That Other Me (23 page)

“I can.” (More calmly now.) “I will.”

“That's better.” She stuffs her hair back into her turban. “I can only deal with one outburst at a time.”

We pass open-fronted shops packed with car tires and spare parts, and juice stalls surrounded by haphazard clusters of honking cars filled with restless customers. We pass a paint shop, a flour mill, and a parking lot filled with bright-yellow tractors. Later we see a row of workshops constructing house gates in the traditional style: decked with bits of welded metal and painted in bright colors, decorated with flowers, sharp geometric patterns, or the UAE logo. They make me think of Dalal's old shaabia house and how at first she had loved that her gate was adorned with a bright-orange coffeepot—until she realized that it was inferior and reflected the preferences of a common man.

The air conditioner is on full blast. I breathe in Adel's woody, musky scent and sigh. As always, he looks princely in his crisp white kandora with the cotton tassel dangling down the middle of his chest and the ghitra wrapped in a neat turban on his head. He has trimmed his beard close to the skin; it's cut in a clean line just under his chin, thickening slightly where it joins his mustache. Under my abaya I wear
a peach-colored chiffon shirt and a loose gray skirt that hangs just above my ankles.

We've been meeting in secret throughout the summer vacation. Some evenings Adel and I have dinner at Caravan, a restaurant by Dubai's Clocktower. There's safety there: the tables are nestled in private rooms with sliding locks on the doors. Other times we drive out to isolated beaches, all the way in Jebel Ali or Ghantoot. Today we've decided to go to the desert. It's four p.m., and to reach our destination we must pass through this noisy, diesel-infused main road in Sharjah's industrial area.

The light turns red, and Adel screeches to a halt. I sink down in my seat, even though I know it's nearly impossible that anyone will recognize me: my shayla is pulled so low it covers the upper half of my face and throws the lower half into shadow. I can't help it. Blended with the thrill of sneaking away is an apprehension that won't subside. What if someone who knows my family spotted me at Abu Hail Center and followed me as I took a taxi to our meeting point in the parking lot of Al-Mulla Plaza? What if some acquaintance happened to pass by just as I hopped into Adel's Mitsubishi Pajero? I thought I would feel braver after so many successful trysts. But no! That gut-twisting anxiety remains.

Abdul Majeed Abdullah sings “Raheeb.” Adel raises the volume, and I notice that the man in the car next to us—who moments earlier had seemed bored to the point of dozing off—has turned a curious eye in my direction. I switch off the radio. Adel frowns at the man and then snickers at my silliness. “You don't even know him.”

“Maybe he knows me.”

“He's not even Emirati.” He reaches out, but I slap his hand away before he has a chance to stroke my cheek.

“It doesn't matter,” I say. “Maybe he knows my uncle or one of my cousins.”

“That's so unlikely.” Adel twists his mouth and clicks his tongue before shifting into first gear. The tires burn in a screech. The car jolts forward, and Adel cannot hide his glee. It's not the first time he has acted this way, as if gravity had been pulled from under his feet.

“But not impossible,” I insist, and even though I am fully aware that my reasoning is absurd I stick to it because his indifference rubs me the wrong way. “You know the risk I am taking being with you. The least you can do is be discreet.”

“Blah, blah, blah.” He sticks his tongue out at me and waits for me to laugh and agree that I'm being irrational.

I would have, if this game he enjoys playing had any charm left in it. But the truth is that it has become tedious, to the point that I wonder why he gets so much twisted pleasure out of watching me get flustered.

I look away and busy myself by trying to catch as many names of the various roadside establishments as I can. I make the task more challenging by reading them in Arabic, then reversing the direction and reading them in English:
RED FORT PUNJABI KITCHEN
;
MORNING BREEZE LAUNDRY; SMELL AND SMILE FLOWERS
. Later, once it gets dark, the signs will flash in neon or glare through fluorescent tube lights:
SIT AND RELAX CAFETERIA
;
TOPPEST OF THE TOP AUTO BALANCE
;
SHINE AND RISE BAKERY
.

