Welcome to Dubai (The Traveler) (7 page)

While waiting for callbacks, she sat inside of their cramped apartment room. Basim already had a job, leaving her to battle boredom. Despite her cousin’s warnings about the worker-class area that they lived in, Ramia was anxious to explore. She wanted to speak with strangers and ask questions just like the men were able to. She was impatient, anxious and fearless, emboldened by the growing women’s rights movement. “Why should I have to remain inside all day?” she huffed. “I’m not a child.”

Ramia left the apartment defiantly and as soon as she walked outside of the building to stroll the hardened streets of the area, she realized why her cousin was so nervous about her being out and unattended. Without an
abaya
or a headdress to cover up, or Basim there to protect her, the Palm Deira district was definitely not a place for a young and beautiful woman to sightsee.

The blue-collar area was largely populated by unmarried immigrant workers. Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia were all represented there, including many immigrants from North and West Africa—Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and Kenya. The area’s construction of gray cement buildings and seedy, dark streets was not the bright and photogenic images the young nation chose to show the world in its advertisements, websites or brochures of tourism. The working-class districts of the UAE represented the hard realities of thousands of hopeful immigrants desperately seeking income and a fresh start. But most of them had fallen into positions of long hours of sweat work.

Ramia could have been a
Victoria’s Secret
model. She had soft skin, bright-hazel eyes, thick, auburn hair and the slim, curvy frame. That was why Basim had been so insistent that she not wander around unattended. She surely would attract lots of attention—possibly dangerous attention. Lustful eyes were everywhere, and she was worth every second of a desperate man’s lust. She could feel their penetrating stares as soon as she hit the sidewalks in her casual blue jeans and T-shirt.

Basim had begged his cousin not to come live there with him until he could afford to move to a better area in Sharjah and away from the overcrowding near the interior of Dubai. But Ramia refused to wait. Everything was immediate and urgent with her, as if the world would run out of time. She had been willing to do anything to move away from the farmlands of her home in Jordan as quickly as possible, and away from her nation’s strict Muslim code for women. Men in her home nation continued to practice “honor killings” each year against dishonorable wives who dared to disobey or embarrass their husbands. Ramia wanted no part of that, so she refused to marry, and at the legal age of twenty-one she left her immediate family in Jordan to try her luck in Dubai, which was more liberated.

As the sun began to set in the early evening, Ramia walked a couple of blocks from the apartment building and passed by two Indian men at the curb who were smoking cigarettes and conversing in Hindu. With loud, mocking laughter, they startled her and forced her to pick up her pace. Although she was not fluent in Hindu, she could easily assume that the men were talking about her. She could read it through their eyes, darting in her direction as well as through the suddenness of their snickering. So she wasted no time in moving away from them, while quickly turning the corner to her left.

“Hey, watch where you’re going,” a man warned her in gruff English. In her reckless haste, Ramia had bumped into him.

“Oh, excuse me,” she responded nervously.

The man paused and nodded. He stood tall and imposing on the sidewalk. It was Saleem, the Pakistani worker who had walked off from Abdul Khalif Hassan’s troubled construction site after the tragic accident. But Ramia did not know him. Two brown workers stood beside him, all wearing casual clothes.

“Why are you walking around by yourself?” Saleem asked the girl with authority. He could read the bewildered innocence in her face that marked her as a newcomer. And he felt that she should have been forewarned about the dangers and illegal activities of certain areas, particularly after sunset.

At first Ramia ignored him, projecting irritation and bravery. But since the man seemed sincere, she was respectful enough to answer him.

“I’m waiting for my cousin.”

“You should wait for your cousin
inside,”
he snapped at her.

The two men at his side began to chuckle before Saleem silenced them.

“Enough!” he snarled in their direction.

The men swallowed their pride and stopped their chatter immediately.

‘You find your way back inside to wait for your cousin safely,” Saleem advised the girl. He added, “This is not the place for tourism.”

