3. What was it like being a minor and a woman in the persian gulf?
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I should preface this by saying that I grew up in Malaysia, Egypt, India, Abu Dhabi (Persian Gulf) and Canada. My parents were either international spies or on the lam, but I can confirm neither.
By the time we reached Abu Dhabi I was in my early teens and therefore an independent, fully-grown adult who was unusually out-going, horribly precocious and looking for a party! Now, here's the thing you might be surprised about here; that particular region of the Persian Gulf is (or was at the time) very liberal when it came to the goings-on of non-muslim teenagers. And of course, being British, so were our parents. During the 3 years that my parents lived in Abu Dhabi, there were at any one time about 30-50 British youths thrown into the mix. We were all held prisoner in repressive British boarding schools, from which we'd all be released three times a year for a little R&R on the beaches of the Persian Gulf. As long as you weren't Muslim, you could drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes at any age, and if you had British parents they rarely took the time to wonder what you were up to. It was the BEST PLACE ON EARTH to spend one's teenage years! We all had ski boats and would go waterskiing everyday (I was pretty good); we'd throw crazy parties on desert islands that involved all sorts of debauchery... and really had a fantastic time! This was, of course, in sharp contrast to our lives in Britain, so we really lived it up!
The Persian Gulf was a great place to live!
