From Souk to Souk (19 page)

A few hours later, our taxi pulls up at the Marina, a hot spot for expats at the other end of town, twenty kilometres away from our hotel. As we walk up the steps to the Yacht Club, I can feel perspiration already starting to trickle down my back in the humidity. We make our way to the bar past beautiful twenty- and thirty-somethings poised in the lobby like models in a brochure from an up-market clothing store. We quickly find Cesar. Like us, he has just arrived and has not yet been engulfed by the loud mass of party goers. His shirt, open at the neck, reveals a tanned chest, the rolled-up sleeves, muscular arms. I take an instant fancy to his blue suede loafers. We fight our way to the bar and, after some polite jostling, eventually manage to order beers. Everyone seems to know each other. Cesar greets and is greeted as we push our way through the crowd, trying not to spill our drinks. We go outside on to the terrace with its view of the Marina and lavish residential towers. It is almost as busy as indoors, but, again, the humidity is stifling. By now, I can feel my new shirt sticking to me. We fight our way back inside, but it is difficult to hear ourselves think above the music, the laughter, the voices. Finishing our drinks, we decide to go to dinner. Peter texts François, who says he will meet us in the restaurant.

Another cab ride past a forest of skyscrapers, their countless windows lighting up the night, and then the three of us are sitting at a table for four in a South American theme restaurant that looks like a cross between a prison and a ranch. Brick walls and iron bars, cow skins and black and white photographs make a strange combination, but it works. While we wait for our Parisian friend, we order
caipirinhas
and a bottle of sparkling water from the Brazilian waiter, who makes a point of telling us that his name is Eduardo. With his slicked-back hair, he looks like Rudolf Valentino, but the Chinese symbols tattooed on his forearm place him firmly in the twenty-first century. We enjoy the air-conditioning, study the menu, say cheers when our glasses clink and sip our drinks as lounge music mixes with the conversation of other diners. Behind the long counter, a barman with a ponytail and a crooked nose is juggling three spirits bottles as he tries to impress two blonde women perched on high stools. They are laughing coquettishly, encouraging him and relishing the attention; above the music I can just make out their broad Yorkshire accents.

François arrives, escorted to the table by another waiter who, like Eduardo, is dressed entirely in black. I am shocked to see how much weight François has gained and struggle to stop my gaze drifting towards his newly expanded belly. We go through the greeting ceremonies and introduce him and Cesar to each other. Sitting down, he also orders a
caipirinha
and we, having nothing left but melted ice to sip noisily through our little black straws, ask for the same. Like Cesar, François is an architect, but, in contrast to my Lebanese friend, he is pale, his blond features and blue eyes sensitive to the city's glaring sun. Passing slender fingers over his dense flaxen beard, he tells us in his light accent he has had a bad day. In fact, he has lost his job, he sighs, just as the waiter returns with our order. We pick up our glasses, unsure what to say, stirring our cocktails with the straws. Then we drink and ask François to tell us what happened.

Things had been difficult for some time, he tells us: a colleague did not like him. The guy was an Emirati, so had the upper hand – they always do, he says, staring into his glass, eyes glistening. Foreigners here count for very little. If you are caught speeding you have to pay a huge fine, but locals do what they want, he shrugs. He says the colleague was jealous of him because he was producing better results. It did not take long for him to conjure something up, to plot a way to make sure François was sacked. Now, he needed to find a new post, fast, otherwise he would be thrown out of the country. When I ask whether he will get any compensation, he affects a laugh. He has to work thirty days' notice and then he has the same period again to find a job before losing his residency permit. The waiter reappears, beaming like a game show host, and asks us if we are ready. While the rest of us say what we want, François, biting what is left of his thumbnail, quickly scans the menu, then tells the waiter he will have a steak.

While I savour my
caipirinha
, Cesar says he knows a firm that might have some openings coming up. François seems unconvinced, but, quickly finishing his cocktail, appears to reconsider and thanks him for the lead. I study them as they exchange telephone numbers and agree to speak the next day. Our French friend becomes suddenly more upbeat, the sombre tone that had descended evaporates and, by the time the food arrives, we are all back in party mode and in need of more drinks. We order some wine, start eating and then Peter and I begin to list all the things we bought in the mall. By the time dinner is finished, it no longer seems to matter that François has lost his job and, after another bottle of Bordeaux, we decide to go to a bar that Cesar knows.

