or 'Badspace available'When I move to Dubai, I am informed that I will be housed in a hotel for up two weeks. During this initial fortnight, I am expected to find somewhere to live. I am assured that this would be 'easy' and that everyone in the office had gone through the same thing and would be on hand to offer advice, and assistance, and hugs. I soon discover that this was bullshit or, as we like to call it here in the U.A.E., business. What they fail to tell you until you are actually walking the dusty streets of Dubai is that there is no standard system to help new joiners find accommodation -- hell, even a list of landlords would be nice. You are expected to handle things on your own, which is fine, I am a resourceful guy, but I wish someone had told me before I got on the plane. I would have been better prepared. What they also neglect to mention is that you cannot sign a lease without a cheque. And you cannot get a chequebook without a residency visa (anything up to two weeks). And you cannot get a residency visa without passing a medical check (anything up to three weeks). And you cannot take the medical check until you have your employment visa (anything up to two months). I end up staying in my hotel for six weeks.
I sign up for National Novel Writing Month in November. This is a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. 2006 sees approximately 70,000 people accept the challenge. Most of these people have ample spare time. I do not. Put simply: I am an idiot. I have attempted and won National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) twice before. I think 2006 would be easy -- it can't possibly be any harder, I think -- but I am proved wrong. Forgetting the fact I'm working 50+ hour weeks, for some reason I could not relinquish my new social life for thirty days, and as a result I spend more time in front of a lager than a laptop. I even write a whole day off through being hungover. Amazingly, I win with three days to spare, turning in about 54,000 words before I decide I have had enough. The novel -- my second, provisionally titled Deathbed -- is not finished, but it should be soon. That is if I can ever bring myself to open the file again.
'Check Spinneys,' one of my colleagues tells me about two weeks after I arrive. Spinneys is a local supermarket chain; think Waitrose, but decorated in green and yellow and with a special corner of each store given over to pork products[1]. They have notice boards, on which are displayed badly spelled and poorly transliterated want-ads. Next time I am out shopping, I hunt down one of these notice boards. Most of the ads I can dismiss. I am not an 'Indian', or an 'Indian bachelor', or an 'Indian executive bachelor', for example, so those three can go straight away. I am not a Filipino lady either, so that eliminates another half-dozen. The ones left advertise something called a 'bed space'. I have a sneaking suspicion I know what that means, but I do not want to dismiss them out of hand. 'What they do,' my work colleague tells me the next morning, 'is take a regular-sized room and put lots of beds in it. You get a bed, and a space. Some have partitions. You might even get a cupboard.' I decide to eliminate the bed-space adverts as well. Karama is an area of Bur Dubai encountered when I change my walk home after being moved to a different hotel. It is an old part of the city to the southeast of the Bank Street area with which I am familiar. Most of the apartment buildings are small and old and decrepit; the area is densely populated more through the fact that the bedrooms house entire families or bed-spaced Keralite bachelors, than from any high-rise buildings. There is a tangible sense of community in Karama. It is not quite the place where everybody knows your name, not yet, but I spy people talking to each other on the street, which does not happen elsewhere in the city. Old women pass the time outside the supermarkets; men sit and chat in the barbershops and cafés. There are more people walking places. There is less of a sense that people are just passing through. It could almost be a street scene in London or any other metropolitan city. The similarity is oddly comforting; the familiarity refreshing.
