Belonging Practice 1: People Watching

Reflections and a poem about people watching in Dubai

Photo by Kate Trysh on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

In the 2nd week of each month, I share in this free weekly newsletter ways I have been trying to nurture my sense of belonging. Readers can join me in experimenting with these belonging practices and share their reflections with me via replying privately to this email or by commenting publicly on my Substack post.

If you haven’t already, check out my About page linked here for more information about my newsletter, Belonging Co-Lab.

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In my first year of moving back to Dubai in 2018, I was yearning to find a public space where I could simply “be” without needing to spend money. I was missing how easily I could stumble upon such spaces in my Boston years. I channeled this yearning by publishing an article in a locally based online magazine called Sail Magazine about my concerns of the dwindling public benches in the city. You can read it by clicking here.

One afternoon, I leaned against a ledge in Mall of the Emirates under a large glass arched ceiling while looking at the people passing by in the floor below me. I found myself taking in the diversity of languages I could overhear, each person’s sense of style, and how they took up space and crisscrossed each others’ spaces.

This contrasted with my experience in Boston where majority of the time I would hear English or Spanish with rare instances of other languages. The more I practiced people watching, the more at home I felt in Dubai and the more I experienced moments where I could simply be present.

Mall of the Emirates. Image source: Wikipedia

Time slows down when I people watch as I gently sink into a drop of each person’s world. I would notice how each person had their own gaze and own way of moving their legs and swinging their arms as they walked.

Some took smaller steps and others larger ones. Some had a relaxed movement, others more tense, some more flowy, others more bouncy or tip-toe-y. Some seemed to glide their way in the world, taking all the time they needed, while others darted through the air as if on a mission. I wondered about where they came from and where they are headed to and what mood are they in.

I once heard that when we watch a dance, our brain’s neurons almost “mirror” the dancing. In this way, both the dancer and the audience gain from the emotional benefits of the performance. This article linked here from Scientific American explains how this happens. I can imagine a similar process taking place when people watching as I can almost feel people’s movements flow through me.

Lauren, a close friend since my Sophomore year, comes up with stories about the people she would see passing by. While I am not as creative as her, I got inspired in recent years to write a book of poems about people watching. I stopped working on this book since 2022 when my mentor passed away and the rest of my life took over but I hope to return to it soon.

Here’s how I got the idea for the book:

Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash

One early morning in November 2021, I took myself on a solo picnic at a quiet beach in Jumeirah 3 area in Dubai. One of the many things that brought up reverse culture shock for me was noticing how the beaches I used to frequent in my childhood became increasingly commercialized and crowded or privatized by hotels. This is why I get thrilled when I spot beaches like this one. What I especially appreciate about this beach is the fact that it has a wheelchair accessible path between the parking lot and the water—something I have never seen in my decade in northeast America.

Aside from my picnic blanket, cushions, breakfast, and an overnight cold herbal drink I made, I brought my journal with me in the hopes that I would be inspired to write a poem. While at the beach, I wrote down whatever I saw with my eyes and heard with my ears and the physical and emotional reactions they elicited in me.

I noticed metaphors and connections with other personal memories showing up organically until a poem started to emerge. It felt like a practice in mindfulness except I noticed details about the beachgoers that I would not have noticed had I only watched them without writing. This became my first poem in the series which I am sharing with you below (though this will likely go through further edits).

I recommend reading the poem on your desktop computer or laptop to see the lines spaced in the ways they were intended to be. I have manually added footnotes at the end of this post to explain the cultural references as Substack is not letting me add them directly to the poem block.

My picnic set at the beach! You can see a glimpse of my grandmother’s mini savory pancakes topped with a fermented fish sauce. This sauce, called mehyawa, is eaten in parts of the GCC and southern coast of Iran.

Jumeirah 3 South Beach¹

Do you know why 
in my culture people speak 
their worries to the sea? 

Let’s start with how 
after seeing so much sky 
flattened by skyscrapers, 
it’s a relief when we can 
see it roll out to a dome 
housing all kinds of opposites. 

Look at the sun 
bouncing off the sequins 
chest-ing the face-veiled 
woman’s abaya as her 
arms swing freely in her solo walk 
over the sand. 

Look at the sun covering 
whatever skin is out bare on 
another lone young woman 
with hair tied up in bun. 
In the water, 
her legs are a squirming 
reflection as she stiffly 
paces across the shallow edge. 

Now turn your head 
to see the two elderly girlfriends plump side-by-side 
entering the water with white hats 
like lilies softly wading together 
in their own merging reflections. 

