The Sand Men (2 page)

‘It would have been nice if we could have entered the house together,’ she said to no-one in particular. ‘His contract doesn’t start until the first.’

‘That’s only the day after tomorrow.’ Cara checked the view as they drove off. ‘Very flat, Dubai,’ she said in her Noel Coward voice. She could be perversely old-fashioned when she chose. It usually meant she was happy. Lea sometimes had to remind herself that Cara was clever; playing dumb was part of her public persona, like the dour, unsmiling Facebook shots she posted.

‘It looks like a building site,’ said Lea.

‘That thing wasn’t there on Google Earth.’ Cara pointed to the half-finished steel exoskeleton of a tower looming from the soft pink mist. The traffic was heavy and slow. It appeared that nobody drove a car more than three years old. A brand-new Lexus and a Lamborghini Aventador rolled at a stately pace on either side of them, their powerful engines wasted.

The Mercedes saloon coasted along a broad avenue of construction zones, then switched lanes onto a curving flyover. An immense chasm of steel and glass opened up before them.

‘I think we just went into the future.’ Cara stretched her neck back but could not see to the tops of the buildings. A uniform row of cranes appeared along the horizon like the raised drumsticks of a distant marching band. There was a glitter of water between the bases of the tower blocks. The streets were deserted. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘I guess they’re all inside,’ Lea replied. ‘It’s too hot to be out in the open.’

‘It kind of looks like Los Angeles. I mean, what Los Angeles looks like in movies.’

‘No honey, this is bigger and newer. There’s supposed to be an older area near the creek. Look over there.’ They passed a wide man-made river that meandered between the glassine offices. ‘Maybe we can hire a boat, take a trip around the place to get our bearings.’

‘Cool train.’ Cara pointed to a curving armadillo-hood of polished steel, one of the stations on the monorail line leading out to the Palm Jumeirah, the great man-made palm tree island that jutted from the coastline. Its concrete fronds were supposedly visible from space.

‘The Palm Atlantis monorail,’ said Lea, reading from her guide-book. ‘You’ll be able to get about until you pass your driving test.’

They reached a T-junction, where the first Mercedes took the filter and turned off, to be eclipsed by soaring steel cliffs. They were alone now. Lea was bothered by the ease with which Roy had been spirited away. She reached for her phone.

‘Don’t embarrass Dad on his first day,’ said Cara without looking over. ‘We’ve only just left him. We can manage.’

She wanted to protest, but reluctantly returned the phone to her pocket. She could feel the edge of the cigarette packet.

They passed beneath a gigantic electronic poster featuring a beautiful girl tossing glossy brown hair, smiling as if she had just discovered a secret reason for living. The slogan read:
Live a bespoke lifestyle—Dubai Pearl.
The billboard’s pixels shone brighter than any cinema screen.

So that’s what we’re getting, a bespoke lifestyle,
Lea thought.
Men come out here with their families, fulfil their contracts, bank their cheques and head home. It’s all mapped out for us. It’ll be good to have a system for once.

The journey took almost an hour. They emerged from the cliffs of grey steel and silvered glass. The chauffeur did not speak, but tapped on the windscreen with a manicured fingernail.

‘Look, Cara.’ Lea pointed.

The compound was surrounded with date palms and high walls of yellow English brick. Its houses were invisible from the main highway. A slip-road brought them to the perimeter.

At the main entrance, a metal barrier rolled back. Its folksy wrought-iron design was unable to disguise its real purpose.
Dream Ranches.
The name was stencilled in gold pokerwork on a slab of laminated teak, and underneath,
A Division of DWG Estates
.

The company had constructed the compound to house the families of Dream World’s engineers, architects and technicians. The resort’s designers were known as
imagineers
, a Disney term that felt infantilising, considering the pressures they faced; Dream World had been scheduled to open in February but was already four months late.

The chauffeur stopped at the gate house and nodded to a pair of young guards in crisp khaki uniforms. The boys ran pole mirrors beneath the Mercedes. The gatekeepers wore spotless white
kanduras
and
guthras.

‘They’ve got string ties,’ said Cara.

