Habibtis, we need to talk about "morning" sickness

For those of you I haven't told yet, and those among my acquaintances who haven't guessed what the hell's been wrong with me for the past nine weeks and three days, I've been puking my guts up with "morning" sickness.***

First of all, can I just say "morning" sickness. A ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Whoever came up with that misnomer for it needs a good sound slap round the chops. It should really be called "24/7 overwhelming feeling of nauseous dread that you are about to blow chunks across the room, no matter what you do, eat, or smell, punctuated by frequent episodes of violent retching and projectile vomiting".

I may have been somewhat naive but I really did not expect this. I expected to feel some nausea from time to time and throw up from time to time, but, that I would largely be able to go about my work and my usual day-to-day activities as normal. Those among you who have also suffered badly with this charming affliction are probably laughing hollowly at this, but I can honestly say that none of the people I know who have had kids have mentioned to me that it could be this bad, but a tiny Google of the phrase "help I am dying of morning sickness" will show you just how many people suffer hideously for several long months.

Perhaps it's one of those secrets that mothers keep, along with the true horrors of what childbirth is really like - only once you're safely through it is it admitted to you the full extent of just how sick you can be in the first months of pregnancy.

In case you're wondering, no, it's not very much fun experiencing this when the temperature is between 40 and 50 degrees, in fact that's probably one of the reasons I've felt so horrendous - I can't go outside at all for fresh air because heat makes me feel sick. Not to mention the fact that any smells or odours lingering are worsened by heat, and are, of course, heightened by my hormonally enhanced super-charged sense of smell.

In the past couple of weeks, I have had reasonably OK days of only a small amount of chucking up and an hour or a two at a time when I don't feel sick, but that will retreat back into impressions of the child in The Exorcist fairly shortly if I try to do anything like eat anything with any flavour or go outside in the heat. I'm now 15 weeks, three days up the spout, and I'm still pretty much a useless ornament if required to do anything but sit, type on the computer, or consume plain food. Luckily today is a positive day though so I do see light at the end of the tunnel. On not-so-positive days, I assume I will be puking solidly until Sand Baby makes an appearance in February 2015.

In some ways, I feel incredibly foolish for not anticipating the fact that having morning sickness in the Dubai summer heat would be a hellish form of torture, but, on the other hand, I have a very understanding boss who let me work from home for a few of the worst weeks because summer is an incredibly quiet time in most offices in this city. I think, had I been this sick during the busy winter period, particularly on the back of my long leave of absence to be in the UK with my Mum, there was a strong possibility that I would have ended up getting fired.

In case, for some bizarre reason, you're interested, there's a list below of things that have made me puke, followed by things that have been suggested as cures and how effective they were. It's largely useless if you're suffering the same thing as everyone is different - one pregnant lady's cure is another's barf trigger, but, you never know, you might be entertained, or find a handy tip.

Things that have made me sick

1. Standing up or any kind of physical exercise, no matter how gentle, including walking round the flat.
2. The smell of cooking.
3. The smell produced by the oven when switched on.
4. The thought of the smell produced by the oven when switched on.
5. Assorted cooking smells coming in through air vents from neighbouring flats.
6. The thought of said cooking smells, including a particularly noxious stale oily garlicky smell.
7. Cleaning my teeth.
8. Hot showers.
9. Warm showers.
10. Cold showers.
11. Heat.
12. Any food with flavour, exempting nursery food such as plain pasta, tinned soup, baked beans, yoghurts designed for children, and jacket potatoes.
13. Sudden loud noises.
14. The sound of a colleague doing that horrible snorting sniffing thing so beloved of men from the sub-continent.
15. The smell of a garlicky lunch being eaten by a colleague sitting 10ft away.
16. Being in a car.
17. Being in a taxi.
18. A taxi driver's body odour.
19. The thought of a taxi driver's body odour.
20. The scent of one of those horrible pine tree air fresheners that hang in taxis.
21. Ice cream.
22. The thought of puking again.
23. The smell of brewed coffee.
24. Drinking water that isn't ice cold.
25. Tea *weeps*.
26. The lingering after taste of cucumber.
27. The smell of eco-friendly cleaning fluid.
28. The smell of aftershave or perfume.
29. The smell of assorted personal hygiene products including shampoo, face wash and shower gel.
30. Bananas.