Another pair of girlfriends, 
younger this time and 
with hair echoing the breeze, 
pass them by as their laughter 
sprinkles all over the sand. 

To your right you hear 
yet another pair of girlfriends, 
venting, not laughing, this time. 
They’re middle-aged with colorful hijabs 
framing their faces each facing the other, 
mirroring how they sit so closely 
on the sand together framing the other. 

A few feet behind them, 
you see a reclining young man 
wearing a cap sideways 
like the wry smile you can’t 
find on his straight face 
sunk into his phone. 
His fingers are tapping away 
in and out of digital waves 
moving in parallel to the arms 
you find flashing 
in and out of the real 
deep waves far across from you. 
You wonder: “How can he be 
so tuned out by choosing 
the phone over the sea?” 
He then dials a number 
which tunes him into his “sea” 
whom he greets like a chirp: 
“Sabah el khair ya ihleiwa!” 

Another young man donning a cap
comes strolling by 
before he spreads a mat, 
like his smile, 
over the sand. 

You try to catch his cute smile 
but the sea had already stolen it
far away from you. 

...sigh... 

Speaking of the sea, 
there’s now an old man 
inching solemnly into the water 
while holding his hands behind him. 
His arms frame the reflected web 
of light and shadow off his smooth back 
like flashes of life waving by. 

Behind you, behind the sand, 
there’s a thin young man gazelle-ing 
his way down the jogging track, 
his feet barely tip-toeing air—
—flashing through life.

In contrast to this lightness, 
a father and three sons lug their 
fishing kayaks off the water. 
The eldest son gently picks each 
fish one-by-one lining them 
like celebrities for an Instagram shoot 
before throwing them unceremoniously 
into a plain white box 
and continuing to pull his 
kayak towards the parked car. 
His father follows him 
with his kayak, pausing, looking back
briefly to call over the two little boys. 
They snap out of their
distracted play, following along, 
dragging, with all their proud manly might, 
their little kayaks and little feet
that sometimes sink into the sand.

As you can see, 
we still come to the beach
to speak our worries
because the sea knows exactly
what to do with all the opposites
that well up inside us.

The jogging path that goes through multiple Jumeirah beaches. Image source: What’s On: Scenic Places to Go Running in Dubai

If you are interested in reading more of my people watching poetry, do let me know by replying privately to this email or publicly on Substack!

I am also open to receiving any people watching related writing or art that you have created!

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As a solo woman, it can be tricky to people watch without men assuming I am interested in them so having the journal on me was helpful as it gave a “reason” as to why I was looking around. I wonder if I were a man and did not have the journal with me, would my people watching have been perceived the same way or would it have been perceived as harassment. In America, I can easily pass as white, especially as I don’t wear a hijab. I wonder how my people watching would have been perceived if I were there and if I did not pass as a white American.

I would love to hear your experiences with people watching and whether that contributed to your sense of belonging in a place no matter how little, or if it even had the opposite effect.

If you have never tried people watching before and are interested in it, then feel free to send me your reflections after you start.

You can share your people watching experience by either privately replying to this email or by commenting publicly on my Substack. Let me know if you would like to have your share featured in a future newsletter or if you want to keep it private.

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For next month’s belonging practice, I will be writing about my experiences using conversational cards with family and friends. So far I have used Scenario Cards, Parents are Human (Bilingual Arabic/English version), and The Moth Story Cards. I recently ran into a UAE-based one called Bokakenia but have yet to give it a try.

Feel free to join me in this practice and share your progress with me via replying privately to any of my emails or commenting publicly on any of my Substack posts.

If you can’t access conversational cards for whatever reason, I would recommend creating your own conversational prompts and experimenting with them. The companies I have referenced above also have free samples of their prompts on their social media pages and websites.

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Next week’s newsletter will feature the work of UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute and their free public offerings.

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Hayyakum,

Reema

1. First stanza: When I used to work as a trainee therapist in Lynn, MA, US, many of my clients were Iraqi refugees and immigrants. I learned through few of them how they would visit the beach to mentally “speak” their worries to the sea. While my grandmother taught me how sea water is healing physically, emotionally, and spiritually, it was the first time I had heard of this. I later learned that there are other Arabic cultures, including those in the Gulf, that have a similar practice.

Abaya: a loose robe-like dress worn by some Arab Muslim women. Each culture has its own style and there are modernized versions of it. Traditionally in the UAE it tends to be black but currently there are colorful versions that are popular with millennials and Gen Z.

Sabah el khair ya ihleiwa: “good morning beautiful” in Gulf Arabic