From Souk to Souk (18 page)

His eyes attentive beneath thick eyebrows, Rahim studied us while Omar described how it had become too dangerous and the water too polluted for the Mandaeans to carry out baptisms in Iraq's two great rivers. Instead, they had to use a special pool inside the building. With a gesture to the cross in the alcove, Omar explained that the
drabsa
, as it is known, was the symbol of the Mandaeans. Above the niche, the text inscribed in marble, he said, was taken from the ‘Treasure of God', the Mandaeans' sacred book, the script being in both Arabic and the unique alphabet of the Mandaean-Aramaic language.

Rahim invited us to look at the baptism pool. We filed out of the long reception room and followed him along a passage to an area that resembled a small, half-finished spa, brightly lit by fluorescent strip lighting. Centre stage was a rectangular pool of rather murky water with steps leading into it along the length of one side and a large, very elaborate chandelier above. With an air-conditioning unit the size of a vending machine as the backdrop, the holy man stopped in front of a badly grouted wall bordering the pool and started to speak, looking at Omar and gesturing towards the opaque water. While waiting for the translation, I glanced round at the odd decor: marmoreal crazy paving, bathroom tiles, and filigree gold lamps on the walls. This was where the baptisms were carried out, began Omar, once Rahim had finished. Mandaeans believed multiple baptisms and ablutions washed away impurity from the body, and the more times they were done, the better, so the soul could pass on to the next world.

In the far corner of the room, I noticed a cloth canopy suspended from bamboo sticks with a couple of simple wooden bench seats beneath. I picked my way over the tangle of pipes, hoses and cables that lay around to take a closer look. Between the two seats was a battered table with several large stone discs on it. Rahim followed me and, through Omar, described how this was where Mandaean wedding ceremonies took place, the bride and groom sitting on the thinly padded benches. A small olive sprig protruded rather sadly from between the bamboo and the canopy, a symbol, I imagined, to wish the young couple a peaceful life. For those who remained in the country, this felt to me like the triumph of hope over experience, the protection afforded Mandaeans appearing as effective as the flimsy construction of sticks and cloth before me. My attention drifted back to Omar, who was finishing by explaining that Mandaeans were only allowed to marry within the sect.

After browsing the various panels of writing and pictures that adorned the walls of the strange room, it was time to thank our host and leave. As we left the building, guarded by police, I wondered how long it would be before the rather elegant interior with its polished woodwork and marble would be reduced to the same state as the once splendid merchants' homes we had visited earlier.

***

We have just been for an evening walk through town, bright shop windows lighting up otherwise tenebrous streets. Omar told our police escort we did not need them and we slipped out into the dark with only the two plain-clothes guards, Ali the photographer, and Mazen, the grey-haired driver who, spending so much time behind the wheel, was keen to stretch his legs. We walked single file along the raised pavements in front of luminescent window displays and barber shops, looking at thin children buying sweets and swarthy men being shaved. Shops here that once sold music now peddle only recordings of Koranic verses, while the liquor stores have disappeared altogether, their Christian owners gone, or murdered. Omar said he had a headache and needed to stop in a pharmacy, so we ambled on without him, confident he would catch us up. As we paused to look at rows of biscuits and chocolate bars in an open shop front, a policeman emerged from the shadows of the street, the dark blue of his uniform as camouflage in the night. Like many in this country, he bore more than a passing resemblance to its former dictator. Black eyes flashing, his tone at first seemed merely curious, his questions just meaningless noise to the non-Arabic speaker. Only as Mazen and Ali tried to field his queries did I realise that neither of the guards was with us. The policeman's forehead wrinkled and his voice hardened with each successive question. Ali pointed to his camera and shrugged, a flow of words accompanying the gestures. As the policeman turned to the driver, the black truncheon at his waist catching the light, I asked Ali what was happening.

‘Is OK,' he said, shaking his head. Ever tactile, he touched my arm in an effort to reassure me, but the look on his face had quite the opposite effect.

