But how does it make you feel?

Nostomania is an overwhelming desire to surround oneself with the familiar.

I’m feeling a bit homesick today after a miserable night with the suitor last night. I thought we’d managed to dissolve any romantic ideas he had, and granted him a consolatory meeting as friends. But it’s evident that he’s still living in hope. I feel like Sartre’s waitress, living in bad faith, and am kicking myself for getting myself into this charade of politeness. I don’t want to offend him either, this island is too small for that.

Ali Geee asked how I’m feeling beneath these cynically observations. A good question that I’m avoiding asking myself. Just trying to float above any draining psychological introspections. Trying to juggle the identity of the magazine with my own tastes and interests is a challenge too, something that leaves me feeling professionally schizophrenic and constantly trying to apply game theory.

I want to be earthed, shed my “best behaviour” mask and have a good laugh and a couple of burps.

Yet, it is “Friday”, always a melancholic day for me. And I also keep tracing this back to other experiences I’ve had before of moving to new places – there is always a set cycle of disillusionment and integration.

Bits and bobs

Today the government have decreed that bachelors will be banned from certain residential areas and I learnt another piece local slang – the American strip where horny GIs ogle Thai princesses is called Pearl Harbour.

Oh, and have I told you that most people here have two cellphones – one for each network? And that all the straws are bendable: This is the land of the dwarves and I am the giant – the tallest woman they’ve seen!

Salmonella was found in the Cadburys chocolate bars.

Hairdressers are the same everywhere

Yesterday I entered the seething pussy of Bahrain beauty: the bitch parlour.

Yeah, would never catch me dead at a beauty parlour in South Africa, and no, it’s not really different. They can still tell a mile off that you have no respect for their profession: They can see it in your hair somehow and glare daggers into your back, just like in South Africa.

But I accompanied a friend on her pedicure, met her Michael Jackson look-alike hairdresser and watched while liberal Sheikhas got their hair fluffed by gay boys (the traditional ones go to the enclosed side, covered head to toe, only to be touched and seen by women and then to wrap up their blown-dried locks in doeks again).

I also learnt some local slang – someone who is an Abu Ghuraib (as in the Iranian torture prison) is someone who has been seduced by American ways. And ate pork at a Filipino restaurant with Thai chefs. What an Abu Gharaib!

Today I was entertained by yet another hotel bigshot, this one from Canada. The food was bad – salmon over-cooked and dry and the potatoes reheated. But this guy told me about the “black magic” in Morocco. How these women reduce men to nervous wrecks if rejected by sneaking allergens and stuff into their food. He said he never believed it, but it happened to a good friend and the man is destroyed. Curious, I’ve never heard of this and my Google search was fruitless.

My Amazon books have arrived, so time beside the air-conditioner is in order. Breyten can only be appreciated in bits.

Did Breytenbach visit the Middle East?

"In this way one comes down into the desert. It is grey all around the eye, grey and barren and dry as if from some ancient and unlifted curse. Scattered about dimly observed in the myopia are darker objects. One is not certain whether they are alive or living only in the black stultifying flame of death. The curse is a flame. These perceptions may well be cacti or cactaceous rocks, all clarity damped off, daubed with a minute immobility now and dark with the colour of damson. Dark with the colour of damnation? One is not sure. Yet one senses the heterosis, the hybrid vigour of things unpleasant to the imagination because the eye is too shy to concentrate."

Two friends and counting

Enter Friend Numero Two.

His credentials are impressive: We went exploring all the dingy bars in our area (he lives close to me) on Friday night and discussed the American dream, the diaspora, Kundera, Delillo, Carver and a whole bunch of authors I didn’t know, but he reassured me he’ll introduce me, while drinking beer after beer, cheering France in the soccer and analyzing the Asian prostitutes’ mating rituals. I got home at 2:30am, the latest Cinderella hour since I’ve been here. He’s Nepalese but has just completed his masters in creative writing in North Carolina and smaaks Arcade Fire.

