by Becky Wicks
He doesn’t own a mobile phone — they’re more a hindrance than a help. When we need him, we must simply wait for him to grace us with his presence. Yet we need him all the time, for it is his final word, his valued opinion on which we hang. We cannot do anything without him. Should we think of something good, he must first twist, alter, condescend and re-invent so that it becomes his own. And then we must set to work once more, towards gaining approval for hopefully, finally matching the inexplicable visions in his head, while he organises his music on iTunes.
He’s worked very, very hard to get this far, so I’m told, to get to the point where he doesn’t have to do anything at all for people to think they can’t live without him. Occasionally, he will call me on my work phone (although he can clearly see me from his room, three metres away), and ask me how to spell a word in English. I feel very important when he asks this of me — such is his power. Knowing that someone like him needs someone like me makes me feel a sense of achievement I never found with Stanley. And, like everyone else here, I’m not even sure why.
Sometimes, I think he’s a wizard, casting a magic spell over us all. A dark-chocolate-eating, Converse-wearing wizard. Whatever he is, this fascinating entity is certainly making life interesting as I scramble my way, Stanley-style, through this weird new world.
13/05
Risky business …
M&M wants to take me to Yemen next month. Despite warnings from absolutely everyone I know about potential kidnappings and men who carry AK47s to breakfast, I’m intrigued. I quite like the thought of going somewhere considered so dodgy to the rest of the world, with my married Muslim boyfriend. Call me a drama queen, but it would be fantastic if we were kidnapped for a while.
I hear they only murder people sometimes, and the majority get to live quite comfortably in little houses made of stone, being fed cake and Arabic tea by bearded men and women, eager to know all about you — what you do for a living, where you go, what you carry in your bag.
I love telling people all about myself. And so does M&M. It would be awesome. I wouldn’t have to lie awake at night listening to a wailing cat, or wake up early thanks to a rumbling digger. The mountainous regions in Yemen are very peaceful. And also, maybe if my face was in the papers I’d have a valid excuse for quitting the agency when I got back. I could throw one of EGO’s chocolate bars back in his face when next he made a request: ‘I’m a tortured kidnapee!’ I could shout. ‘I have issues, I almost died out there, and no, I cannot spell the word “antagonistic” for you today — I have to go to therapy!’
I’m starting to think I’ll go anywhere to get away from Gizmo’s screeching. Ewan and I cannot for the life of us think what her problem is. She’s acting like a spoilt princess. She shredded an entire four-pack of loo roll the other day too; it was like a white Christmas had blessed the living room when I got home from work. She stared at me from the doorway as I went about the mess with a dustpan and brush. I’m sure I saw her smirking. Ewan has taken to calling her The Thing.
Ewan’s been a little grouchy lately, to be fair. Since I left the media company, he says the office we were all rammed into has become even more crowded and disorganised, and his last pay cheque came in two weeks late. He’s not a happy bunny at all, seeing as they promised him the world when he first started.
Not only this, but the editor-at-large is a guy who’s quite well known for his womanising antics around Dubai and Ewan is finding himself the shoulder that many girls are coming to cry on. Apparently, this guy — let’s call him Heathcliff just for fun — is working his way around the sales and marketing team, and is halfway through conquering the girls in editorial. He swans around town as a VIP at every party, schmoozing, boozing and using as a result of his power in the glossy magazine world. I always thought he was gay when I was working there, but apparently not.
Anyway, word on Heathcliff’s treatment of women in the company is spreading like wildfire, even among those who don’t work there. I’m so glad I left when I did. There might not be an excess of juicy gossip in the advertising agency (they speak in Arabic most of the time anyway), but at least I’m not expected to run about for sleaze balls for no money. And I’m not so grouchy when I come home to a bog-roll blizzard in the living room.
