Fart

It’s a constant fight to avoid sounding like an old fart. You know: “I can remember when that was all sand!” and all that. You drive past the airport that you once flew into when it was a small white moulded concrete terminal building with a single (appalling) restaurant that used to offer ‘Foul Madams’ highlighted with magic-marker lettering on a dayglo green star hanging off the buffet and the duty free that was down the escalator left of the pink marble-topped information desk, staffed by Indian girls in grey uniforms fussing under portraits of Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid hung in incredibly heavy gilt frames. Back in the days when you had to fill in pink immigration cards: when men were men and women were interested.

And now it’s smoked glass and impersonal efficiency: all stainless steel, escalators, travelators and elevators, ubiquitous Dubai-beige and red. More on the way with new terminals springing up like springing up things.

And it’s so very boring.

Marriage

Last week I promised some more extracts from that most compendious guide to every letter you'd ever have to write, 1111 Letters For All Occasions, published by New Light Publishers of New Delhi. I might have forgotten to tell you that I paid Dhs 12 for it, but I'm sure it's cheaper if you fly to Delhi and buy it. If you buy a number of copies, the savings will only increase. The ISBN is 81-85018-57-X and no, Amazon doesn't sell it.

Chapter 28 deals with matters marital and I am sure that if you only put some of this sensible, good advice into your own marriage, harmony will rule your home. Do not under any circumstances contact me as a consequence of this guidance. I shall deny everything.

I don't know about you lot, but I was crying by the end of the introduction...

Anyway. Here goes:

Mighty Marriage Matters
Marriage is not a bed of roses. Many thorny problems crop up between the husband and wife which need to be carefully tackled. If angry, the wife often goes away to her parents and can only be approached through correspondence.

Staying with parents
Dear Subhash
It is now three months that I have been staying with my parents and expecting you to come and take me home.
Is there anything in the matter?
Yours
Lilly

Positive Response
I regret that I could not go over to Calcutta to take you home because of pressing business problems.
I am coming next Sunday and will return home the same evening by air.

Negative Reply
I do not find you happy in my house with my parents. Therefore, I have no option but to let you stay with your parents as long as possible.

Reply to the above
That is no solution of the problem. We have to find a house of our own where we can live peacefully away from people's problems.


Coming of a Baby
You will be pleased to hear that I now carry a baby in my womb.
What provisions should we make for him?

Positive Reply
I am coming to bring you to Delhi and take you to the Jeevan Nursing Home on the Pusa Road for proper advice and care.
We shall reserve accommodation in the maternity ward.

Negative Reply
Since you are now pregnant, I suggest that you should continue to live with your father and mother till the new arrival.

Illness of the New Baby
I regret to inform you that Enu is ill and needs your immediate presence.
Come immediately.

Positive Reply
(Telegram)
ARRIVING ELEVENTH. SHAM KUMAR.

Negative Reply
If the baby is ill, let the doctors take care of her.
I am no doctor.


More next week...

Birthday

A year ago, with this post about the Arab Media Forum, I started this blog.

I think a celebration at the Thai Kitchen is in order!

Kuwait

I stayed at the Sheraton Kuwait the other week. It’s the first time, oddly, that I’ve stayed in that particular hotel and I would recommend it most heartily as the best business hotel I’ve ever stayed in: everything you need is there where you want it, from a printer in your room to free, high speed wireless Internet throughout the whole hotel. It’s truly excellent.

I do remember seeing it as a burned out hulk. Together with the Ramada Salaam, which was a boat, the Sheraton was one of two hotels, and in fact very few buildings, destroyed by the Iraqis as they legged it out of Kuwait. Apparently what they found scariest was the pinpoint accuracy of the cruise missiles and smart bombs, which is one reason why they didn't have the time or inclination to set off more of the explosives they'd wired up across the city. The speed of the US pincer-movement advance was the other reason, of course. I can attest to the accuracy claim, having seen the neat hole punched in the 9^th floor of the telecommunications Ministry building that led to the vapourisation of the Ericsson-made international switch. The operator positions on the other half of the floor were untouched. I have the photo to prove it. (well, actually I don’t. I lent it to Motivate for their Gulf Business 10^th anniversary of the invasion issue and forgot to get it back, but you know what I mean).