But oh man, the hordes of whores (say the last three words out loud for full effect). They just descended on this table of mostly men like flies. Surprisingly, they weren’t put off by the three or four girlfriends who were already there, and these girlfriends didn’t seem to mind. Instead, they were regaling the whores to tease their male friends even more. Prostitution here has a veil of propriety – no slam bam, dollar mam. No, you wine and dine your choice as though it were a real date.

They all seem to be known by all the waitresses and certainly by the cover band. After the soccer I saw my first Filipino cover band – of which there are many, so many that they’re having a battle of the bands at the end of the month. What do they sound like? Think U2 meets Destiny’s Child meets Backstreet Boys with a chink karaoke voice over, complete with camp, sexualised synchronised dance manoeuvres. They dragged this woman whose birthday it was, well not really, more like this deliriously excited woman ran onto stage to do the birthday chicken dance on half an invite. Strange people. But other than that, a sports bar is a sports bar – they even played Who The Fuck Is Alice.

We also talked about the insidious racism we’ve come across in Bahrain. He told me about an Indian waiter earning BD50 a month, who is trapped here by some agency agreement ala Dirty Pretty Things. The waiter’s Bahraini equal earns six times more.

But, we decided the racism is more subtle than even such an obvious example. It’s not acted on that much, or even widely spoken, but it acts out in the different ways one is treated – me being mistaken for a prostitute and him not getting an email account at work for the first two weeks. Also, people wanting to be identified as from a specific race – its disrespectful to mistake a Bahraini for a Saudi, an Indian for an Arab and a Filippino for a Thai. This is evidence that there is some social pecking order.

There is also a classism inherent in this – like with it not being cool for the oil magnate’s second wife to be friends with a single mother. Only Bahraini nationals have a right to vote, even second or third level generations of expat families don’t get citizenship. So, despite this being a new country in that no one has roots here, it’s not growing in terms of governable diversity, nor is there a uniting cross-racial ideal

It is growing physically: They dump truckloads worth of sand they buy from Saudi Arabia into the ocean to physically broaden their island. The rest of the world is worried about global warming, rising water levels and tsunamis, but the Persian Gulf is slowly and methodically being displaced by man’s desire for more earth. The earth is then built up with office blocks, hotels and air conditioned residential skyscrapers, which will be filled with worker bee expats.

I want a party!

I could really do with a good ol' ass-shake tonight. But instead I'm going to drink wine, watch soccer and stuff my face. No reason to complain, I know. But it would be nice to just be loud and crude and not feel like I'm permanently on my best behaviour for just one night. Instead I comfort myself with these memories… ::enter violin music:: And remind myself that I really have no right to expect an ounce for fun for the rest of my life after this party!

And the system detoxes

So the colour proof of my first edition of the magazine is out. It looks good in general and the boss is happy. I feel awful though. Had a headache since yesterday afternoon, my eyes are puffy and scratchy and I’m struggling to concentrate on not letting my vision blur. Yet, I can’t sleep, which makes me think it’s not illness. Possibly lack of alcohol!

Desperate housewives of Arabia

I penetrated the heart of suburban Muslim culture last night. A liberated, upper-class brand, but nonetheless.

After watching sexless midgets in drag (10 and 11-year olds – pre-Lolita even) re-enact a whistle-stop one-hour version of Grease, pissing myself at the double innuendos, the camp lisping sports coach, the innocent air humping of Grease Lightning and the teachers goading like beauty queens with flower bouquets, I stepped into a land cruiser with “Sandy” and her mother to be whizzed off to a real house. This is the first “house” that I’ve been in, only apartment blocks exist in the city.

“Sandy” was a way cool kid. “Ew” she went when we said the production would have been better if Frankie had been played by a guy. And when her mother announced that we were visiting a friend of hers, her eyes lit up and she told me: “They’ve got the coolest house. It’s like a palace and they used to have a German Shepherd puppy, but then the gardener left it outside and it got too hot and it DIED.”

Yes. These are the extremes: either you live in a three-storey palace or a three-room apartment. Beyond the doors, lay the hanging gardens of Babylon and the man of the house, watching soccer with his third wife and some mates. Bottles of booze were displayed prominently everywhere. We were entertained by the second wife – the first wife has died.

