Culture Club

Culture Club

At the moment, I seem to work, work, work. So what little time I have outside of the office I spend with my family although this makes for a very boring life.  Luckily though, the guys in my office make up for this.  As I have said before on here, one of the great things about Dubai is meeting people of so many different nationalities and cultures.  In my office alone I have six different nationalities, and this is due to grow over the coming month as we rapidly hire more staff. 

Now, in the UK people would say they were Italian, Pakistani and Czech despite being born and raised in the UK, often third generation (yes, I am one of these people – Italian BTW).  Here though, this is not the case.  More often then not, the people who are here have never, and are very unlikely to ever, visit your home country if you live in Europe or America.  But they burn with curiosity about your home and culture, as you may about in theirs. 

Take Christmas for example, my colleague is a Pakistani Muslim.  He is shocked that in the UK, you don’t have church bells ringing in every village like you used to.  He believes it is a great shame that we are losing our identity and national religion, but he was very confused about Christmas.  He understood the religious side, but was unable to get his head round the idea of Santa Claus, the tree and presents.

Now this is my favourite time of year.  I love nothing more than preparing for it months in advance, and spending the time with my family and friends.  The whole two weeks surrounding Christmas is a time of food and because you are on show, catching up with those you haven’t seen in a while, you have to look the part too – Food and fashion, two of my favourite things.  Because of this, I was only too happy to explain, getting incredibly animated with excitement about the whole day and it’s importance (think of an Italian mama gesticulating and you can get an impression of me).  I explained the about the excitement of children when they open their presents and how you can use Santa to get your children to behave as he only gives presents to those who are good.  I described in detail, the importance of the huge family dinner, where you have three different types of meats, two types of potatoes and ridiculous amount of veg – and that is just the main course.  And how you spend the next few days eating the left overs whilst friends visit. 

I was so excited about the whole day that my colleague went out, brought a Christmas tree with all the trimmings and had his children write to Santa.  They had their own big family Christmas day and his brother, who loved seeing all the kids happy, said that next year, Christmas would be at his.  Clearly this is not a religious day, but in the same way westerners, atheists and Christians alike all celebrate Ramadan here, they too have experienced one of the best things about our culture.

With all that is happening in the world, the shock and disgust that 99.9% of Muslims feel, is often overlooked.  So often I read in the western press negative things about their religion, because people don’t understand it.  They fear it.  There is nothing to fear.  Take it from me, someone who is completely western but has fully embraced and loves the culture of Middle East.  It is just a shame that others don’t have the opportunity to have this life experience.