During the course of last week, I ventured further than my immediate neighbourhood – Dubai to another Emirate, Ras Al Khaimah (which means the top of the tent in Arabic) for a couple of days with my family.
RAK is one of the seven emirates that comprises the UAE and on a steady, leisure drive, it took us two and a half hours to get there, though I hear some can drive there at the break-neck speed of an hour. RAK is pretty and quaint with the rugged Hagar mountains, desert, healthy hot springs, the Arabian Gulf and oasis that surrounds it. Their lifestyle is also not as fast paced or as diverse as Dubai.
Below are just some of the photos I took. Will possibly share more another day.
Lady Lee takes us to India for her son’s wedding. Beautiful, vibrant, and auspicious ceremony; do take a peek 🙂
Grandma dancing on the occasion of my traditional/customary marriage.
I held your frail wrinkled hands in mine,
They were much smaller! Now! You were old!
The skin of your hands had waxed, waned and tautened over decades;
Toughened by ages of farming and weeding, from lifting innumerable hot clay pots from the burning firewood, from bathing babies; lots and lots of babies.
I caressed them lightly; noting the veins that stood out more prominently; noting the traditionally placed tattoos and the story behind the tattoos;
Beautiful age worn hands that had nourished,
Beautiful wrinkled bejeweled fingers that lightly applied ”Ude-Aku” on my scalp whilst shaping my unruly hair into a bouffant style.
Those fingers were my preferred hair stylist because, you did not pull it tight like Mama Nkechi used to do whilst making the periwinkle hair-do for me.
Beautiful hands that left my little bum smarting from a well-deserved smack after a misbehaviour.
I beheld your face with my eyes. Your beautiful dark skinned face;
I looked! Looking and looking at every lovely lined feature of your face.
Knowing that it might probably be the last time that my eyes would behold your skin.
Your eyes had seen the Civil war, your eyes had looked life in the face, it was a map of times past, etched with love and pain, with joy and laughter, with fear and worry, with seeing things that I can barely imagine…
Your lovely wrinkled face, etched with very fine lines and tiny spots that had stolen in and taken bold space,
Your crown of whitened hair held in a little bun Everything had grown smaller! Your skin had shrunk and your capacious bosom which used to cradle my hair, had bowed to the caprices of gravity
You had aged!
I saw it coming! I knew that it would happen!
But I wasn’t prepared!
The pain still cut me deep!
I wasn’t prepared to stop looking at your age-wizened face!
And when you left, you left with the name! Grandma, nobody ever calls me Nnedim or Ngozika again!
They were your special bequests to me.
You left with your skin all shriveled by death And you took the lovely smell of Okwuma and Ude-Aku!
a cooking pot and twisted tales 