Things suggested as morning sickness cures and their efficacy

1. Eating every two hours. Sounds fun but when your diet is restricted to that of a nutritionally challenged five year old, gets old pretty quickly. Efficacy level - 6/10.

2. Eating dry crackers. For anyone suggesting this, go away, eat some dry crackers, decide how enjoyable that is, then report back to me. Efficacy, 1/10.

3. Ginger, in its many curs-ed forms. Tried eating raw ginger? Thought not. It's a bit sharp and will probably trigger vomiting. Real ginger beer? Ditto raw ginger. Schweppes ginger ale - probably contains no natural ginger but has a subtle sour flavour which is less barf-inducing than some sweeter fizzy drinks. Ginger tea - it's a strong flavour and will therefore make me barf. OK, WILL YOU JUST GET LOST WITH THE GINGER???!!! Efficacy - 2/10.

4. Wearing sea sickness bands. Fecked if I know if they make any  difference. It doesn't involve stuffing something down my throat and bringing it up again so I may as well persist. Efficacy - hard to say as I've barfed with and without them. 4/10.

5. Plain cheese sandwiches. Reassuringly plain, though avoid mature cheddar or any strong cheese, the smell may make you hurl. Efficacy - 7/10.

6. Plain bread. Interesting one, the difficulty of forcing this down may have the effect of making you hurl, useful if you've been feeling awful for a while and just want a big healthy vomit to give you an hour or so before you start feeling like death again. Efficacy - 6/10.

7. Drink plenty of water. See plain bread. It might be OK if ice cold.

8. Assorted caffeine free or herbal teas - Lipton make a lemon tea called Lemon Melissa. I don't know who this Melissa was and why she puts up with being ground up and made into tea, but this does make me feel better so I don't care. Efficacy - 9/10.

9. Getting plenty of rest by taking naps. Fine if you can wake yourself up in time to eat every two hours, if not, you wake up feeling worse than ever for a big messy vomiting session. Efficacy 4/10.

10. Go to the doctor. I was prescribed Navidoxine which made me feel slightly worse, then horribly drowsy and I would then wake up with what felt like a hideous hangover with the inability to work or function in any useful way. Apparently it works for some people, but for me, 3/10. My doctor then suggested Pregnaplan MS, a specialist vitamin for morning sickness, containing, you guessed it, effing ginger. What happened? Well, when I threw up, it was just really lovely and gingery. At that point, I changed doctor and was put on something called Premosan which helped get me through the worst of it. Efficacy, 6/10, because I stopped taking the new drug because it also made me somewhat zombified and I realised I would have no idea if I was actually getting better or not.

11. Plain crisps - pretty depressing after a while because they're so bland. Salt and vinegar have always been a favourite with me, and for some reason, they seem to help, possibly because they're comforting as a favourite, and possibly because this particular sharp flavour helps cut through the weird taste that one gets in one's mouth, which is caused by over-active hormones. Efficacy - 7/10.

12. Eat before you get up and late at night before you sleep. You need a pretty patient partner if you've been as immobilised by sickness as I have to do this. I've found a glass of milk and a slice of milk before bed helps, and the one thing that doesn't routinely bring about barfing first thing is plain oats with sultanas soaked in milk like a breakfast cereal. The hard oats have been best for me, the soft ones develop a texture which is like slime and brings about chunk blowing. You need to eat it 20 minutes before getting out of bed, so you're best beloved has to prepare it and bring it to you. Then before you actually get up, sit on the bed for five minutes to prepare your system for the shock of the day's first standing up while full of baby-growing hormones. If you still feel ill while getting ready for work, stop and sit still for two minutes when you need to, this can put off vomiting until, oooh I don't know, at least 10am to allow you time to get to work without soaking yourself, fellow public transport passengers, your car or a taxi driver, in puke. Efficacy - 7/10.

***I am actually happy about being pregnant, but, I have had to put that on hold until a later date when I'm not spending most of my time feeling sick or conversing on the great, white telephone.

