Dubai

Al-Maktoum Bridge takes him to Al-Rasheed Road, off which he takes crowded side streets to get to his old friend Krishan’s fabric shop in the ancient Deira district. Notices to tear down the ramshackle building which Krishan’s shop fronts have been issued since the time the tallest building in Dubai was a few stories high, not even easily visible from the wharves. Krishan deals with a Muslim middleman whose job it is to pay off the busybody civil servants with nothing better to do than harass honest businessmen with vain threats.

In the early years there used to be mounds of spices outdoors — ah, pungent red chilies six inches long, bright as a new bride’s smile, stacked impossibly high! — but the newest and poorest of Asians now prefer to buy indoors, in the spice emporiums. Other than the occasional Western tourist, there are few resident white faces in traditional shopping districts like Deira. Over the years, the brazenness of Western visitors in such neighborhoods has visibly declined; now they act apologetically, as if they owe their presence to the sufferance of their kind hosts, speaking politely with the Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Indonesians, and Filipinos who’re otherwise treated as invisible actors in fashionable Dubai.

“Memsahib,” Ram says, tipping his cap, to a middle-aged European woman in a long pink dress, bargaining with a street vendor over “pearl” jewelry.

The fondness of the Westerner for expensive junk is limitless. These are the same people who patronize the Emirates’ many museums, which have risen rapidly to mummify the extinction of the pearling industry, the Bedouin habitat, the obligations of kinship, as fast as these old ways of life are becoming dated. These are the type of people who spend entire days in the “heritage villages” in the Emirati hinterland, observing the feeding and milking of camels by the stern Bedu, and who can’t tell that the many “forts” constructed along the Arabian Gulf, from Abu Dhabi to Ra’s al Khaimah, are actually of recent construction, made to look like antiquities.

But Ram’s forgiveness knows no bounds today. He is, after all, bidding farewell to the fond familiar sights. He expects whatever town he relocates to in India, perhaps after he’s taken a young wife, to immerse him soon in its vastly reduced level of energy. And this isn’t something entirely to regret. One gets old.

“Is brother Krishan here?” Ram asks Krishan’s older son, Ganesh, inside the shop crammed with cotton and silk fabrics in every available cranny. Ganesh seems to be trying to fix the broken cash register.

Now thirty-six, for some inexplicable reason Ganesh has always resented Ram. Krishan never brought over his wife from India, although technically, once the shop took off, and especially after Krishan set up branches in Sharjah, an easy drive to the northeast, and then in Abu Dhabi, another short drive to the southwest, his income level was high enough to qualify him to bring over family. Krishan’s two sons, who came from India on work permits when they were old enough, could have had a chance to bring over Indian wives had they petitioned the government, since they do run a business; but they’ve chosen to remain bachelors too. Why they’ve done so has never been entirely clear to Ram, and he tries not to wonder about the unsavory possibilities, including homosexuality, which, as he understands it, is rife in the labor camps.

“Not here today,” Ganesh says peremptorily. “In Sharjah. Fridays, always dedicated to Sharjah. Mondays and Tuesdays, Abu Dhabi. Wednesdays, he goes over to Fujairah— maybe to set up a new shop there. If you need to talk to him about anything related to the business here, he won’t know.” Ganesh stretches his chest, sturdy as a block of bricks. “Ask me. Ask me anything.”

The years of schooling in India have left little impact on Ganesh, as rough and crude as ever. Ram physically backs off. There is a smell coming from Ganesh, as of a raw animalism, that frightens Ram. He feels weak and vulnerable. “What would I ask you?”

Ganesh smiles monstrously. “I don’t have to ask you anything. I know you’re jumping ship. I heard already. From Mustafa, your old buddy. And Jivan. And Patel. All the Patels. Everyone knows you’re abandoning Dubai. I wonder why. Why would a man still in his prime” — Ganesh shushes Ram’s protest — “still able to earn at least a thousand dirhams a month, and no expenses, mind you, no family to support in India — why would such a man want to go to a home that isn’t a home, where there’s nothing to return to? What did India ever do for you? The future is here, man.”

“I’ve lived here long enough, haven’t I?” Ram is edgy, lost, defensive. “I was here when you weren’t yet born. I’ve seen this city grow and grow, until it’s — it’s something I hardly understand.” Ganesh snickers, which makes Ram even more apologetic. “I’m not anybody who matters. I’ve paid for my little share of this crazy development, this gigantic construction — with blood, sweat, and tears. Do I not have the right to retire?”

“Retirement?” Ganesh spits to the side. “Is that what you’re after? I doubt it, man. What’s the real reason you’re leaving?” He becomes meditative, dismissing with a gruff wave of his hairy hand one of the shop assistants who is trying to get his attention at the door. “Everyone knows you never returned to India to renew your work permit. Not once. And you don’t have a business, like we do, to keep renewing it here. Then how have you been allowed to stay? Wave after wave of deportation drives. I’d say at least a dozen major ones since you’ve been here. There’s some mystery here, and it creates problems for me—for the community. We don’t like people who distrust others.”

“Your father trusts me well enough.”

Ganesh spits to the side again. “My father’s an old man who doesn’t know anything.”

“He’s taken good enough care of you. He owns three shops now.”

“And one more on the way. I know.” Ganesh laughs viciously. “It’s like having children… Look, I have a busy day ahead. Very busy. Come again tomorrow, if you’re still in Dubai. My father will be here to check the accounts.”