by Becky Wicks
I told the Indian laser lover I’d think about his offer. It could be difficult meeting clients without a car, and I’d have to do it at weekends and after work, which could be tricky. It’s funny how everyone talks business here, all the bloody time. I mean, here I am, sitting in the Iransion, flicking through endless porn, trying not to lose my entire body to the vortex created by my headboard, and I get offered a freelance job as soon as I head into the kitchen.
29/07
Doing it for our country …
I’ve been here over a month now and I’ll never get used to the fact that the doors to Dubai’s seedy underworld open mostly from the innards of a shiny, clean shopping mall or a luxury hotel. Every time I walk into the glistening Emirates Towers, up the immaculate escalator, past the expensive watch shops and into Harry Ghatto’s (fast becoming our favourite place in the whole wide world), I feel dirty inside. This is because I know that when it comes to me leaving again, I may well fall instead of walk down to level one, make un-amusing ‘I’m a naughty burglar’ motions in front of a watch shop, or puke on the sparkling doorstep of Starbucks next door.
Of course, it’s not the done thing to be drunk and disorderly in public here. Well, it’s not the done thing to be drunk and disorderly anywhere, really, unless you’re wearing a football shirt, on holiday, in Ibiza. But whereas in other countries you can stumble out of a club and disappear into the depths of the darkened night, in Dubai you stumble out of a club into the pristine, floodlit glare of a sumptuous hotel and the disapproving stares of an entire Arab family enjoying some freshly squeezed orange juice.
Trying to act sober on such a public viewing platform is a true test of British twenty-something strength. And of course we all know that when we feel pressured to be something we’re clearly not, we act even more guiltily.
For example:
Mum: Are you drunk?
Teen Daughter: Wachoo always washingmeee for? Donchoo twust me?!? Dwhy look drunk choo? [Falls over]
Nobody wants a friend who’s been in jail. I find that visualising a set of handcuffs around my wrists is usually enough to make me stand up straight, even when my post-karaoke status is teetering into unconsciousness. And imagining a night behind bars with a fleet of perspiring local fruit thieves is normally enough to ensure I resist the urge to jump on my male friend’s back and yell: ‘Carry me home like a pony, come on horsey, giddy-up giddy-up!’ — as was so often the case back on Tottenham Court Road.
As you can imagine, it’s not always easy. When I’d slurred goodbye to my mates at 3 am back in London, the usual chain of events was to stumble through the maze of Soho’s back streets, load up on chips and curry sauce, wait for the number eight bus, head to the top deck, fall asleep with my head against the window and wake up three hours later, covered in condiments. I was anonymous. Invisible. Irrelevant.
In Dubai, however, if you do actually make it out of whichever exquisite hotel or shopping centre you’re in without falling into a fountain or chipping someone’s freshly frozen ice sculpture, you’ve still got to rely on someone else to get you home. There’s no Metro as yet. No night bus to speak of.
A taxi ride home after a night out must of course be filled with singing, pop quizzes involving the non-English speaking driver in his eighteenth hour of ferrying morons around, and the repeated insistence that not all Brits are drunken idiots, corrupting the city’s carefully constructed and highly respectable culture. There are so many risks involved — maintaining our habits and traditions, saluting our heritage, and trying not to forget who we really are as the world changes all around us. But it’s something we must strive to continue, for the sake of our roots.
31/07
Musings on a sleepless night …
When I’m drunk, I can sleep anywhere. I’ve slept in some pretty uncomfortable places in my time. On more than one occasion I have actually fallen asleep on a bar stool. And once, at a party on a boat, while dressed in a ball gown, I awoke to find myself lying horizontally under a pile of coats that definitely weren’t there when I sat down. Also, in Arizona a few years back, I slept on a rock in a national park with no padding beneath me, and woke up to find animal droppings right next to my face.
