HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN AT THE DUBAI SOUK
I was in Dubai on a mission, basically to check out what the future is going to look like. Apparently the future will be a sea of glistening high rise towers built in previously empty desert sands and paid for by people in the western world who choose to drive very large cars that suck back gas like vacuum cleaners. It was investigative journalism of the best kind, which is to say it was a press trip where everything was paid for, and we stayed in the finest hotels, and ate fabulous food, and relied on 5-star air conditioning just to stay alive.
Somehow along the way, Emirates Air managed to lose my luggage. One of the key reasons I went to Dubai, of course, was to find out for myself why Emirates is rated as the top airline in the world. In all honesty it was probably the useless dorks from Air Canada at fault, who are almost as hopeless as the Royal Canadian Mounted Post Office when it comes to delivering things, but I prefer to blame the Bedsheet People at Emirates because they were so rude to me when I tried to file a lost luggage report.
“You should go to your hotel and we will deliver your bag tomorrow,” said an insolent young Emirati lady lounging behind a computer at the Emirates office at the airport, not bothering to look up at me. “It will arrive on the next flight.”
“How do you know what hotel I am staying at?” I replied.
“If you give me the name, I will type it in the computer.”
“My itinerary, along with everything else, is in my luggage,” I replied.
“You don’t even know the name of your hotel?”
“I am a guest of the Dubai Tourism Bureau. They have provided me a limo, driver, guide, translator, itinerary and hotel. They have been waiting an hour for me to clear customs and get to the limo,” I replied. “They will know the name of the hotel, and better yet may actually know where it is located.”
“Then you should go to your limo and hotel and then phone us from the hotel.”
“If I leave the building, I will be outside of security and unable to get back in again,” I replied, “so what happens if the limo has left or I can’t find it? I have no bag and it’s about 150 degrees outside. I have no local money, whatever it is, and my cell phone doesn’t work in this country.”
“I can file a report for you, but I need to know the name of your hotel.”
We could have gone round and round until midnight, but I decided that the air conditioning in my hotel, wherever it was, likely was better than at the airport. I suggested to the insolent young lady that an Emirates staff member should walk with me to the area where my limo driver might logically be expected to be waiting. We did so, and there was an exasperated guide standing there, as she had been for a few hours, holding a sign with my name on it. My bag did not arrive the next day, or the day after that. After four days in 125 degree heat, I needed to buy a shirt because I stank like a rented mule in the one I was wearing. I washed it every night in the sink and hung it out to dry on my balcony. Every morning it was as wet as the night before, because the only thing worse than the summer heat in Dubai is the incredible humidity.
Our press gang went to the souk (bazaar) where on a good day (i.e. less than 125 degrees Fahrenheit) the local touts grab helpless tourists by the throat and drag them into their tatty shops and rob them blind by selling useless, overpriced and unwanted souvenirs. But it was much, much hotter than that on this day, so the touts stayed inside their shops and left us alone to die out on the street. I wandered into a clothing shop with the vague idea I might buy a t-shirt to tide me over until my luggage arrived, if it ever did, and also (more honestly) because the shop had excellent air conditioning. Nothing like going out to dinner in a swank 7-star establishment stinking like a wounded camel, although going to 7-star destinations wearing a soccer t-shirt is really not the best alternative either. Just the cheapest. Among the usual horrible array of made-for-tourist crapwear I found what I was looking for, a triple extra-large United Arab Emirates soccer shirt (i.e. small/medium in Canada) and decided to buy it for $15 US, a price I negotiated down from $50 simply by laughing very hard out loud during the first round of negotiations.
Yes, I flew 20 hours and half way around the world and that was the only souvenir purchase I ever made in Dubai, the world’s most expensive city. But suddenly there was the harsh consideration of how to pay for my purchase. Apparently my credit card was on hold and back at home, waiting for a deposit of some sort to be made before it would function again in the fashion to which it had become accustomed.
