Welcome to Dubai (The Traveler) (11 page)

Recently, Rasik had gained some inside information on what may have happened that day. After being asked a few questions about his work and what seemed to be troubling him, he began to blab away to a man who offered to pay for his drinks at the bar. And Rasik began to tell him all that he thought he knew about the tragic accident.

“I keep asking myself, how did everyone know so soon what had happened? The police, the ambulance, the news cameras—they were all there in a matter of
minutes
when sometimes it takes hours and
days
for anything to happen at our site,” he explained to the stranger. “All of it was very unusual.”

“So you believe that someone informed them all in advance?” the man asked. “But this accident happened in broad daylight in the afternoon. Of course they would all arrive there quickly.”

The light-brown man showed an extreme level of calmness and understanding. He had noticed Rasik wearing his light-blue construction uniform from work, and he decided to befriend him by asking about his day on the job. He too had worked as a laborer. And as one question led to another, Rasik began to tell him everything. He nodded with his right hand around his fourth small glass and said, “I’ve heard a few things about a vendetta.”

The stranger frowned. “A vendetta?”

“Yes. A few older workers who have been here for a number of years …” Rasik stopped momentarily to gather himself as the strong drink began to throw him off balance at his barstool. Even the bartender gave him a knowing look from behind the tall counter.

On cue, the stranger told him, “I believe you’ve had enough drinks, my friend. Will you be able to make it back home?”

Rasik nodded profusely. “Yes, I can make it home.” But he was on a roll with his story and wanted to finish it. He felt compelled to complete his statement of what he knew, and the drinks had blocked his better judgment to remain silent.

“What I was saying was that I was told by some older workers that—”

“Excuse me, are you certain that you’ve not had too much to drink?” the man interrupted him.

As Rasik became frustrated, his imbalance was more noticeable. He nearly fell off of his stool as the man moved to catch him. That heightened the bartender’s attention.

“Are you all right?” the rugged man behind the counter asked him.

“No more drinks for you, my friend,” the stranger concluded.

“I’m fine,” Rasik protested to both of them.

“You are not fine,” the bartender argued. “And you have had enough drinks for one night.” The rugged man was over six feet tall, with a knife scar across his left cheek. If Rasik objected again or became unruly, he was prepared to alert his staff to show the man out, or he would do it himself. He even took the intoxicated man’s drink away.

“That is enough.”

Rasik was in no position to argue, and he was not unruly. So he nodded and accepted his fate without telling the rest of his pressing story. He then stood from the barstool and wobbled. The friendly stranger moved again to catch him.

“Let me help you out,” he offered.

Rasik accepted and walked gingerly with him to the exit. The bartender continued to watch.

“Are you sure you can make it back home?” the friendly stranger pressed him.

Rasik smiled and answered, “Slowly,” with a chuckle. He was suddenly embarrassed that he had had so much to drink. “I just need to get home and lie down.”

The two men shared a laugh as the man opened the door wide for him.

“Thank you for the drinks and your kind ear,” Rasik told him.

The man placed a kind hand across his back. “Don’t mention it, my friend. Anytime.”

As Rasik made his way outside and back into the streets of Deira, the friendly man returned to his barstool and secretly signaled to a companion across the room who casually stood and walked out behind the drunken construction worker.

“I feel sorry for the man,” the stranger commented to the bartender. “He seems to have had a rough couple of weeks.”

The bartender frowned and was unconcerned. “We all have our rough weeks,” he said as he filled another drink order at the bar. There had been plenty of immigrant men with bad days at work who had chosen to drink too much. And their drinking had paid the bartender’s rent.

*****

As Rasik headed gingerly down the street toward his small apartment building in the night, the second man from the bar easily spotted him meandering down the sidewalk. The Indian laborer had not gotten very far in his drunkenness. The second man from the bar then signaled to three more men to follow. They had been waiting outside for their instruction for close to an hour. The second man then returned to the bar and was done with it.

