Dubai

Ram’s head feels hot and heavy when he steps outside amidst the bustle of pedestrians. What a rude son! Ram’s own lack of family has never caused him to be so frustrated and angry. Perhaps it is the nature of the younger generation not to show respect as a matter of principle. Perhaps there is no real reason for Ganesh’s animosity. But what a rude young man! In all his life, Ram has never spit like a village illiterate. He no longer feels enthusiastic about his plan to fill up all of Friday with farewell visits, to Al-Khabeesi, Al-Baraha, Umm Hureir, Karama, adjoining downtown commercial districts where his old friends, who were good to him in the difficult years, prosper as merchants. In Hor Al Anz is a shop owned by the Lebanese Christian brothers, the Frangiehs, who welcome Ram and discuss, with all the gusto of harmed insiders, Sheikh Mo’s — the ruler, Sheikh Muhammad’s — follies in awarding contracts to large construction firms. The Palms, the World, Ski Dubai, Burj Dubai, these and other projects are discussed over mint tea as if the Frangiehs had a real stake in all this. Ram takes their idle resentment in good spirit, but why should he care about the devious strategies of rich builders? In Mankhool, the Naseris, Iranians, sell girls’ dresses, and imagine their smart nephew, now being educated in Britain, returning to Dubai to start a joint venture in Dubai Internet City. And there are others, none of whom ever talk about leaving Dubai, for any reason. Even the worst-off among the labor camp residents, inclined to strike and riot in recent years, only want their living conditions to be improved.

The Friday prayer is in full swing. The city is on hold — as silent as it is possible for Dubai to be, although the non-Muslim workers at the innumerable construction locales are busy orchestrating their staccato clanging and banging to remind the worshippers what Dubai is all about. Ram decides to go home. His belongings after all these years are very few — mostly his spotless clothes, especially white shirts, bought at steep discounts from the better stores along Sheikh Zayed Road, after the end of the annual January Shopping Festival. His one persistent memory of India is of a secondary school teacher inviting him home for snacks and beverages to discuss ignored Malayalam writers. That afternoon it rained so hard even the boisterous children glad of the drenching went back inside their homes after a while. In the old teacher’s courtyard, the leafy banana trees bent back in the lash of the rain, like old people sustaining crooked bones.

Ram stops at one of the disappearing traditional snack vendors by the Clock Tower on Abu Baker Siddique Road. He buys a plate of fried plantains, then orders another to take home to his roommate, a Sri Lankan Buddhist who speaks only when absolutely necessary. Ram sits on the edge of the long wooden bench outside, watching the morose traffic. The desert compels human beings to keep reverting time and again to naturally slow rhythms, give up their robotic wind-up doll mannerisms. Ram feels in his pants pocket the one-way ticket to Trivandrum he’s already bought. It is so silent unwanted memories return to him.

What happened was, a Sheikh ran over an old man, and Ram saw it.

He was the only one to witness the accident. At a building site which was then far from the center of the city, Ram was taking a break from operating the concrete mixing equipment. His back was giving him trouble. He’d thought his body was indestructible — hadn’t he been the most athletic among his schoolmates? Was there a tree he hadn’t swung from, a creek he hadn’t swum in? The late afternoon prayers had been called, and workers — even Hindus and Christians — were reluctant to resume work. Just before evening prayers were called, the builder, a North Indian man who’d picked up fluent Arabic, would show up to inspect the day’s work, and needlessly grill the workers about wasting materials. The hammering and buzzing were beating a nightmarish track in Ram’s head. He walked a good few blocks away from the work zone, abruptly coming up against the beginnings of the endless desert. If he kept walking south, in the same direction, eventually he would collapse and die. A lonely desert death seemed at that moment a most noble one.

He heard the screech of the car — a sickening sound — and the slam of the brakes, followed by the thud of the falling body, lifted off the ground and thrown far away. He bent double, as if he were next in the line of fire. A Toyota had whizzed past him on the dirt track — what passed for the road leading into the desert — and slammed right into the old man Ram had noticed in the periphery of his vision. Soon a Sheikh was bent over the old man, whose body lay crumpled and twisted, a sack of disjointed bones. The man lying prostrate was a Bedouin, his leathery face testament to endless years of willful soaking of the sun. He must have tended sheep, goats, camels with the gentleness of the honest caretaker, known the difference between benign and malignant nighttime desert sounds, never lived in fear of stolen property or the taxpayer’s intrusion. Now he was dead. A trickle of deep red blood squirted out of the left side of his mouth. Ram found himself bending over the old man, many feet from the edge of the road. Ram’s warm breath was blanketing the deep wrinkles of the man’s peaceful white-haired face. The Sheikh was crouched over the dead man too.

“It is my fault,” the Sheikh said in Arabic, distraught. “I admit it.”

Ram looked closely at the Sheikh’s face, never to forget the least of its contours for the rest of his life. He was young. The light in his eyes suggested ambition, and even the horror of the moment hadn’t been able to quite extinguish it. His lips were thick, and the trace of a wart on his right cheek only lent his handsome face more character. It seemed as if time slowed down — came to a stop — as the two of them cradled the dead man’s body.

“It is my fault,” the Sheikh repeated.

Was he sensing his young life go up in smoke? Did he have a wife, children? He wasn’t one of the princes, that was clear. If he were, he wouldn’t have been so afraid. Nor was he a Bedouin, he showed too much refinement for that. He was from the intermediate merchant class, who were the real energy in the Emirates, while the princes gave the orders and the people at the bottom performed the grunt work. Ram tried to recall how fast the car was going. It couldn’t have been going too fast. The road didn’t make that possible. Yet how could the Sheikh not have seen the old man? Perhaps the declining sun had blinded his eyes.