Good Morning, Kuwait
Another gorgeous winter day dawning in Kuwait, with a high expected around 77°R/25°C today, while my poor family in the US is shivering with cold. I have a good friend who had three different family members stranded in three different airports, trying to get home for Christmas, and snow accumulating up to 18 inches while she prays for their safe arrivals.
Have a sweet day, Kuwait. 🙂
I will spend the day preparing for major meals on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Mom, I am making your Cranberry Salad. 🙂
Christmas In Kuwait 2008
I’ve lived in so many Islamic countries, and I have never seen an Islamic country that celebrates – or allows the expat population to celebrate – Christmas – so lavishly.
In some countries, you live on rumors. Can the compound residents put up Christmas lights this year? (Yes! And all your Moslem neighbors put up lights, too, and the compound is like a fairy-land, and people walk around in groups at night ooooh-ing and aaaah-ing over the fanciful displays) or is this the year when it’s all word-of-mouth about the Indian grocer who has Christmas trees hidden in his back room but there is ne’ry a Christmas decoration to be seen on the streets or in the windows, and people are told not to decorate or to draw any attention to themselves . . .
Not so in Kuwait. Thanks be to God for religious tolerance here, allowing us to decorate for Christmas, allowing us to celebrate according to our private beliefs.
For my stateside and European virtual visitors, here are some of the Kuwait Christmas sights this year:
As we were waiting for our flight back to Kuwait, AdventureMan overheard several students talking about their experiences.
“You should see New York!” one student was saying, “There is even a big sign saying ‘Happy Birthday, Jesus!'” and they all laughed.
Why do you think we are so happy, dear ones? Why do you think we celebrate? Why do you think we get together and sing joyful songs, and try to delight one another with special, thought-filled presents? The greatest gift of all, we believe, is born on Christmas Day!
Qatteri Cat Says “Whaaaaaat?”
Those little eyes look SO innocent, don’t they?
Don’t believe it for a moment!
Every morning, I have to gather up ornaments that have been knocked off. I have to glue them back together (I don’t hang anything very valuable on the lower branches, but it is annoying to have to glue things back all the time.)
He had his eye on one ornament and I said his name. He looked at me. His eyes said “Whaaaaaaat” you know, that three syllable what that means “why do you think I would do something like that” when you are thinking of doing something like that.
You don’t fool me one bit, Qattari Cat.
Rosette Update
I’ve been making rosettes for over 30 years now; I can’t remember a Christmas I haven’t made them. I’ve gotten pretty good, but yesterday, when I couldn’t find my traditional recipe from my Mother, and I didn’t want to take the time to boot up my laptop to retrieve it, I used one from the very traditional old Joy of Cooking and it totally threw me off.
My FryBaby doesn’t work here; I don’t have a transformer big enough and I don’t want to buy a 220 appliance I only use once a year – for rosettes – so I use a thermometer. Normally, you aim for a temperature around 370° F, but yesterday, maybe the batter was a little thinner, but the normal temperature was too high, and I found the best temperature was around 350 – 360°. All these years, and I’m still learning new tricks. 🙂
Christmas Ornaments from Here, There and Everywhere
Ten years ago when we put almost our entire life into storage, we had no idea we would be gone this long. We had no idea we would live in four different countries, and that we wouldn’t see our things again for lo, these many years.
Our first contract, I was allowed one thousand pounds. Do you know how little one thousand pounds is? Think clothing, think basic necessities – 1000 lbs. just isn’t very much.
I packed just a very few Christmas ornaments, figuring I could pick things up along the way. Fortunately for us, the next country, after Saudi Arabia, was Germany, the land of Christmas ornaments. Our tree is eclectic. It’s not necessarily a tree with appeal to anyone else; it is a very personal Christmas tree, with lots of memories and stories. Lucky for you, I won’t bore you will all of them. 😉
We are sentimental. When we can, we decorate the tree together, and we remember with each ornament. . . When he was young, our son would get so impatient with us, and our remembering!