I had a minder for the week, provided by the Ministry of Telecommunications, because I was working on a supplement about the remediation of telecoms in Kuwait following the occupation. His name was Jaafar and he was a nice bloke, although one of life’s natural victims. Stuff just happened to Jaafar and it was never good stuff. He never expected good stuff and so was rarely disappointed. He went to university in the States and the kids thought it would be real fun to put a tab of acid in the Kuwaiti guy’s tea. He tried to describe the consequences to me, but I felt he fell far short of the reality – all those years of repression and trammelled thought suddenly bursting into a horrifying technicolour unleashing of everything, everywhere altogether.

He must have been a complete wreck for months afterwards.

It was thanks to Jaafar that I got a tour of the national museum, the other damaged building, which was closed to the public. The Iraqis had made a tremendous mess of it, taking most of the exhibits and burning the rest. The lady that showed me around was at great pains to show me the fireproof carpets that hadn’t burned. These were made in the UK, she kept telling me, as if this built an association between us of some sort. British people were in vogue right then, everywhere you went kids would shout out ‘Boosh good, Thatcher good!” at you.

The worst thing was the big hall in the museum. The soldiers had hanged pigeons by piano wire from the rafters as a sign that peace was dead. They couldn’t find doves, you see.

As we were driving to some telephone exchange or another from the museum visit, Jaafar took a wrong turning and ended up in a narrow dead end. There was no way he was going to be able to turn his enormous American car and I watched him just slump at the wheel. As he dejectedly surveyed the latest evidence that God had it in for him, it started to rain. He turned to me, his face a picture of misery, as the fat drops started to spatter on the windscreen.

“You see, Alex?” He said. “Zis is ze story of my fcuking life.”

I did like Jaafer.

Mushroom

Right, I was going to stick to my guns on this until Chris Saul starting sending people over here to check the 111 letters out. So, purely in Mr. Saul's honour, another excerpt from 111 Letters for all Occasions.

But that's it. No more until next week. No. No. No.

Asking Forgiveness

I am mushroom on which the dew of your grace drops now and then.

Let us harbour no thoughts of revenge, for revenge proves its own executioner.

Ours are the silent griefs which cut the heartstrings. Let us shake hands with time. Let us drown our differences in a cocktail at Ashoka Hotel tomorrow at 6.30pm.

Yours,

Rabid

Head for heights in Dubai

In a city that contains the world's tallest man-made structure, it can be hard to get a sense of perspective. Joy Lo Dico is dizzied by the highs and lows of the planet's most extreme tourist destination.

Saturday, 19 April 2008

For his 1979 travel book Arabia: Through the Looking Glass, Jonathan Raban stopped off in Dubai as the petro-dollar boom kicked in. Thirty years ago, no-one in Dubai could have foreseen the seven-star hotels, the extravagant shopping trips of Colleen McLoughlin and her fellow Wags, or George Clooney dropping into town. But its arrogance and aspiration was already evident to Raban.

"We passed the Dubai Hilton," he wrote. "It looked to me like a Hilton but it was marked by one of those singular honours which count for so much and seem – to an outsider – so numbingly unimportant. At that particular moment it was The Tallest Building In The Gulf and Sheikh Rashid of Dubai was apparently doting on it like a favourite child. Looking at its smug, slab-sides cliffs of glass and concrete, I hoped that it would not be allowed to enjoy its pre-eminence for too long."

STOP!

Stop right there. Yet another stupid report by a dumb 'been there for three days and know it all' blow-in, yet another useless, two-dimensional characterisation of Dubai from yet another someone who can't be arsed to look beyond the blindingly obvious. And the worst crime of all? She's started the whole stupid pile of ordure with a quotation from the original 'Been there, seen it, done that, gonna write it up and be home for tea' writer, Jonathan Raban. The man that dropped into the Gulf for a week, wrote a silly book about it filled with sweeping generalisations and assumptions and got away with the whole awful episode purely because so few people knew better in those days.