The second wife is a dynamic woman. She owns a restaurant and a couple of other things and made her man his fortunes. They’re at a financial level of flippantness – he was watching the soccer in Germany, but got bored and came home. But they have a higher understanding of virtue and respect. She set the conditions for his new wife.

I had the privilege of witnessing a make-up session with this high-profile family woman and her single-mother Christian friend. They had been parted by their various social groups’ bickering and gossip about the other, and the inappropriateness of their friendship. It was interesting going inside the veil and learning the obvious: stereotypes are for sissies. Also that the values of friendship and honesty, and the power of judgemental gossip are universal. They kept saying “this is the small-mindedness of our culture” and I kept saying “it’s not only your culture”. They called their bickering social groups the desperate housewives of Arabia and complained of their lack of education and class. Oil is nouveau riche.

That is, it was interesting the first time the story was told to me. Then, over a couple of bottles of red wine and sambuca with toasted coffee beans, the story was repeated to me three times.

But it reinforced what I saw on Friday: The beach we went to was on the other, south side, of the island – only half an hour away. There are 700 000 inhabitants. This place is smaller than Johannesburg and probably closer in attitude to Vrede.

Nightswimming

Everyone bailed out of yachting (which they pronounce jag-ting – as in Afrikaans for hunt) but my racist Turkish suitor took me to the beach anyway.

Dead salty sea. You wade out for about a kilometre before the water reaches shoulder height and then just float. It’s like a salty dam. The temperature was a whopping 42 degrees, the water 20 degrees, but you don’t burn because the sun’s rays are dispersed by all the dust.

Then, the sun goes down and everything turns shimmering silver and they turn up Schumann on the loud speaker to persuade people to evacuate. Instead it was quite enchanting: Night-swimming (REM?) to classical piano sounds.

Yesterday I hid, next to my air-conditioner with Breyten Bretenbach – the two whitie expats in bed together – and tried to play it cool to the wailing SMSes from the suitor. I’m going to have to tell him. How do I get into these situations?

A rhetorical question. Of course I know. I don’t put myself across enough, I just nod because he’s the only person I know outside of work. And he is a babe, if too boring to even fuck.

Tonight I’m going to watch a school play.

Houellebecq meets Irving

So it was only four star, with none of the promised oysters and caviar, but darned good gourmet Thai food with free flowing wine – oh, the taste of alcohol again was so heavenly! The green mango and radish salad was a bit too bitter for my liking and the ribs had too much bone, not enough meat.

We were dined by the GM and the food manager, who is taking me yachting tomorrow – hope I don’t kotch, I’ve never been on a boat. They also reassured us that if we returned next week, the oysters would be waiting.

I was given an insiders perspective on the goings-on of a hotel – felt like I was in a novel collaboration between Houellebecq and John Irving. And also had the different types of Islam explained to me. The speaker was Turkish and described a noble country where it is shameful not to work and unheard of not to care for your children – even more so the illegitimate ones. He was of the belief that this was the reason there was no economic corruption in Islamic governments, because everyone is family and you owe everyone a favour.

I’m not sure what that really means, or if that is true. It is very Houellebecq – the decline of the world due to its liberal freedoms. I was reading all these interviews with him yesterday, which is why he’s fresh in my mind again. But I don’t agree with such a simplistic reading of Houellebecq. I think yes, he is saying the world is declining due to liberal freedoms, but also he can’t deny his enjoyment of them. There is some self-hatred and fatalism about it, it’s not preachy.

Last night I dreamt of a web-legged man – you know like webbed toes, the web was between his two thighs. He wore very baggy hip-hop pants. Who needs a TV!? Switch on the subconscious!

Smack my lamb chop

If I wear the face of a sheep, I’m still growling inside.

Finally my satellite TV was connected last night. 300 channels! And four in English: BBC World, Euro News, Bloomsbury and CCTV9. Not much veg-ing to do there. There are three or four fashion channels and at least 50 channels advertising porn – miff, butch-looking chicks (it’s European porn) rubbing their g-stringed asses with baguettes, on loop. These are the things that are a language of their own: fashion and porn.