Once again, we are in a taxi cruising along the Sheikh Zayed Road, the multi-lane highway that forms Dubai's backbone, this time heading back south to the Marina area. The wailing strains of a Pakistani woman accompanied by unmelodic music warble out from the dashboard. As if transported to another world by his compatriot's voice, the silver-templed driver appears oblivious to us being in the car. Or perhaps he is simply tired: his thin body seems lost in his shirt and trousers and looks too thin to have any energy reserves. I wonder for how long he has been working today and whether he will fall asleep at the wheel. François is wide awake and laughs at everything, whether it is funny or not. I suspect he had been drinking before he joined us in the restaurant.

We pull up outside an entrance with well-built doormen in black suits and a queue of wannabes behind a thick red cord. As Cesar heads straight to the front of the line, I feel we ought to have arrived in a smart limousine rather than a yellow cab. I turn to look at Peter and François, hoping the young architect will be able to walk in a sufficiently convincing straight line to be allowed into the club. Cesar seems to know everyone in this city and a word from him is enough for us to be waved inside by the bouncers, guys over 1 metre 90 with boxers' noses, coiled earpieces dangling from cauliflower ears, and all the charm of henchmen in a James Bond film. The cinematic theme continues inside with ultra-modern decor of shimmering metal and white leather, like something from a 1970s sci-fi movie. Everyone is tanned, beautiful, dripping in jewellery. I expect a photographer from a society magazine to appear any moment to take pictures of groups of fashionistas with toothpaste smiles, eager to get their faces into the right glossy publication so everyone will see how happy they are. As we push through the crowds, a party of girls are just vacating a couple of sofas, clambering to their feet on towering heels and picking up glittery designer clutch bags. We sit down, Peter and François on one sofa, Cesar and I opposite. My Lebanese friend waves a waiter across. We have to almost shout the order above the pounding oriental electro-pop. I think I hear François saying it is the first time he has been here. He looks around at the clientele, so many of them working hard to sparkle, to look their best. People have a short shelf-life in Dubai; perhaps it is the heat. A brunette in an expensive-looking grey mini-dress strides over to Cesar and bends down to kiss him, taking care not to spill her glass of white wine. He stands up and for a while they chat before she looks across at us and smiles a cold ‘Hello' between glossed lips. I watch her index finger trace a path across his stomach, fuchsia nail varnish vivid against his white shirt. A tray of drinks arrives and she kisses Cesar goodbye before blending into the crowd. It is impossible for the four of us to hold a conversation above the music. I chat to Cesar next to me, now and then glancing across to the others where Peter is nodding and frowning while François is talking incessantly and giving the occasional Gallic shrug. I suspect he is going on about his lost job again and worrying about the future. The alcohol has done its work, first relaxing him, then bringing euphoria, before finally casting him adrift into melancholy. I ask myself what he will do if he cannot find a new position here soon. Cesar touches my arm, his fingers warm. I have not been listening to him. Apologising, I say I am tired. As he crosses his legs and leans towards me, the blue shoes catch my eye again. As if reading my mind, Cesar smiles and, asking me if I like them, taps my leg with his foot.

***

I look at the Downtown area below me, the low-rise clusters of beige buildings interspersed with tufts of green. I think about François' tears after we left the club and his disappointment when Cesar's lead did not work out. Time is running out for him, disappearing like sand between his fingers. Every day counts. I realise that the brand of capitalism that has transformed the desert coastline into a strip of glittering glass and steel and turned burning sand into stylish oases operates with ruthless efficiency. The excellent service we experience everywhere is not because people here are better or nicer: they are frightened of losing their jobs at the snap of a manicured finger or the nod of a head and, with it, their work permit. Dubai is a work-hard, play-hard world: it is just that for some there is very little play, only toil.

Seen from up here on the 124
^th
floor of the Burj Khalifa, the lake below now resembles nothing more interesting than a spilled energy drink. The Address, the fashionably white 43-storey hotel on its eastern edge, looks like a maquette; in the foreground sprawls the quarter-pie shape of the huge Dubai Mall. Beyond that, amidst the haze and dust, rows of skyscrapers, no longer towering, just a series of rectangles and tubes protruding from a distant, sandy surface. Down on the ground, it all seems so perfect, so sparkling, so solid, but from up here I get a real sense of the fragility of the fabricated world below. Just beyond the spectacular and sumptuous buildings of Dubai's new Downtown area lie the endless sands of the Arabian wilderness, a hungry beast waiting to strike when its prey is not looking. Like a long finger, the Burj Khalifa's thin shadow extends way beyond the city into the desert, as if taunting it. As I look out over Dubai, I am struck by the vulnerability of life here: the air-conditioned bubble with its flowing water, fresh food, greenery and comforts is completely energy-dependent. The entire city strikes me as being akin to a spacecraft with an artificial life-support system. From half a kilometre above the ground, I finally realise both the greatness of the achievement of creating this metropolis in the desert and the sheer folly of doing so. The Emirates are, I am told, the most unsustainable country in the world. From the observation deck of the Burj Khalifa, skilfully marketed as
At the Top
, it is easy to see why.