The next fascinating installment will most likely be my adventures with maternity cover on health insurance. I bet you're waiting with bated breath.

There's humour in everything... And I mean everything...

I haven't felt much like writing for a long time because I have spent a substantial part of this year learning what it's like losing a parent to cancer while living as an expat.

Sorry to those of you who I know well but haven't told, but it's not something I felt like shouting from the rooftops. Not because I'm ashamed, or anything like that, but, unusually for me, I simply didn't know what to say.

My mum died of Multiple Myeloma on May 30th. She was 65, not exactly youthful but still too young to die. She had been ill for four and a half years. Like most things in life, she handled her illness head on, determined to carry on with as close an approximation of what she always wanted to do during her retirement as possible. If anyone stuck two fingers up to cancer, it was my Mum. If there was anyone entitled to self-pity, it was her, as there is no cure for MM, your number is basically up, and from the day of your diagnosis, all you can do is get treated and try to live with as best you can. But, she very rarely felt sorry for herself, and when she did, it was not because of the illness itself, but usually because it was stopping her doing what she wanted. To put it simply, my Mum had balls. She was far braver than me or anyone else I know would have been in her circumstances.

Compared to many expats in my situation, I am pretty lucky. I was able to take six weeks off to go and be with her in her last few weeks and for her funeral. When I initially went, I expected it to be for a short visit, then to come back again and return within a month. When I arrived, I knew I would not be able to say goodbye to her knowing that it could be the last time I would see her, so I stayed. Fortunately for me, I have an employer who was understanding about that.

While I was there, I thought a lot about people who have families who depend on them for financial support in Dubai and who simply don't have the luxury of doing what I did. I know of at least one person who didn't make it home before his own mother died. And, then, of course there's the thousands of low-paid workers here who rarely get to see their families during key life events - births, marriages and deaths go on without them as they're working away to pay for the trappings.

I promised myself I would keep this post reasonably short to avoid getting maudlin, so I will. The "humour in everything" I am referring to in the title is about an email I received from a well-meaning colleague who I had to tell when Mum passed away.

"My her sole rest in peace", she wrote.

As comedy English as a second language errors go, it's not up there with "tragically located" or "comfortable and non-violent lodgings" (non-violent should have said peaceful) but it certainly lifted the corners of my mouth on what was probably the most difficult day of my life. And for that, I am extremely grateful.

A brush with death, or imbecility, depending on your view

I had a gun pointed at me yesterday. My first instinct, five minutes after the event, was rush to social media and tell everyone I know, so horrified was I by the sheer idiocy of the event. But my Mum uses social media and the thought of giving her that kind of shock stopped me. I am not actually sure if it was a real gun and it's important to say so as not to over dramatise the event too much, that I am 99 per cent sure there was not really any violent intent, it was just two utter pillocks seeing if they could scare a bunch of women who they pulled up next to in traffic. I don't know if it was real because my experience with firearms amounts to 1. My dad's shotgun, which spent its life safely looked in a tall metal cabinet in the back porch of our family home, and 2. Seeing him indoors being shown how to fire a machine gun on some kind of Viet Cong tourist experience when we were on holiday in Vietnam.

What happened was this: I was in the passenger seat of a colleague's car on the way back from lunch, when a pair of local looking guys in a very ordinary looking white saloon pulled up next to us. I would not have noticed what was going on had another colleague, who was sitting in the back, not yelled: "He's got a gun!" And I looked over and sure enough the guy in the driver's seat had a very real looking hand gun. For reasons I'm not sure about, I was 90 per cent certain that this was not a dangerous situation, just two completely idiotic pillock-brained inbreds showing off because the colleague who was driving is a very attractive girl. I turned away, but my colleague who was sitting in the back tells me that he took off what looked like a safety catch, and, aimed it first at the back seat passengers, and then at me and Attractive Driving Colleague, and pretended to fire.

