Mothers love me. I don’t want to blow my own trumpet, but they do. Every man who’s taken me to meet his family finds himself usurped. ‘Nyree’s so sweet,’ say the ladies of the house, delighted by my manners, gifts (bribery) and lack of facial tattoos.
Yet Christmas always reminds me of the one time ‘The Matriarch’ rejected me. Five years ago, a friend of mine, whom I’ll call Roger, invited me to his house for a pre-Christmas shindig before I jetted off to see my parents in the UAE.
‘My mother’s a stickler for manners,’ Rodge warned me on the drive to the ’burbs. ‘Oh, I’ve got it down,’ I replied, cocksure, fuelled by the fact I was still receiving floral cards from my high-school sweetheart’s granny. Zoom forward five hours and I was pulled aside by Roger on my way to the toilet to be told my table manners weren’t up to scratch. ‘But I am manners!’ I squealed. Yet Roger’s mother was still upset. Why? I wasn’t holding my cutlery properly and was, in her words, ‘shovelling’ food into my mouth.
At this point I’d like to note I’m from New Zealand, where it’s hot at Christmas, so Mother Rodge had put on a barbecue. And who uses correct cutlery for sausages? Needless to say, I was all too happy to be boarding an A380 the next day to see my far less finicky parents.
That, my first trip to the UAE, introduced me to a smorgasbord of table manners. Dinner on my first night at a Chinese restaurant was chorused by slurps of encouragement from the Chinese guests; the third night at an Indian eatery saw the Keralen community eating curry with their fingers; and a visit to a mosque restaurant on the last night was a display of what seemed like impossible hand acrobatics, the man next to me picking at a whole goat with one hand (something I find tricky with countless utensils).
Sure, there are certain ‘rules’ among communities here: in Islamic culture it’s uncouth to touch food with your right hand and, according to a Japanese lad I got chatting to at Wasabi, it’s rude to point with your chopsticks. But none of my Muslim friends have told me off for being left-handed and the Japanese fellow didn’t seem perturbed by the South African couple behind me waving their chopsticks mid-fight.
That’s what I love about this country, and why I decided to say ‘stick a fork in me, I’m done’ to Roger and move here permanently. Surrounded by people from so many walks of life, we’re all too busy learning about each others’ cultural quirks to get sniffy over whether others are sticking to ours.