In spite of all that, I have never, I repeat never, slept anywhere as uncomfortable or ridiculous as my bed in the Iransion. It’s not even the vortex created by the shelving unit that bothers me anymore, even when I sit up and smash my skull on the mammoth Welcome to Dubai book (just to rub it in). It’s more the concrete slab that the mattress resembles. Imagine sleeping on the floor with no padding underneath you. That’s what it feels like. In fact, I could well be back in Arizona on that rock, should something care to shit near my face as well.
For the past few nights I’ve probably had about four hours of sleep in total. The rest of the time I’ve been shifting from side to side on my slab like a reject from The Night of the Living Dead, praying for some comfort. I came up with a half solution, which was to fold the duvet (a seventies yellow-and-brown affair that my friend Ric thinks looks like a Chocolate Viennese biscuit) in half, and lie on top of it. This offered moderate improvement, although rendered me without a duvet, so I’ve been ‘sleeping’ underneath my beach towel, which has the game Twister printed on it.
I can’t imagine what my deceased relatives must think if they’re looking down on me at this moment. And if it adds anything extra to the image, I’ve also been wearing an aeroplane eye mask, because the thin, white curtain lets the light in too early … and some earplugs too, because the air-conditioning unit in the room sounds like a tribe of dwarves with lawnmowers are trying to drive through the walls.
The cherry on top is that at 4.30 am, just when I’m finally starting to drift off in a deformed, unborn-childlike position, the chanting begins. It drifts over the villa-tops and through the crack in the sliding door, bursting through my earplugs and calling the Muslims (and me) to prayer in an echoing song that quite frankly scares the living shit out of me. Parts of it would be beautiful if, as my friend The Irishman said on the phone the other day, ‘I was sitting on a beach at sunrise, soaking up the soulful sounds of tradition’. I’m sure he’s right. But at 4.30 am, when I’m suffering on a concrete slab, shivering under a Twister towel in an aeroplane eye mask, I can only really concentrate on the part that sounds like a moaning camel dying outside my window.
I thought about going to IKEA at the weekend and buying another mattress. It would make for an interesting expedition, trying to get it home without a car. M&M, being the generous man he is, offered to help, but like fifty per cent of men in Dubai, M&M has what I call ‘a selfish car’. It’s a Porsche, which only realistically has room for two and definitely wouldn’t accommodate a mattress, unless it was strapped to the roof. The other fifty per cent of men in Dubai, in case you were wondering, drive cars so huge you could fit an entire bedroom suite inside, fully constructed, straight from the showroom. I don’t know any of them yet though, unfortunately.
I’m going to have to lump the concrete slab for now. Having a drink before bedtime takes the edge off, at least. Hopefully I’ll get used to it before I become permanently deformed.
02/08
A new-found celebrity status …
I was in the Crowne Plaza hotel on Sheikh Zayad Road, heading to a smoky pub called The Harvester, when a man I’ll call Stanley called me from the publishing company and asked me to an interview for that jazzy celebrity online editor job I applied for. I was so excited and ended up getting quite drunk with Stacey and Private Banker, who has now become a firm friend and regular singing partner in Harry Ghatto’s.
I got a bit of a funny feeling from Stanley, who’s the sort of man you look at and think English ex-public schoolboy made good in a position that’s probably far too superior for his skills. I might be judging too quickly, but there are a lot of people like that in Dubai. He looked sort of nervous in the interview; his hands fumbled over little spikes in his slightly gelled hair. He also admitted he d
oesn’t know a thing about celebrities and doesn’t really care, which I did think was a rather funny thing to say when trying to big-up a brand-new position in his ever-growing department to an excited potential new employee. He brought in the editor of the magazine that I’ll be responsible for putting online to talk to me about it instead.
I’ll call her Hazel. She’s an interesting lady, quite large, quite blunt and clearly oozing the kind of confidence that can only come from knowing absolutely everyone in Dubai’s glossy mag circuit, and probably everyone in PR, too. Apparently she’s been here a couple of years now, fresh from a job at a British shopping centre magazine — a powerful lady to know. She seemed to size me up before her eyes, and must have told Stanley she thought I was acceptable because he hired me the next day.
