Burqalicious

by Becky Wicks

Unfortunately, I’ll have to quit writing the article for now. I can’t very well carry on doing it under a different name, telling Stanley every week that no, it’s definitely not me writing about exactly the same stuff, in the same style, on the same page.

  Dammit. Stupid stupid stupid. I really liked that gig.

  Thank God I still have a few other magazine jobs coming up. And the freelance for the dot com that M&M set me up with, featuring gift experiences and entertainment, is still going well, too. They now want me to write every month for a fixed amount, which all pushes the salary up out of the pittance category and into the realms of acceptable. Tax free, I’m actually not doing too badly these days. HBSC UK would be proud of me, paying off my debts instead of dodging them (albeit thanks to another loan).

  Everybody freelances in Dubai. There’s definitely an abundance of work here at the moment, what with a different new this and a bigger new that opening and launching every other week. The trick I suppose is not to let people like Stanley stop us branching out and making the most of it all, but to learn how to juggle it without getting caught.

  07/12

  The hills are alive with the sound of silence …

  Yesterday I received a press release informing me a local dramatic arts group would soon be performing The Sound of Music. I practically peed my pants.

  The most expensive tickets for this upcoming performance were going for 1000 dirhams each — that’s more than 200 quid! And 300 were apparently reserved for children with special needs. The package also seemed to involve the all-you-can-eat-and-drink concept, which I’m not sure would have been a particularly wise gesture, given that no child, special needs or otherwise, should be encouraged to drink. But if that’s the way they envisage people will stay to the end, then all power to them. I applied for some press tickets, knowing Heidi and definitely Ewan would be keen to check it out.

  But alas, alack, this is all in the past tense, as tragedy has befallen our beloved show. I just heard back:

  Dear Ma’am,

  It would be a pleasure to have you over at the The Sound of Music. However, this is to bring to your notice that the event has unfortunately been postponed.

  We have requested the venues as well as the performing artistes to give us new dates in a manner that we can retain the format of our event to the existing one and are now awaiting a confirmation for the same, before we convey the new dates to all concerned.

  Regards,

  Organisers

  I’ll admit the second part of that email deserves the award for most perplexing paragraph of the year, so far. As we’ve established, I get a lot like that. But the gist of it is that after building a day’s worth of hope among theatre-starved expats, the hills of our peaceful emirate will not be alive with the sound of nuns or imported Austrian white kids after all. Gutted.

  We must wait with bated breath instead, for a miniature version of ‘The Nutcracker’ at the Madinat. Gladly … on this occasion (probably having signed numerous forms) men are allowed to wear tights.

  14/12

  Mulled whine …

  Perhaps visions of sugar plums were dancing through my head when I did it, but without really thinking, I posted a recipe for a nice mulled wine on the website today, just to get people in the mood for Christmas. Being in warmer climes, it’s sort of snuck up on me this year, so I was proud to finally jump on the festive bandwagon. I found a recipe online that looked fairly easy to make and photoshopped my own little image to go with it. Perfect. The British expats will love it, I thought, basking in the joy I would bring my fellow comrades.

  Then I saw Stanley move from his chair. He appeared in slow motion, shuffling on the carpet, head shaking, sleeves draping over his hands in typical fashion. I minimised Facebook and my chat window with M&M.

  ‘You’ve put an alcoholic recipe on the website,’ he said.

  Oh, shit. ‘Oh, well . yes, I know. But technically when you mull wine, the wine sort of . well, it . you know, it’s really not like it’s alcoholic at all . when it’s mulling it’s just like . grapes . and cloves with a bit of .’

  ‘Take it down.’

  ‘Right'.

  And off he shuffled out the door for a ciggie, which I’ve noticed he does after every single conversation that involves him having to leave his chair. I think I’m becoming the death of Stanley.

  27/12

  An orphan’s Christmas …

  I uploaded photos of Stacey and me sliding down sand dunes onto Facebook, among a barrage of Merry Christmas emails today. Stacey and her visiting guy pal, plus M&M and I went camping in the desert a few nights ago and although the darkness got slightly chilly once our little fire had burned to the ground, it was nothing compared with the Arctic climes of the traditional British winter. I don’t miss that element of home at all.