Attractive Driving Colleague, who is not local but was born and grew up in the UAE, seemed to think it was all a tremendous laugh, and play acted being shot, before they drove off. Shouting Colleague protested loudly, "it's not funny!" and I was inclined to agree. Shouting Colleague was particularly furious about it because she said it didn't matter whether it was a real or fake gun, or, whether there were actually bullets in it or not, they were deliberately trying to frighten us, or, thought the idea of shooting people dead is some kind of hilarious joke. My instinct is that we were in no danger, as for all I know it was a pellet gun used for keeping stray cats out of someone's garden, but, knowing what I do of local attitudes to firearms, I can't be 100 per cent certain. Stories like this one, about someone being shot during celebratory gunfire at a wedding, are not exactly every day here, but they appear way more frequently than they should. And, there is the fact that locals seem to have access to real guns with relative ease, because there is something of a hunting culture here, as this story  shows.

If it were the UK rather than on a sunny day in Jumeirah 1, I would have acted differently. I am fairly sure in the UK, I would have perhaps have made more effort to get down the car registration and report them to the police, because pointing even a fake firearm at someone in the UK can lead to criminal charges. But, I have no idea if attempting to frighten the absolute bejesus out of a bunch of women in a car with a firearm that may or may not have been fake and may or may not have had bullets in it is an offence here. It might have been just too much effort to explain it to the police. I suspect the response would have been: "Hlas, no real harm done, so why are you wasting our time, sister?" And, there was the fact that at least one person in the car seemed to think it was all totally hilarious, so getting the boys in khaki involved seemed something of an over reaction.

I wish I could say I wasn't afraid, but I was. My reaction to it all was to turn away, avoid eye contact, thinking, "if someone is stupid or mad enough to play with what could have been a loaded firearm in broad daylight in the front seat of a car to try and impress or scare the crap out of a car full of women, they are stupid or mad enough to accidentally or deliberate put a bullet straight between my eyes, so, while I am not going to do anything as dramatic as duck down, I am not going to be accidentally or deliberately shot in the face".

Being afraid feels stupid, because it was an incident that lasted seconds, and which Attractive Driving Colleague thought was "just so funny". Perhaps, as someone who was born here and grew up around such people, she has experienced such things before and thinks there is no cause to be afraid. I am anti-gun anyway, because of, oh, you know, incidents like this and, you know, this and, you know, the fact that guns are used on a daily basis to maim and murder innocent people, and, the fact that you can read daily in the newspapers at the moment about the damage done to Reeva Steenkamp by a firearm, apparently "accidentally". All factors considered, perhaps my reaction is not so stupid.

You only have to look at the way people drive here (tailgating, speeding, cutting across lanes with no notice at high speed, WITH their small children on their laps in the driver's seat, with eight or nine people stuffed into cars meant for a maximum of five), to realise that human life is a lot cheaper than it should be. I've never actually met anyone who is willing to say it out loud, but I am told the attitude to seat belts in cars among many is that, if God wills it, you will die in a crash, to wear a seat belt is to interfere with God's will. I suppose knowledge of that kind of attitude is what makes me afraid of some utter oxygen thief waving a firearm around in the front of his car. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before in the UAE, and I am hoping that it won't again. Even in a country where life is cheaper than it should be, there can't be that many molecule brains who think that waving a firearm around is "funny", can there?










 

Rent!

It may not have made the international news yet, but believe me, it's pretty much all anyone is talking about in Dubai at the moment - the fact that a combination of financial recovery, optimism brought about by Dubai's Expo2020 bid win, and, sheer determination by a lot of investors to earn absolutely pots of money, mean that that property market in Dubai has once again gone completely berserk.

Dubai landlords can be an excitable bunch anyway, but of recent, there seems to have been a herd mentality that has led to them to once again start asking for absolutely bonkers rents for properties in Dubai, as this story will show you. In case you can't be bothered to click the link, we're talking 50 per cent rent increases, with the area that him indoors and I live in, Downtown, one of the worst affected. We had a rather stressful battle with our Averagely Revolting Landlord who tried to impose a giant rent increase on us last year. Averagely Revolting Landlord reluctantly realised the law was on our side and accepted a small rent increase, then, sulkily sold the apartment to Profoundly Revolting Landlord, who has behaved like a repulsively putrid, fulsomely foul swamp toad of the highest order in order to get us to leave without giving him any bother. This post is a bit of an indication of what he is like. He has won. Mainly because the old landlord wrote enough pseudo-legal caveats into our current contract to make sure we have to leave unless we agree to pay whatever ludicrous rent increase the new one feels like charging, but also because we would actually like more space than our current place has, and, to not live in the 22nd floor for a while.

