by Denise Roig
“Hey, guys, remember that time in Jakarta? We’d invited some under-secretary from the Laotian Embassy for Thanksgiving?” Jersey’s face was bright with wine.
“Cambodian,” said Mark.
“Yeah, whatever, and the guy thought that the cranberries looked like some poisonous berry and he got really scared?”
“What about Turkmenistan?” said Mark, and they both groaned. Their two Turkmen Thanksgivings had required improvisation. The first year, Justin had been so disappointed at the sight of flatbread pieces and chickpeas in the stuffing he’d cried.
“Or the Thanksgiving where we just decided to keep it the four of us…where was that?” Holly asked.
“Paris,” said Mark. And she saw their apartment again. It had faced Les Tuileries and the two bedrooms had been flooded with light and there was a wonderful boulangerie right downstairs.
“What about that one when we went home and Uncle Vince and Uncle Pete and that crazy old aunt of yours danced around the kitchen?” said Jersey. “I think I dropped the pumpkin pie or something.”
“You remember that?” said Holly and had to look down at her plate because the room was suddenly swimming.
“Sorry, Mom,” said Jersey.
“I’m a tough old bird and don’t either of you forget it.” Then realizing what they were eating, Holly laughed, a laugh she could feel in her chest. And they were laughing too.
“This was quite…unexpected,” said Mark, when he laid down his napkin finally, regarding his wife with a look of long, complicated love before she sent him off to the den.
Alone in the kitchen later — so much to wash and put away, so many containers to rearrange in the fridge — she caught sight of an Emirati family, they seemed like a family, taking a late walk on the Corniche: one khandoura followed by five abayas. Wives? Daughters? One was never sure. Families came in so many shapes and sizes. She watched them walk the full length of her window and disappear into the frame. Perhaps they were all going out for ice cream, baba treating his girls.
National Day
You know how parents tell kids as their marriage is busting up: Honey this has nothing to do with you it’s between me and Dad (or me and Mum) it’s not your fault we hope you understand sometimes grownups just can’t live together anymore we still love you honey this has nothing to do with you?
My parents couldn’t say that.
They worked — she still does — at the New Medical Centre. She’s an internist; he’s an ob/gyn. Babies, private parts. I never got why he would pick that specialty, but Dad says he just loves pregnant women. “He loves women in general,” Mum says, but not meanly or jealously. Other women weren’t the problem.
We have an agreement going, now it’s just the two of us. We will not badmouth Dad. We will not be negative. We will not be dramatic. That one’s for me. My mother could star in an ad for Xanax, she’s so fucking calm. She could open a yoga studio, start an ashram. Dr. Nadira, doctor of serenity and bullshit. But I’m not supposed to crap all over her either. Them’s the rules.
Dad’s take is that I don’t have enough rules. “That’s what this place does to kids,” he says. “This place” happens to be my home sweet home and I’m never leaving it. Another issue, I guess you could say, between me and the rents. I love my Abu. I love it to pieces. The heat’s ridiculous and sometimes it gets to me how other Indians are treated. Like there are these guys who wash the windows of our apartment tower. Twice a year they’re out there on this creaky, stupid little box with their squeegees and they look so tired and sweaty and like they really don’t know what they’re doing and I know they’re probably getting about a dirham an hour and living out in the labour camps. So what do I do? Pull the blinds. Rude and basically useless, that’s me, but I can’t watch.
The British School Al Khubairat, where I’m cruising Grade 10, is for precocious, entitled kids with ambitious, guilty parents. “We’re so sorry, sweetie, for taking you away from your friends in Flitwick (or Henley-on-Thames or Glossop…take your pick of any British backwater). But we shall make it up to you, my darling diddums. Promise!” The joke, of course, is that kids love it here. They love it after five minutes. What’s not to love? The city’s buzzing. The beach, the sun, the shopping, the travelling. Golf lessons, billionaire buddies, gold dust on the chocolate mousse at Emirates Palace. Freedom.
