Jennifer Acker

1.

Late afternoon, late January. I need air, exercise, but my regular walk around Al Manhal Palace is too long; the construction en route to the Corniche too hazardous to navigate. I try to take comfort in the company of my own mind, but today I am a terrible person to be with. Wandering, uninspired, brain-stuck, I find myself in the middle of ten lanes of traffic on a median barely wider than a balance beam. Grumpy as all get out as hot exhaust blasts me by. I need to move, but I have nowhere to go.

I don’t know it yet, but what I need is a dérive.

1.

We know that they are coming, but we don’t know when. The glass is smeared with brown dust, and some have complained. We may have been among the complainers.

The first sign is the hand mop dropped down from a higher floor. Dangles there, on the other side of the window pane, like a body part. Next a bucket tilted with supplies—more cloths, squeegees—and a cluster of bottles filled with fluid heavily knocking each other.

1.

“That’s the best date I ever had,” I said. I was speaking to the young women with the latte skin and uncovered, long dark hair, but also to the serious-looking Emirati man who had wandered over because I was the only thing happening. Mid-week, midafternoon, the date festival was nearly deserted, save a few clusters of Indian men, single Western men in suits with briefcases, and a grumpy woman with big glasses. I suppose I was expecting this man, this representative of Al Foah, one of the largest date producers in the UAE, to be impressed somehow, or at least gratified, by my enthusiasm. I wasn’t exaggerating. The fruit had a thin, melting skin and a pillowy interior, the flavor rich, heady with sweetness and spice. (Hints of cardamom and apricot?) The serious man asked where I was from, and I proceeded to disappoint him with my ignorance about the production and sale of dates in the United States. Yes, I did think that dates had become more visible in grocery stores over the past five years, though I couldn’t say what varieties. Medjool? I did know that California was a hub, but, by then, I’d lost him.

I’d had grander plans for the day, of course, plans that involved walking through Bur Dubai, the old city, and the souks in Deira and visiting the beautiful Jumeirah Mosque, but the mosque tour was early, at 9:45, and nearly a 40 minute cab ride away…and then there was the heat. Even sitting in the shade in early morning, I was sweating.

No, we would not be setting foot on city sidewalks today. This was a blow to my touristic romanticism, my plan to experience the places where some semblance remained of the daily life that had characterized Dubai before the race to the top. Before the spectacular towers, malls, and hotels upon which superlatives are pinned.