Brilliant (5 page)

 

Mohsin thinks this is nothing. You drive in the desert, he says. Abu Dhabi is not a real city. Not like London or Paris or Rome. Mohsin has not been to Paris or Rome, but he pronounces this with authority. Sami can see his brother Mohsin's mouth: turned down at the corners, disdainful but humouring. Sami talks to Mohsin often in his head, especially when driving, which means all the time. Perhaps he even speaks to him in dreams.

Sami's back at Al Zaabi Finest Bakery, already the third pick-up of the day. Shhhh, he tells Mohsin. You are wrong. Abu Dhabi is a real city. You come see. For thirty-four years Mohsin has been driving cabs in London, six more than Sami has been head driver for the Al Qubaisis, a family one rung down from the Al Nahyans, one remove from royalty. My life, Sami tells Mohsin silently as he gets out of the
SUV
, has been touched by luxury.

It's already so hot his khaki shirt is stuck to his back, his whole back, not just the small of it. He will change at the next stop. Saeed Al Qubaisi likes staff to look military-sharp, no sweaty men in damp
shalwar kameez
in
his
employ. Sami appreciates this. My life, he thinks, passing through the bakery's air-conditioned entry, has been touched by excellence.

Dania, the Palestinian counter girl, looks up, smiles slightly, drops her gaze. They have known each other for more than ten years, but both watch over-friendliness. “This place has eyes,” she told him once when he inquired after her young son, living in Jordan with extended family. He'd willed himself not to look up at the security monitor in the ceiling, and nodded, complicit. The camera is always on, training itself on who comes and who goes, though who would steal
maamoul
and
baklawa
? True, Al Zaabi's Arabic sweets are delicious, the best in the Emirates, some say. But really…
maamoul
? Working for the Al Qubaisis, he can have all the
maamoul
he wants. Platters of
maamoul
, the really big ones Saeed Al Qubaisi prefers, are kept in the kitchen's cold storage, the pastries stacked in steep, perfect pyramids. You have to slip them carefully from the top, then fill back in with fresh ones, otherwise it looks suspicious. But there is always another tray waiting for this small, artful deception. He is here to pick up half a dozen more trays. My life has been touched by…and he searches out the right word for Mohsin, always listening, always ready to jump in with an objection…by abundance.

Dania orders the two Bangladeshi helpers to load the trays into the back of the Land Rover. Last year, Sami asked Saeed Al Qubaisi about installing bakers' racks in one of the Land Rovers. “The trays, Sir, they slip around,” Sami explained. His boss has yet to commit. Sometimes he takes months to make a decision, often not making any at all, unlike Sultan, his father, who hired Sami twenty-eight years before. There was a man who said yes, no, in, out, stop, go. You jumped when you saw him coming. His son isn't a bad man, just mixed up. It's on account of the poems he writes. Poetry excites a woman, kindles her body and mind, Saeed told Sami once when they were driving to one of the family farms. Years before, Sultan had hired a down-on-his-luck cousin to manage it; a generation later, the manager still needs managing.

Perhaps Sir is right about pretty words being the way to a woman's heart, but poetry softens a man, makes him moody, full of questions not answers. If Sir was writing traditional
nabuti
poetry, praising the heroes of the desert, that would be different. But Sir writes about women, their supple skin, their honeyed voices. It's not quite decent.This is what Sami thinks. No, this is what Sami
knows
. Even Mohsin would agree. But then Mohsin doesn't think much of Sami's bosses. What do you expect? says Mohsin. These people were nothing, a bunch of tribes fishing for pearls and growing dates until the Brits found oil. It's a country built on black stuff gushing from a hole in the ground. What kind of achievement is that? In London, Mohsin drives lords and ladies, members of Parliament, rock stars, once David Beckham himself. People of substance, he says.

Sami's mobile vibrates in his pocket as he double-checks the trays. In the absence of real bakers' racks, he's fashioned something from Ikea shelving that he's paid for himself, no need to trouble the boss for something so trivial. Fine, fine, Sir might say if he took the time to look back there. Brilliant, Madame might say, though her eyes wouldn't move from her iPad. It's Madame on the mobile now. She doesn't wait for him to say
marhaba
. “Go pick up Rashid from school. He's been bad again.”