It’s a salary increase of 3,000 a month, meaning I’m now on 13,000. More shopping tokens — hurrah! A whole new world awaits. It does mean I have to get to the other end of town every day, though, which is a ball-ache in traffic from the Iransion, but I’ll handle it. I’m actually looking forward to getting out of carpet-and-car-park land and working in a place that has an abundance of lovely shops and eateries. Maybe someone there will even sell me tampons …
It wasn’t so nice telling the boss at the travel publishers that I’d got another job already. I believe her words were, ‘It doesn’t show much about your character, to leave a job so quickly.’ She asked outright if I was going to be working for the company I’ll be working for, and when I said yes, a look of total hatred washed over her face and she told me to leave immediately, before walking off in a huff. I later learned I’m not the first person they’ve flown in who’s stayed just a few weeks before pissing off to this certain bigger publishing company and a much better job. They clearly see the company as stealing their staff, but it’s not like Stanley came swooping through my window and into my biscuit bed like a thief in the night. I applied because it sounded cool.
I do feel guilty, though. They’re lovely people and it’s a great company. It’s just that the job’s not for me. I had to pay back all the money they spent on me — the flight and the hotel stay — which basically amounted to the same as my salary. So as it happens, I’ve gained absolutely nothing from my time in that office and its hellish vicinity. Except, of course, a better job, a good new friend in Heidi and a couple of weeks off in the sun before starting. Yay!
06/08
Car-crash parties and the fleet-horse elite …
It had been another all-day brunch-fest and I was just thinking how good M&M was looking in his floral swim-shorts when it happened: a testament to my intoxication, perhaps. As we were splashing and laughing quite drunkenly in his pool, by the light of some intriguing neon ducks, a car literally crashed outside M&M’s villa. We all ran as fast as we could to the road, where we found a sweet little lady crying and praying beside some twisted wreckage. She explained that her boss had been driving her to the airport, but hadn’t made it more than a few metres — because he was absolutely shitfaced.
No one was hurt, but it was quite an event. M&M spoke to some people and acted all ‘in control’ as we stood dripping puddles of chlorine onto the road, and we all left the scene just as the staggering bloke was trying to explain to a security guard why he couldn’t stand up straight and why his car was wrapped around a signpost, in a residential area, in a Muslim country.
That wasn’t the most exciting thing to happen over the weekend, however. Hell no! The most exciting thing by far this weekend was being offered a partnership by the Iranian inventor.
He entered our room with a joyous spring in his step, as though the greatest idea for the greatest invention ever had just crossed his mind. His hair was kind of messy, as though he’d been staring unseeingly for many hours into the middle of a giant fan, pondering perhaps the obstacles that stood between him and the millions of things he would invent, if he only had any ideas. His T-shirt was crumpled, as though he’d been up for three days and three nights, inventing an invention to invent things (and shagging the cleaner).
He sat on the coffee table in front of us while Stacey and I perched on our concrete slabs, wondering if it was normal for a landlord to enter his tenants’ bedroom on a Friday night, when they were clearly quite pissed, eye masks at the ready, getting set to embark upon another vodka-fuelled journey into unconsciousness. He rubbed his hands together and stated once more: ‘I’m an inventor.’
We nodded. We had to agree. Yes. Yes you are.
‘I come here to make money, and you come here to make money.’
We nodded. Yes. But no. I actually came because I wanted a break from London and to see something new, and maybe to find a boyfriend, as I’ve been single for ages, and possibly in a few years, to maybe even buy some property …
‘Speak slower, my English is bad.’
Whatever.
‘I come here to offer you opportunity. I want to take horse to America. I want you to help me take horse to America. That is the place for it. America is where I will make lots of money.’
Right.
‘I am Iran. They do not like me so much in America.’
Does anyone like you here, then? Except the cleaner? You’re a bit weird …
‘I need you. Your personalities, your speaking. I need you two. I offer this, we help each other.’
Would you rather we just handed over our passports?
