Author's Note: About 7 or 8 years ago, I first learned about the living conditions for migrant workers in Dubai, building the spectacular skyscrapers the world was buzzing about. In the shadow of those scrapers, poor, often young guys from all over the region - Middle East, Far East, South East Asia - were working 13 hour days with terrible safety precautions and having their passports taken. This short story is written from the perspective of one of those migrant workers.
Update: part 2 is available here.
I am going to write just to get through the vile stench of sweat and sand lingering in the hot air. In just a little while it will be gone, cleansed by the soft steam of boiled rice and vegetables.
When we get back to the living quarters there are maybe 20 minutes of the stench. It comes back when people have eaten and started sweating again, but at that point I’ve gotten used to it.
But this half hour I cannot stand.
Karim usually reads his comics. He likes the Incredible Hulk, especially when he destroys buildings, he tells me. But I’m not 10 years old, I don’t like comics. Karim is 20, so he shouldn’t either.
This is my week:
Monday. We get on the bus and are driven to the construction site at 6 am. The tempo is often a bit slower. The boss man is away on a lot of meetings. Me and Karim are working the 23rd floor, but when we build it higher, I hope I can work on the 100th floor. I bet the winds are cool up there and that I can see all the way to the ocean.
Tuesday. The tempo goes up. The boss man is always stressed out on Tuesdays. He screams at the top of his sooted lungs that we are late, that we are never going to be on time.
Wednesday is the same. It’s the worst day of the week. When the heat comes and the winds are blowing from the south, the sand clogs the air, and we can’t breathe. We work an extra hour on Wednesdays and sometimes I fall a sleep without eating.
Thursday also means a lot of work, but it’s still easier than Wednesdays.
Today is Friday. On Friday we only work half a day and the bus always comes fifteen minutes late. I don’t know why.
On Friday, sometimes Jaser whispers of a strike. It’s always Friday when he does that, I don’t know why. He’s from Jordania, maybe it’s something special about Fridays there.
And then comes Saturday, when we rest. Sometimes I go to the mosque, and sometimes to the park with a made up lake. I would love to stay in bed if only the room was empty. But the room is never empty. There are 12 beds to a room, so there always someone there.
And then there’s Sunday, and everything starts all over.
Karim says sometimes that in Dubai, you can only see two days ahead because there’s always sand or a skyscraper in the way.
***
Wednesday. We just got back from the site and I want to fall asleep but I can’t. The stench is insufferable today.
Some guys here, all they talk about is their families. I don’t know why. Every damn sentence. For me, it’s the other way around, I don’t want to think about my family at all. That’s why I like Karim, he talks about things all the time. He can talk for an hour about one page in his comics.
The sweat brings a memory. I’m seven years old and dad tells me I need to go to Negombo and give an envelope to a man. He gives me the directions and I start walking. It’s early morning but soon the sun starts frizzling and there are no more shadows on the road. I walk for an hour but I’m getting exhausted. I’ve walked this road before but never on one of the most scorching days. I keep walking and start asking myself why dad didn’t drive me if it was so important leaving this envelope. But I don’t want to disappoint him again so I toil forward.
Every once in a while, I stop to take a drink and rest, but faintness has built a nest in me. Dad’s voice echoes inside of me and the mark on my right arm is getting upset. I rise from the ground to push through the final part of the road, but as soon as I get up I pass out.
When I wake up a man is driving me home in his tuktuk. I don’t know what happened to the envelope.
It’s my time to cook.
***
Not sure what to write. These walls doesn’t say anything. They’re just blue walls of concrete. There’s a number of rooms with six bunk beds in each. At the end of the hall where I’m writing this there’s a filthy kitchen. I don’t have anything else to say about it but I don’t have anything else to write either.
I don’t know if there was anything here before we came here. The rooms doesn’t seem to have a purpose. I can’t imagine why they were built. In a way, it reminds me of a hospital, but it’s much smaller and not enough rooms. And no one would need a hospital this far from everything.
***
There is something black in Jasers eyes. Even his tears are black.
Yesterday, when everyone had eaten and wanted to sleep, he gathered us all and said quietly that this had gotten too far. It wasn’t even Friday. Some guys haven’t earned their recruitment fee even though they’ve been here a year, he said.
I know that’s true, but I came here without a recruitment fee.
Karim didn’t say anything afterwards and he hasn’t said much today either. I think he also wants to strike.
We’ve been moved from the 23rd floor to the ground. Here, the wind heaves sand in our faces all day long, and the sand mixes with the dust from the cement sacks that we wheelbarrow to the elevator. My lungs are plastered with it.
At lunch, we were drained. Karin slept in the shadow of the east beam. The cement floor is cool, he said, but my vegetables are hot.
I try to keep my mind on Saturday instead, even though it feels like it was years ago. I was out walking and felt happier than in a long time. I had my white shirt on and the wind even felt a little cool.
When I am happy, I feel like I’m not thinking about anything, not about my family, not about Dubai, not about money. I thought a little bit about a girl that I used to be in love with when I was 12. She had the thickest hair and always dressed in green and pink. It was something about her teeth and the way her face changed every time she reacted to something. Most people become a little happy or a little sad or a little surprised, but her face really shifted, like her whole body was shivering with the movements of the world. And whenever she was happy, it looked like she loved life more than anyone, and whenever she was sad, it was like she was the last girl on the planet.
I don’t think my face changes much. Karim says I only have to faces, whatever my mood is, and that sometimes he mistakes one for the other.
I thought about that girl for a little while, but then mostly about nothing.
On a back alley from the park with the made up lake there was a kid selling comics. He almost gave them away. There was Superman, some I didn’t know, but also the Incredible Hulk. That’s the kind of thing you don’t see often here. Maybe he got them from a tourist or he bought them from a store that went out of business. I didn’t ask, but I got some comics for Karim. When he got them, his smile went from one ear to the other. He hugged my and riffled through them like a five year old.
My room is much more quiet than usual. No one is joking around anymore and no one is fighting about who’s turn it is to boil his vegetables. The stench isn’t that bad today.
It’ll probably be worse tomorrow.