Christmas in the Desert

I celebrated Christmas in pretty good style -- one of my colleagues cooked a turkey with all the trimmings, along with pie and mince and so forth, and fifteen or so of us got together. There was even some homemade wine. Some of the guests brought their wives -- mostly Asian women they picked up on former teaching assignments.

No one got drunk and vomitted, there were no fistfights, and nobody had sex in the toilet.

People did get into heated discussions about politics and conspiracy theories, though.

And also, we had to be careful because the religious police were flying around in Hunter-Killer VTOL ships searching for Christmas parties with infra-red scanners and alcohol-sniffing dogs.



No, just kidding.

But some of the guys who have been here a while said that in the past buying Christmas decorations was about the same procedure as buying bootleg alcohol or Playboy magazines -- you had to go into the back room.

Now apparently Christmas decorations are actually sold openly in one of the big glitzy malls full of Starbucks and such. They don't have Christmas trees in public places and annoying Christmas songs like they do in Dubai . . . not yet, anyway. . .

Fa-la-la-la-la, Allahu Akbar