Another reason that I've relented is that this man is such a gruesome, foul, turd of a man, that the idea of giving any more of my hard-earned cash to him makes me want to hurl myself from aforesaid 22nd floor. I refuse to speak to him any more because I feel that anyone who has the kind of attitudes to women that this man has displayed isn't worth the effort it would take to summon enough spit to gob in his face. But, he hangs around on a sofa in our lobby, suppurating like Jabba the Hutt, because he manages several apartments in our building and is often here taking care, or not taking care, (if his attitude to maintenance of our place is anything to go by) of business. So, unfortunately I have to see him fairly regularly.

You may remember that him indoors and I suspected mental rent increases were about to happen, as we watched the fireworks exploding from the Burj Khalifa on the night the Expo win was announced. The signs were there pre-him indoors' final showdown with Profoundly Revolting Landlord in the form of news stories like this, from Arabian Business, taken from 7Days. Click here.

If you don't click on any of my other links, I would urge you to read that one, as, it pretty much sums up the situation as far as tenants are concerned in Dubai, and, to be fair, Abu Dhabi, and increasingly, the Northern Emirates.

What I mean by that is this: I have been well aware since arriving in the UAE that Dubai landlords are not like him indoors and I, who are also landlords. We have had the same tenants in our Ealing flat since we left the UK more than three years ago. We have imposed one rent increase which they agreed to pay. We asked them to pay another last time they renewed, they said they would leave if we insisted. We decided on balance to keep them on at the same rent: They're good tenants, they don't ask for much in terms of maintenance, they pay on time, we don't want the flat empty because there's a hefty mortgage and so on.

However, flats sitting empty in Dubai for months while landlords chase increasingly ridiculous rent yields is par for the course, it would seem. I suspect this is possibly because many of them bought cheaply off plan for cash, or don't need to worry about the flat being empty because the rent yields are enough to see them easily through a few mortgage payments. And, because they bought determined to make loads of dosh, so they will bloody mindedly chase loads of dosh, whether or not it makes business sense and finally, because they don't care about the tenants who they unceremoniously turf out of their homes on a yearly basis.

What that Arabian Business article has taught me, and this will probably not be a surprise to most of you, is that it's not that those in the property industry here don't care about the people who are being kicked out in favour of people with big salaries who can pay bigger rents, they actively resent us.

In a way, you've got to admire honesty of the man quoted by AB, there's no way his equivalent in the UK would ever say something like this because he would have been PR-trained into submission for fear of being pilloried in the media:

"But I say to that person: You were not supposed to be living in Burj Khalifa . Because if you were working in London, at your salary, which falls in the average salaries of London, can you live in Knightsbridge? You cannot. You will take the tube, live half an hour away from the city and commute - just like all the employees,” he added.

I don't live in the Burj Khalifa, although I have a fine view of it from my lounge window meaning my flat is now considered "very desirable" in terms of Dubai property. So what he's saying does apply to me. And what he's effectively saying is this:

"Gwarn, you low paid people. You people without big private incomes or trust funds, those of you who are not corporate lawyers, oil workers, finance directors, bankers and so on. Get out. You've had your fun living in a posh area in a nice place while the Dubai economy was in the toilet, now will you kindly p*** off to some bland suburb where people like you actually belong. And close the door on your way out so none of you can creep back in. Thanks."

He has a point, I suppose, these buildings weren't built for low-paid journalists, booze salesmen, teachers and the like, they were built for people who can afford something approaching Knightsbridge rents. Although, I can't help but feel there are fewer people that can afford Knightsbridge rents in the world than developers in Dubai seem to think there are... Also, I can't help but feel that likening Dubai, a city that's sprung up in a  matter of decades, with Knightsbridge, an established area of London that has extremely expensive properties in a market that's built up and sustained over centuries, may be asking for trouble.