‘I need you to come up with plan to take horse to America. I give you percentage. Of course, it’s still my invention.’
That’s OK, we’re more than happy not to take ANY credit for it, but we really don’t think …
‘I leave you now. We talk in one week. You think of how you would take horse to America. Sorry for interrupt, I leave you now.’
And with that, off he sloped. But not before stating once again how rich he is in Iran and how he’s simply here to promote ‘the horse’.
Of course, Stacey and I were dumbfounded. What an opportunity, we thought. What an adventure. He even promised to sort our visas if we came up with the master plan.
I’m sure it wouldn’t be that hard at all, ringing round an environmentally conscious America, plugging a sales machine involving a hot and sweaty horse on a treadmill, born from an Iranian brain. We’re seriously going to put our heads together this week. I just hope we can meet his deadline. He’s looking very stressed lately. So stressed is he, in fact, that upon ‘fixing the Internet’ for us, he swapped the fridge plug for the router, leaving our food to rot and perish overnight. Bless.
13/08
Swimming pools and breaking rules …
It would perhaps be a little too soon to say I have fallen in love. I think lust is more like it. Perhaps I’ve been floating on a little awestruck cloud since I met him, but something else happened with M&M a while back that I can hardly say I was expecting. I’ve said nothing up until now, hoping it might go away, but it hasn’t. And against my better judgment I haven’t tried to stop it. Even though I should.
M&M, as I’ve taken to calling him, stands for Married and Muslim. And therein lies my problem.
I know I’m a terrible person, even for entertaining the notion of our drunken kiss by the pool … his pool, after he’d entertained us all day (again) with his barbecue skills and an unclean amount of booze. Hmmm. Well, the more I think about it, maybe I’m placing the blame on the alcohol because it stops me admitting to myself what an idiot I am.
But then, M&M is one of the nicest guys I’ve met in a long time. Aside from an Irishman I met briefly not so long ago, he’s the first man who’s actually caught my eye and stirred up any form of romantic interest. But of course you always want what you can’t have, don’t you? What is essentially unattainable lights a fire of intrigue inside, until you develop a mild infatuation. You start to analyse everything he says, and read between the lines of everything he types, making that man you only vaguely liked the only one you could ever imagine wanting.
M&M and I have, since we met, spen
t hours exchanging stupid banter on instant messenger when we’re both supposed to be working. His texts crack me up. I’m not sure what it is I like the most: his easygoing nature; his brilliant smile; his kind heart and generosity; or the fact that since we’ve met he’s shown me things I’ve never known before. He’s so well travelled and wise, and still has time to spare for waifs and strays like Stacey and me.
He whisked me away the other night to a place called Bab Al Shams. It’s the poshest resort I’ve seen to date and lies deep in the desert; an oasis of calm involving fountains, a planet-sized swimming pool with giant vases on ledges in the middle, and a few ludicrously expensive restaurants. It’s amazing. There’s even falconry, horse riding and desert camel treks, if you go in the daylight.
We only went to chat, though, not to do anything naughty. But as we sat there in the glow of a thousand candles, sharing a shisha on a terrace overlooking the pool, I realised he might be serious about carrying things on with me.
Ugh. Why does he have to be married? Why did he then, shortly after our kiss, have to pick me up in his ‘selfish car', drive me away and seduce me in a hotel room about an hour’s drive from Dubai, when the world wasn’t looking? And why did I not think there would be consequences? Now I feel horrid and guilty, but totally unable to stop. Stacey knows because she’s seen it all happen. Well, she was sleeping in a spare room when we first kissed by the pool at his house. I don’t remember how it happened, really. He says I started it; I say he did. Only red wine knows the truth.
He says he hasn’t been happy here for a while, in spite of being very successful, with several businesses under his belt and a good few properties that he snapped up when Dubai was less a city than a steadily growing port. Differing religious values aside, I guess it can be tough to live somewhere for so long when all your friends keep leaving. Stacey and I have experienced this already. We’re always meeting people on their way out of Dubai, in spite of thousands shipping in.