Here is the very first ornament our son ever made in school – it is a dreamcatcher; his teacher was very into the American Southwest and American Indian traditions:
We met and married in Heidelberg, so we always have that ornament with us:
My ties to the Pacific Northwest:
AdventureMan’s love of Africa and the Middle East:
Religious symbols:
Beautiful German antique silver walnuts and pinecones:
And memories of places we’ll remember . . .
Whew! I’m tired, too! Think I will go join the Qatteri Cat in a catnap!
Qatteri Cat Trims the Tree
3:30 in the morning, and I am wide-awake. I can lie in bad and toss and turn, or I can get up and make use of all this energy now and take a nap later, which is what I decide to do. I want to get a Christmas tree up, and I am hoping Qatteri Cat will not take too much interest. Two years ago, he pulled the tree over in the middle of the night, utter chaos.
Toss a load of laundry in the washer, pull down the tree box, get it set up, lights on – it’s great putting on lights while it is still dark out (I can see the ring of fishing boats along the horizon, and I shiver, thinking it must be really, really cold out there with the near zero Centigrade overnight temperatures) because I can see where I am putting them and how they will look when it is all finished, not too many lights in one area and big empty spaces elsewhere.
And then – the ornaments. When I have my own house, I usually have one big tree in the living room and one smaller one in the family room. The big tree has all the beautiful ornaments we have collected over the years, and the smaller tree is usually a theme tree – Maybe all red and white, pepperminty, one year and all blue and silver another. It’s my experiment tree. But we never mess with the serious family tree – it is thoroughly eclectic, and that is the way we want it to be. Hmmm. I think I will do a separate entry later on the ornaments.
The lights are on – just as the sky is beginning to lighten, the Qatteri Can and I finish up. The Qatteri Cat goes and gets his babies to share the tree with. Thanks be to God, he is not showing any interest in pulling on anything this year. We enjoy the lights together.
We put on Christmas music and I get a cup of coffee so I can sit and see if the tree needs more. Here is one of my very favorite Christmas CD’s (I have a collection of very old Christmas music, along with some very good more recent Christmas music)
The Qatteri Cat says he is finished. He is exhausted. He is going to take a nap. Wouldn’t it be nice, to have the life of a housecat?
Night Flight
Arriving at the next airport, we find our flight is delayed, while a seat is found for every single passenger. As I look around, I feel dismay – this flight is like 3/4 college students. We thought with Eid having ended, the plane would be half empty – NOT so! The lounge is packed with twenty-somethings headed home to Kuwait on Christmas break from their universities in the USA.
I used to be one of those. My parents lived in Germany; my sister and I would travel home. One difference, we were flying military planes, so they would wait until a whole planeload of college students had gathered and then send us all off to Frankfurt on one plane. It was party party party, card games, laughing, talking, catching up with friends from all over Europe, some flying on to bases in north Africa and Greece . . . I don’t think we had any bases in the Middle East at that time (It was a LONG time ago!)
But payback is hell. Now I am about to board a flight full of young people like I used to be. I can kiss a good night’s sleep goodbye! Every single seat on the plane is taken, and it is a BIG plane. I prepare for the worst. I remember those days . . .
Here is what really happened: this was the nicest, most polite group of college age students I have ever met. When they gathered at the food places, they talked quietly. Most of them slept or quietly watched movies the entire flight. The flight was one of the quietest I have ever been on. The bathrooms stayed relatively clean. I was so totally impressed.
If there are Kuwaiti parents reading this blog whose college students are flying home around now, you can pat yourselves on the back. You raised young people with excellent manners. 🙂
Northpole Goodies
In an e-mail I received this week, a friend had a loooonnnnggggg list of Candy and Cookie recipes for the upcoming Christmas season. Purely out of curiousity, I clicked a few – and wow. These recipes are quick, delicious, and easy.