I will leave this insight at that, after also reiterating that I am in a Muslim country where both of these are taboo.

Sheep are also moralising animals – think Mary’s little lamb and Baa Baa Black sheep.

Today, I went to pick up my ATM card from the Bahrain Saudi Bank.

In South Africa they’re always talking about the proportional imbalance of the security industry and how it holds us hostage. I realised today that I’ve been conditioned to consider it normal, it’s not hot air.

Also recall Daniel’s golden fleece and good ol’ Lambchop.

But to continue on security, consider this: On Monday, I received my pin number in the post. Today, my ATM card was waiting for me, not in a sealed box with five locks, but in a lever arch file with a pretty (using five different coloured highlighters) hand-written label “new atm cards”. It was loose, no sealed envelope and no security guard to open it for me. In fact, the security guard who was there didn’t even have a gun. The openings in the glass between the teller are big enough to stick my head through and look at their computer screens, are strangle them, which ever I choose. But they were very congenial. Quaintly so, even. One can also jump over the top of the enquiries section, the counters are at a considerately low height and there is no glass, and run straight through to the teller side – there’s no time-delay nine-inch reinforced steel door. At this point, the security guard is ineffective as you are now behind bullet-proof glass and, besides, still has no gun. Then I deposited some money, which was cleared immediately.

Now, I ask myself, should I feel nervous?

Bleet bleet.

Hmmm. I’m being wined and dined tonight by a 5-star hotel. The editor gets much nicer freebies than the DStv leftovers the listings gimp used to get! I hope there’s mutton.

Scrabble dabble doo

So I went to play Scrabble last night with the Bahraini pros. Despite the sense I get that I’m the only person in this country who can spell – and I’m the dyslexic one around here – I lost.

With the amount of times one sees “thier” instead of “their”, there is a serious case for its inclusion in the Bahrain Oxford Dictionary. Others include exhibiton and juces. My favourite, from the government website, is constantly referring to the successor to the “thrown”. Unfortunately they’re mostly just sad, not funny, and far too frequent to post. Besides, I blush covertly, because I barely afford these blog posts a cursory scan after my keyboard splurge, so who knows how low I’ve sank.

I think it’s got something to do with the pronunciation. It seems Arabic is a very vowel-based language, so they accentuate these sounds. I’m still struggling to decipher it – I have to train myself to listen differently. Sth Africns tend to clp thir vowls. Sic of lways sking pepl to rpet thmselvs, I often just nod. It works in small talk.

But back to the Scrabble, because scrabble is more about maths than language – identifying and remembering series and resolving anagrams is a mathematical skill – I played the 16th seed Gulf player. They had the Gulf Championships here over the weekend, which is how I learnt about the club. He was actually quite impressed, even though I lost. Twice. But both times my score reached at least 330 and he’s feeling threatened. A month, he says, and I’ll be beating him.

So, for all you naysayers who said I’d be playing Bridge, not Scrabble, I’m going to return with a world rating! Heck, it’s better than staring at my walls and one way to make sure I don’t catch this country’s spellingtitis.

Take one for the team

I’m on deadline. It feels so weird not to be the mac jockey. Instead, I sit here behind my black desk with my redwood blinds and gaze at the personal assistant through the glass wall. I wait for each PDF, print, edit, return. I still have one article outstanding, which is arriving tomorrow. But I feel nervous because I’m not sitting behind the Quark – yes, what a downgrade – controls. Now I really know the responsibility that lies with the designer. And I’m fretting. I’ve never been a team player, always the last line of defence. Check out the golfball rings - sorry about the shadows.

Beach prices

On Friday night I went to the launch of a new beach. I was lounging in cushions, an almost full moon in the night sky, sipping white wine, eating lobster and prawns, watching the Germany-Costa Rica soccer match… It was utterly gorgeous if bewilderingly new.

