Burqalicious

by Becky Wicks

  ‘Only MasterCard or Visa, ma’am.’

  ‘But I have real money, in my account, now. Real money that I shouldn’t even owe you in the first place but am giving you anyway. And you want me to put it on a credit card, therefore forcing me into more debt?’

  ‘Only MasterCard or Visa, ma’am.’

  ‘What if I don’t have a credit card? What if I learned from my past mistakes and cancelled all my credit cards when you should have cancelled this one?’

  ‘Do you have a credit card ma’am?’

  ‘Yes of course I do, but .’

  ‘Is it MasterCard or Visa, ma’am?’

  Demented with the Rage (it was only 8 am), I paid up before she called the cops. Perhaps I’m asking too much, I thought. Am I acting a little spoilt … expecting customer service people to cancel things when I ask them to, nicely? It’s a constant quandary here, that’s for sure. But seriously, at a time when the world is now seemingly drowning in debt, why oh why is my bank encouraging me into more?

  I called the TV people, who were very nice. They admitted their mistake, filed it somewhere in a tree within their monkey network for a chimp to screw up at a later date, and said a technician would call me back about my 900-dirham refund. Something tells me I could be waiting a very long time.

  19/11

  Re-biting the Big Apple …

  Baz Luhrmann wrote a song about the dangers of being hardened by New York. I sort of understand it. Spend too much time in Manhattan and its pace would probably drive you crazy. People push, people rush, people chatter in your ears, people shout, people laugh LOUDLY, people mock, joke and poke at you until eventually, you become immune. You take it for granted. You harden and then become oblivious to all the amazing reasons you moved here to begin with.

  Being back in New York after two and a half years away is very weird. When Stacey and I arrived at Todd’s apartment he welcomed us in, M&M included, cooked for us and set up Rock Band so we could jam into the early hours. The rain was hammering down outside, but it really didn’t matter. I heart New York!

  I almost married Todd once by the way … for my visa! I was so in love with New York in a way I’ve never felt for a man. Not that I’d tell this to M&M, of course, who flew from London on a different plane (in business class, obviously), just to be with me on my birthday. He’s gone back to Dubai now. I told him he had to stay in a hotel, like he’d offered to do, as we’re not together anymore. I’m still not sure that he’s entirely clear in his head about our relationship status because something happened one night in his hotel room which shouldn’t have. This worries me a bit (stupid stupid stupid!). I hope it doesn’t make things more complicated. But God … what a wake-up call to be here on my own again, thinking of all the things I’ve done and the people I’ve met since I left New York the first time.

  I didn’t even realise how much I’ve missed this city till now. In the end, I didn’t marry Todd for the visa. It wasn’t such a good idea to stay here, once the Libran (the guy I would have married for love) made it clear he didn’t really feel the same. I kind of blocked it out like I’m prone to doing with most things that don’t pan out the way I want them to. I moved to England, then Dubai — always marching forward, always pushing, always ‘too ambitious’ (like Stanley said), maybe. It’s funny, thinking back over what’s played out. I didn’t think I’d left New York before it had hardened me, but maybe I was hardened after all.

  The streets still smell the same. It’s so weird what you remember. Hotdogs, pretzels, coffee and car fumes. There’s attitude round every corner. And now that I’m here, in spite of M&M, The Irishman, and every other guy who’s entered my life in the time since I left, I can’t help but wonder where the Libran is. He’s out there somewhere, probably still sporting that sexy hipster beard … probably causing some other girl no end of heartache with his Libran fear of commitment. He ruined Librans for me in general, really.

  I told Stacey all about him as we walked through Central Park, before she left for London. The unfamiliar cold gripped my suntanned fingers like a vice but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I’ve always loved walking in Central Park. It clears your head, helps you make sense of the chaos beyond its borders. This is something Dubai definitely doesn’t offer. We have parks, obviously, but the imported grass and palm trees don’t thrive naturally in the desert. I don’t think anything thrives naturally in Dubai. I don’t think I do … not as well as I used to, anyway. Every time I leave it lately, I wonder whether or not I should actually go back.

