Burqalicious

by Becky Wicks

  Trips like this make you think, I reckon: about yourself and your place on the planet, but other stuff, too. Back in the confines of safety, it’s suddenly quite clear that life in these places, for all of its frightening poverty and awe-inspiring beauty, is real. Just a couple of hour’s bargain flight away from Dubai’s glitz and glamour lies the real world. While this trip hasn’t exactly made me want to ditch the lifestyle I’ve now become accustomed to (don’t be daft), I’m definitely a whole lot more appreciative of it now. I think I can say we all are.

  13/02

  Masters of The Universe …

  Back to life, back to reality (or Dubai’s version of it, at least). No sooner has the cow poo from Jaipur dried on my trainers than master developers Nakheel have announced the next big thing soon to be constructed off our fine shores. They’re knocking them out faster than we can all keep up. But personally, I like this one more than the fashion island. Oh yes. They might have created The World, but with all that money and enough creative genius to put any children’s TV team to shame, they clearly woke up one morning thinking, ‘It’s just not enough, we need to do better.’ And thus, they decided, ‘We shall create The Universe.’

  The Universe — a multibillion-dollar project consisting of 3,000 hectares of land — will take fifteen to twenty years to develop. It is set to be dredged up in quite a noisy, non-spiritual manner between Palm Jumeirah, Palm Deira and The World — three of the many weirdly shaped projects already polluting our view of the endless ocean, which God ironically created as part of ‘The Real World'. Hello? Anyone remember that place?

  Tons of celebs, so we’re told, are already moving to The World. Brad and Ange will be living in Dubai’s version of Ethiopia, so by the time The Universe is ready, they might even want a slice of the sun, too — to give to the kids they bought from other countries in ‘The Real World'.

  It’s all a bit mental, isn’t it?

  If the rumours are true, this city won’t even stop when it runs out of land and water to play with. I swear that not so long ago I heard whisperings of a floating city in the sky! It really has gone mad around here. Where do you invest in a property when the city limits are expanding by the hour? Which car do you buy when you might well have to upgrade to a solar-powered space pod in three years’ time? Will buying an apartment in a building that looks like an iPod, be the equivalent of living in a rather embarrassing, battery-operated ghetto blaster when 2017 rolls around? These are things not even the developers can tell us. We’ve chosen to live in a city that constantly tries to outdo not only everyone else, but its own self. Maybe we should just embrace it. Right? Hmmm …

  Unsure of what to think, I informed several of my friends at home on the matter and asked for their opinions for the website. I rather like this email from my lovely friend Sara on the subject:

  Artificial = cool/desirable/nifty. Real life (whatever that is) = hackneyed/narrow-minded/pedestrian. Dubai will totally be like the Jetsons soon and Angelina can have little satellite bubbles to float her pick-n-mix kiddies in while she’s having her aspirations rejuvenated in the life-justification salon.

  I say, dredge up more of the sea for Angie! But why should she settle for The Universe when she could have a personally designed island in the exact relief of her genitalia, each grain of sand impregnated with her unique body odour, the glorious domed nerve-centre of which could be a planetarium-style arena where she could watch endoscopic journeys into her own body cavities in 360 degrees of egocentric intimacy? Benefiting, of course, from the complete privacy that comes with the remaining 10 metres of shallow water between her and Dubai’s denigrated coastline (and Bruce Willis’s new phallus island on the other side). Opportunity knocks! Now there’s a girl who needs to work for Nakheel.

  Asking too many questions about all this stuff hurts my head. But I guess, when I’m standing on the outskirts of it all, scratching my head in confusion, at least I can look at the ‘Real World’s’ tallest building from the boundaries of the Earth’s crust and know that I’m living the dream.

