Contained

In the last three weeks I have paid visits to four countries, been in a women’s only taxi, allowed a Frenchman’s dazzling smile to befuddle me into accepting two six euro sandwiches when I ordered un, been offered the plinth in some man’s life as his forth wife, had an Aussie in customs tell me ‘it’s funny, you don’t look like a pom’, oh and besides that, I’d forgotten how odd it is to dare to be called Miriam. But it’s an Arab name? (This only beats being greeted in Morocco with ‘Oh, Miriam? You’re not black?’)

Dubai has always been on my list of places I categorically never want to go. The idea of glass and chrome rising out of desert and sea so Paris Hilton can party on her way round the world (or something) was my basis for not going. That and the awful film with that awful harem of bitchy middle aged women stolen from a previously better land of televisual opportunity... Oh, and the rules. Which were firmly assured by my hotel guide to Dubai that explained what ‘day-to-day’ law breaking could result in the death penalty. But, as much as my interest in returning to Dubai where my luggage was searched and run through with red dye and my heart was burst with uncomfortable everything as the whole place is encased in shiny soullessness, is non existent; it was interesting.

I have often passed the time wondering if odd things happen to me, I invite odd things to happen to me, or I find things more remarkable than everyone else. In Dubai I haplessly found myself ricocheting off the walls of a Landrover (thing) in the desert on a Monday evening, which felt strangely like a large Truman Show style set, (the desert, not the vehicle) with a Russian woman of broad design and wired eyebrows shouting ‘MAMUSKA’ and ‘AYYEEEE’ each time the wheel arches tempted to smash through the tires and we tumbled over the dunes. This may in essence already seem odd, but imagine, if you will, our Moroccan (as he took pains to tell us he was not from the oil risen land of the Arab Emirates) driver mirrors her cries for life with his own ‘WAAAAA AYYEEE, MAMA’ and the Philippines and the Germans and I were torn between knocking Russian out, telling her to put her freaking seatbelt on and laughing mercilessly, and openly, at this crazy woman’s expense.

There is something a little odd in parting with a wadge of hard earned cash to be driven on a motorway out of a city to some sand dunes off another motorway, to then be driven about and ear raped by a crazy Russian, then taken to a tourist camp of ‘Dubai’ stuff, none of which, as our lovely driver told us on the way back to the hotel, was remotely Dubaineese. Some call it tour'ism. To be fair, the baked coffee really was of a very high standard. And the shisha. But I’ve had shisha in Morocco and southern Spain and Tunbridge Wells and no one there was offering to buy me into a life of polygamy. Well, possibly in Kent, but still.

Being a tourist – or a newbie to a different place is always going to present challenges. I get that. And I usually reserve confusion for the way so many people treat ‘foreign’ places. But Dubai and MAMUSKA seem to have captured my attention full throttle with the unashamed random combination of various worlds and cultures and a blatant disregard for what I would consider expected norms in my world.

I could wang on about the Louis Vuitton clad persons headed to Dubai merely to buy stuff for $20 less than in the US or wherever you go to buy nasty overpriced branded celebrity endorsed crap normally and to eat in restaurants where the pizza is genuine as a real Italian was flown in to make it – go to Italy? I don’t want to get started on serving pork even though it’s religiously wrong to offer it... ? I left the place with as many new questions as I had thought up to take in with me – but I now am sure I do not need to return to get answers. I’d rather read a book.

Sometimes I can be more succinct in my ponderings when I compare life’s trivialities to films or some kind of referential creative expression. If my take on the world is Kill Bill – a little to whiny and judgemental but in essence put together for the right reasons, then Dubai is SATC2. One fucking huge contradiction.

NB: For legal reasons I must state there is no referential creative expression involved in SATC2. Or I won’t be allowed back into the Arab Emirates.