by Omar Tyree
When he closed his office door behind him, Abdul continued to think about his wife. He had watched the interview that she had given the day of the accident, and he had agreed that it was good. She was much better with her words than he was, but her excellence did nothing to improve his image amongst other Muslim men.
In Western society, Hamda would have been a fabulous asset, professionally as well as a wife. But in the Muslim world, he was forced to continue to negotiate how much she could do before it was acceptable.
Or maybe she will be the first to do great things for all women of Dubai, he mused often. He already realized how much the younger women revered her. Nevertheless, many of the Emirati and Muslim men didn’t see it that way. They viewed Hamda as one of Abdul’s many weaknesses. So he remained conflicted about his wife’s strong will and spirit.
He sat back in his chair behind his desk and thought of call ing his wife to announce that he was on his way home, as he had always done. But then he stopped himself and contemplated everything.
Is it possible for me to love my wife too much? he asked himself. Maybe it’s time for the balance of a second wife.
But he didn’t want a second wife. He loved Hamda too much to share his time, his heart and his wealth with anyone else. So he picked up the phone and called her anyway.
*****
After the construction site incident, the news of Abdul’s handling had reached the older and more established real estate developers of the UAE, as well as the Emirati council. A trio of wise men decided to hold a private meeting to discuss their shared concerns about their country’s most recent obstacles. Sheikh Al Rashid, Sheikh Al Naseem and Abdul’s uncle, Sheikh Al Hassan, all met at the latter’s villa home in the capital city of Abu Dhabi for dinner and dialogue. And in the privacy of Sheikh Al Hassan’s home, they were free to eat and socialize at the large marble dinner table without need to wear their public headdresses.
“How many more buildings in Dubai do we have yet to complete? Five thousand?” Sheikh Al Rashid asked the other men. He pulled a piece of bread in half to eat. He was the oldest of the three distinguished council members, but he was the smallest in physical stature.
Sheikh Al Naseem, the youngest and the largest of the three, chuckled at his elder’s exaggeration.
“We don’t have that many. Or at least I don’t believe so,” he commented. “But I do understand what you mean. We have had a lot of overproduction.”
Sheikh Al Rashid became insistent. “We have been overproducing for years now. So much, in fact, that we will soon cease from being recognized as an Arabian nation.”
Sheikh Al Hassan smiled and spoke casually. “We are still an Arabian nation, my friend. No amount of immigrant workers or tourists will change that. But you must also remember that we are still a very young nation—less than fifty years old. So we are still establishing ourselves around the world.”
After hearing the younger council members’ comments, Sheikh Al Rashid pounced on them with vigor.
“Yes, and in less than five more years, it will be the youth, like your nephew Abdul, who will undo our establishment as a respectable nation through too much greed,” he blasted. “We do not need to open up our country to everyone. For the Mercy of Allah, how much tourism and immigrant workers are enough?”
Sheikh Al Hassan sighed deeply and bit into the white breast of his sesame chicken. His overly ambitious nephew had caused him a lot of heartache and embarrassment through many impulsive decisions. Nevertheless, Abdul had been the only Hassan kin to apply himself through business and enterprise, where Sheikh Al Hassan’s oldest son, Talib Mohammed Hassan, had only managed to waste several opportunities before abandoning the Middle East and moving with his young wife and family to London.
Sheikh Al Rashid continued, “Now I know that Abdul is your favorite nephew, and that he has many talents in business. But his ways are just too—” He stopped and shook his head in search of a word. “They are just not humane, or in the honorable methods of Allah. We should not submit people to human sweatshops, like the businesses of China and Southeast Asia. It is an abomination!”
Sheikh Al Rashid had always been passionate in his words. Maybe it was his older age and his desire to outpoint his younger council members. But the younger men each found it hard to match his ire.
“The ways of international business have always been complicated,” Sheikh Al Hassan responded. “Without thousands of immigrant workers, the best foreign engineers, equipment, finance and urgency, the great cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as we know them today, would have never existed.”
“This I know,” Sheikh Al Rashid admitted. “But if these methods of international business do not adhere to the ways of Allah, then how closely should we follow them?”
Sheikh Al Naseem ate his rice, chicken and salad, while he watched and listened to the two older men as if he were a spectator at a tennis match. After their conclusions, he nodded in concurrence with the elder council member.
“I agree with Sheikh Al Rashid. Even your nephew’s wife, Hamda, has taken on more of a Western woman’s aspiration to speak out in public places and in business affairs. Did you not notice how often she addresses business officials and reporters without first seeking permission to speak? She is setting a bad example for the next generation of Muslim women.”
Sheikh Al Rashid grunted. “She has already done so. And your nephew has not managed to control her.”
Sheikh Al Hassan had been guilty of admiring Abdul’s wife himself. Hamda Sharifa was very impressive. She represented a new wave of Arabian woman, and one who was unafraid to find her voice. Sheikh Al Hassan even viewed her as a strong example of courage and achievement for his own young daughters and grandchildren. So he held his tongue from more slander and decided to defend her ambitions.