Rashid, Rashid. What will they do about Rashid? Already there's talk in the household about sending the youngest Al Qubaisi to boarding school in England. “Not London,” Madame says. “Somewhere with no distractions.” Distraction is only part of Rashid's problem.

Sami swings onto 15th Street, careers through the roundabout, a Hummer riding his bumper, then flows out the other side. Rashid texts him: “Sami, way r u?” Rashid loves to text. “I'm good, aren't I, Sami?” Rashid asks nearly every day. “You are,” Sami answers.

Rashid is waiting outside the British School Al Kubairat, a tubby boy in a
khandoura
who already looks like a little man. Rashid opens the car door and lunges across the back seat. Three boys in blazers and ties watch from the curb, smirking, as the Land Rover pulls away.

“Faggots,” hisses Rashid from the back seat.

“Seat belt,” says Sami.

“Where?” says Rashid.

“Home,” says Sami.

“No fun,” says Rashid.

He's right. With Madame studying for her university classes, with Sir writing poetry in his own villa across town — “Poets need complete peace and quiet, Sami” — with Sultan, named after his grandfather and the oldest, doing military duty in Ras al Khaimah, Eiman graduating from university in Al Ain and about to get married, Hassan training his camels in Madinat Zayed, it's often just the two youngest rattling around the compound: Asma, sixteen and Sami's least favourite — the girl's too smart for her own good — and Rashid, ten going on four. It doesn't help that the two hate each other. The once-strong Qubaisat clan isn't what it was, Sami admits, turning at the evangelical church. What is? says Mohsin. Except, of course,
our
royal family. (Mohsin loves the Queen.)

They've argued this before — both in phone calls and in his head. Sheikha Salama, a Qubaisat, gave birth to Sheikh Zayed, the father of the country, Sami tells Mohsin. She is
our
Queen Mum. But he can hear the amused snort.

She married a murderer, Sami. His own brother yet. What's to be proud of?

Yes, brother, I know, brother, sighs Sami, easing onto 26th Street and then through the Delma roundabout. Arabian sands cover a lot of history.

You mean blood, says Mohsin.

“Sami,” whines Rashid from the back seat.

“Seat belt,” says Sami.

“Happy?” says Rashid, and Sami hears the click.

He should drive the boy home. He should. But what's there? More nannies, cooks, gardeners, drivers and maids than there are parents or siblings or friends. Homework that will not get done despite threats and punishments. Five
TV
s that will be on with no one watching. Three
salukis
growling for food and attention, their nails skittering and scratching on the marble steps outdoors. Sami pulls onto Khaleej al Arabi.

“Hey,” says Rashid.

“You asked,” says Sami.

But already Rashid is bent over his iPhone, gone, lost. They could drive all the way up the E11, all the way to Jebel Ali, the Emirates' vast port, a place Rashid was fascinated by once — “Boats! Boats!” he would cry when little. They could take the ring road around Dubai, passing Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al Qawain, Ras al Khaimah, swinging across to Fujairah on the return, a private, grand tour of all seven Emirates. From sea to desert to sea. Rashid's world, birthplace and birthright. But the boy, lost in battles with mythical beasts and spear-wielding women, their bosoms filling the tiny screen, would barely notice.

“Yes!” he crows from the back seat.

See, says Mohsin. See what your job is.

Sami tried London for a year when he was nineteen, in the early 1980s. He'd needed to go somewhere, anywhere, after the girl he'd loved since age six fell in love with the American exchange student at her private high school. Love was supposed to be simple, mutual. It wasn't supposed to make you want to die. Forget her, little brother, said Mohsin. Come to London.

Mohsin worked for a taxi company started a decade earlier by a man, like them from Peshawar, now a millionaire. Maybe a billionaire, Mohsin said. But Sami couldn't get The Knowledge down, though he took the London cabbies' test three times. (“Three times? That's nothing. I did ten appearances before I passed,” said Mohsin.) But Sami hated the drizzle, the smell of Wimpy burgers, the grotty damp of the flat he and Mohsin shared with four other young men from home. He found the British unsettling. Chirpy, distant, friendly, aloof, push, pull. They chatted and smiled, but didn't register anything other than what was in front of them, what they already knew. Dear, darling England! They could not imagine the life of a young man far from home, heartsick and homesick. And those were the
good
ones.