The rooms I look at are pretty disappointing. I restrict myself to looking in Bur Dubai, because I have seen the escalating traffic and decided that if I wanted to sit in traffic all day, I would have become a cab-driver. I search in the centre, because I do not want my location to dictate whether I go out on a night out or not. Some of the flats are nice but too expensive. Some are cheap but lack a communal area[2]. Some have a sizeable lounge, but are dingy. And the circle of flat-hunting continues. I find a place that is almost perfect. Good size, convenient location, good amenities, and close to those pubs I have selected as potential Locals. It is within my price range and the potential housemate is sociable. This is almost a problem. The housemate in question is a pretty young Belgian woman. Sharing with her would break the 1st Fundamental Rule of Housesharing -- Never live with someone you find attractive -- but I'm almost willing to do it because the other places I have looked at have been so disappointing. As it is the problem is solved for me. The room isn't available until the 1st of November, and work aren't willing to let me stay in the hotel for that long. You have to find somewhere sooner, they tell me. As I sit in my hotel room on the morning of November 1st, I decide that it was probably for the best. Work was obviously aware of the Fundamental Rules of Housesharing, and were just looking out for me. Perhaps. The Irish Village is a Dubai InstitutionTM (a term used by ex-patriates for any bar, nightclub, or restaurant that manages to stay open for more than two years without a refurbishment, or a name-change, or introducing fusion cuisine). Whilst the traditional definition of an institution fits reasonably well; in modern times it is associated with lunatic asylums. Apparently, on St Pat's that definition is rather appropriate. As the name might suggest the Irish Village is an Irish-themed establishment, complete with Irish staff, an Irish duckpond, and a 'typical' Irish street scene[3] stuck onto the side of what is actually Dubai's tennis stadium. Its popularity lies in the huge outside terrace and good food. We attend the 10th birthday celebrations of the Irish Village (or the I.V., or just the Irish). The ducks are evicted with an unimpressed quack, the pond is drained and the fish rehomed, and a stage is set up. The Saw Doctors, a super-group unheard of outside of Ireland, play the second night. Every Irish boy and girl in Dubai (and two English guys) swarms on the I.V. The English guys begin practising their 'top o' the mornin' to ya's and 'ah go on's. The band play a relatively short gig. Things are beginning to get desperate in the househunt. It turns out there are just aren't any rooms available that don't involve me becoming a Filipino prostitute. In desperation, I turn to the internet. I had already looked on the internet, of course, for rental adverts, for advice. Now, I decide that it is time to just look for a housemate. And funnily, whilst there are not any rooms available, there are plenty of people in my situation; needing someone to live with, but not being able to find a room. I meet up with a few people, but only one outdrinks me. At our first meeting I only plan on stopping for a couple of drinks before heading back to my hotel. Seven pints, a pitcher of cocktail, and several games of pool later, I am being put into a taxi. That he still wants to flatshare after seeing me get drunk convinces me that he is probably someone I could get along with. My potential housemate is a big feller in his early thirties, who walks around with a perpetual hangover. He is between jobs for most of November, and as the month draws on I become convinced he is actually nocturnal. Some days will pass between sightings, and the only evidence I have that he is still living is the occassional detritus from whatever dirty takeaway he had the night before. He is the classic expat, right down to the Dubai stone, the permaburn, and the foreign girlfriend. Souk Madinat Jumeirah is a hotel resort in the shadow of Dubai's (currently) most famous building, the Burj Al Arab. A maze of bazaars and bars, of restaurants and night clubs, and canals plowed by silent electricity-powered abras. The sand walls and towers are built to resemble a traditional arabian settlement, with hidden nooks and secret stairways, leading to yet more shops or refreshments. I have become convinced that you would need several visits before you could ever get used to the layout of the place. This is confirmed when my drinking partners get repeatedly lost and we spend what seem like hours searching for the right nightclub. I have not visited during the day but I imagine, with the markets in full swing and the tourists in full force, it is even harder to get your bearings. We find, eventually, Jam Base, a jazz bar with a lively house band and plenty attractive young ladies in attendance. Potential housemate calls to say that he has found a flat. I dimly remember him telling me something similar when we met, but seven pints and a pitcher have wiped the details from my memory. He has clearly forgetten telling me. I ask him what it is like. 'Ah,' he says. 'Well, I was wasted the last time I was there, so I can't really remember much about it. I remember it was pretty impressive, though.' We arrange to meet at the flat on Friday morning. It is in Golden Sands[4], in the heart of Bur Dubai. We are shown around a cavernous tiled flat. Our voices reverberate as the current tenant shows us vast room after vast room. 'This is the guest room,' he says, showing us a room that could have swallowed my last bedroom twice over, and still had room for a small broom cupboard. 'This is the maid's room,' he says, showing us a small broom cupboard. 'The what now?' I ask, interupting him. 'Of course, we only use it for storage,' he says. As if the flat having a room for a maid is the most normal thing in the world. 'And this is the maid's en-suite bathroom.' When I get over the fact that we have four toilets in a two bedroom flat, we are shown the rest of the building. We have a pool in a central courtyard, two squash courts, a gym, a games room, full-time security. 'What do you think?' asks potential housemate. 'Well. I'm sold.' 'Told you it was pretty impressive,' he says.