  On the whole, Christmas in Dubai turned out to be a drunken affair in Ewan’s flat. After our camping adventure, Stacey jetted off home and M&M returned to his wife. The Orphans’ Christmas, a collaboration of cooking efforts from roughly fifteen waifs and strays from work and various friendship circles, was the most fun I’ve had in ages — even though we managed to set fire to the dining table with a cracker and a scented candle.

  To escape the smell of burnt fabric, we headed to the roof with our wine glasses and took some stupid photos, posing with our paper hats on and our feet in the Olympic-sized pool. We all agreed that this was something we’d have never thought we’d be doing this time last Christmas. This time last year, in fact, I didn’t even know I’d be moving to Dubai.

  It’s a weird time here at the moment. There are the majority of expats, desperately clinging on one side to Christian traditions, trudging the food aisles of Marks & Spencer in search of anything to remind them of home. On the other side are the locals, carrying on as normal, patiently pushing their way past every Santa who throws a ho ho ho in the wrong direction and undoubtedly wishing it wouldn’t be Christmas every day.

  Heidi and I even went to see Santa in the Mall of the Emirates after we received an exciting free invite to the snow-play area in Ski Dubai. It was mostly full of kids, obviously, but we hugged ice-sculpted penguins and polar bears in our blue-and-red ski suits, screamed our way down a slope on rubber rings and then went for a glass of mulled wine in Après, the bar overlooking the ski slope. (Don’t tell Stanley.)

  It’s pretty fascinating to see these worlds collide, although I can’t say I feel as though I fit into any of it right now. Christmas has never been that much of an occasion in my household. In Dubai, the whole thing feels even more like a Hallmark-sponsored holiday, imported just to appease those of religious indifference, or those who don’t really know any better. What is Christmas really? I hate to admit it, but this is the first year I’ve actually thought about it on a deeper level, other than which pub I might end up in, puking up the turkey.

  M&M came over briefly on Christmas Eve and gave me a guitar. A brand-spanking-new Yamaha guitar, complete with ribbons and bows! I’m still amazed — it’s an incredible present. As I’ve mentioned before, I didn’t really know what to buy the man who seems to have it all, so I set about making a photo album of our trip to Cape Town. Stacey’s watched my flurry of work over the course of the past two weeks with interest, always on hand with the scissors. The lounge has been like a little arts and crafts studio! I spent hours cutting out all the prints and making little love hearts out of pieces of the map, and sticking red tissue paper round our tickets to Robben Island. She was impressed. It didn’t cost a lot, I’ll admit, but it looks pretty neat and serves as a good reminder of our awesome weekend jaunt, seeing as we can never share photos online. He shed a little tear when I gave it to him. Thank God . I was so worried he would think it was shit.

  In truth, M&M and I have been having a good few verbal scuffles lately, mainly because of his mounting jealousy over never really knowing who I’m with, when I’m not with him. This I can understand. When I’m not with him he can’t know where I am, becaus
e he’s with his wife and I’m not supposed to call him.

  I’ve already established he’s not entirely mine, but I’m starting to think M&M doesn’t much like sharing me, either. I suppose his paranoia is heightened by the imminent arrival of The Irishman. I may have mentioned him briefly before, but he’s a gorgeous guy I once had a fabulously romantic weekend with on a conference trip to Spain. We still speak on the phone sometimes. In Spain, after our work was done, we spent many an hour snogging under the stars and on our respective returns to London and Dublin, we sent texts back and forth. Just stupid things, you know, making each other laugh. A few weeks later, I got the job in Dubai.

  The Irishman was the first guy I’d really liked in ages and one text from him lingers in my memory — one he sent late one night when I’d just got home from a party in London. He wrote I adore you, which put a stupid grin on my face for the whole of the next day. Just three simple English words leapt straight off that screen and into my heart. And even though deep down I knew distance meant nothing could ever happen between us, I kept them there.