A gay designer from the Philippines told me that as long as you’re low-key, not a Muslim and don’t get caught in the act, homosexuality is fine.

The Bahrain jetski champion was also the first person in the traditional white robes that I’ve spoken to. He was the security manager at the venue and surprisingly candid, if just a jock in different robes.

A flooring company owner, who is also a radio DJ that plays non-chart toppers, filled me in on the radio and music scene of Bahrain. It seems, like many other aspects of this country, unregulated and open to anarchy but lacking in taste.

The food and beverage manager of Mercure explained that to move up in the hotel business he has to marry, there’s definitely a glass ceiling here, and that the problem with Bahrain was that, besides the Muslims, there were three kinds of woman: the type you pay for, the air hostesses who are similar to the first kind but more of a long-term investment, and the okay women who are already taken.

The GM of one of the competition newspapers – a short, softly spoken Lebanese guy who had all the girls tripping over their feet with his George Clooney looks – explained that Bahrain was the friendliest and most liberated country in the Middle East. He’s also lived in Kuwait and Dubai.

This was affirmed by my accomplices who said that those warnings I was given about wearing a wedding ring and covering your shoulders apply to Dubai. As a single woman you can’t get an apartment and men hassle you on the streets there.

Not that they don’t hassle you on the streets here, but it’s not for the wedding ring, it’s for the western looks. Besides, it’s drive-by hassles from the Saudis. Everyone hates the Saudis. They pull in in their numbers on Thursday evenings and takeover the lesser-grade hotel area seeking booze and women. Act like uncouth hooligans and then fuck off on Saturday.

The key is apparently not to make eye-contact. The same with the beggars, who are relatively few coming from South Africa but uncannily relentless with tourists and westerners. While the older ones sit covered head-to-toe, not even their eyes showing, in the doorways to branded takeaway places like McDonalds, KFC and Burger King, the children audaciously hassle you at the table inside, trying to eat your food and take your drink. The managers ignore this. I’ve never liked giving money to beggars, really stingy I am, but after this display my hardheadedness refused to capitulate to the manipulation.

A country still full of contradictions to me, the non-Muslims seem to live above the law somehow. Apt considering that apparently 50% of the country’s residents are expats with no voting rights – mostly from India. One person I spoke to said that this pseudo-democracy the king has granted is in fact ideal for this country because, with the religious indoctrination, most of the residents can’t think for themselves. Thus, the king rules with a slightly progressive edge to encourage foreign investors while leaving the fray to debate the moral implications and ignore the economic growth and stability the king is generating. I don’t know enough about the situation yet to offer a viewpoint.

Apparently the queen entertains Michael Jackson. But no one really gives a shit, or maybe I missed the hot news about that.

At the moment the hot news is The Da Vinci Code, like the rest of the world, and the primary telecommunications company who are instilling soft caps on their internet connections to pay for the upgrade to broadband. The two aspects are kind of conjoined because the only people who have seen the movie are those that downloaded it off the internet.

I’m controversially on the side of the company, but the rest of the country has roused a consumer boycott – even though there’s no alternative. But coming from South Africa, consider this: For 30 dinar a month (about R540) you get 15Gig at 2MBps. Price wise about the same as SA, a little cheaper, but look at that speed! After you’ve reached your cap, you can either pay R2 a gig (practically nothing), or surf at 64KBps.

However, I suspect the big revolt is coming not from the paying users, but the illegal users. Apparently 10% of internet users here are hacking into other’s connections. The new system uses an itemized billing system and tighter security.

Ironically, despite their better internet structure, prices and general standard of living, Bahrain has a much smaller internet presence and economy compared to South Africa.

But then, maybe 30 dinar is a lot to them. (Multiply by about R18 for conversion). I’m still trying to bend my mind around the currency here. Eating conservatively, I could spend 90 dinar on food here. 3 dinar can buy you a pair of cheap shoes, a set of sheets, a head of broccoli or food for an entire day. Labels like Nine West, Hush Puppies, Levis, Nike etc start at about 20 dinar, which on conversion is cheap but for 10 dinar more you have an internet connection. It would be the opposite way around in South Africa – internet would be cheaper than these brands.