Recognizing the man’s honorable position and power, Ramia backed down from her tough stance and decided to heed his warning. She nodded and was embarrassed, heading silently and quickly back toward Basim’s apartment building. She knew that a tough-minded and principled man was watching her back. Even the two mocking Indians fell silent as she returned past them.

Who in the world was that?
she asked herself as she walked. She then noticed the pickup of aimless energy out in the streets as the sun set. There was random car traffic, human transactions and the noise of menace that came with any overpopulated area.

Oh, my God!
she thought in a panic. Suddenly, she couldn’t wait to get back to the building.

Up on a fifth-floor patio in a building directly across the street, a stern-faced Egyptian man watched Ramia’s entire short-lived walk to the corner. When she made it back to safety inside of her building, he smiled and grunted before walking inside himself.

Ramia rushed back inside to wait for the elevators in her building, only to find Basim waiting.

“Basim, when did you get home?” she asked her cousin excitedly.

Basim looked back in alarm and frowned at her. “Where did you go? And why are you out of the room?” he barked. With thin-rimmed brown reading glasses, Basim looked more like a student, and he was still dressed in the yellow-shirted uniform from his job at the gas station and convenience store. The twenty-eight-year-old was usually calm and caring. But at the moment he was irritated by Ramia’s defiance.

“Basim, I can’t just sit in there all day and night. I need something to do.”

“You will have something to do as soon as a job calls,” he told her. “Then you can start school at the university.”

The plan was for Ramia to attend the Women’s University of Dubai or even American University of Sharjah. But without the money to afford it, they realized that their plans would have to wait.

In frustration, Ramia pouted. “I know, I know. But I just get so tired of sitting around and reading in the heat. Your room does not even have a patio.”

“Because I don’t want to waste the money,” he snapped. “I have no intentions of staying here, so why would I pay extra for a room with a patio? I told you I wanted to move to a new place before you even came.”

“You were just taking far too long,” Ramia snapped back. “So I just wanted to take a walk.”

She stepped past him and climbed onto the opening elevator as the other tenants overheard their argument. In her extra week of idleness, she was really beginning to irk her cousin. They did not even speak as they rode the elevator up to the third floor.

“What are you going to do—drag me back inside the hot room?” Ramia added sarcastically as they climbed off the elevator. “I didn’t even stay out there long.”

Basim shook his head, exhausted from his day. “Don’t you see what kind of people are out there?” he asked her. Surely she wasn’t blind. Basim did not like the area at all.

Ramia ignored him and used her key to reopen the door to the room.

“I just wanted to get out,” she repeated.

“And when I get home, you can,” he insisted.

Ramia turned to face him at the doorway. She was so bothered by her cousin’s chauvinistic tone that she wanted to hit him. Instead, she growled and balled up her fists.

“Argh! You sound like a Muslim
husband,
and I am not your
wife,”
she shouted.

“Yes, but you are a guest in my house, and so you are my responsibility,” Basim argued. “Do you realize how much trouble I would be in with our parents and your brothers if something were to happen to you here? So stop acting inconsiderate. You have not been here long enough to know this place like I do.”

Again, Ramia felt squeamish. She closed the door behind them and said, “But I feel like such a
slave
in this little room. Look at this!”

The apartment was so small that Basim used curtains to separate the rooms with no walls. Only the small bathroom had walls.

“Why do you even bother to give me a
key?”
Ramia pouted.

“Because you will go back to work next week, and you will need to use it,” Basim responded supportively. “This place is only temporary for
both
of us.”

Understanding how supportive Basim had been, Ramia calmed down and took a seat at his tiny kitchen table.

“What makes you so sure they will call next week?” she asked doubtfully.

“Because I have faith in Allah.”

Ramia listened and refrained from engaging in a social religious argument with him. She no longer followed the Muslim faith. Outside of women’s rights, she didn’t know what to believe in anymore.

“We will see,” she told him.

“Yes, we will,” Basim concluded. “In the meantime, I only want to protect you.”

