Past 4am. Must’ve been standing there by an empty road for about half an hour waiting for a cab when finally one came along. Hopped in and was greeted by a bulky driver all smiles at me.
Why not? His shift was about to be over and me his last passenger.
“Clock Tower,” I said. Exasperation hanging thick in my voice. Been a really long day and could only wish to see my bed and drop dead to the world. It’s one of those lonely, long trips where you try to stay awake, engaging the driver in idle chat.
“So, how long have you been in Dubai?” I asked the bespectacled man on the wheel, keeping my eyes on the surrounding buildings. The nice thing about Dubai is that she never loses her charm, not even in the dead of the night.
“Eighteen years.” was the reply, himself keeping to the road, negotiating a roundabout rotunda, a road design borrowed from the British of which Dubai has no shortage of.
“Wow!” I said. “How was Dubai back then?”
“Oh,” he said, “It was nice. No Kimra on the road.”
“Kimra?” I asked myself, pretending to know what he meant.
“Yeah… Kimra that flashes to catch you speeding.”
Camera! I told myself. Dubai’s main roads are nowadays filled with those roadside protuberances much like stationary laser speed guns that take photos of speeding cars’ plate numbers and automatically log fines through a central system against the erring motorist.
I wanted to regret striking a conversation because the guy talks a lot, kept asking me the English word for say, “mustache,” and if it has a plural form.
“See? I know mustache I know nostrils and forehead,” he said.
Moving on with his monologue, he said they were taught English back in the day in Pakistan where he was from.
“But I stopped on seventh grade,” he said, or something like that.
“Why?” I ventured to ask hoping for a short reply.
“We lived near Afghanistan and during those days, there was war with Russia. There were bombs and firing guns. So, parents keep their children home,” he said in a relatively fine conversational English.
He said their area was right next to Tora Bora. I Googled later and found out the place was that of armed conflict. So, I told myself, I am in a car driven by a man who grew up in a war-torn place and took his chances in this big city, where he said, he learned English through chats with his passengers.
No wonder, I told myself, he kept asking about English words and he has probably been doing the same to all other passengers since he got here. Don’t know if I’m making sense but Dubai is replete with stories like his – – people taking chances because there’s not one where they come from.