For all its riches, I doubt this modern-day Babylon will be remembered a hundred generations hence. Despite its reputation for hubris and hedonism, the original Babylon was a great centre of culture and art. Somehow, I do not think the statues of divers we saw in the mall will one day find themselves displayed next to a section of the Burj Khalifa in the way that the stele bearing the laws of the Babylonian King Hammurabi stands in the shadow of the Ishtar Gate in Berlin's Pergamon Museum. Looking out from the observation deck platform, I wonder whether, in some future, tourists will visit the ruins of Dubai as I once did the remains of the fabled Mesopotamian city. Or whether, in two thousand years, there will even be anybody here to do the remembering.

And, reflected in the unsustainability of the city that stretches before me, I see the tenuous nature of my own presence here, in this country, in this holiday fantasy where you forget the value of the local currency, live for the moment and begin to believe that a new life could be created here instead. You can only suspend disbelief for so long. Only now does the reality of the situation become apparent. My return to Dubai puts into sharp focus how little has changed since my last visit, despite all my efforts to the contrary. I turn and walk towards the elevator, ready to go back down to earth.

Struggling for breath under the weight of expectation, I looked at the clock on the dashboard, I looked at my watch, I looked at the time on my mobile phone: their verdict was unanimous. There would be no escape: the moment of truth was approaching inexorably. We had been in the traffic jam for what seemed like a lifetime, the silver strip of the Mediterranean on the distant horizon having long since disappeared from view. Gone were the fertile landscapes of the plain and in their place stood tired, dusty bushes struggling to survive in the increasingly arid environment. The air-con battled audibly to keep the temperature in the car to a bearable level while outside the glaring sun burnt as though determined to roast us alive. I imagined the car's tyres sticking like chewing gum to the asphalt as we inched forward. The road climbed, climbed, ever upwards, towards the interior, towards the city, as if we were ascending to the gates of heaven itself.

My chest tightened as I said we had to pull over and stop so that I could make a call. I clambered out of the car into the searing heat and walked safely out of earshot, not realising that the traffic and closed windows rendered my conversation inaudible anyway. I called up the name from the phone's address list, braced myself and pressed ‘dial'. I could feel my heart beating as the call went through; I wondered if I was going to be sick. I prepared myself to attempt normal speech when I heard the voice on the other end. We spoke. No, there was no news: I would have to call back later. The anguish was to be drawn out a few hours more. A mixture of foolish relief at not having to face reality swirled dizzily with the horror of waiting yet longer before knowing one way or the other. It was as though the delay, the judgement, the sentencing, was being dragged out: a foretaste of the punishment to come. Nothing is worse than not knowing, than doubt: it is in uncertainty that the greatest fear lies.

I got back in the car. We did not say anything about the call. My friend is good like that. He can be very discreet. Perhaps it is something in the character of Swedes. We rejoined the traffic crawling up the hill to this most ancient of cities. I wondered what it would be like. I had heard it can change you. I had read of people who had been transformed by it, who had become religious, who had been overwhelmed by the experience, who had undergone an epiphany, who had gone mad. I wondered what the city would do to me.

Finally, we saw the reason for the delay: three wrecks of twisted metal surrounded by emergency services' personnel blocked half the highway. Statistically, more people die in road accidents in this country than from all the shooting and bombing. We negotiated our way past police cars and men and women in fluorescent safety jackets until, finally, we were free. We left the slow-moving river of traffic behind us, the road opened out and suddenly we were speeding towards the city. It was not long before we reached the outskirts. I was surprised by how high up we were and by the mountainous nature of the landscape. A modern development of little box-houses clung like limpets to the side of a barren hill. I should have expected it, but this was not how I had imagined it to be. I reflected on all that these homes represented as we pushed on towards the centre. We had arrived in Jerusalem, a place I shall never forget.

We drove around the Old City on a wide ring road with traffic lights, shiny road signs and dazzling white lines on fresh tarmac, an incongruous display of modernity and apparent normality in this crucible of tradition and the irrational. Eventually, we turned off and headed down a series of narrow, winding roads into East Jerusalem before arriving at our home for the coming days, the iconic American Colony Hotel. Originally a pasha's palace, it stood in a lush oasis of green, a veritable Garden of Eden with palm trees offering welcome shade, bougainvillea bursting with colour, and the gentle fragrance of jasmine, redolent of so many romantic fables.