My favourite time of the week is Friday evening, at dusk. It is the one day of the week when the city seems empty. The streets are free of cars, and the traffic horn symphony is curiously absent. When free of social obligation I go down to the creek; walk alongside the moored dhows and shisha palaces and wait for the sunset to show me something beautiful.
The strategy for furnishing the flat is thus: We'll buy most of it second hand, as and when we find it available. We have a sofa-bed in the flat, a remnant of a previous tenant, so if the worst comes to the worst we have something to sit on. Beds, we both agree, have to be bought new. A second-hand frame is not so bad, but you never know what has happened on a second-hand mattress before you take possession of it. You want to be able to sleep easy. We go to Ikea for our beds, albeit separately. Ikea in the U.A.E. is much like Ikea anywhere else. In other words: my personal hell. Chaos given Swedish form and function. Much as I hate it, you can't deny the fact that for good, cheap furniture, you cannot really do better. Especially seeing as if you spend enough shekels there, they deliver and build the furniture for you, thus avoiding the inevitable flat-pack-furniture headache. The other essentials that we decide to buy first hand are the widescreen television and the D.V.D. player. Perhaps we didn't need to hurry so much; for the first month the sofa bed was still in my bedroom and thus we had nothing to sit on whilst we watched TV. Also, to this day the television still has not been connected up to the satellite, so we can only watch D.V.D.s on the set. At the end of November I go on a desert safari. The first event of the desert safari is dune bashing. This involves taking four-by-fours out into the desert, and driving over the sand dunes at ridiculous speeds. Our driver tells us that he has been doing this for ten years, and it shows as he throws the car up and down dunes with apparent disregard for the safety of his passengers. We are perfectly safe, of course, and emerge unscathed, but it is a terrifying, and exhilirating, experience. Unfortunately, our experience is cut short about halfway through when one of our party has to be rescued because his front driver-side tire has come off the wheel. Being in the most powerful car, we are dispatched to rescue him whilst the rest of the group continues on to camp. An hour or so later, the tire has been restored, and we crawl, belatedly, on to camp. We arrive just in time for food; a desert barbecue that, despite the fact that our hosts are cooking for almost 100 people, tastes great. The evening entertainment is a belly dancer. She performs on a wooden stage in the centre of the camp, and drags helpless members of the audience up for humiliation. This is hilarious until the fourth member of the audience she pulls up happens to be me. I stand on the stage alongside her, painfully aware that I cannot dance. It is hot on stage, and eventually I am released to return to my seat, red faced. My camera is on my seat, out of its case. I had been taking photographs of the other victims when she grabbed me. 'Don't worry,' says one of my friends. 'I got lots of photos.' After the belly dancing the camp empties in a hurry, as many of the tourists head for the four-by-fours that will take them home. Some of us stay behind however, and camp out. The lights are extinguished, and we sit in the dark, talking under the stars. Dawn finds us huddled in sleeping bags in the middle of the encampment, tired but relaxed.
My photographs from my second month in Dubai are located here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/53537358@N00/sets/72157594403625550/.
[1] Which we have taken to calling the Sin Shop.
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Concept and content by Kevin Paul Jones Copyright © 2007 Kevin Paul Jones |  |
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