A jolt, and the engine growls as he overtakes the pickup truck in front of us. I glance at him quickly and see that the grin has not left his face. Three cars later, Adel cuts in front of an eggplant-colored Toyota Corolla. The driver, an older woman in a sari, looks straight into my eyes, her mouth warped with the shock of having been missed by a handsbreadth.

I swallow my cry before it escapes. I want to scold him, even slap him, but I resist the urge. That would just feed his need for attention and make him want to scare me even more. I stiffen and continue sur
veying the shops:
COOK OF THE PEOPLES RESTAURANT; THE NUTTY MAN ROASTERY; PARADISE PHOTO SERVICES; MISSION IMPOSSIBLE IRANIAN KEBAB.

There's a shopping bag between my feet, containing two cotton housedresses that I don't really need but purchased as proof that I really was at the mall, shopping. Why do I go through so much trouble for this childish man?

When I first arrived in Dubai five weeks ago, I spent days figuring out the logistics of how I would be able to meet him without raising suspicion. It would have been simple if only I knew how to drive. But Ammi Majed is against that. He will not budge when it comes to allowing the women of his family to drive.

My first plans were illogical and overdramatic. I pictured myself creeping out my second-floor bedroom window and climbing down a ladder, which I would keep hidden behind the tamarind tree. I imagined digging a tunnel to the far corner of the garden. Of course, it was all fantasy, but it gave me time to decide how ready I was to take the gamble of meeting up with him. Then, in a more constructive frame of mind, I examined the workings of my uncle's household: when the family was resting or out of the house; when the staff disappeared into the outdoor kitchen for their meals, or to their rooms for naps. I'm not sure why I bothered taking note of these details, because I couldn't just saunter out through the front gate as I would in Cairo. Although the roads in Dubai are broad, even, and clean, and although there are no hazards at the intersections because cars stop at red lights and wait for pedestrians to cross, a woman alone on foot would draw too many curious glances and trailing cars, and eventually someone would recognize me and feel it his or her duty to let the household know. My solution was simple: one of the house's drivers would drop me off at a mall; from there I would take a taxi to meet Adel.

“You stopped talking, I see.”

At the moment I feel very little affection for him. I consider opening the door and getting out. But we are out of the congestion, past Sharjah Airport and speeding toward the desert of Al-Dhaid.

Just before he turns off the road, Adel stops to let out air from the tires so he can drive on the soft sand. And then we're off, following one of the trails plowed by another person's car. To the left I see a settlement of five or six palm-frond huts, littered with roaming goats, and farther along is an oval-shaped enclosure of camels with their young. Scattered between the pristine dunes are plants plump with sap and a scattering of dried-up bushes. Every now and then, in the distance I spot plumes of dust stirred up by other four-by-fours.

As the Mitsubishi sways and rocks, my temper cools with the pleasure of being out in the vast and open desert. Why is it that I cannot stay angry with him for long? Perhaps it's because my time spent with him is limited—and precious. Nevertheless, I do my utmost to remain impassive, even though this becomes difficult when he turns off the trail and onto the dunes.

Up we go, flying off the crest. My abaya slips down to crumple around my hips, and my shayla slides onto my shoulders. I hold on fast, one hand clutching the sling above the car door and the other holding the corner of the seat in preparation for what's ahead.

It's a sea of swells and dips. Adel tears over the shallow dunes of soft-soft sand. With every leap, the breath sticks in my throat. A second later it's expelled with the force of the landing, along with a noise that's between a yelp and a grunt.

He knows I love the thrill. He knows I will soon be screaming from the rush. And I do, when the car stirs up the deeper sand of a high dune. “
Ooh!
” The car growls all the way up to the tip and purrs as it slides down, nearly vertical. “
Eeee!
”

Adel tackles a few more giants before maneuvering the car back to some smaller hilly dunes, where we're hurled from side to side and shaken up and down, back and forth. I grin and grimace at the same
time. There is no respite, just terror and exuberance all mixed together until I can't tell one from the other.