“How do you take it?” he'd asked Mohsin, when his brother would tell stories after his shift. Some customers, if they'd spent too long in a pub, called him “Paki” or “Pac-man.” Mohsin shrugged. “I go heavy on the brakes. Bounce them around. They can call me whatever they like. I'm the one behind the wheel.”

Sami had tried once more to face down The Knowledge, borrowing a scooter from one of his flatmates so he could memorize the 25,000 London streets that might come up on the exam. There were 320 standard runs — how could that many
anything
be standardized? — through central London alone. Still, some of it was finally getting into his head and staying there when they got the news that their mother was ill.

“You go,” said Mohsin. Grateful for the chance to leave all those streets with their funny names — Amen Corner, Finsbury Pavement, Mincing Lane…damp streets, too many streets — Sami packed a small bag and boarded a plane for Abu Dhabi. The plan was to spend a day in the new-oil, upstart city where their mother's older brother — also a cab driver — lived. The two would make their way to Lahore, then on to Peshawar. By the time Sami landed in Abu Dhabi, their mother was dead.

The rest, says Mohsin, is history.

A good history, retorts Sami. A happy history.

Whatever you say, Mohsin says.

“Sami,” says Rashid.

“Yes,” says Sami.

“I'm hungry.”

The traffic is slowing. Only an accident, a bloody one, slows traffic on the E11. Sami has heard stories about the M1 in Britain, that you're as likely to end up in an ambulance as at your destination. But Britain can't match this. Driving is blood sport in the
UAE
. Sami has seen things that make him toss at night — an arm on the side of the road; an entire body's worth of blood smeared on the pavement; bodies rolled in muslin and stacked like building material in the back of a pickup.

Be careful out there. Check your mirrors, Mohsin says, when they talk once a week, though Sami hears it more as further reproof than brotherly concern. They're both middle-aged men now. It's too late to play protector and protected.

Bad traffic, awful traffic. Though he has no real idea where they're going next, Sami chafes at the standstill. It's claustrophobic to be surrounded by
SUV
s, many even bigger than theirs. Two finally let him in; he navigates the lane changes, moving right again and again across six lanes, until he can creep off the exit ramp. Others have the same idea: he's rooted again. But there on the right is a sign giving them a destination.

“Sami?” It's a question now, not so much a demand. “Am I good?”

“You are good, Rashid,” says Sami, turning onto a smaller highway. “You go to Akhdar City, Rashid?”

“No I don't know maybe yes,” says Rashid, and Sami can tell by the way his voice muffles that the boy's head is down, his attention scattered again.

“You know Akhdar?” Sami asks.

“Yes!” crows Rashid, an answer that has nothing to do with the question.

The boy's a loser, says Mohsin. Like his father, like all those people.

Give him a chance, says Sami.

Maybe he has too many chances, says Mohsin. He has too much,
period.

 

Sami drove Rashid to a birthday party a few Fridays back. Rashid doesn't have any friends, not really. But this boy, a new Canadian kid in the class, was keen to make a good impression and invited the entire class. Only half turned up at the ballroom in the Beach Rotana Hotel. “What kind of a place is that for a kid's birthday?” Mohsin asked on the phone the next weekend. “Why don't they go to the beach like normal kids? Don't you have nice beaches there?” And Sami had tried to explain that this is what children did here, especially if they were locals. “Throw money at the youngsters, right?” Mohsin said. “Teach them what's important.”

“It was too hot for the beach,” Sami added. No parent would let their kid attend a beach party in May. But Sami never complains about the impossible, burn-through-the-sandals heat to Mohsin, who already has too much ammunition.

At first Rashid hadn't wanted to go to the party. “I want to stay home,” he said. “I want to play at home.” But Madame had insisted, and Rashid's nanny, Lilibeth, had promised to order a cake from Al Zaabi Finest Bakery just for him for afterward, even though he wasn't the birthday boy, and Sami had offered to take him to buy a special toy for his friend. “And maybe one for you too.”

“I want the same toy,” Rashid finally agreed.