It is typical of Raban's slapdash, silly little book that he mistook the 33-storey Dubai World Trade Centre Tower for The Hilton, the four-storey building next door. It is even more typical that The Independent's brilliantly insightful journalist repeats the idiocy as she embarks on her shallow, idiotic sprint through Dubai before loading up on duty free and snatching her flight home to show her tan and some yellowish-looking diamonds to her mates.

It's enough to make you puke.

And if it's not, you can find the whole dumb, excruciating 'Paid a ferryman Dhs 100 to take me on a trip on the creek and bought a fake watch that fell apart, too' (Abra fare to anyone with half a brain, Dhs 50) piece of travel writing mediocrity here.

At least it's not as bad as the silly arse from the Daily Mail who wrote up how fun she found it shopping last year in Dubai's 'delightful and traditional old souk' - you guessed it, the Madinat Jumeirah.

The souk that was the inspiration for this blog's name, in fact.

More

I don't know why I'm so weak, I really don't. Here, then. But I'm not posting up any more of these until next Sunday. You'll just have to put up with the same old dross until then.

So. More excerpts from That Great Work, 111 Letters For Every Occasion.

Letters of Divorce

Divorces are not yet as common in the East as in the West, but the poisonous wind blowing around the world is infecting Indian youth. And we must do our best to protect our heritage of harmonious marital relations.

To the Mother

I am not feeling happy with Manmohan. He is given to liquour and has illicit sex relations with his brother’s wife.

O God, what should I do?

Positive Reply

Please have patience. Keep courage. Pray. Try to win Manmohan back from the part of evil.

I am sure God will help you.

Negative Reply

Your letter is shocking.

Really I do not know what to do.

Shall we consult a lawyer?

Consulting a lawyer

My husband and his mother are maltreating me and my life is very miserable. I am really living in hell. It is now for more than six months that we are separated.

Will it be possible for me to get divorce?

Positive Reply

I think it is possible for you to seek divorce under the circumstances that you have mentioned.

Please come to my office for further action.

Negative Reply

My gentle lady why must you hurry for a divorce?

Take time to cool down.

Letters

I have a number of prized possessions, for which I am thankful. Some of them are relatively valuable, like my first edition Seven Pillars of Wisdom and The Mint. Some have no value, like a neem leaf from a Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka or a rhododendron leaf from Cloud’s Hill. Some of them have a different value, like my 1845 copy of Household Management, an early cookbook. And some of them are simply beyond value. Into this last category falls my copy of a book called 1111 Letters For All Occasions. It is a work of insane genius. The authors are K. Malik, Anand Sagar and JS Bright. To them, and to New Light Publishers of New Delhi, I am eternally indebted. The book is intended to be a template for every letter you will ever have to write in life. All you have to do is pick up 1111 Letters, flick to the appropriate section (Matrimony, employment, commercial, official and others) and look up the letter you need. Although occasionally tempted to use one, I have always allowed wiser counsel to prevail.

I found 1111 Letters in an old stationery shop in Sharjah. It was lying, unloved and unwanted inbetween some Islamic esoterica and some charts for small children to learn how a tooth is formed. I idly picked it up, was instantly enraptured and bought it on the spot regardless of cost, considerable or otherwise. I simply had to have it.

“This must be regarded as the unique book of its kind. No author has ever attempted to write such a large number of letters, covering every walk and talk of correspondence.” Say the authors modestly in the preface, noting that when the publisher commissioned this great work the authors were hesitant to take on a task of such enormity. But, luckily: “When we proceeded deep into the woods of the correspondence, we found the jungle both fascinating and rewarding.” They finish their introduction with an assurance. “The reader will reap the fruits which the authors sowed and we are sure he will relish it.”

