Most mosques in Dubai are off limits to non-Muslims. An exception is the Al Noor Mosque, which is open to non-Muslims by tour only. The tour started at 10 AM, and that seemed like a good way to start the day.

The tour was less tour (since the mosque is basically one big room) and more like Islam 101. Our tour guide, Shareefa, was an expat from the UK who moved to the UAE 26 years ago with her Emirati husband. She gave us a quick review of Emirati dress, culture, and the five pillars of Islam. An older European couple used the opportunity to ask Shareefa, immediately a representative of all things Muslim, why Muslim nations were not receiving more refugees from Syria. Aside from being wrong (because Muslim nations are doing just that, see Lebanon), it was an unbelievably ill-timed question to the wrong person. Old people everywhere just have axes to grind when it comes to newcomers in their backyards.

At the tour, we also met Violeta, a Dominican American nursing student who was in the middle of a rotation in the UAE. She was on her way to the gym, but said she would join us later at the Dubai mall. In the meantime, Cindy and I went up the highest building in the world. The elevator at the Burj Khalifa goes from floor 0 to 124 in less than a minute. That’s pretty amazing. At the top, visitors are allowed to walk outside along one side of the building and look out widows on the other three sides (top picture). We were then ushered one floor higher via the stairs, where we could look at everything again (but from one floor higher!) and be subjected to the gift shop.

Cindy stares at Dubai

We met up with Violeta as planned and left the Dubai Mall to visit our friend, Jane. I worked with Jane in Hawaii (still do) and she recently moved to Dubai to become a librarian for a local university. We caught up and shared an Indian food dinner. Haroon wanted to show us his favorite shisha cafe and picked us up after dinner. Shisha culture, what little I know about it, is changing quickly. In Dubai, it’s largely absent from street corners are sidewalks and prevalent in standalone establishments. Meaning, you don’t just sit down at a random table in front of a store and expect shisha. You go into a cafe that exists to serve you shisha. Also notable is that women are welcome in these cafes.

Haroon and Violeta

The cafe was what one would expect from a Dubai establishment–shiny, clean, handsome. A button on the table called our server. Haroon recommended the watermelon juice, which I thoroughly enjoyed. A few smokes later, we dropped of Violeta at the bus station and headed back to Sharjah.