Picnic in the Park

Last week my husband and I were invited to a real Middle Eastern barbeque in the park with some of his coworkers. 

Middle Eastern people are about the most hospitable I’ve ever met.  I only use the term “Middle Eastern” because this group, while all living in Abu Dhabi are from many different countries in the Middle East – Syria, Morocco, Egypt, etc.  They are basically expats as are we.  They went to great lengths to make sure Hubby and I were comfortable and certainly well fed!  Most of them were quite a bit younger than we are – I couldn’t help but notice many similarities between them and young people at home.  They laughed, joked, smiled, played just like kids back home.  I had to ask myself, “Why wouldn’t they?”  I guess it’s easy to come someplace new with pre-conceived notions and have them flipped upside down and backwards.

 

One of the funny things that happened was one of them asked how long we had been married, and I didn’t quite understand the question, and thought she asked, “How long have you been in Abu Dhabi” and I answered “two months” – they laughed because we didn’t look your typical newlyweds… when I realized what I had said, we all had a good laugh about that.

A typical picnic/barbeque at a park in the UAE consists of setting out rugs and cushions and everybody sits on the ground.  They were kind enough to offer us folding camp chairs!  The barbeque is meat on a stick – Shish Taouk, which is really yummy marinated chicken, ground spiced lamb on a stick, and tender, succulent beef on stick.   Plenty of Arabic bread which is the size of a large tortilla, but more like a thin pita bread.  I basically made wraps with the meat and hummus, baba ghanoosh (made from eggplant), labneh (tastes kind of like garlic, sour cream and greek yogurt all mixed together) and a variety of pickles.  I also tasted stuffed grape leaves for the first time, that were stuffed with spiced rice.  Lots of nuts and sunflower seeds and ketchup-flavored potato chips (which surprised me - they're good!) were passed around to snack on.  Also the most delicious and I mean DELICIOUS Moroccan cookies… I’m desperate now to find a Moroccan bakery so I can get some more.  For dessert we had a couple of delicious cakes, a Zebra cake and a cinnamon layer cake.  My mouth is watering right now as I type.

Another custom at picnics is “smoking shisha”.  This is basically smoking fruit flavored tobacco from a hookah pipe.  Our friends were eager for hubby and I to try this.  We had to repeatedly turn them down… I explained that it is against our religion to smoke and we got in a very interesting conversation about why Mormons don’t drink or smoke with several young women.  One of the young women told us, “This is a very good thing.  It is the same as our religion.  Although many people ignore this as you can see, however we are taught against putting any unclean things in our bodies.”  I felt really good to be able to talk to her a little about my beliefs regarding health and it was nice to hear how she felt about it as well.  After that they were very supportive and told the rest of the group, “No, stop asking them!  They are trying to honor their religion by not doing it.” 

 

It was such a nice afternoon and I have to admit, it shattered a lot of stereotypes that I have held about Muslim people.  To be honest, I've had little to no interaction with Muslims until I moved to Abu Dhabi.  I know that we are all children of our Heavenly Father and that he loves us equally.  These are my brothers and sisters.  The news constantly reminds us of the people in the world that are doing bad things, but in the day to day world I believe that most of the people that we come in contact with are trying to do the right thing and be a good person.  Those are certainly the people with whom I shared a lovely picnic with last week.