Idle passers-by were solidifying into a crowd, listening attentively to the man in uniform, looking at us, starting to jostle with each other. Nobody was smiling, not even our normally jovial driver. Cigarette still in his nicotine-stained hand, he took out his simple mobile phone, hairy fingers quickly pushing buttons, while Ali now turned his attention to deflecting the questions from the gathering youths. I saw Mazen dialling again and then again, trying to reach Hassan or Ahmed. His oversized Adam's apple rose and fell and his tongue passed over his lips. Perhaps because he had an audience, the policeman's tone was now sounding overtly hostile. He stepped forward, eyes narrowing: it was no longer necessary to understand Arabic. The tranquillity of the morning's boat ride suddenly seemed a world away. A microcosm of the Arab Street, it appeared, was now in front of us.

Then, as if having received stage directions, Hassan and Ahmed appeared, one from either side, nonchalantly reassuring the policeman with picture IDs that put him back in his place. I looked around: the crowd had dissipated and instead shoppers drifted as casually as before. Lighting another cigarette, Mazen had just begun talking to the two minders when Omar arrived.

‘What was the problem?' I asked, as Hassan explained our encounter to him.

‘He wanted to know where the security was,' said Omar, wiping his forehead. ‘It's not a problem.'

We headed back in the direction of the hotel and soon found ourselves on the tree-lined corniche. In more liberal times, waiters in white jackets served cocktails at casinos here. Now, straggly bushes and uneven pavements spoke of poverty and neglect. Set back from the road, a statue, twice life-size, formed a silhouette in the dark evening air, one hand held in front. Clouds of moths and midges fluttered and floated round the dim streetlamps on either side and, in the distance, on the far bank of the Shatt al-Arab, tiny yellow lights twinkled. We approached the angular-faced giant and Omar translated the script on the square waist-high plinth beneath. It was Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, he said, a local man and Iraq's most renowned twentieth-century poet. Ali took a photograph for his collection, the flash quickly attracting two policemen who appeared from nowhere. Omar's papers from the Ministry and Hassan's ID card met with confused looks, shaking heads and an insistence that we move away from the statue and not take any more pictures. Fear is never far below the surface in Iraq: fear of making the wrong decision, fear of the hierarchy, fear of thinking rather than simply obeying.

***

We are in a bar a couple of hundred metres further along the corniche sitting on yellow plastic chairs, our soft drinks on the matching table in front of us. Groups of men sit a short distance away, talking, laughing, discussing and smoking as men do anywhere. The brightly lit bar, set between the road and the slow-flowing river, now black, is what passes for nightlife in post-war Basra. The air is warm and deceptively comforting as Hassan pulls out the magazine from his semi-automatic pistol before showing it me. He keeps a firm hold of the gun; I find it strangely reassuring that he trusts no-one. I look up and in the distance see the Ferris wheel, now a rainbow of colours lit up against the night sky, still turning languidly. I reflect on how Sinbad's fictional adventures ended happily with the sailor finding great wealth through ‘fortune and fate'. Sadly, after all I have seen today, I fear that only the latter awaits the current inhabitants of this once flourishing city.

I take another drag on the
shisha
and relish the flavour of double apple tobacco before blowing the smoke out, the scented cloud dissipating before my eyes into the warm evening air of the hotel courtyard. My gin and tonic is slipping down beautifully and, if Peter does not arrive soon, I shall have to order another. I pick up my phone from the table to check the time again: he should have been here half an hour ago. As I touch it, barely audible above the Arab lounge music, a huntsman's horn: I have a text message. Peter's taxi is just arriving at the hotel; I should order him a G&T. Sucking with satisfaction on the water pipe, I look for a waiter in the rapidly fading light. They are all so polite here, so willing, so helpful, so easy on the eye. I wish they were like that at home. I ask for two large gin and tonics –
Tanqueray
, please – watching his manicured fingers as he taps the order into the gadget he is holding. The badge on his chest says he is called Jamil.