“Okay, you two watch the streets,” the lead voice of the three men commanded. He was in his thirties and dressed in a heavy, dark jacket to hide his weapon. The two younger men in their twenties wore plain clothes to blend in with the normal pedestrians. They then separated into three different directions. One walked left, the other walked right, and the leader followed behind Rasik.

After ten o’clock, there were still people, cars and taxis out on the streets of Deira, but not as many as there had been an hour or so earlier and fast decisions and actions could now go undetected. So the man followed the slow-moving and wobbly laborer up the sidewalk, while watching for his cues of his young cohorts, with one in front and behind him. When it appeared there were no onlookers, the man wasted no time in running up and jamming his six-inch hunting knife several times into Rasik’s back.

“Unnhh!” Rasik squealed. The pain was excruciating and sudden, even with numbness from the alcohol.

The man quickly stuffed Rasik’s mouth with a rag to keep him from screaming too loudly, while cutting open his pockets to take his belongings. The assault and robbery all took less than twenty seconds before the man ran off into the night.

Rasik crumbled to the ground and squirmed, bleeding on the sidewalk. By the time five minutes had passed and the first person found him there in a pool of fresh blood, the three assailants were long gone.

As the Indian laborer slowly slipped into the afterworld, he thought of his wife back home in India and mumbled his last words in Hindu, “Sunita … I’m sorry.”

Chapter 12

From the earlier gathering with Mohd Ahmed Nasir, there were a few men of a certain character who were invited to remain behind for one-on-one discussions. Saleem, the rugged Pakistani, was one of them. He was told to wait and be patient, while Mohd conducted conversations with several men before him in a private room. In fact, Saleem was called in last.

“He wants to see you now,” he was told by Mohd’s personal bodyguard. Bakar, a thick-mustachioed Algerian, was one of the biggest men inside the room; Saleem was sure that he would be a handful in any form of combat.

Saleem stood from where he sat on the floor and had to stretch out his legs to avoid stiffness. The armed guards showed him into a bedroom to the right of the kitchen that had been converted into an office. There was a small desk with a tall leather chair behind it where Mohd sat, and a much smaller chair in front of the desk where Saleem and the rest of the men were shown to sit. Behind Mohd’s desk were a small cot and a pillow for him to rest.

Saleem sat in the chair across from the desk as a lone guard stood behind him with an assault weapon cradled in his arms.

Mohd looked directly at the Pakistani and smiled. “You are a military man,” he stated.

Saleem nodded. “Yes.”

“But now you want to make a civilian living for your family.”

Mohd spoke as if he knew everything. That was his way.

Saleem paused and thought out his words before responding. “It was a very difficult decision.”

Mohd nodded back to him. “I understand. I had to make difficult decisions as well. How many children do you have?” he asked next.

Again, Saleem paused. He didn’t want to discuss it, but he had lost much of his family from the constant warring in and around Pakistan, including his young wife and children. It was a reason he had left his homeland, deciding to live a civilian lifestyle. If only that civilian lifestyle could be more profitable and respectful, he would have no complaints.

“So you no longer have children or a family?” Mohd assumed.

Saleem was surprised by this, and he remained hesitant.

“I have lost loved ones as well,” Mohd told him calmly, “and my war was an economic one. I had a decision to make between my family and modest wealth, which was no decision at all. Every family must eat and have shelter; otherwise, you will have no family.

“Do you know the man you used to work for?” he asked Saleem next. His questions were rapid and continuous, as if he had a lot to ask.

Saleem shook his head, uncomfortable with not knowing. But he hadn’t come to Dubai to know all of his employers; he was there to work, provide a new living for himself and create some peace of mind.

Mohd continued, “His name is Abdul Khalif Hassan. I used to work for him myself, when he was far too young to know his influence. I served as his first overseer on the construction of the International Suites hotel.”

Saleem nodded. He knew that hotel. It was very popular with international tourists. He had imagined what it would feel like to have a room there for a night.

“He owns that hotel?” he asked Mohd.