“So, what am I to say to my eight daughters and granddaughters if they are not allowed to speak their minds in the twenty-first century?” he responded artfully. “More women are getting educations and qualifying themselves to speak, more so than some of the men who speak out unwisely.”
Sheikh Al Naseem admonished, “You may tell your granddaughters to utilize their education and ambitions to speak out when they are asked to do so.”
“And when may I ask is that?” Sheikh Al Hassan countered quickly.
As Sheikh Al Rashid prepared to add his own views to their argument, Sheikh Al Hassan’s youngest daughter, Sara Mumia, entered the room, wearing her covered garb and veil, to inform her father in Arabic that she would be on the way to the library.
He responded in Arabic for his daughter to be careful and to take an escort for security. He also told her to call her mother after she arrived.
“Yes, I will,” she promised her father in English.
As soon as his daughter had left the room for her outing to the royal library of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Al Naseem questioned, “Is that basic respect too much to ask of a wife or a daughter? I believe it is not.”
Sheikh Al Hassan continued to grin while enjoying his meal. He said, “There will come a time when we will be forced to recognize the value of a woman who is much more than just a wife or a daughter. Like Aishah, the Prophet Muhammad’s youngest and most gifted wife, there will be women amongst us who will be destined to rule, whether we are prepared to accept it or not.”
Both Sheikh Al Naseem and Sheikh Al Rashid began to laugh out loud.
Sheikh Al Rashid conceded as much as he devoured his fruit and garden salad with light dressing.
“You are probably right, my friend. But at my old age, I may not be around long enough to see it,” he commented. And the Emirati council members shared another laugh.
Chapter 6
The same young reporter who had been fortunate enough to interview the honorable Emirati wife Hamda Sharifa Hassan, continued to reflect on an opportunity that could have made her famous amongst the Muslim and Arabian women of Dubai. Ramia Farah Aziz dreamed as she watched old footage from a year ago, presenting
the grand opening of a downtown hotel where Hamda was allowed to cut the ribbon and congratulate her husband as one of Dubai’s top young developers.
Ramia watched the old footage on a small television set in a cramped apartment room on the man-made island of Palm Deira, where she had moved in with her cousin Basim. And she found herself having a hard time letting the excitement of the unexpected interview go. They had arrived there to find footage of unsafe immigrant worker conditions at various construction sites, not to capture a Muslim icon in a one-on-one interview. But now that the Emirati government was onto them, the police pressures had forced their camera crew to lie low for a while, leaving Ramia with idle time and a need to find other work.
“Ugh, we were so close to something great,” she fussed to herself while slapping her face with both hands. Ramia was determined to lead a life of courage and enlightenment, while taking destiny into her own hands, which was why she had challenged herself to leave home in Jordan and to room with her cousin in Palm Deira three months earlier. Showing fearlessness and exceptional presence in front of a camera, a group of guerilla newsmen and film producers dared the young Jordanian to help them report the many current events and cultural happenings in and around Dubai. And with the blessings of her big cousin, Ramia jumped at the opportunity. But after more than a week of the group’s inactivity, she became eager to find something else to do to occupy her time. She and Basim began to job hunt.
While waiting for callbacks, she sat inside of their cramped apartment room. Basim already had a job, leaving her to battle boredom. Despite her cousin’s warnings about the worker-class area that they lived in, Ramia was anxious to explore. She wanted to speak with strangers and ask questions just like the men were able to. She was impatient, anxious and fearless, emboldened by the growing women’s rights movement. “Why should I have to remain inside all day?” she huffed. “I’m not a child.”
Ramia left the apartment defiantly and as soon as she walked outside of the building to stroll the hardened streets of the area, she realized why her cousin was so nervous about her being out and unattended. Without an abaya or a headdress to cover up, or Basim there to protect her, the Palm Deira district was definitely not a place for a young and beautiful woman to sightsee.
The blue-collar area was largely populated by unmarried immigrant workers. Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia were all represented there, including many immigrants from North and West Africa—Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and Kenya. The area’s construction of gray cement buildings and seedy, dark streets was not the bright and photogenic images the young nation chose to show the world in its advertisements, websites or brochures of tourism. The working-class districts of the UAE represented the hard realities of thousands of hopeful immigrants desperately seeking income and a fresh start. But most of them had fallen into positions of long hours of sweat work.
Ramia could have been a Victoria’s Secret model. She had soft skin, bright-hazel eyes, thick, auburn hair and the slim, curvy frame. That was why Basim had been so insistent that she not wander around unattended. She surely would attract lots of attention—possibly dangerous attention. Lustful eyes were everywhere, and she was worth every second of a desperate man’s lust. She could feel their penetrating stares as soon as she hit the sidewalks in her casual blue jeans and T-shirt.
Basim had begged his cousin not to come live there with him until he could afford to move to a better area in Sharjah and away from the overcrowding near the interior of Dubai. But Ramia refused to wait. Everything was immediate and urgent with her, as if the world would run out of time. She had been willing to do anything to move away from the farmlands of her home in Jordan as quickly as possible, and away from her nation’s strict Muslim code for women. Men in her home nation continued to practice “honor killings” each year against dishonorable wives who dared to disobey or embarrass their husbands. Ramia wanted no part of that, so she refused to marry, and at the legal age of twenty-one she left her immediate family in Jordan to try her luck in Dubai, which was more liberated.