Yeah, everything is still “compared to South Africa” for me. They tease me about it in our creative brainstorms, but good-naturedly because it has also resulted in a couple of great ideas.

Oh, and apparently there’s also a Woolworthes and Truworths, exported directly from South Africa for the expats, which is heavily over-priced. I’ve been to the grocery shop the group also owns, which is pricier than the Muslim shops, but the only place you can get chamomile tea, Camels and basil.

So I’m smoking Gauloises again, which depending on where you buy it (you can find three different prices along the same street) ranges from R9 to R14. There’s one place near the hotel I was staying that sells them for R6. I must go buy a carton. And booze!? Ha! I haven’t bought any yet, but judging by the adverts in the newspaper 1 dinar, R18, is dirt cheap for a beer! In fact, all of the people from Friday night’s first response to me being from South Africa was that they’re planning a drinking holiday there.

So… My birthday’s coming up… Wink wink…

Thank god it's Thursday!

Today is "Friday". It took me a while to remember that this morning. See, the jetlag here is not the one hour ahead of South Africa, but that everything happens one day forward. So you start your week on a Sunday. It's just too weird. It confounds my brain, which really doesn't work on "Fridays" anyway. So, here's a picture of my street.

New poems

Here's new poems on Litnet.

Kleenex nests

With boxes of tissues on every available surface in this country – there were five in my hotel room alone, there are two in my fishbowl office and at least one (sometimes two even) on every restaurant table – evidently, Kleenex moments are just waiting to blossom.

Last night I met the first female erotic painter of the Philippines. I introduced her to South Africa’s very own clit poet.
After her artistic debut, her family and country expelled her and she came here. Now she’s my designer.

She took me to the Souk – traditional Bahraini market. Not what I expected, or what you would expect from that description. More like a set of pedestrian roads within a specified area that run between buildings housing shop after shop after shop.

At best you can tailor-make your own Arabian perfume, buy a hubbly bubbly or Arabian fractal underpants (guess what everyone’s getting for Xmas). At worst you have high class Guchy, Armani, Givenchy etc outlets. Oh, and there’s loads and loads of jewellers with, I’m not over exaggerating here, golf ball-sized rings. Basically, an outdoor mall, only the price is negotiable.

Then we went to an Indian restaurant. Air conditioned with Chinese waiters. We kept thinking the passersby were staring at us, especially after our confessions. Until we realized there was a TV screen with soccer above our heads. The de-evolution was not televised.

Tut. She also brought me up to speed on the hornet’s nest called work. I guess any place one goes is. But whereas usually I just put my head down and work, here I can’t. These are the only people I know in the country, I have to make friends.

At least I’m on the road to that though.

Find your inner kitsch

So I gave up my view of the purple and yellow hotel backside flanked teasingly by azure turquoise ocean for a terrible view into the ablution side of a decrepit apartment building with washing hanging out of every rusting window grid. There’s even a balcony on which I can sit and contemplate this. I don’t.

See. I have a flat. Five days in Bahrain and I’ve put up nest. Not bad.

It’s nothing fancy, except for one of the biggest TVs I’ve ever seen in such a small room. This comes with satellite, so bring the popcorn guys. But there’s only frontrow seats, even if you sit in the kitchen, so no necking!

Besides that it’s got off-yellow furniture and these framed flower arrangements. The flowers are made out of pink and blue metallic tape, orange netting and have green velvet leaves. I was forced to turn them face down on top of the wardrobe.

The kitchen is full of the filthiest crockery I’ve ever seen in my life. Remember at 2B House Street we thought aliens had copulated, bathing the kitchen top to bottom in gism? Well, post-coital bliss brought them here where they individually fingered each eating utensil, or maybe this was foreplay. I’ve washed everything every night since I’ve been here – that’s three times – and I’m only starting to see what lies beneath.