No sooner has the waiter gone than Peter walks in. He sees me waving behind my veil of smoke and pads straight over. They have taken his bag up to the room, he says, flopping into one of the black faux wicker armchairs. We talk about his flight from London, the food, the delay, the taxi ride, until Jamil reappears with the drinks and sets them down on the table, together with bowls of nuts and spicy biscuits, flavours of the orient to whet our appetites. Our gins are delicious and just the thing to get us in the mood for our short holiday. I can feel the tobacco and alcohol going to my head, but the high starting to lift me into party mode is not induced by social drugs alone: it is simply from being back in Dubai, the sparkling city of hedonism where, if you are willing to suspend disbelief, you can imagine all your dreams coming true. Here is where you can experience the sensuous pleasures of the Middle East seemingly without limit, where you can indulge yourself in the delights of luxury shops and feast on your fantasies. Come to Dubai and leave behind all that guilt for, here, you can enjoy yourself without the faintest glimmer of a conscience.

We decide to dine at the hotel and ask Jamil for the menu. As he lights the tea candle in the glass on our table, I notice two young couples entering the patio and looking round for somewhere to sit. With their dark skins and close-cropped goatees, the men, like so many here, look straight from Arab central casting. I wonder if their polo tops really are a size too small or whether their muscles are simply too big. The women might have stepped out of a fashion magazine, a little white dress next to its electric-blue twin, long hair ready for a photo shoot, pouting lips shiny with gloss, doe-like eyes noticing nobody but registering everything. Perusing the menu, Peter asks if I am going to have a starter. I say I am, while I watch the men guide their high-heeled trophies down the steps towards one of the square tables. Jamil returns to take our order. As Peter plays with his signet ring and reads out his choice, I wonder how the waiter dresses when he is not in his burgundy and white hotel uniform, what sort of place he lives in when he is not dashing round the palm-filled patio, dutifully attending to the whims and desires of the well-heeled clientele. I imagine him commuting to a tiny apartment in some distant corner of Dubai on the driverless metro system built to ferry domestic staff and other people without cars around this sprawling city. He asks what we would like to drink. We order water and a bottle of wine, a 2010 Sancerre. It is all tapped into the little gadget.

The courtyard continues to fill up with a mix of expats and Gulf State tourists. Tanned legs in designer footwear strut in front of black
abayas
that sweep along the floor, sky-blue shorts contrast with starched white
dishdashas
, and ice-cold beers gather condensation while steam rises from glasses of mint tea: the only things that mix are the cigarette smoke and the fruity fragrances drifting in billowing clouds from the
shishas
. Words of English, Arabic and French dance in the air while tambourines and traditional
ouds
shake and strum an exotic melody above the pulsating, sensual baseline of the electro-beat that pounds from invisible loudspeakers, a soundtrack to the scene. A teenage boy in an embroidered waistcoat and black harem trousers appears carrying a tray of hot charcoal. Using what look like sugar tongs, he quickly replaces the ash on the bowl of my water pipe with glowing coals. Sucking the mouth-tip, I take another deep drag on the pipe, savouring the taste of the smoke. Over the starter, we discuss what we would like to do in the coming days. We both know people here. I tell Peter he should meet my friend Cesar: we can go out for dinner together, perhaps party afterwards. We want to go shopping, but have no idea what we want to buy. The main course arrives and our conversation descends as fast as the wine in the bottle: we begin to discuss the people around us, who we find sexy, who not. We jokingly pair each other off with the most unsuitable partners, vying to see who can spot the least likely match. We are sliding into holiday mode. I can feel myself slipping into fantasy land.