Gizmo has started to creep into the living room when we’re watching Dee-Wee-Dees now. She pokes her little nose round the corner to see what we’re up to, then darts back behind the fridge to add her own lonesome soundtrack when she spots that we’ve seen her. We end up having to shut the door so we can’t hear her, which is kind of sad. We imagined we’d be fighting over whose lap she’d sit on by now, who would get to stroke her lovely silky fur as we watched another episode of Will & Grace or PoultryGeist 2. Perhaps the dream was not to be. In light of everything, a risky trip to dangerous Yemen sounds heavenly right about now.
21/06
A truly shit time …
A girl at the ad agency called Nina has been arriving at the office later and later every day lately. I asked her what was up this morning as she yanked her swivel chair out from under her desk with a vengeance and flung herself down in it hard, looking thoroughly pissed off.
‘Fucking International Shitty!’ was her reply.
Now, funnily enough, I know what she means. It’s been in the news a lot lately. International City — now renamed by its residents — is in a lot of trouble. Nina didn’t want to move out there in the first place, but like Ewan and me she was forced to move somewhere totally inconvenient owing to spiralling rental costs in the city. And now, after months of clamping both her nostrils and her windows shut against an offensive stench, Nina spends her mornings squelching her tyres through a marshland of shit, which is now spilling out from the nearby sewage plant.
International City is another resort-style residential area, miles away in the Al Warsan region of Dubai, along the road to Hatta. Along with a few businesses and soon-to-be tourist attractions, its colourful housing blocks are themed on architecture you’d usually find in Italy, Spain, Morocco, Persia, Greece, China, Indonesia, England, Russia, Thailand and France.
Nina lives in England. She hates it. It is quite literally, shit. A few months ago, the smell started drifting first through her bedroom window every morning and into her dreams, and then through the air vents in her car as she drove to work. But now, her entire block is flooded with raw sewage. She’s having to watch families with kids try and dodge things like condoms and tampons drifting down the street. Last night, she says there was even more shit on the streets surrounding her building.
The air-con in her flat doesn’t take the smell away. She can’t open any windows because the stench is so bad that it makes her want to puke, and she’s afraid that if she does open them the mosquitoes will get in. She has bites on her arms. ‘Who knows what those fuckers are carrying?’ she complained this morning, slapping her hand on her desk so hard it must have stung. ‘I’m probably diseased!’
I’m keeping my distance, even though I feel sorry for her. Living on a construction site surrounded by diggers and dealing with a possessed kitten is bad enough, but I can’t imagine what I’d do if my flat stank of a soiled toilet twenty-four hours a day and my street looked like a turd that wouldn’t flush. Roads and pavements are completely submerged in her area and the shit is even bubbling up, swamp-style, from the drains. Blog sites are going crazy as people complain and plan letters to the authorities about their disgusting dilemma. But to be honest, it’s looking largely like the authorities don’t really give … well, a shit.
All this actually makes me think about the state of the sea here at the moment. A couple of weeks ago, I saw a pile of dead fish washed up on the beach. I almost stood on one as I walked along the shore. Apparently, it’s been happening quite a lot on all of Dubai’s public beaches lately and the general consensus is that all this digging and dredging out at sea is killing the wildlife.
Also, because Dubai is growing so fast, the sewage facilities are working overt
ime and there are now so many disposal trucks waiting to dump their loads (ahem) that the drivers are having to queue in the blazing, stinking heat for up to sixteen hours at a time. Well, of course, they just can’t be bothered, so in some cases these tired, bored, frustrated people, deluded by the monotonous stench of their day jobs, are drilling open manholes and dumping their untreated sewage straight into them, whereupon it then flows straight into the sea (and International Shitty, by the looks of it).
Nina’s still looking mightily pissed off at her desk. I’m planning to avoid her for a while. She doesn’t smell bad or anything — the stench has yet to pollute her actual person, but the people walking past her with their fingers clamped over their nostrils aren’t doing much to help her crappy mood.