  15/02

  Permission to launch …

  A small, goggle-wearing man in a full-body lycra swimsuit flapped past, goldfish-style in a huge bowl of water as I turned to The Irishman and informed him that this was quite possibly the most impressive hotel launch party I’d ever had the fortune to attend in Dubai. At that point in the proceedings, we hadn’t yet witnessed the troupe of equally versatile acrobats throwing themselves around the lobby above us on a series of trapezes, and climbing up and down the walls like genetically mutated spiders carrying roses in their teeth. Neither had we experienced the limitless free champagne or helped ourselves to a plate of free sushi from the buffet, or accepted an offering from the carvery station in the very spot that would, some twenty-four hours later, actually become the hotel’s new reception.

  The glistening new Monarch Dubai acquires the coveted address of Number One Sheikh Zayed Road and looms over the adjacent Fairmont like a threatening schoolyard bully. We’ve watched it being built for months and naturally Dubai’s media elite was out in force for the launch the other night, with their army of plus-ones.

  The Irishman has seen a fair few things that have shocked him so far. I’ve watched his eyes widen in wonder on many occasions, just as Stacey’s and mine had when we first arrived. I feel like some sort of guru at times, here to ease the exasperations of a new and nervous boy–child; to turn this new beginning into an adventure instead of a struggle. At times I feel like I’m seeing the things I’ve started to take for granted all over again, through a brand-new pair of eyes. I guess it’s easy to forget the craziness that to us is now commonplace, but is still completely mind-boggling to other people!

  We’ve been hanging out a lot, and while I can’t exactly say I’ve forgotten about our wonderful weekend in Spain, when we kissed in the starlight and confided in each other our dreams, I can definitely report that we’re inching into friendship territory now. The Irishman knows about my dalliances with M&M too. He doesn’t approve — not that many people do. I can’t tell if it’s because he still ‘adores me', as he wrote in the text message I’ll never forget, or if it’s because he’s concerned his new ‘friend’ will get hurt, but with so much going on in his new life at the same time, I think it’s an unspoken understanding that we’re better joining forces as mates anyway. God knows this place is weird enough without adding any further complications.

  As such, The Irishman has integrated quite swiftly into my friendship circle and adds his Irish charm to nights on the town. Getting to know him properly has been a lot of fun actually. I find it kind of strange how certain people come in and out of your life the way they do. When we first clapped eyes on each other in Spain, he’d travelled from Dublin and I’d travelled from London. And now here we were, not even a year later, watching a man perform bizarre acrobatics in a bowl full of water in Dubai.

  Back to my meeting request from M&M. I obliged. It was a reunion of sorts, having both established that we’ve missed each other since he dumped me for his wife. He came over the other day to talk and one thing led to another, and now … ugh. OK, I’d be lying if I said the pain of losing my married, jealous, somewhat possessive boyfriend hadn’t started to subside by the time we actually met up again, but there’s something about him.

  M&M is so powerful and commanding; so passionate about everything; so passionate about me! It’s not like I need him, but when he takes an interest in me, when he listens, when he sends those sweet declarations directly to my inbox … well, it’s hard to resist going back. It’s hard not to respond to his messages at work when everyone else in the morgue at work is just so goddamn dull and quiet, too. I flirt with him and thus with potential disaster every time I hit reply — and I hate that I love the attention. M&M to me is like a magnetic force and I’m the weaker object of his affections.

  He hasn’t exactly done anything about becoming single in the time we’ve spent apart. But … he’s whisking me away
for a two-day mini-break in the Maldives, which is so exciting, and this will give us a couple of days to be alone again and talk. I’ve never been whisked anywhere quite so exotic in my life. I thought Cape Town was pretty extravagant, but taking me to one of a collection of idyllic islands in the crystal-clear Indian Ocean, just a four-hour flight from Dubai, probably tops his growing list of grand gestures. OK, so it’s rainy season, but I’m not going to be picky.

  In accordance with Dubai’s almighty plan for self-improvement, every event in my life at the moment seems to be bigger and better than the last thing. Did I mention that I even met Céline Dion the other day? Well, OK, I didn’t actually meet her, but I sat in the same room as her with my laptop open and tapped everything she said into a Word document as she politely read her spiel into a microphone at the new and celeb-attracting InterContinental hotel down in Festival City. I was even given a press pass to the concert, which I’ll flash with pride if I can face the torturous traffic jam that I’m sure will exist between us on the actual night.