***

Next morning, the smoke from the
shishas
has vanished from the courtyard, replaced by dazzling sunlight, but the dregs of gin and wine are still flowing through my veins. I am part way through my usual hotel breakfast routine: juice, then fruit salad, followed by smoked salmon and scrambled eggs. After the virtuous start, I feel less guilty as I tuck into a
pain au chocolat
and a blueberry muffin. Peter is wolfing down his own standard fare, which approximates a full English breakfast. We laugh about the night before. We have thought of things we need to buy.

After a slow start to the day, we stroll over to the Dubai Mall. It is only a few hundred metres to the world's largest shopping centre, but the walk in the early summer heat brings back vague memories of Camus'
L'Étranger
from French class, of scuttling along shadeless streets. The last time I was here, ‘The Old Town' was still being built, a mass of cranes, hoarding, and sinewy workers from the subcontinent, armies of shadowy figures working through the night as we cruised past in our air-conditioned taxi. Now, we are in the middle of a copy of an ancient desert city that never existed, imitation mud walls concealing comfort and luxury, palm trees and lawns growing as if on hormones. We walk past a long, decorative pool in the broad courtyard of a five-star hotel that looks like a 1950s Hollywood film set. At the far end, feeling as if we have trekked across the entire Arabian Peninsula, we pass through heavy glass doors into the coolness of the Souk al Bahar where the first thing we see is a pastiche of an ‘olde English tea shoppe', all ruche and pink swirls, with tapestry-style seat covers and curtains. It is like Barbie meets Miss Marple: it is hideous. We quickly realise the souk has about as much to do with a Middle Eastern bazaar as Selfridges on London's Oxford Street. There are escalators and air-conditioning, stands peddling souvenirs, shops selling fine furniture, and a store specialising in erotic underwear. Two mannequins in the window are clad in scraps of red and black lace, strategically placed love hearts providing the finishing touch. Al Bahar is compact and up-market, but its designer chocolates and couture scarves languish in empty boutiques. It is a soulless place in every sense of the word. We float through its corridors and out the other end, where we make our way over the bridge, a gentle arc that leads to where the real shops are.

Towering above us is the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, a sparkling spire reaching over 800 metres into the sky. Separating us from this edifice is a large turquoise lake that spills out from the promenade in front of the Dubai Mall. A modest crowd, braving the heat and with cameras at the ready, has gathered at its edge. Suddenly, a mass of fountains shoots up, flamboyantly spouting water 150 metres into the desert air in time to music. A ripple of applause and gasps of amazement drift across from the crowd. On my previous visit, the Burj was half the height; now it stands a triumph of engineering. It is the latest example of a human fascination that began all those years ago in Babylon with
Etemenanki
– the 90-metre-high Tower of Babel; a fascination with constructing ever higher buildings, with reaching to the heavens in a demonstration of power, of invincibility. How apt that the shimmering skyscraper should stand in this of all cities, a glittering centre of hedonism. I stop to look at it, shading my eyes against the reflection of the sun on the water and glass. For a building containing a third of a million tonnes of concrete, it is remarkably graceful: few must be those, I suspect, who fail to be impressed at the sight of it. Peter hates heights, but I determine to go up the tower whilst we are here.