My cousins back in the UK don’t believe that last thing. “Really, free as a bird,” I tell them when we visit in summers. “But, Raakhi, it’s, you know, Muslim.” It’s standard that Brits — even Hindu Indians, who should be more tolerant — get vexed when it comes to Muslims. That’s why so many Brits are moving to France and Spain. Most won’t actually come out and say so. They just roll their eyes and say something about lax immigration, blah, blah. It’s dred.
I have a theory why kids feel so free here. The dads are flat roofin’ it at some job with insane hours and random bosses. The mums are bored out of their skulls, so they roll with a bunch of other expat ladies. Their world’s busy, too busy for kids. Besides, there’s always the nanny or the maid or both. If your folks are working, and doctors to boot, you basically write your own ticket. I had a nanny when I was younger, but she ran away when I was ten and Mum hasn’t trusted anyone since. “We manage,” she says, which means she calls every hour to check on me and leaves samosas from Lulu in the fridge for after school. Oh, the life of an only child.
But that’s not what’s bugging me now. Not even missing Dad with all my hard little heart — his words — comes to the level of being grounded for National Day. National Day is brill. National Day is jokes. National Day is wicked fun.
First off, it’s December 2, so it’s blue skies, no clouds and not a drop of humidity. At school, the day before, we come in national dress. Somewhere in our closets we all have an abaya or khandoura. Just for this one day I glide along in my long black dress, jeans underneath, slut-heels on my size 6s, like a real Emirati lady. I love the way the material — light as nothing — swivels around my legs when I walk, the way the shayla slides off my hair onto my shoulders. So buff.
Mum says she might let me go for the school thing if I don’t pull any drama between now and next week. But National Day, the real holiday, she’s taking me to work with her. No parade on the Corniche. No watching the fireworks on the beach in front of Emirates Palace. No meeting up with friends. First she said she might take me up to the roof of the hospital to watch the fireworks. Then she thought about it. “Better yet, I’ll order in from India Palace. It’ll be fun.”
Last National Day, me, Miles, Rahim, Becka — mates from Al Khubairat — walked all the way down Khaleej al Arabi to the Corniche, Becka and me complaining all the way about our feet. At 7th Street, we got spun around in the crowd and lost each other in seconds. Miles miraculously found me on the corner, looking madly in all directions.
“Hey, isn’t this the way we wanted it?” he said. He was lush, with these burning blue eyes and artist hands. We’d been texting each other like crazy for a week. We’ve been classmates since Grade 6, but it was like we’d just noticed each other, like we’d just woken up.
Of course, we couldn’t hold hands, but we walked as close together as we could, passing the long lines of honking, grid-locked SUVs, sports cars, Hummers. Each was like a work of art, covered in red, white, green and black decals, crêpe paper, balloons and every gaudy, out-there decoration you could imagine. Some people had even got their cars painted green or red for the day. Happy Birthday, UAE! Thirty-nine years old, a baby of a country, if you think of Merry Olde. The car windows were open, Arabic music blasting out, people inside waving and yelling and squirting out green and red foam from giant canisters. Some green landed at my feet and I nearly slid into the people in front of us.
Two little kids were perched on the sunroof of a red van plastered with photos of Sheikh Khalifa and Sheikh Mohammed. “Look!” Miles was pointing at the kids, but I d
idn’t want to. A couple of years ago a three-year-old boy slipped off the roof of his family’s car onto the hood and got caught under their front wheels. They took him to hospital, where my parents were working. “These people,” Mum said, shaking her head. She doesn’t think much of Emiratis. “If you saw what comes through our ER, you’d lose all respect,” she says.
When Miles and I finally waded through the traffic and reached the Corniche, it got crazier — ten lanes filled with cars inching along, mobs of Indian and Pakistani men in pastel shalwar kameez, women in saris, girls in abayas, cops trying and failing to keep order, kids dashing in and out of the street. A boy in a khandoura stuck his arm out of his Porsche and shot a long stream of red foam at the Pakistanis. It landed in their hair mostly, but one man, near me, doubled over, clutching his eyes. The boy took aim again, laughing and shouting in Arabic, and sprayed the men, aiming at their shoes.
