An Infidel’s Guide to Living in the Middle East

Our friends came over for drinks last night; fortunately we tippled so much that I don’t think they minded the overwhelming scents I was exuding from spending the afternoon slathering myself with all of the samples at Lush.  H came home and Anonymous Friend started telling him how I walked home doing jazz hands courtesy of my gold glitter coated hands that came from picking up a glitter encrusted bath bomb to smell. 

“Actually,” she said,  “you have a little bit of the stripper dust left on your face.”

I went to wipe it off and remembered the nice face cream(s) I had sampled at Lush.  So I promptly stuck my face in front of H’s and made him feel how soft my skin was.  Which promoted a Middle East flashback, this time not triggered by the pervasive smell of pork.

 “If you guys ever get transferred to the Middle East, you must promise to do one thing.”

“What?” Anonymous Friends asked.

“Well, you know how Chanel and La Mer and all of the other expensive face products are always behind lock and key at cosmetic counters and you can never sample them?  In Doha, Sephora has all of that stuff out and every time I went to the mall (which was at least once per day since that’s all there was to do in Doha), I used to slather very generous quantities of them all over my face.”

H piped in, “One day I finally asked AE why she didn’t just buy the creams and then I saw that they were a couple hundred dollars each.  So sampling them in store was a much better option and one of the limited perks of living in Qatar.

Anonyomous Friend, “Haha, that’s amazing.  You guys should write an insider’s guide of tips for living in the Middle East.”

H, “Wow, that would be fun….we could call it “An Infidel’s Guide to Living in the Middle East.”

Me, “Done.  High end face cream samples at Sephora will get it’s very own chapter.  Now if only we can think of enough other perks to write a book; perhaps we should aim for a pamphlet instead.”