  It feels like every day is a launch party for the next, and perhaps a little bit of Dubai’s winning spirit is rubbing off. I have to say, although I haven’t forgotten the lessons I learned in poverty-stricken Jaipur, in the fake world I now call home, it feels like there’s a lot more to look forward to.

  18/02

  Endings and beginnings …

  Uh oh. Perhaps I spoke too soon. Two major events have coincided this week to put a serious spanner in the works. Not only did Stanley shuffle over the other day, take me aside and announce that he was ‘letting me go', but Stacey has informed us that she’s leaving Dubai. I’m still in shock.

  On the former … well, things haven’t quite been perfect in the morgue for a while, have they? I’ve been toying with the idea of quitting the job anyway, and the night before the firing I felt the inexplicable need to gather every pair of shoes that had been collecting under my desk and take them home; something I still find quite spooky. I showed up with my arms full just as Stacey was getting back from the gym, and couldn’t even explain the sudden spring clean. It’s not like we’ve done the same with the flat since the cleaner went AWOL.

  I was planning on sticking it out another couple of months, perhaps, and I’ve been keeping my beady eyes on other media jobs on offer for a while — ones that offer similar perks, of course.

  I suppose it’s been pretty obvious from the start that this one wasn’t ever going to live up to expectations. Even after months of running the website alone, bugging Stanley for more resources, I wasn’t any closer to getting any help on my last day than I was on my first, in spite of constant promises to expand the team and create more structure going forward. In fact, instead of hiring me an intern, Stanley hired another person to work above me a few weeks ago, which went against everything he’d promised me from the start. One day, without warning, I was told to report to a woman I’d never seen before, and had to spend about a week telling her how to operate the computer system. I felt quite sorry for her actually. She clearly couldn’t believe the state of the place, or the soul-destroying silence of the morgue.

  I’ve hardly seen anything at all of Hazel or the magazine team, aside from Ewan, obviously. The awesome camaraderie I envisaged only ever existed in my head, and the site is like a completely separate entity to the magazine; something that no one really cares much about, apart from me. I actually think Hazel and her crew were annoyed at the website, and me, for taking some of the attention away from them and their precious magazine.

  And now for the spanner. Allegedly, Stanley says I said something derogatory about the job during my last radio broadcast.

  Now, this is what upsets me more than being fired. I may have sounded a little hung over, as the broadcast in question was made the morning after a rather heavy night out involving Harry Ghatto’s (as usual), but I’m pretty sure I’d never slate my own company live on air. I ran over the entire hour’s broadcast in my head, racking my brains. I’d maybe felt a little peeved at being ignored for so long when there was so much left to be done with the site, but as for blurting something bad about my own company or job on the radio, to the whole of Dubai … not on purpose. Not ever!

  I happen to think Stanley was just getting a little bit sick of me trying to press the issue of improving things; a little weary of having to assure me daily that things would change when he knew they never would. He was probably sick of being told by his own boss that he, as my boss, couldn’t give me what I needed in order to succeed. This inkling was in fact confirmed when he took me into the little conference room for ‘the chat’ and said, almost wearily, almost like he’d given up weeks ago, like he’d written me off as a lost cause, ‘You’re too ambitious.’

  I looked at him, flabbergasted, and a little laugh escaped my lips as he shuffled in his seat, clearly anxious about following the orders of whoever had instructed him to let me go.

  ‘How can I be too ambitious?’ I demanded.

  I wanted to know how he as a manager could call a member of his department ‘too ambitious’ when he’d hired me to launch and run an entire website single-handedly, and still not bothered to find me any help. Had I not been too ambitious he would have had one site update a day, and probably a cut-and-paste job from another badly written press release at that, seeing as he’d long ago told me not to go out and meet anyone interesting in order to source more content.