‘It’s called a
kerkusha.
You can soak it in scent.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I read, my dear.’ One guard promptly dropped to his knees and checked behind the tyres. ‘I think they’re looking for explosives.’ The country was on a medium-level security alert, but so was everywhere these days. If you followed the Foreign Office advice on travel you’d never go outside again, especially not in London.

The chauffeur finished chatting to the gatekeepers, and the saloon rolled inside. After fields of ochre sand and gravel, the sudden mouth-watering burst of greenery came as a shock. Behind the acacia trees stood identical beige ranch-style homes. They were arranged in pairs, low and wide, with shallow red-tiled roofs and spotless garage bays.

The roads were uniform and identically matched, from the colour of their fences to their regiments of kerbside eco-bins. The houses were constructed close enough to each other to suggest that a subtle point was being made; they were for executive employees, but employees nonetheless.

‘Welcome, please,’ said the unsmiling driver, pulling to a stop. ‘This is your new home.’

‘I
CAN’T BELIEVE
you packed teabags. We’re not on holiday. You’ve finally turned into Nan.’ Cara was impatient to explore. She roved fractiously from room to room, anxious to see over the dense green hedges that surrounded the property. The street outside was deserted and silent.

‘As you will one day turn into me, darling,’ countered Lea. ‘Or if you’re lucky, the me I might have been.’

‘Don’t start.’

‘We should have a cup of tea first.’ She opened each of the cupboards in turn and found them packed with groceries. She had forgotten that she’d filled out an online form requesting kitchen provisions. Most of the produce was from Waitrose.

‘Can I go outside?’

‘We’ll have to go out later and get some fridge stuff. There’s supposed to be an amazing mall nearby. We’ve got a shared swimming pool, and there’s a lake and a golf course.’

‘Then let’s
go
!’

‘Let’s wait for the luggage to turn up first. You’ll need to unpack today if you’re going to start school straight away.’ She had enrolled Cara in a British School run by ex-pats who had stayed on after the country had been handed back. The classes were small, and the Albion High School prospectus suggested she would get a better education than she would have done by remaining at her cash-strapped state school in Chiswick.

Lea walked through the house, making mental notes about how the furniture would need to be rearranged. The property came with chairs, tables, beds and sofas, finished in safe tones that matched the cream and beige walls. There were three flat-screen televisions. The beds were made. There were even towels in the bathrooms. The rooms smelled of lavender air-freshener.

Opening the French windows in the lounge, she stepped out onto the area which had been described in their orientation brochure as ‘the entertaining deck’. Tipping her face to the sun she closed her eyes, feeling the encompassing calm of light and heat. It was raining in London and 14°—she had already taken pleasure in checking the conditions on her phone.

‘Turn your data roaming off until you get a local provider,’ Cara called. ‘Do you want me to do it for you?’

‘I’m not completely useless,’ Lea called back. ‘I’ve already done it.’ She quickly checked her mobile settings and disabled the internet access.

The deck had comfortable rattan sofas and pretty peach-shaded lamps. Beyond it was a small square garden filled with unfamiliar plants. She could smell the flowers, pungent and cloying.

It was wonderfully quiet. No circling helicopters, no sirens, no continuous thrum of traffic.
I won’t be able to get away with the odd cigarette out here,
she thought,
the air is too still.
Roy thought she had given up, but she felt sure Cara knew. She knew too much about everything.

‘The luggage could be ages,’ Cara called, trying again. ‘Come
on
, there are cars in the garage. They’re ours, aren’t they? The keys must be around here somewhere.’

She was going to argue, but decided Cara was right. There was no point in simply wandering around the empty house. Whoever was delivering the luggage presumably had keys. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let’s go and see what’s out there.’

There was, indeed, a double garage containing two cars. The little blue Renault was emphatically intended as a woman’s shopping vehicle, complete with a decent boot for grocery bags. When she turned the ignition, she found the gas tank full. Roy’s new BMW X5 had been parked in the shadows like a glistening black diamond, manly and expensive. Not that she was complaining; the company’s attention to detail was everything Roy had promised. All their immediate needs had been catered for. This, she decided, was no mere courtesy. It allowed her husband to start work immediately. Various permits and laminated ID cards had been provided in orientation packs that made her feel as if she too was now working for the company.