“Will you accept cash? Canadian money?” I asked. “Canadian dollars?”
“Canada?” said a clerk with a beard, softly stroking his chin while giving me the stink eye. “I have heard of Canada. It is a cold country, yes? A very long way from here, no?”
“Yes, we are located next to America, what you folks might call the Great Satan,” I replied, reaching slowly for my wallet. “Please do not confuse Canada with the USA.”
“Oh, the USA? Uncle Sam!” cried out the clerk joyously, stroking his beard with one hand while holding out his hand for my proffered money. “We love Uncle Sam. You have this USA money?”
“No,” I replied, handing over the bill. “No USA money. What I have is Canadian money. Cash. Will you accept that?”
He took the $20 Canadian bill I proffered and carefully held it up to the light. The bill was the older version, made of actual paper, printed before the Canadian government decided that plastic bills were harder to counterfeit and lasted longer and you could also put photoshopped photos of old politicians from your own political party on it as free advertising. The original paper version of the $20 Canadian bill had a younger version of Queen Elizabeth on it. No moose chewing on willow trees, hockey players with no teeth or ancient politicians who ought to be in jail, just the elderly dowager Queen herself when she was only about 80 years old and in need a facelift and anew hat.
“Who is this old woman on your money?” asked the clerk, holding it up to the light, shaking his head, and then handing me back the bill.
“That is the Queen of England,” I said proudly, holding it up the light myself and squinting at it for possible damage, then handing it back immediately before he could drop his hand away.
“England?” replied the clerk, still stroking his beard and now looking very carefully at the bill. “Great Britain? Yes, of course, I have heard of that country. It is a wet country, far away? There are many Britishers working here in Dubai now. But what is this old woman from England doing on your Canadian money?”
His question caught me somewhat off-guard. In the Gulf States women are seldom seen in public unless wearing the full bedsheet, are never heard from or talked to, and certainly do not appear on any country’s money. I gave his question some thought. My body odour indicated I needed the soccer shirt urgently, but in order to purchase this particular item evidently I needed to answer some skill testing questions first.
“This question of yours about the Queen takes me way back to third grade, in school,” I commenced my dissertation, leaning forward and taking the bill and holding up it up again for him to see. “Do you understand what I mean by third grade? In school?”
“Yes, of course” he said, leaning forward himself, now with some interest. “When you were just a youngish fellow.”
“See, if you fold this bill in half,” I indicated, doing so and showing him, “and then if you fold it again, like this, you will find an interesting secret that few people have ever realized.”
“What is that?” he asked, taking the twice-folded bill and looking at it carefully, exactly where I had pointed
You see this line here?” I asked, pointing to the bill where the Queen’s neck made a curving acquaintance with her shoulder, in a smooth arc. I held my thumbs on either side of her neck, thereby blocking out the rest of the bill. “Look carefully at this again. You see that line? Imagine this. This is actually the crack of the Queen’s bum.”
He stood stock still, in shock, awed by the ramifications. “Abdul,” he shouted, holding up the bill and waving it. “You must come over here and see this thing right now. Inshallah, you would never believe it.”
I only wore the t-shirt once, to a dinner in Dubai, where it didn’t pick up rave reviews but even in fancy restaurants in the Persian Gulf there are western tourists who show up to a fancy dinner wearing shorts and sneakers so I was allowed in. When I think back to my trip to Dubai it’s not the 220-story Barj Khalifa that awed me, or the suite at the Atlantis Hotel I toured that cost $57,000 US per night (to sleep, or whatever Arab oil sheiks like to do in hotel rooms that costs 145,000 dirham per night). No, thinking back on my time in Dubai, I remember the souk where I bought my soccer t-shirt. Inshallah, it was so goddam hot you wouldn’t believe it. I washed the shirt when I got home and put it in the dryer, and it shrank up the size of a hankie. I can’t wear it, but it makes a great conversation piece.