“This is nuts,” yelled Miles, and took my hand since no one could see. In this party mood, nobody probably cared either. His hand was electric.
It was hardly my first National Day, but it was the first time my parents had let me come down here without them. “Only if you’re with friends, understand?” Mum had insisted. “And it probably wouldn’t hurt if there were some boys in the group.” Dad had looked at her doubtfully.
Back in our flat, Miles asked me to touch him and I did and then he touched me and then the thing just happened, though I was scared the whole time and hearing things. Miles kept saying it was just the cars on the Corniche. “They’ll be out there all night burning rubber with their Lamborghinis. Idiots.”
Afterward, I changed into my trainers and we walked all the way to the Marina for the fireworks. My folks wouldn’t have been happy about any of it — splitting off from the gang, going to the beach. And the other thing, a big thing I could never tell them. Miles and I didn’t talk about it; instead we joked about our stupid UAE social studies class in Grade 8 and how Miss Khadija had made us memorize the names of the leaders of all seven Emirates. “I bet you can’t remember them,” said Miles, turning to grin at me. His hair was messed up and adorable and for one scary moment I thought maybe I’d fallen in love back there.
I named the only one still in my brain. “Fujairah…Sheikh Hamad Bin Mohammed al-Sharqui. Remember old Sharqui?”
“The colours of the UAE flag are highly symbolic,” trilled Miles in Miss Khadija’s high voice. “Red for sacrifice, white for peace, black for oil and green for…” he hesitated. “Not the environment?”
“Money,” I said.
“Right,” said Miles, and then about 100 years later: “Let’s not make a big deal about…you know.”
The beach was so packed with bodies and blankets and camping chairs and hibachis and coolers that we stood on the sidewalk for ten minutes, scanning for one square foot of unoccupied sand. Miles finally dragged me to a place in the dark, somewhere to the left. We sat, the sand surprisingly cool. I pulled my knees to my chest. My body was sore and I now had oozy blisters on the back of both heels. Miles passed me a lit cigarette. It was just a cigarette, though, not the interesting stuff, which we would have been crazy to smoke out here, even if it was National Day and the whole place had gone postal.
It was a happening crowd — people dancing and playing music, laughing and eating, mostly eating. All nationalities, all ages: a baby crawled in front of us. “I think we may be the only Westerners here,” Miles said. Interesting, I thought, to be included as his “people,” considering my ethnic origins. Though if you’ve never actually lived in India, are born in the UK and raised in Abu Dhabi, who’s to say what you are?
I did go to India two years ago, the folks deciding I needed to discover my roots. Even my grandparents back in Brixton have only ever visited their parents’ village. They’re essentially British, but Brits who wear saris to weddings and argue about their curry.
I had been pissed about going at first. “Why are you taking me somewhere I’m going to get sick?” But Dad got me all the right shots, Mum loaded up our carry-on with antibiotics and it turned out, I absolutely loved the place. The poverty makes you want to cry every minute, but there’s so much life and beauty, and my relatives — Dad’s family, who live in Delhi — are like the sweetest people. I was spoilt rotten. “You come back,” they said.
“Get a look at those Pakistani guys over there. Where the bloody hell do they think they are?” Miles was pointing to a group of men to our left. They were dancing in a circle, holding hands — one guy seemed to be in the middle — and everyone around them was clapping in rhythm.
“They’re having a good time,” I said and then there was a sound so loud and close, so skull-splitting that I lunged to the side, rolling over in the sand, as an SUV — green and red and white crêpe-paper streamers flying behind, horn blasting — roared down the sand toward the water, men and women and kids spilling out on all sides, as it ran over blankets and barbeques. The car slowed only when it came close to the water. People were screaming and running in all directions and Miles grabbed my arm, pushing me against and through the crowd running toward us, toward the accident. I was hit in the face by a shoe flying, someone stomped on my foot, but by now Miles was behind me, shoving me hard toward the sidewalk. One cab only was on the street and we ran toward it, Miles jamming me inside, before sliding over on the seat.