  He didn’t have an answer. He just played with his sleeve and mentioned the mulled wine incident, and the freelancing, which served as a backup to his decision. Fair enough, I suppose. But he couldn’t play me a recording of the offending broadcast in question — not because it would have made a difference to his decision if I sat there defending it, it seems, but because he didn’t have it, and he hadn’t even heard it himself anyway.

  Yes. He had never heard it. He’d been on holiday you see, and heard about it on his return. It appears that Stanley was instructed to fire me over something he didn’t even bother to check out himself. I shot him another look, which I think burned straight through to his very soul because he shuffled in his seat again, quite uncomfortably. Even if he didn’t give two shits about letting me go, you would have thought in the long run he’d have quite liked to arm himself with a vaguely incriminating piece of evidence on the off-chance that I might have something to say about it.

  ‘You didn’t hear it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well who did?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘Right.’

  Stanley said I could stay the rest of the day but when I left the room, fuming, he appeared to get a little nervous and asked me to leave immediately. I assume he’d guessed my plan to email the entire company and my list of contacts (which I’d already stashed elsewhere, along with my shoe collection) and tell them what had happened. M&M says it looks as though they just wanted me out for combined reasons and then made up an excuse, knowing I’d never have a leg to stand on in light of Dubai’s non-existent employee rights.

  Of course, I marched straight back to the flat, grabbed my laptop and headed down to the coffee shop, whereupon I contacted a recruitment agent who lined me up two interviews by 5.30 pm. Thank God Dubai’s still desperate for anyone with a modicum of skill in the English language department — even if they do shoot offensive, imaginary comments out to the masses on public radio.

  On the latter subject of Stacey leaving Dubai, I think it’s a combination of her commute to work being a hellish hour-long process there and back, mostly stuck in traffic, and also feeling a bit like she never really gave London a go. Well, she had just graduated uni when she moved here with me. Thanks to her time at the travel publishers she’s got a lot more experience under her Prada belt now, so I can’t really blame her. It’s just all happened really quickly and I’m really sad. In fact, I’m totally in denial that she is leaving me now, what with all this stuff going on.

  We’ve gone from sharing a room on the landing of the Iransion,
sleeping side by side in biscuit beds, befriending half of Dubai over tragic renditions of Bonnie Tyler in the karaoke bar, to growing up quite suddenly and going to the gym. Well, Stacey’s been going to the gym. I’m still convincing myself that the Jacuzzi beats the flab if you spend long enough with your arse pressed up against the jets.

  I think it’s always going to be hard to say goodbye to someone that you’ve spent pretty much every second of your life with for so long. It’s definitely been an adventure, but now everything’s going pear-shaped, it feels like Dubai’s even more of a challenge than ever (sigh).

  In spite of the interviews at a couple of advertising agencies both going well (they’re looking for creative copywriters and the pay is so much better than in publishing!), I’m taking a month’s work placement at a new international media company. Ewan has just started working for them, too.

  It all sounds quite exciting actually, especially for Ewan, because he’s been taken on permanently. The company specialises in outdoor advertising, and the CEO has been developing a media arm of the company that will boast two new consumer titles to go with the radio stations they already have. Like much of Dubai, it appears to have popped up out of nowhere but it works for me — I need a job! I’ll be editing a health and beauty trade publication, while Ewan acts all important as the section editor across two men’s titles. After that … well, I guess I’ll just see what turns up. Maybe some copywriting, maybe some work for the media company. Or, perhaps, the Iranian still needs help with the fleet-horse (sigh).

  Ewan is going to move into the flat for a bit and then we’ll look for a new place together. The timing worked out well on that front at least, although spiralling rental costs makes this particular task even more daunting than before. Still, most media-based companies are positioned at the other end of town near the aptly named Media City, so it does seem pretty pointless for us both to stay here … even though we have this amazing pool and Jacuzzi and … oh, I forgot to say, we found our cleaner. He didn’t drown in the floods after all. He had some family problems back in India so had to go home for a bit, without telling anyone. Still, at least we have closure on that front, too. Poor sausage.