It's the little things ..... bedspace

.... that sometimes make you realise just how good you've got it.

Take these advertisements, for example. I photographed them on the weekend, pasted onto the side of a public phone booth on Bank Street in Bur Dubai.

The two notices at the top are advertising bed space. Not houses, not flats, not even rooms. Bed space.

There are two different kinds of bedspace available in Dubai - at least, there were when I lived there all those years ago, and I don't imagine much has changed if these ads are anything to go by.

Bedspace Type One is one-half of a bunk bed you rent in a room, which probably has three or four bunk beds in it, which means you could be sharing a room with five or six other people. Did you note that the ad on the top actually specifies you get an individual bed? For other alternatives, see below for Bedspace Type Two. You are probably an Indian or Pakistani man, perhaps Sri Lankan or Afghani. You might be a bachelor saving up money for your marriage at home, or you might already be married, and sending money home to your wife, children and most likely mother as well. If you're a woman you are most certainly young and single and submissive, most likely Filipino or South Asian.

Bedspace Type Two is literally, bedspace. You rent the bed on a timeshare basis. You're an Indian/Pakistani/Afghan/Sri Lankan shift worker, and you share the actual bed with one or two other people, and you each get a timeslot to sleep in when you're off work and the others are on. You might rent it from midnight to 8am, or on a twelve-hourly rotation. Take it as read, you don't get to sleep in.
 
Bedspace is a widely exercised and generally acceptable accommodation option in this part of the world. It's a prescription that means you can live in Dubai and earn money at a greater rate than you might in your home town.

It comes with its side-effects though, which can cause nausea and headache. The flip side is that if you're renting bed space you're probably employed by a third-party company who has confiscated your passport and only allows you one trip home every two years. You can't leave the company, because you haven't got a passport, so effectively you're a modern-day slave. You're completely dependent on them.

You probably earn between 400 and 1000 dirhams a week - the equivalent of about $125 - $350. Maybe the company doesn't pay you every month like it should, either ... maybe it only pays you every few months, or every six months, or maybe it doesn't pay you at all.

You probably risk your life quite regularly, especially if you work on a construction site during the summers here, when workers in their blue jumpsuits fall like stones from the top of tall buildings as their brains bake in the searing heat and their legs fail underneath them.

It's not all like this, of course. There are reputable companies who look after their workers (in a relative sense). But there are enough of the disreputable ones around to make you take a second look at the glamorous world everyone there is living in, with their designer clothes and fancy cars and top-end international lives. Lives which are built off the backs of the men who live in bedspace.

That makes some of us  thankful for the things we have. Glad for our suspiciously pornographic-looking flats and the ever-present soft red glow of our RAMEE SUITES-2 signs. We bid you goodnight, from the vast and gratefully unshared expanse of our four-poster porno bed.

I told you there'd be sewing....

Thank you lovely readers for your encouraging comments on my last post - oh how I love social networking for its power to cheer you (me) up when you (I) feel low. You cheered me up, and I'm grateful, and I'm glad I made some of you chuckle as well.

So it seems appropriate that today's post is a fabric-y craft one, because I am here in Dubai for the first time in five years, and it's heaven.

First of all, I was waved through at passport control........ which means the niggling little fear I've been harbouring all this time that I might not be allowed back into the country because my old residential visa wasn't cancelled through the proper channels when I left last time, was unfounded. Yay.

And driving along Sheikh Zayed road past all my old haunts brought a tidal wave of nostalgia over me, which I quite enjoyed. Dubai has changed so much, and I have a post about that ready to go, but MOST IMPORTANTLY, the fabric shops are still there in Satwa, right where I left them.

My very good friend Ms Read and I used to trawl the fabric markets in Dubai on an all-too-regular basis. It was our pastime to go and pick up new material and take it straight to Mr Prakash, our tailor near Lamcy Plaza.

Mr Prakash is a genius - I am still wearing clothes he made for me seven years ago. In fact, in honour of the occasion, yesterday I wore a plum-coloured straight skirt he made for me, to celebrate my return.

There was one shop Ms Read and I particularly liked - Deepak's, a wonderful place stocked and staffed in the Indian manner. That is, drinks on arrival, an attendant to shepherd you round the shop and pull out lots of lovely stuff for you, anther man to fold it all up once it was cut, and then a final man to tally the bill and take payment.

On the left, cotton polkadots for daytime. On the right, crepe de chine polkadots for nighttime

Last night, I walked into Deepak's and an attendant came straight over. I was hopping up and down with excitement to be there, and I explained that I used to live in Dubai but it's been five years and I have dreamed about returning and I love Deepaks, etc etc ..... and he fixed me with a gaze, an Indian head-wobble, and said "Oh yes, madam, I do remember you".  

I love the Arabic script on the middle selvedge - I'm going to make a feature out of that somehow

I was sceptical. Five years between drinks and he remembers me? I graciously said Oh, that's very nice but I'm sure you don't.

And he looked at me again and he said "You ask my friend over there. When you came in the door I said to him, the madam has cut all her hair."

I gaped.  He continued.

 "You were often coming in here, very regularly you were coming in here, and you were coming with your tall friend, and you were buying many fabrics." And I'm thinking, well, yes, that does SOUND like me.

"You were taking them to Mr Prakash."

You could have knocked me down with a feather.

"I am remembering your name madam, and it is (insert my name here). Are you remembering my name?"

And I confess I wasn't remembering his name at all. My god, the man remembers me and now I feel embarrassed because I a) didn't believe him and b) don't remember his.

"Ah, but you were remembering my name when you were living here madam. I am Sunil. And I am remembering that before you left you came in and bought one great mountain of fabric to take home with you, many embroidered silks especially in the bright colours."

It's true. The man has a memory like an elephant (while I have one like a goldfish.) How happy and touched was I to feel remembered, and valued - no doubt because I used to spend so much money in there, so it's a friendship based firmly on commerce, but really, who cares? The man remembers me as a valuable customer, five years later!

 I spent a lovely hour looking through the shop and finding a wonderful collection of orange and yellow fabrics to take back to Bahrain with me. Um, 26 metres to be precise. And then he threw in four free pieces as well, as a welcome back gift.

My god I love Dubai, and especially Deepak's, and particularly Sunil.