As the sun began to set in the early evening, Ramia walked a couple of blocks from the apartment building and passed by two Indian men at the curb who were smoking cigarettes and conversing in Hindu. With loud, mocking laughter, they startled her and forced her to pick up her pace. Although she was not fluent in Hindu, she could easily assume that the men were talking about her. She could read it through their eyes, darting in her direction as well as through the suddenness of their snickering. So she wasted no time in moving away from them, while quickly turning the corner to her left.
“Hey, watch where you’re going,” a man warned her in gruff English. In her reckless haste, Ramia had bumped into him.
“Oh, excuse me,” she responded nervously.
The man paused and nodded. He stood tall and imposing on the sidewalk. It was Saleem, the Pakistani worker who had walked off from Abdul Khalif Hassan’s troubled construction site after the tragic accident. But Ramia did not know him. Two brown workers stood beside him, all wearing casual clothes.
“Why are you walking around by yourself?” Saleem asked the girl with authority. He could read the bewildered innocence in her face that marked her as a newcomer. And he felt that she should have been forewarned about the dangers and illegal activities of certain areas, particularly after sunset.
At first Ramia ignored him, projecting irritation and bravery. But since the man seemed sincere, she was respectful enough to answer him.
“I’m waiting for my cousin.”
“You should wait for your cousin inside,” he snapped at her.
The two men at his side began to chuckle before Saleem silenced them.
“Enough!” he snarled in their direction.
The men swallowed their pride and stopped their chatter immediately.
‘You find your way back inside to wait for your cousin safely,” Saleem advised the girl. He added, “This is not the place for tourism.”
Recognizing the man’s honorable position and power, Ramia backed down from her tough stance and decided to heed his warning. She nodded and was embarrassed, heading silently and quickly back toward Basim’s apartment building. She knew that a tough-minded and principled man was watching her back. Even the two mocking Indians fell silent as she returned past them.
Who in the world was that? she asked herself as she walked. She then noticed the pickup of aimless energy out in the streets as the sun set. There was random car traffic, human transactions and the noise of menace that came with any overpopulated area.
Oh, my God! she thought in a panic. Suddenly, she couldn’t wait to get back to the building.
Up on a fifth-floor patio in a building directly across the street, a stern-faced Egyptian man watched Ramia’s entire short-lived walk to the corner. When she made it back to safety inside of her building, he smiled and grunted before walking inside himself.
Ramia rushed back inside to wait for the elevators in her building, only to find Basim waiting.
“Basim, when did you get home?” she asked her cousin excitedly.
Basim looked back in alarm and frowned at her. “Where did you go? And why are you out of the room?” he barked. With thin-rimmed brown reading glasses, Basim looked more like a student, and he was still dressed in the yellow-shirted uniform from his job at the gas station and convenience store. The twenty-eight-year-old was usually calm and caring. But at the moment he was irritated by Ramia’s defiance.
“Basim, I can’t just sit in there all day and night. I need something to do.”
“You will have something to do as soon as a job calls,” he told her. “Then you can start school at the university.”
The plan was for Ramia to attend the Women’s University of Dubai or even American University of Sharjah. But without the money to afford it, they realized that their plans would have to wait.
In frustration, Ramia pouted. “I know, I know. But I just get so tired of sitting around and reading in the
heat. Your room does not even have a patio.”
“Because I don’t want to waste the money,” he snapped. “I have no intentions of staying here, so why would I pay extra for a room with a patio? I told you I wanted to move to a new place before you even came.”
“You were just taking far too long,” Ramia snapped back. “So I just wanted to take a walk.”
She stepped past him and climbed onto the opening elevator as the other tenants overheard their argument. In her extra week of idleness, she was really beginning to irk her cousin. They did not even speak as they rode the elevator up to the third floor.
“What are you going to do—drag me back inside the hot room?” Ramia added sarcastically as they climbed off the elevator. “I didn’t even stay out there long.”
Basim shook his head, exhausted from his day. “Don’t you see what kind of people are out there?” he asked her. Surely she wasn’t blind. Basim did not like the area at all.
Ramia ignored him and used her key to reopen the door to the room.
“I just wanted to get out,” she repeated.
“And when I get home, you can,” he insisted.
Ramia turned to face him at the doorway. She was so bothered by her cousin’s chauvinistic tone that she wanted to hit him. Instead, she growled and balled up her fists.
“Argh! You sound like a Muslim husband, and I am not your wife,” she shouted.
“Yes, but you are a guest in my house, and so you are my responsibility,” Basim argued. “Do you realize how much trouble I would be in with our parents and your brothers if something were to happen to you here? So stop acting inconsiderate. You have not been here long enough to know this place like I do.”
Again, Ramia felt squeamish. She closed the door behind them and said, “But I feel like such a slave in this little room. Look at this!”
The apartment was so small that Basim used curtains to separate the rooms with no walls. Only the small bathroom had walls.
“Why do you even bother to give me a key?” Ramia pouted.