Still, compared to what it looks like outside of my flat, I feel like I’m living in luxury. As you might have guessed from the description of the view, I’m living in the heart of authenticity. No tuscan villa enclosed utopia – which seems as popular here as in South Africa, although I still can’t figure out why: It’s not for crime.

In fact, I’ve been working on an advertising campaign for one called Riffa Views. If it were up to me the logo would have been a fat spliff and the landscape a Jimi Hendrix psychedelic. When I ask the creative director how it’s going with the designs, I always ask “are you smoking”? But he hasn’t caught on yet, although he seems like quite a cool guy. Probably just been here too long – six years he says! – or, more likely, thinks I’m weird.

I’m enjoying playing up the dumb South African newbie damsel in distress. I find people seem to like helping me then, which is an inroad into small talk (I’m making lists of topics to talk about the next day before I go to bed). And from small talk… well, it’s too early to say really.

But back to my neighbourhood. It’s grim. Square ant-heap-like apartment buildings with small windows, tiny roads with no pavements and desert sand piling up against the edges. And oh please send it a coat of paint! But inside those crumbling walls is a good standard of middle-class living. I think this is important to understanding Bahrain – the inside, next to your air conditioner, is what counts. That’s why the TVs are so big and the women all veiled. It's about inner beauty - or kitsch in the case of the tape flowers.

The smell of newness

The first thing that hits you about Bahrain is the smell.

I’ve been here two days now, albeit isolated, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

It reminds me of the musty mould smell of South Coast holiday bungalows, but there’s something else, not entirely unpleasant but slightly acrid. It may be the desert, the salt water, perhaps the cooking spices or the oversized American sedans and rovers everyone races down winding alleys – 80 gallon tanks are standard in a country that hasn’t seen a petrol price change in 15 years, or the output of probably three air conditioning units per head.

I suspect it’s the latter. See, the second thing that hits you is the heat. When we landed at 8.30pm the temperature was 31C and the sun long gone. Midday at the moment is at about 40C and this is Spring temperatures – I haven’t seen anything yet, the first Saffir I met warns me.

But it’s a strange heat that hits you like a wall when I open the sliding door to my balcony in the morning. Yet, I haven’t even broken a sweat and as most of you will know, I can drench myself at a mild temperature in South Africa. Especially in Durban, which this place reminds me a lot of, only that it’s floating in the Persian gulf and is furnished by the East Rand consumers Richard and I spotted in the furniture expo at the Rand Mall – kitsch kitsch baby.

If I edit out the purple and yellow holiday block facing me from the balcony, I have a flat paradisically turquoise sea stretching out on three sides of me. It’s right there. But apparently people don’t go to the beach: Beaches are owned by the hotels and are expensive. In fact, there’s apparently only three.

So, I’m still puzzling as to what people actually do here. Pray, yes, a lot. In the bathrooms at work there are hooks on the wall on which the women keep little bags containing the required religious utensils to wash themselves for their lunchtime prayers. Fridays seem to be dedicated to prayer and the vast majority of the country works a six-day week.

Thankfully my company has “western affectations” and we get Saturday and Friday off. However, this does mean that we have to work a 9-hour day.

Their other great god is that of consumerism. Malls, malls, malls. Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Today, sitting in the food court of one, I could have been in South Africa if everyone wasn’t dressed as Lawrence of Arabia. The titles of two magazines I’ll be working on: Arabian Knight and Arabian Lady.

My boss, who picked me up from the airport, told me over dinner that hardly anyone still wears this traditional dress. He was the only Arab, apart from the waiters and cooks, not in their robes. But I guess it’s what you’re trained to see. I’ve been on the look out for westerners, to try and establish the existence of this mythical expat community. I saw my first four today in the mall, that is, other than the couple I work with.

The work is heavy at the moment, as it is at any new job for the first while. But with an editor that left before I arrived (I haven’t worked out why yet) there was a pile of work on my desk before I even arrived. I do have my own office: A first. The people seem genuinely friendly, more so than anywhere before – feeling comfortable after two days is a record for me. Of course, I still have to see how deep that runs.

I also almost have my own flat. Moving on Saturday.

This is a historic post, dated June 2.