  Broadway bustles with workers on cell phones, twenty-somethings wrapped up warm in hats, scarves and furry boots. Walking in NYC, you’re as invisible as you want to be, and that’s without covering up in an abaya. Being crazy is encouraged. Bartenders chat about their lives as you prop up their bars, sipping Jack and Coke where no one needs to know your name: ‘I’m an actor from Maine, this is only a part-time job …’ Promoters stop you in Times Square: ‘Buy a comedy ticket for 20 bucks — that’s half price, lady … hey, where ya from? Your accent’s kinda awesome!’

  Men stop you struggling up the subway steps and offer to help carry your suitcase. Waitresses call you ‘cutie’ as they serve you iced water that you didn’t even ask for. Taxis speed and screech, dodging people. People speed and screech, dodging taxis. Crossing the street is a game of patience. When the lights are red cross the other way. Follow the grid till you reach your destination. Stay awake. Stay focused. Take a cab if it’s raining. The driver will talk whether you want him to or not, and he’ll always know where he’s going. Pictures of his family litter the dashboard. His coffee spills precariously from a cup, perched in its holder: ‘Tom Hanks was in here last week, I took him to the theatre … hey, where ya from? Your accent’s kinda awesome!’

  Carrie Bradshaw once described New York as a loveable boyfriend. Perhaps that’s why I’ve thought of it this way myself. New York was strong and tough; it taught me to stand up for myself, to fight my corner. But it was loud and demanding too; it scared me and scarred me. We had some amazing nights, staying up late, cultivating dreams and schemes. It gave me a lot, but it took a lot away, too. Perhaps I was a little too young, a little too naive. I should have known New York would move on without me, eventually.

  But our fling was beautiful and wild and it changed me. With miles and years between us, and a man on the scene who’s quite the opposite of the Libran and doesn’t want to let me go, New York is still the ex I can’t get over. I wonder now what Dubai brings to our relationship. It’s dirty, that’s for sure. A little dishevelled and also very loud. It’s a dreamer but it fights admirably to put even its wildest plans into action. It’s bright with a sunny disposition and buys me an extravagant lifestyle. It takes me further than New York ever did and lavishes me with promises for the future. But I do get a little lost sometimes, wondering what it wants from me really. It’s hard to read. It’s difficult. But like New York, I guess Dubai is teaching me brand-new things about myself every single day.

  Sitting here in Todd’s apartment, hours behind Dubai and a whole world away, I’m thinking I couldn’t have loved and lived in two more different cities. I wonder, perhaps, if Baz Luhrmann should write a new song: Live in Dubai once, but leave before it makes you ungrateful.

  23/11

  Fireworks …

  Even in New York, people would stop me when I said I was from Dubai and ask, ‘Are you going to see the massive fireworks display? They spent more money on them than on the ones in Beijing, you know!’ No, I didn’t know. Three million dollars! That’s a whole lot of money.

  Apparently it was all in aid of the official opening of Atlantis — the mega hotel to end all hotels they’ve been building for … it feels like about two weeks … on the crest of the Palm. Atlantis is a pink monstrosity that could well have been created by a hundred Disney fairies in lilac dresses and golden tiaras. From a distance it resembles a giant sandcastle plopped by God in the middle of the ocean. The Irishman can see it fro
m the end of his street, but he wasn’t invited to the opening — a star-studded event my new friend Svana got to attend, which was … well … another star-studded event in Dubai.

  Svana’s kind of lucky like that. Being in PR she has a job like the one I used to have, where she either gets invited to, or hosts, the opening of every envelope, bookshop and bar in town. The party at Atlantis was above and beyond as far as VIPs were concerned. Svana reports that aside from a scrambling by the media on the red carpet (Dubai apparently couldn’t decipher who deserved to walk the walk and who should be standing on the sidelines, such are the egos in this town), it was really quite impressive.

  Kylie Minogue gyrated through five or six songs. Oprah Winfrey bailed, but she sent her two friends instead, which was nice. Lindsay Lohan stumbled about to full expectancy. Richard Branson scoffed at a reporter, causing controversy, and Charlize Theron appeared in a less-than-impressive dress, but was appropriately polite to everyone.

