Layover in Dubai

by Dan Fesperman

  Laleh put a hand to her mouth.

  “Labor camp?” Sam said. “Like a prison?”

  “Worse, I’m afraid. In prison, your confinement has a limit. Serve your sentence and go free. At Sonapur everyone is supposedly free from the moment he arrives. But in practical terms it is a life sentence. All those men you see in hard hats, building everything? There are half a million of them in Dubai, and they are all living in camps like Sonapur. Entire cities without a single woman. They rise before the sun and return after nightfall. And when they die, no one even bothers to count them sometimes. So you see? It is the perfect place for you to be lost for a while, and you will be one of the lucky few with a prospect for departure. A speedy one, I hope.”

  “Will I have to work?”

  “Of course. All the better for keeping you camouflaged. You will be high up on some new tower, where the only way someone can reach you is by industrial elevator or by climbing onto the arm of a crane.”

  Sam felt queasy thinking about it. He may have been a daredevil on the water, but he had never been comfortable with heights. Ali slapped him companionably on the back.

  “Come. Best to get you settled before dark.”

  They piled into Ali’s roomy Mercedes with tinted windows. Sam sat up front next to Ali, with Laleh in the back. They headed south and east, and soon were driving through industrial parks and freshly graded tracts awaiting development. The traffic was heavy, with a preponderance of dump trucks, cement mixers, and flatbeds carrying backhoes and bulldozers. Sam also noticed battered buses filled with men in hard hats. He saw Laleh watching them as well.

  “Won’t there be people at Sonapur who would want to turn him in?” she asked.

  “Not likely,” Ali said, glancing at her reflection in the mirror. “They’re too busy and too tired. And none of them are local. They’re from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. Besides, Mr. Keller will have far more to worry about than exposure, I am sorry to say.”

  “They aren’t big on safety rules, huh?” Sam asked.

  “Just be glad it is not summer, when a building slab is like a skillet. Still, on balance it is much safer than leaving you at the mercy of Lieutenant Assad.”

  Ali exited onto a potholed two-lane road clogged with trucks and buses. They made their way slowly toward a smudge of low-slung buildings on the near horizon and turned onto a rutted dirt lane. A thunderstorm had recently passed, one of those cloudbursts that never seemed to reach Dubai’s coastline. Craters as big as compact cars were filled with water, and the whole area stank of mud and raw sewage.

  They were surrounded now by complexes of grimy buildings, two and three stories high. Each looked like a cheap motel, with rows of doorways along breezeways. Brightly colored laundry hung from the railings. Some rooms had windows, and most were mounted with air-conditioning units. Other rooms had neither. The complexes were separated by iron fencing and low plaster walls. Each had an entrance gate that displayed the name of a contracting firm. Buses were unloading workers from the day shift. Weary-looking men in jumpsuits shuffled toward their dormitories. The only other vehicles in sight were the lumbering “honey wagons,” tanker trucks that worked around the clock to pump out septic tanks.

  Sam could already tell from the preponderance of dark faces that he wasn’t exactly going to blend in with the crowd.

  “I’m going to stick out like a sore thumb.”

  “In here, yes. Although at least you’re on the darker side of Caucasian. That will help. So will a beard. But the more important thing is that the moment you put on your uniform and leave these gates you will become invisible. In Dubai these workers are everywhere and nowhere. No one sees them, because no one wants to. You must trust me on this. It has worked before, even with someone whiter than you. What is it they say in your country? ‘Hidden in plain sight.’ Here we are.”

  Ali parked the car next to a whitewashed plaster wall, which was spattered a rusty brown by hundreds of spittings of paan, the local chewing tobacco. A cinder-block hut sat next to an entrance gate, where a security man stood guard with a holstered weapon. The sign out front said the site belonged to the Al Mumtaz Engineering Co.

  “Free room and board?” Sam asked.

  “Rooms, yes, but the meals will be up to you. Laleh, give him the envelope.”

  She handed it across the seat.