24/06
A fairytale called Yemen …
Upon landing in Sana’a, it was obvious that we were somewhere, let’s say … special. Sweaty, organised chaos at the airport meant it took an hour for M&M and me to get our visas and to shuffle through immigration, but we were soon collected in a clapped-out taxi with mismatching doors and a hole in the floor behind the driver’s seat. We were told that this was one of the city’s most modern cars, supplied by the hotel we’d been booked into. M&M’s face was a picture. I could tell he was dreaming of his Porsche.
Fearing for my life, I sat down, trying not to touch more than I was meant to. I clung to what was left of the doorframe as we were driven to our hotel. I know I’ve mentioned previously how terrified I am in cars at the best of times, but I’ve never exactly had to watch the road whiz past underneath my feet as I’ve been travelling along before. I tried to look out the window, so as not to puke.
Driving through the old city I felt my eyeballs bulging at the view. Fruit and veg stalls spilled from the sidewalks, floating balloons bounced on strings in the breeze, and hollering streetside shoemakers waved their arms animatedly in every direction as we whizzed past. It was a bit like Jaipur but cleaner, and I didn’t feel as though there were any kidnappers out there at all, actually. Everyone was smiling.
I felt like our little car was a time machine, chugging along through the rainbow, although none of the colour came from the people. M&M warned me against wearing my latest flowing dress purchase — bright blue and covered in flowers. Most women and tourists in Yemen stay concealed beneath black scarves and abayas. It’s advisable to go with it, out of respect. You’ll stand out like a muppet if you don’t. This is, after all, a strict Muslim country — even stricter than Dubai. While children ran free in a kaleidoscope of coloured clothing, we rarely saw a woman who wasn’t covering everything but her eyeballs.
Our hotel was called the Sana’a Nights Tourist Hotel. Our driver pointed it out as we approached and I did my best to look impressed at the somewhat dilapidated, slightly lopsided construction ahead, which was made of gingerbread. Well, it wasn’t actually made of gingerbread, clearly, but its sandy-brown colour and white-lined windows made it look positively edible, and definitely crumbly. Apparently, the people of Yemen like to confirm their hotels are for tourists by putting this status into the names. Tourists stand out, not only for their milky skin and protruding telephoto lenses (I’m guilty of that one) but also for their wide-eyed stares and flapping guppy mouths. This is probably because Sana’a is a pretty awesome scene to see. M&M was gripping my hand in the car. I wondered if he was allowed.
Sana’a, if you’ve never cared to google it (I definitely hadn’t until it came to booking the ticket), sits within a mountain range and thus endures the temperamental forces of Mother Nature. One minute the sky is sapphire blue, the next it’s showering hailstones the size of marbles on your head. It’s a city forgotten by time, yet time has taken its toll. It dates back to the Kingdom of Saba which lasted from about the eighth century BCE to the sixth century CE and its multi-storey buildings of tawny brown clay line cobbled streets that should by all rights be hosting Dickens’ characters. I noticed after a while that every building looked like a gingerbread house, not just our hotel. Icing-sugar paint outlined every tiny window. I couldn’t put my camera down. I think M&M was annoyed.
The city has been inhabited for more than 2,500 years and wandering its streets with M&M behind our guide, Ahmed, I whispered that I felt as though we were exploring a living fairytale. It took me right back to when I first sat on Dad’s knee, behind a storybook. The characters are all here too. Hansel and Gretel wearing dungarees and smiles caked in grime run at you from doorways, scattering clucking chickens and scaring donkeys in their path. The creepy grandma sits huddled over piles of ripe tomatoes, her face, what can be seen of it, contorted with a cheek full of khat — a leaf that acts as a stimulant and is said to have an effect like caffeine. (I tried it. It tastes like … well … leaves.) But what’s probably the most fascinating thing about the place is that when other ancient civilisations were battling it out with stones, these people here were building and living in these amazing, multi-storey houses.