  Mary Kate Olsen was small. Michael Jordan ‘wasn’t really that tall,’ the fireworks exploded to rounds of applause — a few ‘oooohs', a few ‘aaaaaahs’ — and at 2.30 am, the lights came on and everyone went to bed. Oh, but thanks to a leaked guest list, including celebrity room numbers, security probably had a hell of a job keeping the normal citizens at bay from those fancy lifts and staircases, hoping for a sight of the stars in sweet slumber.

  Back to the fireworks. The Irishman says he had to have written permission to get back to his villa on the Palm after 2 pm on the day of the party. Can you believe that? Some people with jobs who went out all day and didn’t go by the rules must have had a problem getting home, and I’m sure there was at least one forgetful soul sitting calmly on the balcony, sipping a cup of tea as a gigantic Catherine wheel started shooting red and yellow sparks across the sand at the end of her ‘garden’ before launching a stream of rockets into the sky, absolutely terrifying her cat. They lit up the whole Palm, allegedly. Apparently it was quite a display. I wouldn’t know. I was in New York. I just had to watch it in small, grainy format on YouTube.

  Grucci’s of New York (the organiser), has confirmed that the fireworks for the launch party will take pride of place in the next Guinness Book of World Records. You’d bloody well hope so, too, if you’d spent that much money and gone to all that effort. According to the Gulf News, they planned ‘firing positions from 226 floating pontoons across 46 kilometres of water on the Palm fronds, 40 locations along the 5.5-kilometre monorail on the Palm’s trunk and positions on 400 balconies on the south facade and rooftop surfaces of Atlantis.’ This is pretty frickin’ impressive, seeing as Dubai can’t even run a public transport system.

  Anyway, if the world was ever in any doubt about Dubai’s ability to throw a party, it’s definitely not anymore. Just when I was thinking no city could ever impress me as much as the Big Apple, look which city’s gone and done just that. Even though I wasn’t invited.

  29/11

  Who wants to be a millionaire?

  Today, as we speak, I have one million dirhams in my bank account. As I sit here in my swivel chair, trying to put together a credit card campaign for our lovely local bank, I have one million dirhams at my disposal (oh, the irony) and no one in the office has a clue. I feel wicked and special and almost invincible. I could do anything right now, go practically anywhere. I could shove this project in EGO The Great’s face and go shopping. Oh, sweet temptation!

  Before you think you’ve gone insane and missed something huge along the way, you haven’t. I didn’t win the Dubai lottery — there isn’t one. Gambling’s a sin, remember? It’s actually not my money at all. It’s M&M’s.

  He hasn’t given it to me, unfortunately. I am simply keeping it safe for him. He trusts me … which is perhaps slightly unwise in light of many things, least of all my issues with money and spontaneous clothing purchases. But he does. And now I have one million sparkly little Arab dollars in my otherwise empty bank account that I can’t touch. It’s killing me.

  It’s not very good for him either, though. One of his many businesses has gone bust. And by bust, I mean the bloke who owns the major share has skipped town having drained the company bank account and M&M is automatically responsible. Apparently, the authorities might come after him for the money his former partner (now AWOL) owes to a number of people. They’ll take M&M’s own money if they have to, anything to get it back. The lack of legal standing for people in this situation here is bloody scary. If you can’t pay back your debts you’re guilty of thievery and deceit before you’ve even muttered the words ‘But I thought I had an overdraft!’ It’s not like it is at home.

  In the UK, HSBC would just write a polite letter asking me to please pay something back. If I didn’t, they’d write another one. If I still didn’t pay, they’d write another one. If I didn’t pay for quite a while, they would maybe call me, or my dad. When my dad called me … well, then it was different. Then I’d be scared and definitely have to start paying it back. But no one threatened prison. A court summons, maybe. A severe telling off; a big black mark against my name when it came to requesting that holy TopShop loyalty card, maybe, but no life behind bars, getting yelled at in Arabic for nine hours. Maybe that was the problem.