She paused before getting into the car and looked across the street. A curtain shifted, and for a moment a man’s face watched her from the darkness of his living room.

‘Are you okay to drive?’ asked Cara.

‘I’ve driven in other countries. Incredible as it may sound, I did have a life before you.’

‘Just checking.’ Cara had confidence beyond her years. Her mousey hair was London-tough, her chin a little too pointed, eyes blue and thoughtful, with a cool indifference that hid her emotions. She had become good at hiding herself, so that when a genuine emotion surfaced it was like the sun coming out.

The guards opened the gate and released them into the afternoon traffic. The soft-spoken female voice of the sat-nav was a nice touch. It guided them along a series of identical dual carriageways in the direction of the mall. Driving was stately and at a fixed pace, as in America. You hardly needed to be awake.

Lea caught sight of herself in the mirror. The same high cheekbones and brown eyes, almost dark enough to be mistaken for Arabic, but she was tall and lacked the fluidity of movement she associated with Middle Eastern women. Instead she saw the restlessness of an awkward Englishwoman who was always slightly too aware of her surroundings.

‘You can go anywhere you like, so long as you keep your shoulders covered and don’t wear a short skirt,’ she said, looking out for the turn-off sign. ‘Maybe I should help you choose a new summer wardrobe.’

‘Forget it, not going to happen,’ said Cara.

‘We’ll figure it out when we go shopping. It’s super-safe. Apparently there are some towns where women aren’t allowed on the beach and even men can’t wear shorts. It’s more relaxed here. It only rains about three times a year. We can go to the desert. You can try dune surfing. And there’s falconry, and—’

‘You don’t have to sell it to me, Mum. Left here.’ Cara pressed a pale finger on the tinted windscreen.

‘I’m excited, aren’t you?’

‘Interested,’ Cara conceded.

They parked on a virtually deserted floor, wrote down the location of their car, B769 Orange, and headed into the Arabia Mall.

The scale of the building induced agoraphobia; five pastel floors with a vast golden glass atrium, fluted fountains and a forest of tropical plants, hundreds of stores selling high-end luxury goods, mostly aimed at women. ‘Check out the shoes and handbags,’ said Lea. ‘It’s how the local ladies show their wealth.’

‘No different to home, then,’ said Cara, pushing her mother towards an Apple store. ‘Can I get the iPad now?’

Lea had promised Cara she could have one if she made the move without a fuss. She hated using bribery but had been worn down by her complaints. Only a few women were wearing
abayas
, the traditional black gowns used to cover day-wear. Many wore
hijab
head-scarves but there were very few
burqas
, the hoods that sometimes still came with metallic coloured face coverings. Most were dressed in the kind of designer wear you saw all over the Mediterranean.

‘How come the women cover up and the men don’t?’ Cara asked.

‘The Prophet Muhammad issued guidelines for female modesty,’ Lea explained. ‘You’re not allowed to outline or distinguish the shape of the body, so skin-tight jeans are out. He once warned that in later generations, there would be people who are dressed yet naked.’

‘What, he saw the future?’

Lea looked about. ‘Seems pretty accurate to me.’

‘The women must get hot.’

‘The clothes are very light. Feel that.’ She showed Cara a gauzy, pretty
hijab
. ‘And it’s only for going out. At home they jazz it up for their husbands.’

They found what appeared to be the largest supermarket on the planet, and were paralysed with indecision when faced with seventy types of breakfast cereal. Cara stood before a display featuring thirty different brands of honey. ‘Why would anyone need so much choice?’ she asked, genuinely bemused.

‘I guess eating is a serious family business. Not drinking alcohol probably makes you enjoy food more. Remember when the three of us used to sit down at the meal table together?’

‘No.’

‘I’m just saying. A real dining table. Conversation. The odd night in front of the TV.’

‘Is that what you want?’

‘What, for us to be a real family? Well, yes, it would be nice.’

The process of shopping was slow and laborious—everyone seemed to be moving at a third of the speed she was used to. Lea pushed the giant red plastic trolley between rows of shocked fish arranged on ice like jewelled purses, past jars of exotic pickles as mysterious as foetuses in a medical museum, through a corridor of arranged meats that glowed acid pink under sterile counter lights.