M&M chatted in Arabic with Ahmed, who was actually the father of the guy who ran the hotel. He told us he often takes people out to the mountains. At first I wondered if he was going to kidnap us. Even though he seemed pretty friendly, you can never be too sure. But apparently Ahmed had no intention of locking us up in a little house, or feeding us chewy leaves. He just wanted to show us the amazing Yemen. And as we left bustling Sana’a in his rickety four-wheel drive, the pages of our fairytale kept turning. We wound our way along perilous mountain roads like a modern Jack climbing his beanstalk into the sky, and stopped to take pictures of entire villages cast into mountainsides. The ancient walls out here look as though they might fall at any moment, yet children still race among ruins, squishing up against the bricks, chasing bedraggled goats, tugging the hands of weary mothers from shop front to food stall, never once fearing their world might suddenly crumble.
One of the most impressive sights was most definitely the Dar al-Hajar, or the Rock Palace. Perched on top of a humongous boulder, like a curious giant plucked it from the ground and put it there, this amazing building was once the summer haunt of the powerful Imam Yahya during the 1930s. It’s a bit of a favourite destination for Yemeni families, as well as tourists, although the local kids followed us around up there like we were famous members of a pop group (Yemen’s great for the ego). ‘Surrah, surrah!’ they shouted. ‘Take a picture, take a photo!’ So I took about 800 more.
At this point, I found myself thinking how The Irishman would have loved it in Yemen. We’ve become photography buddies, and he’s almost as addicted to his camera as I am. Of course, I didn’t tell this to M&M, who may or may not have traded me in for a milking cow in response.
It was the people who really made this weekend adventure for us. I’ve never encountered such amazing hospitality. I wish I could speak Arabic, then I could have learned more. I got the impression that M&M had a much more fulfilling experience, being able to converse with the locals.
At the hotel we were treated to a private dance performance featuring daggers and dishdasha swirling on a bright red carpet. At the end of the trip, Ahmed took us to his house to sample tea and his wife’s homemade cake. I could tell M&M felt pretty humbled sitting in that house. So did I. It was so basic, but homely and filled with such impossible love. I felt guilty for imagining we might have been kidnapped.
Ahmed told us he wished more people would come to Yemen, to see how beautiful it is, and how safe it is, and how friendly and hospitable the people are. I felt like telling everyone that no matter what might happen in the future, or what’s happened in the past, at that very moment in time, Yemen was the most incredible, warm and interesting place on earth.
Although … you can never be too careful. We definitely saw a few AK47s at breakfast.
27/06
Not pet people …
Ewan and I have reached the end of our tether with little Gizmo. It’s just not working out. Since we got her, the screeching hasn’t stopped and even though she now lets us pick her
up with our hands rather than with an oven glove, we feel the time has come to go our separate ways. Ewan was fuming when I got back from Yemen. Not only did she keep him awake every night scratching at my door while I was away, he says her intolerable bawling all but destroyed his romantic movie marathon with Sean. Even the Dee-Wee-Dee Man is knocking less and less frequently these days. Apparently, not even Ewan’s weekly promise that next time he’ll buy from his ‘special’ collection makes up for the fact that we’re murderers, secretly torturing hysterical toddlers behind closed doors.
I’ve placed an ad on the community message board with a collection of six adorable kitten photos, taken in our candlelit living room for extra cute and cuddly effect. It seems like the quickest way to get rid of her.
I was determined to mask her inner demons as best I could. Should any hint of evil shine through, we’d be screwed. Thus, my note says something along the lines of:
I’m devastated to have to find a new home for my darling kitty, but I’m leaving Dubai and can’t take her with me. I really want my beautiful sweet baby to go to a good home, which is why she’s free to the first person offering her the love she so deserves.
We’ll see how it goes. I just hope it works. She’s been so vile lately that I’ve actually resorted to cruelty. The other day she was shrieking so loudly on my bed as I was drying my hair that I pointed my hairdryer at her like a weapon, making her bolt for the door. She paid me back by shitting on the sofa. Fair’s fair, I suppose.
01/07