Basim was not an imposing man at all. Unless he had secretly trained in the martial arts, or owned a loaded gun—neither of which was the case—Ramia could not imagine him being able to protect her anyway. He was nowhere near as threatening as the Pakistani man she had bumped into at the corner.

“What if the man who tried to harm me was much bigger and stronger than you?” she asked him hypothetically, imagining the man at the corner.

“Then I will pray to the all Powerful Allah to give me the strength and skills to beat him.”

Ramia shook her head and could no longer take it. “Allah will not help you with everything. There are thousands of people in this neighborhood, and even in this building who pray to Allah, and nothing happens.”

“You take that back,” Basim warned her.

“I will not.”

“Then I will pray to Allah for your forgiveness.”

Basim was unwavering. Ramia could see now how he had been able to survive for so long on his own. In her mind, it was not Allah at all—it was Basim. He had faith in his own belief that he would succeed in anything no matter how long it took. So she finally gave into him.

“Okay, forgive me. Now let’s fix you something to eat.” She immediately went to his pantry with ideas of cooking her cousin a good meal. Basim Yaqoob Zahir was indeed a good man, and he deserved it. She really appreciated him. So she rubbed his back and smiled at him.

“I’m sorry, Basim. I can still act like a brat sometimes.”

Her cousin chuckled and remained silent. He loved her anyway. She was family.

“You are your own woman,” he told her. “And I respect that. Maybe you should even go to Britain or America
after
you become educated.”

Ramia smiled and chuckled. Britain and America seemed a long way from home. Nevertheless, she refused to back down from anything.

“Maybe I will,” she teased. Then she opened the refrigerator for eggs and meat to fix the meal. “I will also help you to move into a new place.”

He took a seat at his kitchen table and waved her idea off. “Just worry about your money for college. I will take care of my own. I’ll just make sure to send enough money back home to my mother and family.”

Ramia nodded. She remembered that her aunt in Jordan had been fighting different physical ailments off and on for years.

“I still have a little bit of money to help.”

Again, Basim waved her off. “Everything costs money here. You save it to buy some things for yourself.” Then he looked her over and grinned. “After all, you’re still a very pretty girl. You deserve to pamper yourself.”

“Stop it,” she told him. But it was true. Ramia could have easily become the pampered wife of a wealthy man, yet she would never allow herself to be kept, especially as a second or third wife. She treasured her independence.

Chapter 7

In the gray cement building that was directly across the street from Basim’s, an important meeting of the minds was ready to take shape between Saleem and a much wiser man. Saleem arrived at the fifth-floor apartment with his two followers and walked into an apartment in the building across the street from Basim’s. The apartment was much larger than anything Basim would pay for or could afford. Inside, several immigrant men sat in a circle on the floor. They were from various nations, and many of them had become construction workers like Saleem. These were men who believed that working in Dubai would greatly benefit them and their families back home. But now they knew better.

The practices of cheap labor, dishonor and negligence in Dubai had unnerved them all to the point of vengeance. These laborers felt exploited and demoralized. They had become perfect followers of the radical Mohd Ahmed Nasir, an Egyptian man in his sixties who held some serious intentions.

A group of Mohd’s loyal guard were in the apartment, standing armed and against the wall, while the laborers sat cross-legged on the floor complaining about dangerous working conditions and the poor pay. At the moment of Saleem’s arrival, there was disciplined silence inside the room. Out of respect for their worshipful elder, none of the new recruits dared to speak unless they were asked to do so. Mohd often made men wait in dead silence for long stretches at a time before he would even make eye contact with them, let alone allow them to hear his speech or his impressions of them. Such was his way of discipline, because men who spoke without being asked were not to be trusted.

Silence was a methodology of determining the anxieties and temperaments of those who claimed to desire leadership. An honorable student would not rush the teacher, and Mohd only desired to teach honorable men. So after nearly an hour of silence, reading the impatient stares and the stormy emotions of the men who sat inside of the candlelit room, Mohd stood from his seat inside of the circle and walked toward the window, where he stared down at the activities on the streets below them. Finally, he decided to speak.