  “Three hundred dirhams,” Ali said. About eighty bucks. “Keep it with you at all times. If you need more, tell the foreman. His name is Zafar. You will meet him shortly. He is your link to me. He will always know how to reach me, but don’t mention my name around the others. It is best if you do not contact me at all. As soon as it is safe for you on the outside, I will come for you myself. Don’t leave with anyone else. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Ali turned toward Laleh.

  “I am taking him inside. You must not leave the car under any circumstances, and you must not open the window. Even in an abaya, your presence here would be a provocation.”

  He turned back toward Sam.

  “Come with me to the blockhouse. There will be some papers to sign.”

  “Good-bye, Sam,” Laleh said.

  “Good-bye,” he said, glancing back at her. Just as Ali was climbing out the door she furtively thrust forward her right hand with a small square of folded paper. She nodded quickly, as if to say, “Please, take it before he sees us.” So Sam snatched it away and nodded in reply. More forbidden behavior, he supposed, which made the gesture all the more touching. He stuck the paper in his pocket so Ali wouldn’t see it, and then opened his door to follow.

  “Good luck,” she whispered.

  Ali led the way through the front door of the blockhouse. The white billow of his kandoura looked out of place among the mud and the disheveled, wiry laborers, a white bloom of prosperity in a scrap yard of weeds.

  Inside, another armed security man eyed them suspiciously. A dark middle-aged man in a wrinkled gray shirt stood up from behind a steel desk littered with paperwork.

  “Ali.”

  It was a professional greeting. No smiles, handshakes, or hands on the heart. Ali nodded in return and said, “This is Zafar, the foreman. He will look after you.”

  Zafar didn’t seem like the type who looked after anyone, except to ensure they gave him a full day of labor. He walked over from the desk, sizing up Sam from head to toe. Spreading a thumb and forefinger like calipers, he clamped them around Sam’s jaw, turning his head one way and then another.

  “It is good you not shave,” Zafar said, releasing Sam’s bristly jaw. “Black hair. Brown eyes. These good also. Grow beard. Right now, too white. Too many will stare. Speak only when you must. Only few on your crew speak English.”

  “How will I know what they’re telling me to do?”

  “You watch. Do what others do. Very easy. You will see.”

  He returned to his desk, where he motioned Ali toward a small pile of documents on a front corner. Ali handed a pen to Sam. All the writing was in Arabic.

  “Sign them both,” Ali said.

  “What are they?”

  “One is an employment agreement. The other is a receipt for your uniform, your hard hat, and your boots. They are company property, so you must take care of them.”

  Sam obliged, although for all he knew he was selling himself into slavery, just as Ali had joked.

  “How much will I be paid?” he asked, trying to make light of it.

  Zafar’s answer was businesslike.

  “Seven hundred fifty dirhams, one month.”

  Roughly two hundred dollars, Sam calculated. Less than a buck an hour.

  “We hold first two months’ pay for cost of equipment, housing, medical helpings. I cannot change this because I already make special change for not having passport. Two changes not possible.”

  Sam was less worried about pay than the implication that he might be here for months. He turned for reassurance to Ali, who placed a hand on his shoulder. But the man was no longer sm
iling. Perhaps he, too, was just realizing the gravity of the situation. Or maybe his earlier offhand attitude had been an act, to keep up Sam’s spirits.

  “The good news,” Ali said, “is that this is not a Muslim crew. They’re Hindu Bengalis, so perhaps you will not be resented so much. Of course, that means you will also be expected to work on Fridays, the Muslim holy day. Be strong, Mr. Keller. I will do what I can to make sure that your stay here is a short one.”

  He turned to go. Sam watched through the doorway as Ali climbed back into the big Mercedes and eased it down the rutted lane. Neither Laleh nor Ali was visible through the tinted windows, and the car was soon swallowed by the crowds. It felt as if his previous life had just disappeared along with the car, so he reached into his pocket for Laleh’s note. Even with that in hand, he hadn’t felt this abandoned since being dropped off for his freshman year in college. And then at least his father had eased the shock by reminding him of what a great adventure he was about to have.

