last minute birthday party, we all met up to go to a restaurant on the next weekend shopping trip.  The place was on the corniche and it was new and fancy.  Since I still hadn't gotten paid yet, I was a little nervous about going, but I figured I could always just not order anything, and it was better than sitting around waiting for the bus to come back in three hours and take us home from our weekly shopping trip.  So we made our way to the restaurant on foot, and even though it was only about two blocks away, it was over 100 degrees and when you are wearing an abaya and headscarf, it automatically adds about ten degrees, so I was sweating pretty heavily.   It just so happens that while we were walking, one of the guys who had been on the bus to hear my sarcastic comment about aura's was walking with us, and so was the man with the small aura.  You can imagine my horror when they asked me to read his aura and see if it was still small.  Would this joke never end?  So, sweating more than ever now, I looked at him and squinted and stared and finally said simply; "yes".  By the time we arrived at the restaurant, I was pretty much soaked in sweat from the combination of heat and embarrassment.

The Front Entrance to Naia Restaurant

I could tell I was in trouble when the name of the restaurant was lit up in a giant water fountain wall out front. That, and the doorman who ushered us into the lobby with modern art covering the walls while we waited for the elevator to take us up to the top floor.  This place was way out of my league.  I was wearing sweaty pajamas under my abaya, and only had about 40 riyals ($10) to my name at this point, to last me until whenever they decided to pay me, so I clearly didn't belong.   When we got to the top floor, the restaurant looked like a strange combination of zoo and strip club.  All of the seats were zebra print, and the chandeliers were covered in black and white feather boas with LED lights that rotated from red to green to blue to yellow and back again.  Even the tables themselves were lit from underneath with rotating colors.  Everything was marble or polished chrome. I kept expecting stripper poles to descend from the ceiling or rise out of the tables, it had that kind of a vibe, minus the music.  There was (as there always is) a separate room for praying in the restaurant, but during prayer times, they turn the muzak off altogether.

Naia Restaurant Decor

There was a waiter or bus boy standing around about every 20 feet, just in case anyone needed another napkin or dropped a fork.  The didn't have traditional menus.  Instead they had iPads, and you could just scroll through the menu and select anything you wanted.  There were actually three different menus, a Chinese menu, a Lebanese menu, and a Sushi menu, plus all your standard American fare.  There were about six pages of appetizer options and another half dozen or so pages of just drinks.  Which is surprising when you stop to think that alcohol is illegal.  Saudi's may not be able to drink liquor, but they sure have excelled in inventing creative ways to drink just about everything else.  For example; avocado and watermelon juice (those aren't two separate juices by the way, that's a favorite blend).  As you can imagine, ordering took a while.

Happy Birthday to Sophia!

When the food came, it was beautiful.  It was probably the prettiest looking food I have ever seen.  I hadn't ordered anything myself, so this part of the evening was sheer torture.  I watched people eat and eat this amazing food and struggled not to say "are you gonna eat that?" when peoples appetites started to wane.  Luckily, Fozia had gotten an ice-cream cake for her sister from Baskin Robbins earlier and the ever helpful waiters brought it out with firework style candles before my scavenger instinct overcame me too greatly, and I was able to satisfy my hunger with chocolate ice cream cake instead. Overall, it was a very pleasant evening, and well worth the mad dash back to the bus so we wouldn't be left behind.  I'm sure Sophia had a marvelous birthday, but I think we all got something of a present out of that day.