Inside, the dark wooden reception counter, heavy furniture and colonial style decor made me think Hercule Poirot could appear at any moment sporting a white suit, straw hat and spats. While we waited to check in, I perused the hotel's brochure. The building had been bought at the end of the nineteenth century by a group of American Christians, it explained, and had begun life as a hotel in the early years of the last century, evolving to become one of Jerusalem's landmarks. The brochure claimed the hotel to be a haven of neutrality being owned neither by Muslim nor Jew, but, as I wandered round the foyer and saw the titles of the books for sale in the glass cabinets, I realised that, sadly, in Jerusalem there is no such thing as impartiality. Formalities concluded, we went to our room and unpacked. I sat on my bed and looked round at the antique furniture and the black and white photographs on the walls. Through the French windows the pool flashed turquoise, a reminder of the merciless sun outside. Having come so far, I felt obliged to explore the Old City, but needed to do so on my own. After just a couple of minutes' walk from the hotel, I found myself in a rather shabby commercial street with shops selling mobile phones, shiny grey suits, haircuts, fruit, and vegetables. Drivers with thick, hairy arms dangling from the windows of Japanese cars hooted impatiently in the heat and dust as shoppers wove their way through the crawling traffic.

The street opened on to a wide road on the other side of which stood the Old City and the imposing sixteenth-century Damascus Gate built by the Ottomans. Even as other, darker thoughts churned at the back of my mind, it was impossible not to be filled with a sense of wonder at the sight in front of me. I imagined Nabataean merchants arriving at the city, their camels laden with frankincense and myrrh, and, centuries later, crusaders leading one of the twenty-three sieges to which Jerusalem has been subjected over the years. For millennia, this city has occupied such a key place in human history that today its name is almost a part of the DNA of every Jew, Christian and Muslim, wherever they are in the world, observant or not. Now I, too, was here to see and experience Jerusalem, but my communion with the city was to be a bitter one.

Along the busy road outside the walls, tourists and the faithful, vendors and shoppers mingled in a noisy, chaotic melee, the visitors in awe of the sight ahead, the locals no longer noticing its crenellated fortifications and towers that stretched in front of them as they busied themselves with carrying, buying and selling all manner of merchandise, just like innumerable generations before.

In the footsteps of countless millions, I passed through the Damascus Gate and headed down the sloping stone slabs that led into a warren of alleyways and a street level of times gone by. I found myself absorbed into the Arab Market, transported to another world. Stall after stall lined passages so narrow that you could easily touch wares hanging on either side. Toys, scarves, cosmetics, tin pans and underwear: a kaleidoscope of gaudy tat crowded in from left and right. Ragged awnings kept out not only the sun, but fresh air too: the smell of spices, cheap perfume and perspiration swirled in an intoxicating and suffocating mix. Stout women in long nylon robes and
hijabs
paused to inspect the goods on offer and then pushed their way past me as if I, the infidel, were invisible. This market held none of the cultural or architectural attractions of souks I had seen elsewhere in the region and certainly none of the charms: it was a confusion of stifling tunnels ‘Made in China', from the oppressive heat of which I could not escape fast enough.

I emerged somewhere near the Via Dolorosa where signs pointed the devout and the curious in the direction they were expected to take to follow the path Christ walked carrying the cross. I turned off and quickly found myself in a different, scruffier world with children playing and litter piling up in the corners, the cocktail of smells in the souk now replaced by the acrid odour of urine. A thin, ginger cat surveyed me nervously before abandoning its scraps and hurrying away. Generations of sandstone walls towered above, the once elegant mixed with a jumble of later add-ons, although ‘later' is relative in Jerusalem. I continued walking, wandering, exploring and almost inevitably ended up at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, steered perhaps by some invisible hand that guided me through the maze of narrow stone streets and cobbled alleys.

Built on the site of an earlier pagan temple, the church rose in front of me a mass of sandstone surrounded by more of the same, squeezed into the centre of the Old City. Two windows, each set in a high arch supported by thin columns, looked down on me like startled eyes. Beneath them was another pair of arches, one bricked up, the other a black rectangle – the gateway from the dazzling daylight to the shadows of the twelfth-century church. It is reputedly the spot referred to in the Bible as Golgotha, the setting of the crucifixion, which was outside the then city walls. It is one of those places you are compelled to enter. Inside, I was bewildered by the medley of separate churches vying with each other for the attention of the devoted and, presumably, the grace of God. Judging from the decor, gold seemed to be a key element in their argument. This place should have felt holy, but it was just touristic. Meditation and prayer might have been appropriate, but, despite the subdued light, there was no sense of peace amongst the jostling crowds, the shoulder bags with tour operator logos, the bouffant hairdos in artificial orange, white and black framed by headscarves. I recalled the brawl between Armenian and Greek Orthodox monks from two of the six churches that control the shrine and wondered how they would justify their behaviour with their hero's call to ‘love thy neighbour'. Miraculously, I found a spot away from the shuffling masses whispering in countless tongues and sat down. I thought of the phone call. I thought about the situation. And I felt a deep sense of despair.