  “Now for the fun part,” his father had said, grinning through a surprising flush of tears. “Always look before you leap, son. But don’t ever forget to leap.”

  Good advice now, Sam supposed, as long as none of the leaps came from fifty stories up. For a brief moment his thoughts seemed to scatter, and he couldn’t pin one down. It was a feeling almost like panic. Then he drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly, steadying himself.

  “Here is your uniform,” Zafar said in his flat tone. “Hat and boots, too.”

  The canvas jumpsuit was the bright blue of surgical scrubs. It smelled sour, as if it hadn’t been properly laundered. The helmet was blue and scuffed, and the boots looked small. He wondered if anything would fit. Most of the other workers were shorter.

  “You must buy food. Store that way.” Zafar pointed vaguely left, beyond the compound. “First Charbak take you to room. You sleep with seven more.”

  Eight to a room. Cozy.

  Charbak, some sort of sub-foreman, wordlessly led the way into the narrow mud courtyard, which was bordered on either side by long two-story dormitories with rows of open doors. Drying laundry was draped on every rail. There were fifteen doors per floor on each side. Sam added it up. At eight workers per room, about five hundred men were living here in a complex roughly the size of one of those chain motels you found along interstate highways. Down at the far end, backed by a high fence topped with razor wire, was a cinder-block room with the showers and bathrooms. Men were coming and going in towels and rubber slippers.

  Along the lower breezeway to the right was a row of propane canisters attached to stovetop burners. Men stood at the blue flames with giant skillets, frying chopped eggplant and some sort of stringy meat. Nearby shelves held blackened pots and pans. The smell of hot grease masked the stench of sewage, but at the moment Sam had no appetite.

  Charbak led him to a door at the right end of the first level, where they entered a nine-by-twelve-foot room crammed with four steel bunk beds. Three men squatted on the floor in a narrow space between the bunks, eating with their hands from a steaming bowl of stir-fried greens and meat. A fourth fellow watched in silence from a lower bunk that had been stripped of its bedding. Every other mattress had sheets and pillows.

  Charbak barked an order in a language Sam didn’t understand. The fellow sitting on the bare mattress looked up sullenly but didn’t move. Charbak spoke again, louder. The man jumped to his feet with a sudden roar and came straight toward them, eyes wild with anger. Sam braced for impact, and before he knew it the man had grabbed his lapels and was shoving him against the door, shouting all the while. His warm breath smelled like onions. Charbak piled onto the fellow’s shoulders from behind, while two of the men on the floor grabbed the madman’s legs. The scrum tottered, then collapsed, sending the bowl of food clattering beneath a bunk. Sam, who nearly had the wind knocked out of him, disengaged from the pile as the others subdued the attacker and slung him back onto a bunk. Judging from their shouts, his name was Ramesh.

  “He wants that you not take bed,” Charbak explained.

  “If he’d like to switch, tell him that’s fine.”

  “No. He wants no one being there.”

  “Why?”

  Charbak shrugged.

  “He is crazy man. You take bed.” He pointed to it.

  “But if—”

  “You take bed!”

  Now Charbak was angry. Sam held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. Then he shrugged toward the men on the floor, as if to explain he had no choice. Figuring he had better mark his new territory, he removed his suit jacket and tossed it onto the bare mattress. That drew a snarl from Ramesh, who was still muttering darkly from the opposite bunk. One of the men eating dinner turned and snarled back at him, and for a moment Ramesh looked genuinely chastened. He then curled into a ball and rolled onto his side, facing away from the others, toward the wall. Thank goodness that was settled, at least for now.

  Sam still had no appetite, but figured he had better buy supplies and cook something if he was going to have any energy the following day. Charbak had already departed, so he offered his question to the room at large.

  “Can someone tell me where the food store is?”

  One of the men on the floor eyed him carefully, then nodded.

  “Go left from the blockhouse,” he said quietly. His English was perfect. “Four hundred meters. The Al Madina market. You will see it.”