A few moments later, we have exchanged the dry, burning heat for the air-conditioned protection of the mall with its piped music, spacious atria and wide avenues housing over a thousand retail outlets. We meander along one of the walkways, strolling past some shops, wandering into others, enjoying their perfumed interiors. We feel fabrics, smell leather, look at watches, start to be tempted, all the time slipping deeper and deeper into the fool's paradise of consumerism, Dubai-style. We are as surprised to discover T-shirts selling for hundreds of dollars as we are to find stores like Topman, the latter no doubt catering to the expat market. Caucasians walk by, barely within the limits of the respectable dress code requested on the mall entrance doors, arms and legs exposed as if on a beach holiday in Spain. Yet they are invisible to the locals and visitors from other Gulf States in their flowing robes: heads never turn, eyebrows betray nothing and, unlike back home, none of the Muslim males here hiss comments about morality to Western girls as they walk past. Men in crisp white
dishdashas
and women in
abayas
made of the finest cloth saunter along the mall's avenues, the pedicured feet of both in footwear that would cost some people a month's salary, their watches and jewellery lifted straight from the pages of a
Financial Times
weekend supplement. Doing my best not to stare, I try to imagine the lives of these people. I remember the words of a German architect friend who works a lot in the region. He told me about the huge houses he designed for families in the Gulf States, explaining how the basements were parking garages, with the domestic staff lodged in windowless rooms on the level below the collections of luxury vehicles. I look at the wealthy Arabs passing me in the mall and wonder if they will return to such mansions to be waited on by humble workers emerging obediently from the subterranean depths. As I watch those around me, I realise that the vast shopping centre is in fact a great leveller in this highly stratified population. As much as anything, the malls are one of the few truly public spaces here. It is too hot to linger outside, but their air-conditioned walkways offer even those of more modest means shelter from the desert heat and an opportunity to take part in Dubai's dream world, if only vicariously.

We walk as far as Bloomingdale's, finally giving in to our credit cards' itch to come out of our wallets, before continuing to the Galeries Lafayette, each now with a large bag. We drift in and out of one store after another. The plastic gets regular airings, the purchases become more capricious. The shop assistants, many more from the Far East than the last time I was here, are unfailingly gracious and smiling, professionals at making us feel like visiting royalty, opening doors and wishing us a pleasant stay. Like hypnotic
djinn
doing a dance of temptation, the range, the choice, the novelty, all start to swirl around as we explore level after level of the vast mall, equivalent in size to fifty football pitches. In the middle of it all we find the Gold Souk, a collection of expensive jewellers' shops in a simulation of an Islamic courtyard. They are surrounded by stores selling the sort of bling you might find on any high street, and in the middle stands a row of would-be-quaint wooden carts flogging cheap souvenirs. A few unrented retail spaces, their fronts covered by smart hoarding with Arabesque designs, lend this geographic centre of the mall a strangely unfinished feel. A sign at the top of an escalator points down to a basement branch of Waitrose, a high-end British supermarket. We trudge on past shoe shops and window displays of opulent furniture, a mass of golden swirls and purple velvet. We pause outside what claims to be the world's largest sweet shop and gaze at an Olympic-sized ice rink where children are skating, their excited cries echoing around the cavernous atrium. Shop after shop, boutique after boutique: the mall seems endless. We stop to admire the multi-storey waterfall with its silver statues of divers plunging its length, have a late lunch in a mock French bistro, and shuffle round the aquarium, knocking people with our shopping in the walkthrough tunnel as we watch sharks swim overhead.

If the coolness of the air-conditioning cannot temper our feverish acquisitiveness, fatigue and the increasing weight of our bags do. Eventually, we take a taxi for the journey back to the hotel, even though it is just a stone's throw away, and deposit our mass of purchases in a corner of the room, our homemade altar to consumerism somewhat spoiling the elegance of the minimalist Arabesque decor. Exhausted, but still feeling the benefits of retail therapy, we decide to relax by the pool and head downstairs to the striped sun loungers. We order cold Lebanese beers from a pool attendant with teeth as dazzlingly white as his hotel-issue polo top and discuss our plans for the evening. While Peter, the brim of his new baseball cap pulled low, checks office e-mails on his phone, I text my architect friend Cesar, reflecting on how Dubai must be heaven for someone in his profession. Cesar is a party animal and will show us a good time, I tell Peter between refreshing swigs of
Almaza
. A few seconds later, the sound of the hunting horn proclaims his response: we should head up to the Marina for drinks at the Yacht Club, followed by dinner. Peter contacts François, a mutual French friend of ours here, proposing he join us. François is a great fan of Dubai who is constantly encouraging us to come and visit. His reply does not come straightaway and sounds odd when it arrives. He will join us, but is not in much of a party mood.