After a while – I do not know how long – I got up and went back outside to face the heat and the bright sunlight, the same sun that shone down on the Canaanites, Greeks, Romans and Byzantines when in turn they each ruled the city. I continued towards the Jewish Quarter and soon found myself in tidy streets where Orthodox men wrapped up in black coats and felt fedoras, despite the heat, chatted with each other, and boys with side curls and arms full of books walked purposefully to their
yeshivot
, their religious schools. Star of David flags hung from windows, limp in the afternoon heat. I slipped into a side street and after just a few paces was surrounded by almost rural stillness where only the occasional glimpse of washing drying on a rooftop line or a well-tended pot plant outside a door hinted at the area being inhabited. The sense of timelessness was palpable. Turning into an alley, I saw two gnarled olive trees before which a small sign announced that they were an estimated two thousand years old. I paused and contemplated the tumultuous past of the city and that these two trees, symbols of peace and already a thousand years old when the crusaders arrived, had witnessed and survived so much: the Romans and the Rashidun, the Umayyads and the Mamluks, the Ottomans and the British. Yet it was the fact that they might even have stood here at the time of the crucifixion that provided a living link to the past in a way a stone monument or a precious vase simply cannot. And their longevity put my own mortality into even starker contrast. I looked at my watch. The hour was approaching. I could feel my stomach beginning to writhe in anguish and my throat tightening as if gripped by an invisible executioner eager to carry out his task.

I drifted towards the Western Wall. As I ambled along a narrow, stuffy street, half a dozen American tourists scuttled past, their guards with handguns drawn. Did this make them feel safer, I wondered? I queued to pass through the airport-style security check and then walked out onto the Western Wall Plaza, created after the demolition of the Moroccan quarter following the Six-Day War. I pondered the wall's long history, the last two millennia of which have been as part of a ruin and, as I observed Jewish tourists around me, young and old alike, looking at it in awe, asked myself how people could attribute so much holiness to mere stones. And I wondered if there were not more important things in the world than fighting over rocks.

A discreet but all-pervading military presence was a blunt reminder of the strength of feeling the site engenders. Above, where the Second Temple had once stood, glistening in the sunshine was the Dome of the Rock, the ultimate symbol of the discord that lies at the heart of the city and that poisons the entire region. I wandered over to the wooden walkway that rose above the plaza to lead to the Temple Mount and a small Portakabin where more soldiers carried out further security checks, this time to make sure nobody was smuggling in Jewish prayer books or instruments, prayer by non-Muslims being forbidden within the boundaries of the compound. The openness and tranquillity of the Temple Mount proved a welcome respite from the suffocating labyrinth of the city below, but the ornately decorated Dome of the Rock itself, its golden cupola glistening in the sunshine, was strictly off limits to those not of the faith. Here, from the shady gardens of what Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary, I could see across to the Mount of Olives outside the city walls. Ironically, this most disputed site was the only place I had visited in the city that had any sense of serenity. I looked at my watch. It was time. I took out my phone and, with a sense of dread, dialled.

As we drove to Jerusalem, I had wondered what it would be like. Now I know. Jerusalem sits on a hill, a bastion of intolerance, its position inland symbolic of its isolation and of the stark contrast to the laic openness and modernity of Tel Aviv just sixty-seven kilometres away on the coast. Known, fittingly, as the navel of the world, it is the epitome of all that is regressive and inward-looking. It turns its back on the world and focuses its schizophrenic energy on how it can keep itself only for Jews, only for Muslims, only for Christians, each time to the exclusion of the hated other. It cannot, of course, fulfil all of these aims simultaneously. To me, it represents the abject failure of the representatives of the three great monotheistic religions to practise what they preach and an excuse for many others to barricade themselves behind the placards of bitter tribalism. Instead of love, tolerance, peace and forgiveness, the city encapsulates and exudes the antitheses of all its protagonists purport to espouse. If there is a God, surely he must despair when he looks down on Jerusalem.