And the week is over...

Yesterday I had a very odd hour, which left me rather at sea, in tears, and all upside down. I will explain...

After a rather long day, I left work with Shoops and got a lift to Festival City, to get a cab home, change, feed cats, pick up car, and get to the Fairmont by 7.30pm for wine tasting. It was never going to happen, but I figured I could do most of these jobs, perhaps leaving the car where it was.

Then I got in the worst taxi in the world. He basically looped away from my direction, completely on purpose and with no acceptance that it was literally the polar opposite from where I wanted to go, straight in to the worst of the rush hour traffic. I got cross, not too shouty cross, but seriously cross. I stopped short of phoning the taxi company when he said he'd knock the first part of the journey off the fare (whilst also suggesting he drop me off on the hard shoulder on a 4 lane highway flyover).

So I changed destination rather than head back in to the traffic and miss all appointments, and decided to just feed the cats and leave it at that. This was a 4dh taxi ride from where he had said he would stop the fare. I gave him 10dh. He lost the plot. I honestly thought he was going to hit me.

Anyway, the point of the story was this man that appeared out of nowhere and stood between the taxi man and me. He kept saying to the taxi guy - we are muslims, we do not treat people like this. I was shaking, and he was calming me, saying, you are a lady and you do not need to shout, you do not need this, you can walk away. Basically, he convinced me that it was better to give this man his money, basically another 10dhs (or 2 pounds) as he was poor, no matter who was right. He just exuded calmness and clarity and was just really really kind. The taxi man was shouting at him, shouting at me, waving his hands around (even after he got his money) and this somali man just stood there saying calming things.

Anyway. I know its not much of a story, but it was just a little example of one person taking time out of their own crazy world to step in to another person's craziness, and help. It was a peculiarly moving experience.

Then I went to a wine tasting and drank wine. Moving in a totally different fashion.

It did remind me of a conversation that I have had a number of times recently, regarding the way that expats treat other expats, or in other words, the caste system amongst the nationalities in the Gulf. I found myself dismisssing one of the office boys with a wave of my hand, two of the nicest guys in the office who always come for a chat and who are an important and critical part of the office. I caught myself, and apologised immediately, and he didn't know what I was talking about. This morning a friend recounted a story of how she replied to her maid's story about a sick daughter, with her story about her sick cat, and was hideously ashamed of herself when she realized the connotations of what she'd said. I told her that it was when we don't realize we've said something awful when we will have sunk beyond redemption, and while we do, we must check each other and make sure we don't morph into gin-swigging, turban-toting cliches, but it is a close run thing.

On a totally new tangent, I embraced twitter today. Apparently it appears on this blog. I think not. Well, I can't see it anyway. I am trying to remotivate myself to embrace the world of marketing, communications and that other stuff I do. If one more person asks me for a business card template, I will give it all up forever and become a pig farmer. (Or camel farmer, perhaps)