The wise old man grinned momentarily. “Abdul owns many things, but he lacks the ownership of a strong
conscious.
In his world, the completion of a task overrules all of humanity. So the construction of his buildings will go on, regardless of who pays the price with death.”

Mohd paused, then added, “Including my wife, Faiza, of thirty years, who needed money for an operation.”

Saleem narrowed his hardened dark eyes, sharing Mohd’s pain. Men of pain could relate. It was spiritual. Even the armed guard flinched with irritation inside the room, and he had heard the story several times before. “You did not have enough for your wife’s operation?” Saleem asked him. He was immediately sympathetic. Deprived men lacked the monetary resources for many of the needful things of life, let alone the extravagances that men and women desired. Poor men had been trained to do without.

Mohd smiled and remained calm. “I did. And my wife was able to have the operation. But I was not allowed to return home to be with her in the hospital, nor during the time of her recovery. I was asked by the
Emirati
child to keep it all in the hands of Allah. Not because of his faith, but because he needed my experience here in Dubai to finish the job of construction.

“But I should have told him to keep his
construction
in the hands of Allah, and gone back home to Egypt to be with my wife and family during her operation and recovery,” Mohd added sternly. Then he paused again and breathed deeply. It was his moment of revelation. His armed guard breathed deeply as well.

“There were complications with my wife’s recovery, where she came down with a life-threatening fever. So I told the
Emirati child
that I was returning home to Egypt immediately to be with my ailing wife and family. And at that time, he told me that if I left my post, I would no longer have employment in Dubai when I returned.”

Mohd stopped and shook his head, looking down at his dark wooden desk. He peered back into the sympathetic eyes of Saleem. “I had a moment of hesitancy, where I thought about how much money I could lose. As an experienced engineer from the Egyptian Army, there were not many here who were in my position. The majority of the building engineers of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and the surrounding Emirates were European. So there was a lot for me to lose, not only for my family, but as a representative of Arab professionals here in Dubai. Nevertheless, I eventually made the decision to go home, where my wife, Faiza, died in my arms.”

He stopped and shook his head again, gravely.

“My personal dilemma should not have been such a difficult decision. It would have been honorable and gracious for an older and wiser developer to allow me the time I
needed
back home with my wife. And although there is no way to guarantee that my wife would have lived had I been there earlier, there is no argument that the
ignorance
and
youth
of Abdul Khalif Hassan was in complete negligence, as he continues to be today.

“He is driven by his insanity to complete each and every building
yesterday
instead of today or
tomorrow.
It is an insanity of
youth
and inconsideration that must be dealt with.
He
must understand, and all those who have allowed him into power, that there is a penalty, not only for poverty, but for
wealth.

“So yes, I
too
have had a difficult and painful loss in which to deal with, my friend,” Mohd added. “And I can no longer sit idly by and allow thousands of good men and families to lose their lives, their dignity and their human spirit through the continuous practices of greedy and inconsiderate men. Do you agree?” he asked Saleem with opened palms.

Saleem grinned and nodded. “Yes, I do.”

“Good. Then we will leave it at that,” Mohd said. “One day I will hear your story. But for now, I am tired, and a man must rest,” he joked.

Saleem smiled back and stood from the chair to leave. But before he could reach the door to walk out, Mohd told him, “You are a good man, Saleem. And you are loyal to justice. But smart men must also be loyal to their intelligence. And it is not intelligent to speak about everything that you know. I can sense that in you, that you understand what information is yours to
keep
and that which you are allowed to share.”

He looked into Saleem’s eyes again to make sure that they understood each other.

Saleem nodded. “I understand.”

“Good,” Mohd said. “Foolish men do not. And they will not be allowed to breathe amongst us.”

As Saleem turned to walk out, he was sure to comprehend the seriousness of their conversation. The assault weapons carried by Mohd’s personal guards were there to remind him that their talks were not to be repeated. However, Saleem had no fear of most of the guards. As Mohd had already noted, he had been a militant man himself—and a good one.