You can sing that one, boys. Never has one relished so much as I. The book’s charm lies partly in its strange and colourful language but mostly in the fact that its authors have simply made up a number of scenarios and written letters to suit these. We are therefore introduced to a whole fictitious universe, the lives of Manmohan, Singh, Prabakher, Lal and others are exposed as they quarrel, seek appropriate daughters, ship goods to each other, fall out and then go to court. Their strange correspondences give a new insight into an odd and wonderful world.

The following is a typical slice of the genius on offer in this most compendious and compelling of works.

Failing to keep appointment

You had promised to meet me in the Stock Exchange but you never turned up.

What is the fun of having any appointment when one does not have the capacity to keep it.

Reply to the above

Dear Mr Lal

You are mistaken. You had promised to meet me in the bank and not the Stock Exchange.

I fear your memory needs some training.

With best wishes

Yours sincerely

Sohan Kumar

Reply to Reply

Nonsense!

You are a dirty liar.

We had an appointment in the Stock Exchange and not in the bank.

Final Reply

Please don’t lose temper.

There could have been some kind of misunderstanding between us.

Let bygones be bygones.

The above is carefully typed and verbatim. It is only a scintilla from what is, to steal a certain Dubai Shopping Mall’s catchphrase, a rare collection of wonderful things. I shall offer more on a weekly basis, I think.

Darwin

The chances are that you've heard of the Darwin Awards. One of the cruellest and yet funniest corners of the Internet, the Darwin Awards are given to people who have done the world a service by removing themselves from the gene pool. It's a celebration of the many pointless, stupid and utterly dumb ways in which people choose to die. And it's very funny indeed.

The most wonderful thing about the Darwins is that they're real. Each award is sourced and must be backed up by a 'proper' print reference from a known medium. A couple of examples from this month's batch for you follow. And yes, I did say this month's. You can subscribe to the Darwin Awards newsletter (as I, in fact, do) and get a monthly update of clownish carnage. The fact that there enough utterly stupid deaths going on to keep this thing going on a monthly basis is in itself something of a worry.

I do hope you enjoy these. You can go to the website here.

NEW YORK: Joe, 20, was drunkenly driving through Wayne County farmland in upstate New York. With the utmost of inebriated care, he steered his car directly into a ditch and knocked over a powerline. Oops! How could he rescue his car from the ditch without getting a DUI?

The only way out was to steal a nearby farm tractor, and winch the car out himself. So he aproached the nearest farmhouse, managed to start a tractor, and motored over to the scene of the accident. He then proceeded to drive several tons of metal into the downed power lines.

Goodbye Joe. Hello Darwin Award.

CZECH REPUBLIC: Steel is valuable, especially the high grade alloy used in steel cable. Scrap metal dealers do not ask questions. They pay in cash. And a good supply of cables can be found in elevator shafts.

This particular goldmine was a towering shaft inside an empty grainery near Zatec, 40 miles northwest of Prague. The cable was tightly fastened, and the far end of it disappeared into the shadowy distance above.

After substantial wear and tear on a hacksaw, our man finally cut through the strong steel cable. At that instant, the counterbalance, no longer held in check, started to move silently downwards, accelerating until it reached the bottom of the shaft.

Result: one proud winner of a "terminal velocity" Darwin Award.

VIETNAM: A rolling stone is not all that gathers no moss. Three Vietnam men scavenging for scrap metal found an unexploded 500-pound bomb perched atop a hill near Hanoi, and decided to retrieve it with a little help from Sir Isaac Newton. After all, gravity is free. As they rolled the bomb down the hillside, it detonated, blasting a four-meter crater and sending all three entrepreneurs to a face to face meeting with their deceased hero.

Launch

Went on the radio this morning to witter on about The National, the new Abu Dhabi based newspaper. It was an interesting segment as I hadn't actually seen the paper - ADNOC might be selling cheap diesel (Gulf News finally picked up on that story!) but they weren't selling The National this morning when I dropped by.

I got a copy later. Congratulations are in order. It's stunning.