  Anyway, M&M has given me some of his personal money to take care of, until the legalities, if there are any, are sorted out. He’s a pretty powerful man who knows a lot of people, so he thinks he’ll be OK. Of course, if you have enough of your own money, there are a different set of rules altogether in Dubai. He tried to explain it all in factual business terms but to be honest I was just sitting there in his Porsche, looking at my bank statement, trying to fathom how a million dirhams could be ‘some’ of his personal fortune. It’s more money than I’ve ever had in my life. It’s also a lot of responsibility. M&M and I are not even really together and all of a sudden I’m his financial carer. Me. The girl who less than a year ago couldn’t even budget for a Big Mac.

  I suppose it’s nice to know that he trusts me. I have decided to try and be his friend since the slip-up in his New York hotel room, and friends help other friends out when they need them, don’t they — especially if they’re millionaires.

  After he deposited the cash in my account last night, I took him as my date to a food review at a new steakhouse called Hunters Bar and Grill in the Westin hotel. The dinner was a diabetic’s nightmare, featuring five sickly courses of chocolate-themed food, but I thought enjoying a free meal together would be a nice chance for us to talk about all the things I wasn’t going to spend his money on.

  I also tried not to talk about my upcoming adventure in Nepal … in a matter of days. I know it still annoys him that I’m going and that The Irishman is packing his bags along with me. It doesn’t seem to matter that Svana and Sash will be there too, along with another four people. He only sees The Irishman and his non-existent ulterior motives.

  What happened in M&M’s hotel room in New York has only served to make me feel worse about things. I ended things for good, forever, and in a moment of weakness I’ve buggered it all up again. He’s just as keen as ever and now I have ‘some’ of his money, which kind of makes things difficult. HSBC was one thing; it’s a faceless entity I had no problem ignoring. But I can’t very well not see M&M when I’m running about with a million dirhams of his hard-earned cash. I hope that’s not what he was thinking when he gave it to me. Hmmm …

  Stacey says I shouldn’t be hanging out with M&M again. She reckons I’m only doing it because The Irishman appears to have lost all romantic interest since our drunken snog and I need to have a man around me who cares. I don’t think she’s right. She says I’m just trying to convince myself that I don’t think she’s right. Maybe I’m managing to convince M&M that I’m not still convincing myself that he’s wrong for me, but I’m not convincing Stacey that I’ve convinced myself at all.

  My head hurts.

  As if to rub it in that we really had nothing to celebrate, the couple on the table next to us cracke
d open a 5,000-dirham bottle of vintage wine and nuzzled each other all evening. Bastards. Getting a bottle ourselves wouldn’t have cracked a dent in the wad sitting comfortably in my bank account, but it would have been nice to feel as though I deserved such a treat. I’ve only been a millionaire for one day, but already I can see how money really doesn’t buy happiness if you’re investing in all the wrong things.

  05/12

  Spinach and the Nepalese concept of time …

  ‘A brave heart and a courteous tongue. They shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling,’ says Rudyard Kipling. (I had to Google that ‘cause I didn’t know the Jungle Book was anything other than a Disney film till I was too old to care.) Anyway, he forgets to mention that a strong stomach helps too. But perhaps Mowgli wasn’t raised in Chitwan National Park in Nepal, and perhaps he never ate the suspicious-looking wilted spinach I had to deal with a second time round, when it ‘popped up’ again before me rather unceremoniously in the toilet.

  Oh, the humiliation. Oh, the misery. The bout of food poisoning I experienced last week wasn’t too unlike the bowel-based occurrence in Kenya, after I narrowly missed taking a brand-new boyfriend along for the shitty ride. It was only my good friend from school I had to fight for the toilet on that trip. On this one, it was The Irishman. Perhaps there’s such a thing as karma after all.

  Anyway, a brave heart was definitely necessary in Nepal. Bravery was called upon as we wandered openly through an eerie jungle, reminiscent of the one in the movie Pan’s Labyrinth, brushing the trees and vines aside like wide-eyed, intrepid explorers with giant sticks. It was very David Attenborough, only with smaller cameras. The guide — a small and tubby man in a sort of off-green policeman-type sweater (weird) — carried no gun and no tranquilliser dart, yet informed us that not one, not two, but thirty-five wild tigers were roaming freely in our general vicinity, and should we come face to face with a charging rhino, we should probably run. He was a very smart man.