  “Thank you.”

  The man resumed eating without another word.

  The Al Madina was tiny and crowded, every aisle jammed with men. To Sam’s surprise there was an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables. He didn’t know if the prices were decent or not. He piled eggplant, green peppers, bananas, oranges, flatbread, and cooking oil into a basket, along with a two-kilogram bag of rice. Fresh meat was for sale, but at seemingly outrageous rates, so he turned to the freezer. He avoided the frozen carp and some buffalo product labeled as “Bobby Veal,” settling instead on chicken parts. Then he bought soap, a towel, a toothbrush, and a set of sheets. The only ones for sale had a wildly colorful pattern of bright green palm trees against an orange beach.

  To his surprise, there were a few other shops as well—a small pharmacy, a narrow restaurant selling rotisserie chicken and kebabs, a jeweler, a cell phone dealer, and a small photography store where you could develop film or buy a disposable camera. He supposed there must be a market for sending pictures home, especially for family members who had been away for years. There was also a lottery kiosk that seemed to be doing a brisk business—the great, faint hope of the world’s dispossessed.

  When he returned to the room, Ramesh was still sulking with his back to the others. Sam tried to make as little fuss as possible while making his bed. He put his perishables into one of several small refrigerators set on the floor between the beds. No one had labeled anything, so he supposed there was an honor system.

  He took a few pieces of chicken and one of the peppers and chopped them on a table outside. He had to wait half an hour for one of the burners to become available, and it gave him time to work up an appetite. It was only when he was almost finished cooking that he realized he had no plate or utensils. That’s when he noticed the fellow from his room who spoke English hovering nearby.

  “Here,” the young man said, handing over the large bowl he had just washed, along with a clean spoon.

  “Thanks,” Sam said.

  “The bed you are in. It belonged to Ramesh’s friend, Sanjay. They came here together, from the same village. That is why he is angry.”

  “Tell him that Sanjay can have his bed back, as long as I have somewhere else to sleep.”

  “Sanjay is dead. He fell last week from the twenty-seventh story. He was standing at the edge, and the wind came.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Ramesh has been a little crazy since then. He believes that a demon was responsible. When he saw your white face taking Sanjay’s bed, he said you were the demon, and had come to dist
urb his soul. Ramesh has been here eleven years. Too long.”

  “Sounds like it. How long have you been here?”

  “Three years. It is only this year that I no longer owe money to the people who brought me.”

  “How long will you stay, then?”

  The young man shook his head, as if those sorts of questions weren’t even remotely answerable.

  “I’m Sam, by the way.”

  “Vikram.” He didn’t offer a last name. Sam had yet to hear anyone mention one.

  “You should hurry,” Vikram said. “Lights-out in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And take care around Ramesh. When you are working, I mean. If he thinks you are a demon, well …”

  “Yes. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “So why do you come here?”

  He considered offering his own demons as an excuse, but figured the sarcasm would be misunderstood, perhaps even resented. So he offered what he hoped was a safe approximation of the truth.

  “I have been having troubles in the city. A friend thought this would be a good place for me to stay until things are better. What time will they wake us in the morning?”

  “Five. Before the sun. You must be waiting for the bus at five twenty, or it will leave without you, and you will not be paid.”

  Vikram turned to go before Sam could ask more. He ate hastily and washed out the bowl and spoon at an outdoor spigot. There wasn’t time to shower, so he scrubbed his hands and face, and brushed his teeth at the same spigot. When he returned to the room all the other bunks were occupied. A few men were reading magazines or newspapers. Two were playing cards. Vikram was writing a letter. Four snapshots of children were arrayed beside him on the bed. Ramesh was still facing the wall, either asleep or brooding. Someone had switched on the air conditioner, which droned and rattled, and gave off a whiff of mildew.

  It was then that he remembered Laleh’s note. He retrieved it from his pocket as he was undressing for bed, stripping down to his briefs. Then he lay on his side in the dim light and opened the folded paper, while hoping that no one would be able to read it over his shoulder.