  The Irishman has now got a job in Dubai and is moving here very shortly. This worries M&M and in between assuring him that he has nothing to worry about at all, I wonder to myself whether that’s the God’s honest truth. I guess I’d be lying if I said the news hadn’t stirred a few memories at least.

  If Christmas is a time for reflection, I guess the truth of the matter is that since I got here, I’ve been well and truly swept away by this whole place and everyone in it! And M&M, although once a welcome part of a world so new and exciting, is also a powerful and somewhat overwhelming force that I’m now finding quite confusing, not to mention difficult to handle.

  Hmmm. You know what … maybe I should just try not to think about it so much and have another imported mince pie.

  01/01

  A bad day …

  Oh crap. Today is a very bad day. A very, very bad day.

  02/01

  Happy New Year …

  Today I’m trying to adopt the popular expat holiday outlook and have a jolly good time. Starting with a haircut in Jumeirah. I’ve chosen a new place in a very posh hotel that backs onto the beach. They did Heidi’s hair before Christmas and it’s gorgeous. She sauntered into my apartment with brand-new highlights, looking like . like she’d just stepped out of a salon, really.

  I feel a bit bad because I usually go to another place, but I told the hairdresser there all about him, and I don’t want to have to answer any of her questions. So, I’m letting the gay Lebanese guy at this new place work his magic, and I might even make up a whole new boyfriend while I sit in his chair — one who loves me and doesn’t buy me a Christmas guitar and then dump me on New Year’s Day. Yes, you read that right.

  The last five minutes have gone something like this:

  9.45: I love him

  9.46: I HATE him

  9.47: I really fucking love him

  9.48: I love him so, so, so much

  9.49: I hate him

  Suffice to say that just as I was pondering how far my affair with a paranoid, married, Muslim man could possibly go, M&M was thinking it too. He’s decided to end things with me, so he can see how things go with his wife. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this before.

  Oh dear. I can’t believe I actually just wrote that. Sorry. I’m one of those people I despise. I’m a walking — or rather slouching quite pathetically in bed with a laptop — cliché. I’m a pitiful shadow of the woman I was last week, even though I’m exactly the same; just a man down, I suppose. A man who was never really mine, at that. A man who I was starting to think was more trouble than he was worth. Is it an ego thing, I wonder? No, no I’m actually pretty upset.

  I thought I was going to be OK last night. I went to the cinema in Deira City Mall with Ewan, watched a bit of Will Smith, had a bit of a laugh. Another few clichéd thoughts passed through my mind, like, I don’t need a man, I’m fabulous on my own, and then I came home and opened the fridge and saw two Flakes that he’d bought before, to sprinkle on our ice-cream. How thoughtful, I thought at the time. What a lovely gesture.

  Only last night when I opened the door and saw them still there (we’d got too full for dessert), it was almost as if they shrank back in fear and muttered an apology, knowing that their innocent presence might well send me spinning right back into the depths of depression — which they did. Those two Cadbury Flakes suddenly stood for everything he’d just snatched away, everything I would never have again. His chocolatey skin, his smooth, sensual charm, his yellow T-shirt, his purple … T-shirt …

  I suppose one of the reasons I’m so upset about the whole thing is because I sort of knew what I was getting myself into, and it didn’t take a genius to see that it could only end in misery. I just went on with it anyway. But another reason, and clearly a thing of major annoyance, is that I just don’t usually get dumped. I don’t. I always do the dumping. Always. I was, until New Year’s Day, a girl who had never been dumped.

  Well, actually, that’s a lie. I was dumped at university once, but I was eighteen and I didn’t really care. Well . that’s a lie, because I did care, but quite obviously those emotions have faded into oblivion, causing me to believe it was nowhere near as bad as this. Of course, I want to believe that my student-self felt nothing of this sort when my boyfriend dumped me, sitting on the top step of the stairs at his house party, drunk on cheap white wine, probably thinking he could do better than this skinny, spotty girl from Spalding, sobbing into the knees of her purple flares.