I don’t think there is a nutritious recipe in the whole website! All the recipes are for sweets! Here is just a partial selection from the Pies department:
I admit it, I am not that vulnerable to candy, but chocolate truffles are my downfall – and I am going to have to try their chocolate truffle recipe!
Here is the website: North Pole Kitchen Cookbook.
Have fun!
Epiphany (2)
While looking for an image of the Wise Men and the Child that appealed to me, I came across a website, Farsinet.com that has more information about the revelation of the child. Here is a quote from Farsinet.com from the Ronald Latham translation of The Travels of Marco Polo, from an article by H. Behzadi:
In Persia is the city called Saveh, from which the three Magi set out when they came to worship Jesus Christ. Here, too, they lie buried in three sepulchres of great size and beauty. Above each sepulchre is a square building with a domed roof of very fine workmanship. The one is just beside the other. Their bodies are still whole, and they have hair and beards. One was named Beltasar, the second Gaspar, and the third Melchior.
Messer Marco asked several of the inhabitants who these Magi were; but no one could tell him anything except that they were three kings who were buried there in days gone by. But at last he learnt What I will tell you.
Three days farther on, he found a town called Kala Atashparastan, that is to say Town of the Fire-worshippers. And that is no more than the truth; for the men of this town do worship fire. And I will tell you why they worship it. The inhabitants declare that in days gone by three kings of this country went to worship a new-born prophet and took with them three offerings -gold, frankincense, and myrrh – so as to discover whether this prophet was a god, or an earthly king or a healer. For they said : ‘If he takes gold, he is an earthly king; if frankincense, a god; if myrrh, a healer.’
When they had come to the place where the prophet was born, the youngest of the three kings went in all alone to see the child. He found that he was like himself, for he seemed to be of his own age and appearance. And he came out, full of wonder. Then in went the second, who was a man of middle age. And to him also the child seemed, as it had seemed to the other, to be of his own age and appearance. And he came out quite dumbfounded. Then in went the third, who was of riper years; and to him also it happened as it had to the other two. And he came out deep in thought. When the three kings were all together, each told the others what he had seen. And they were much amazed and resolved that they would all go in together.
So, in they went, all three together, and came before the child and saw him in his real likeness and of his real age; for he was only thirteen days old. Then they worshipped him and offered him the gold, the frankincense, and the myrrh. The child took all three offerings and then gave them a closed casket. And the three kings set out to return to their own country.
After they had ridden for some days, they resolved to see what the child had given them. They opened the casket and found inside it a stone. They wondered greatly what this could be. The child had given it to them to signify that they should be firm as stone in the faith that they had adopted. For, when the three kings saw that the child had taken all three offerings, they concluded that he was at once a god, and an earthly king, and a healer. And, since the child knew that the three kings believed this, he gave them the stone to signify that they should be firm and constant in their belief.
The three kings, not knowing why the stone had been given to them, took it and threw it into a well. No sooner had it fallen in than there descended from heaven a burning fire, which came straight to the well into which it had been thrown. When the three kings saw this miracle, they were taken aback and repented of their throwing away the stone; for they saw clearly that its significance was great and good. They immediately took some of this fire and carried it to their country and put it in one of their churches, a very fine and splendid building.
They keep it perpetually burning and worship it as a god. And every sacrifice and burnt offering which they make is roasted with this fire. If it ever happens that the fire goes out, they go round to others who hold the same faith and worship fire also and are given some of the fire that burns in their church. This they bring back to rekindle their own fire. They never rekindle it except with this fire of which I have spoken. To procure this fire, they often make a journey of ten days.
That is how it comes about that the people of this country are fire worshippers. And I assure you that they are very numerous. All this was related to Messer Marco Polo by the inhabitants of this town; and it is all perfectly true. Let me tell you finally that one of the three Magi came from Saveh, one from Hawah, and the third from Kashan.
(LLLLOOOOLLLLLLLL: It took me forever to find an image of the three Wise Men/Magi that didn’t look European or Western instead of Persian and Yemeni, as the legends state!)
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