“Get us out of here,” he yelled to the driver, who was watching the horror through his open window. He didn’t move, didn’t speak.
“I mean it. GO!” Miles thumped the back of the front seat, and the man, as if in a dream, still watching, turned the key in the ignition.
“Fucking Paki, go!” Miles yelled and kicked the seat so hard, the driver lost his footing on the brake and the cab lurched.
I looked over at the boy with the cute hair and wished with all my heart I could live my life over. I got out of the car, ran back across the street, joining the tumbling mob. I saw bodies carried out by wailing men, women running with food hampers on their heads, blood coming down their arms, little kids turning round and round in place before getting trampled. I wanted so badly to help. But what could I do? I was a useless sixteen-year-old girl. When I couldn’t stand there and watch any more, I limped back to the Corniche. No empty cabs still, just slow-moving cars. They looked sad now, inching along with their garlands hanging half off and dragging in the filthy street. It took me an hour to get home, but I managed, even with bleeding feet, to beat Mum and Dad.
The next week I couldn’t eat. Gastro, I told them. “What did you have that night? Was it from one of those new restaurants on the Corniche?” My folks were ready to have the health department check every single one of them. “It’s just a bug,” I kept saying. I lost a stone in a month.
The people who got hit were taken to Sheikh Khalifa Medical City and others to my folks’ hospital, so they knew some of what had happened. As far as I could figure out, they were the Pakistani men I’d seen dancing. It was hard to put it together because The National only mentioned it on page six two days later and didn’t actually say if anyone had died. They made it look like one crazy kid was responsible when the SUV had been loaded with locals. There was nothing in Gulf News.
I heard nothing from Miles either, not even a text. When we went back to school after National Day break, he put up his hand from across the classroom. I read it more as bye than hi and he didn’t try to make me think he meant it any other way. Mum and Dad worried that I was becoming anorexic and because telling the truth was worse, I said, Yeah, I want to be thin, really thin. Food is my enemy. Stuff like that.
Then the dreams kicked in. Not dreams of that night, but dreams of people wanting to hurt me, coming to get me. I started locking my door at night, which freaked the folks. “What are you hiding in there?” Dad said. “You’d better not be doing drugs.” Dad, God love him, is as stick-up-your-ass as Gordon Brown. Straight as a golf club. No to drugs, sex before mar
riage, shit marks, disrespect to the elders. Yes to stellar grades, virginity, Oxbridge, suitable marriage, big bucks as doctor/lawyer/prof. He’s a traditional Indian man with no fucking clue how to handle an acting-out, messed-up teenage daughter. Mum murmured a lot of stuff about third-culture kids, hormones, history of depression on Dad’s side (news to me), a New-Agey mumbo-jumbo of theories that totally let them off the hook and had piss-all to do with me.
But it wasn’t until I started cutting myself — tiny little scratches with a nail scissors on my upper arms — that they got it. The nicks didn’t hurt too much. They even looked sort of cool in the bathroom light, like the lines of an etching. Late at night, the folks asleep at the other end of the flat, I would draw out designs on graph paper from my maths notebook, then copy them onto my arms. I was a skin artist. Sometimes, though, it hurt so much I couldn’t sleep after and then I’d be a total wreck at school next day. I was already losing it at school. A couple of teachers took me aside: “Raakhi, is everything okay? You’ve failed the last two quizzes.”
Who was there to tell that everything was so not okay? Mum? Dad? Becka, who did everything but with Rahim? And what would I tell them? I have pictures in my head that won’t go away? I am so fucking disappointed in myself? I’m a screwed-up third-culture kid? I already knew what I’d hear from a counsellor type: Everyone makes mistakes, luv. My bet is you’ll feel a whole lot better if you tell your parents what’s troubling you.
The really crazy thing is that life in Abu trundled on, like nothing had happened. I googled “National Day,” but all I could find were YouTube videos of some big, Emiratis-only celebration at Zayed Stadium. Even the one story that had run in The National wasn’t posted online any more.
Miles and I weren’t even making eye contact by then, but one lunch I went over to his table in the school canteen.
“Yes?” he said, looking up.