He is unwavering in his mastery, sliding the SUV in a wavy line so we don't get stuck, keeping a firm grip on the steering wheel but releasing it when needed, as if in conference with the car.

But then something happens: a miscalculation, a flaw in judgment. He reaches the top of a rise and is startled by what's on the other side. It's steep and narrow. It's a gaping mouth.

We slide down. The car is not as straight as it should be. “Get back up! Turn it around!”

He hears me. I wish he wouldn't listen to me. But the unforeseen hazard has knocked the sense out of him. Adel rotates the steering wheel toward me, and before either of us can react, gravity is pulling us down.

There is a thud. I am as heavy as a sack of rice as I drop on top of him. His cry is lost in the hiss of sand that swallows us. Some part of him—I'm not sure which—is stuck under me at a painful angle. He tries to shift my weight off but manages to do no more than nudge me a few centimeters onto the gear stick, which rattles and pokes me in the belly.

He bellows, and I realize it's his hand. It's pinned to the door under my ribs. I try to move, but my head is as heavy as a cannonball. I want to pull myself up, hold on to something, anything, but my cheek remains glued to the window.

Down, down, down. Every second stretches, and just as I start to imagine it will go on forever the car rocks into a precarious slant. Instinct tells me to jump up and out. Logic slows me down and tells me to get my bearings. There's a groan of metal and a massive thump.

Seated on the slant of a dune, I hug my knees and rock. Still shaky from the ordeal, I mumble my thanks to God for saving us. The over
turned vehicle sits in front of me, and I think it's a miracle that the accident wasn't fatal.

Soon after we climbed out through the passenger window, two Nissan Patrols with massive round lights fixed to their bumpers appeared as if out of thin air. They arrived just as I was examining Adel's hand, trying to tell if it was broken. (As if I had a clue about such matters.) Five boys, who looked to be about sixteen on account of their bony frames but were probably older, jumped out. After asking whether we were all right, they examined the car: it lay on its side, two wheels in the air and the pair on the driver's side buried in the sand.

It's the heart of summer, and the air is thick save for a mysterious breeze that suddenly picks up every so often. It's fiery hot and makes a whistling sound as it dredges up tiny twisters of sand around me, as if letting out a sudden fit of hysteria. Sand sticks to my clammy face and turns into a fine paste.

The boys wear baseball caps instead of ghitras—the sporty look. They hike up their sleeves and secure their kandoras in thick knots around their waists. They stand in a row facing the roof and start rocking the vehicle. Adel works with them, but he pushes only with his uninjured left hand. One of the boys drops to his knees and digs. When he is convinced that the wheels have loosened sufficiently, he gives a thumbs-up and rejoins the others. They seem to know what they are doing, and this comforts me somewhat as I mumble into my chest, “C'mon, c'mon, c'mon.” The quicker we get out of here, the better. Enough testing fate!

“One, two, three!” They push.

After a few unsuccessful attempts, they decide to rope our bumper to their bumpers and use their cars, one on each side, to yank it back up. This finally works, and my relief is so great that I want to hug them one by one. Of course I do nothing of the sort. Before they leave, one of the boys asks Adel whether he can manage steering in the sand with one hand. “What about . . .” He nods in my direction. “. . . the family?”

“My wife?”

“Yes, your wife. Can she drive?”

“No.”

“One of us can drive your car to the main road, if you want,” another boy suggests. “Or we can follow you just in case you get stuck.”

“Yes, because with that hand . . .” The first boy raises it gently and scrutinizes the swelling with skepticism. “I think you should go straight to the hospital.”

“And I will, brother,” Adel reassures him. “Look.” He raises his left arm and curls his fingers. “The other hand works perfectly.” He grins.