  I want to believe that it wasn’t anything like this. I need to believe that I’m the only girl in the world who’s ever felt this pain — this tragic, awful pain. The woman I was just three days ago is spiralling into unknown territory, into battle with the girl he turned me into — a person who, just a few days ago, was actually getting a little pissed off with his snoring, a little irritated with his driving and more than angered by his jealousy. Am I now firing those cursed clichés out into an empty room? — Who am I without him? How do I live without him? — because I’m a woman who’s been programmed to feel she should do this? How annoying it is, to analyse everything this way. I hate being a Scorpio.

  But it was like this with my uni boyfriend, I suppose. Of course it was. I ran out of his house and onto the road without looking. I took the first train home to Lincolnshire and flung myself through the door, onto my dad. I couldn’t eat for a week and I lost half a stone. Of course I felt like this. Time’s just blurred it all nicely into nothing.

  Right now — I love (well … lust) and hate M&M in equal measures and I can’t go to work. My eyes are so puffy that I don’t even think I could blame Stanley and his constant cloud of smoke. I can’t roll to the other side of the bed because the pillow smells of him and he isn’t there — even though, if he hadn’t broken up with me he wouldn’t be there anyway. He’d have driven off ages ago to his wife and I wouldn’t have heard him go, because I’d have put my earplugs in to drown out that intolerable snoring.

  Stacey’s still not here, so after M&M left I called Heidi and got her to take me to the beach. This, I have to say, made me feel a bit better, though when she asked what had happened, I didn’t really know what to say. We didn’t exactly call it quits, or define a moment when we were no longer an item. We just sort of had a conversation about where we were going, and concluded that we weren’t exactly sure. And after he kissed me at midnight under the fireworks, after we toasted the end of the year and the start of another with Veuve Clicquot and an endless buffet of the finest food, we danced on the grass till we couldn’t keep our eyes open. We staggered back to my place and fell asleep, just like we’d done so many times before, only this time, when he woke up to leave before dawn, after he hugged me and told me he still loved me, he left.

  It’s a weird situation, really. It’s not like he doesn’t love me. But he wants to do the right thing. I can understand that. I don’t want him to feel like a bad person, and I don’t m
uch want to be one anymore, either.

  After sobbing the entire morning away in bed, stopping only to type, I plan to go up to the roof for a swim and have a sob in the Jacuzzi instead. Then, when I am done with that, I plan to sob for twenty sweaty minutes in the sauna. And then, when I realise what a spoilt little expat I’ve become, thinking my life is so tragic while mourning my losses in such a luxurious fashion, I am damn well going to go and get that haircut. This is the start of a new me.

  08/01

  You can stand under my umbrella …

  I stepped out of my building and practically fell on my arse. I cursed the cleaner under my breath and looked around for the CAUTION: WET FLOOR sign (he usually tells us when he mops — careless man!). But then I realised. The slippery slabs had nothing to do with Mohammed’s thoughtless mopping. It was rain. It rained on my lunch break. And I missed it because I was inside eating leftover pita bread.

  I haven’t seen rain in months, except in Cape Town. I saw a lot of it there, of course, but never here. I could smell it all the way back to work, lingering in the air, reminding me of London. Dubai isn’t built for rain, though. What few paths there are on my short commute to the office are now rendered impossible to walk on in my cheap flip-flops, because not only did it rain two days ago, it hasn’t really stopped since. Dubai has officially entered panic mode, and most of it is now under water.

  According to the officials, we’ve now been sloshed with a record rainfall of 110 millimetres since it started on Monday. Schools are closed, traffic is at a standstill on most main roads, and apparently some traffic lights aren’t working. This is an absolutely terrifying thought, because people here in general can’t drive very well when it’s dry outside, let alone when their cars are resembling an army of submarines. It’s mayhem out there! In fact, I wonder if the Iranian’s got the fleet-horse out. Now, there’s a vehicle that could move in these conditions!