Dubai is tremendously growing: spiral flyovers, roads flooded with lights, clean meticulously trimmed flower beds along the road and lush green isles of grass at the cross-roads. I wondered if this is the same country I visited twenty years back.
My English friend, Judith, who was driving her convertible Ferrari 360 Spider from the airport to her home in Jumeirah, read my expressions and told me more about the fascinating journey of the UAE towards progress and prosperity in many fields.
I was overwhelmed by the dynamic progress of Dubai. I had come to enjoy the Dubai Shopping Festival from Pakistan on my friend’s invitation. I wandered through the fabulous malls, clubs and did a lot of shopping at the world famous boutiques. I thought there’s no need to go to Hong Kong, London or Paris for shopping, it’s a better place in many ways. I enjoyed all kinds of entertainments, watched movies in most modern cinema halls and sipped coffee at the Italian, French and English restaurants and cafes. I enjoyed the delectable weather, the beaches, and water sports.
More than anything was the safe and secure atmosphere of the city, maybe not available anywhere in the world. These were not only my feelings, but my British host family had the same opinions and they were very happy and enjoying such a luxurious life, may be they couldn’t afford in London.
The presence of Indian and Pakistani servants as their cooks, driver, watchman, made me gloomy. I didn’t know why but they reminded me of the stories of British rule in undivided India that I have heard from my mother and grandmother. Strangely, I noticed all the servants were happy and nobody ever complained about anything to anybody. I visited their homes at the back of the large bungalow. They had air conditioners, TV, neat clean beds, and I thought whether these material comforts were the reason for their contentment? But I was still feeling low without any apparent reason.
I forgot about my unknown anxiety in the fresh warm desert air. We had come on a Safari to enjoy Arabian Nights with a few more families. The tents had been fixed. Some were examining the tyres of their 4-wheel drives for a drive on the fascinating sand dunes. The sun had begun to set. Sun, sand, quietness and hissing of desert breeze were so unimaginative as if I was roaming in a world of fantasy.
It was all going very well when suddenly I woke up from my dream when one day my aunt told us to take their ailing driver to the doctor and then drop him at his home. I asked my friend on our way to his home, “His family must be worried about him.”
“He doesn’t have a family here,” she told me.
“Why?” I was a little surprised.
“He’s not allowed to. I mean he doesn’t have a family status income,” she said. I wasn’t satisfied by her obtrusive reply.
“Do people need a certain status to have their families with them? A man is married and has children, isn’t that enough status?”
“Yes, but he couldn’t afford a family in this country within his income,” she increased my knowledge.
“Then why his income isn’t according to the country’s living standard?” I asked her.
“That’s not for us to think,” and she switched on the cassette.
By the time we turned to a dark street and took many turns before the most luxurious car stopped in front of a shanty dwelling. The driver was profoundly grateful to us. She reversed the car. I looked through the tinted glass. For a moment, I thought I was in a slum of my own country but window air-conditioners were something that my people couldn’t enjoy in slums.
“How many people live in that house?” I asked her still contemplating the plight of those people.
“Maybe ten or fourteen. They share the rent otherwise....”
“They can’t afford it”, I completed her sentence. Her nonchalant attitude made me silent for the rest of the journey, until we reached the posh area. Next morning I asked the housemaid about her family. She told me that her four children and husband were living in Sri Lanka and she visited them once in three years. “Your husband allows you to work here alone?” I asked.
“It’s better to be alone than to starve and scrounge,” she answered.
“Do you save money,” I was still curious.
“Yes, Ma’am, I send five hundred Dirhams every month. They are very happy. My children go to school and my husband is getting medicines for himself also”.
“Don’t you miss them”, I asked again.
“Ma’am, do I have a choice?” her head dropped.
I looked at the odd job boy who was shining the glass dining table with great caution. He was a thin, short, a little dark Pakistani dauntless boy with plain face, might be in his early twenties. I sat on a nearby sofa and called him. He came instantly and asked most obediently, “Yes Ma’am”.
“How long have you been working here?” I asked.
“I came here ten years ago when I was fourteen but I was endorsed as eighteen on my passport to get work visa,” he said. “How many times have you gone back?” I asked.
“Last year and I got married,” he said a bit shyly. “When will you see your wife again?” I asked again.
“I don’t know, maybe after two or three years. It needs a lot of money Ma’am”, said he and continued, “I have a son born last month. So I have sent all my saving to my mother and wife. Now it will take time to collect more money to plan a visit to see them,” he looked more relaxed now. He paused and said again, “I have a picture of them”. He took his wallet and showed me a photograph of a thin, hardly fifteen or sixteen year-old girl holding a baby wrapped in a coloured sheet. The girl was smiling but tiredness and weakness were quite prominent on her face.
“You can’t live with your family, then why did you marry? I mean ... I mean ....” I blurted and squirmed over my ridiculous question. He stared at me with an aching void for a while and then smiled mechanically.
“It was my mother’s wish. She has spent all her life alone. My father came here after one month of his marriage and then he called me when I was fourteen”. He turned his face, perhaps to hide the tears, which were ready to roll down in a moment. I couldn’t ask anymore, because I felt a lump in my throat. But I know many of his kin are envious of his wife and mother because they are well off in their country with their own home, TV, refrigerator and other luxuries of modern life or perhaps happiness of being together as a family loses its fervour when the basic needs of life remain unfulfilled.
So the rich and poor both are happy here in some way or the other. The poor are rightly obliged to the UAE to provide their families shelter, food and clothing, no matter if they can’t enjoy a family life for their whole lives. That’s a covenant in pursuit of material happiness or the maid was right, at least one man’s sacrifices save a whole family from destitution and disease. I wish they get all that in their homeland and live happily with their families forever. But then it will be a fairy-tale ending. And the stories of the Third World people working abroad are not, after all, fairy-tales.
Dubai is tremendously growing: spiral flyovers, roads flooded with lights, clean meticulously trimmed flower beds along the road and lush green isles of grass at the cross-roads. I wondered if this is the same country I visited twenty years back.