What can you do? Well, first of all, it's best to have a laugh about it, and thanks to the Pan Arabia Enquirer, it's possible to do that. Once you've been through the stages of grief, hysteria, denial and anger, you come to the acceptance part.

Staying in our place would mean an ugly battle, starting with reporting the landlord to RERA, the property industry's regulatory body. Even if we won a case against him, I hate to think what Profoundly Revolting Landlord's behaviour would be like over the following year. It does mean that he has won by bullying us out of our home, but, when it comes down to it, does anyone really want to live somewhere where the owner of the property wants you out so badly he's prepared to shout threats of getting lawyers on you in your own building lobby? The answer is no. I'm bloody minded, but not that bloody minded.

So what of the future? Well, a lot of our friends are leaving Dubai. For most of them, the rent increases were the tipping point on their decision to leave, as many of them have been here five years or more - a point at which this place starts to send you slightly mad. Some people will fight to stay in their homes in nice areas, then, next year, like us, relent and find somewhere in one of those bland suburbs Mr El Chaar was implying that we should all move to, because the fact is, although rent increases are still capped, the legally allowed maximum of 20 per cent may prove too much for many.

It's not all bad news. The bland suburbs are not as bland as they could be and there is news that, no doubt seeking to cash in on the recovering market, a lot more new residential property will be completed this year than in previous years, so more supply to meet the demand may mean that landlords won't be able to hike rents as much as they did last year.

In the mean time, I feel like the final scene of Lord of the Rings, Return of the King, when the elves and Gandalf, Bilbo and Frodo get on the swan boat into the West, such is the exodus of those of moderate income from Downtown. Except we will be heading not West but in in a sort of South Easterly direction, away from the coast, where the more expensive properties are, and into the desert where new suburbs are being built. And, of course, there won't be any tearful hobbits waving us off, only landlords and property investors, gleefully counting their money, in our wake.

Blink and you missed Champ of the Camp

You may have missed it, but the film I wrote about in this post had brief run in the cinema over the past week.

To get a documentary into UAE cinemas at all is pretty good going as we tend to get only the bustiest of blockbusters screened here, apart from at a few often short-lived arts centre ventures and at the Abu Dhabi and Dubai Film Festivals.

Him indoors and I went to see it at the Wafi Centre and had a jolly time apart from the annoying woman who decided to chat on her phone all the way through. I mean, why? Why would you pay to go to the cinema and spend the duration of the film not watching and chatting?

Sigh.

Anyway. The film is still to be released on DVD and hopefully screened on television too. If you want to help make that happen, you can donate here:

http://www.aflamnah.com/en/champ-of-the-camp/

Kindly remember that you are a second class citizen

I am the kind of person that will defend Dubai to the hilt to those who criticise it. This is the kind of thing I will say to people who say it is a revolting capitalist plastic hell hole full of Porsche-driving idiots with empty lives:

"The climate is great from October to April, you can enjoy a good quality of life, yes there is the fair share of complete materialistic plonkers that you would expect in a rich country, but I have made great friends here. And, as a woman in Dubai, I have always been treated with respect, it does not have the unreconstructed attitudes you might think, and, I know that as long as I remember I am in an Islamic country and do not do anything silly like be horribly drunk in a public place and otherwise live within the law, I will be fine."

Unfortunately, this week, I was given a rather stark reminder, courtesy of my landlord's agent, that despite the fact that I am as educated as my husband, have just landed a job that is nearly as well paid as his, pay my share of the mortgage on our property back home etc etc etc, in the eyes of some, the fact that I am a woman means my opinion matters less and that I should not argue and listen respectfully when a man is talking.

To cut a long story short, the agent had originally agreed to fix our broken washing machine, even gave us the cash up front without seeing a quote, but went back on this when the technician who came to fix it told us it was going to be twice as expensive as originally thought.

When I tried to disagree with his argument that he would not fix our six-year-old machine because "the apartment had been delivered to us in good condition" (it really wasn't, but that is another long and boring story) his words were something like:

"This is Arab country, here a man can do something very bad to his wife if she speaks against him."

At this point, I thought there was little point trying to argue with someone who is going to disagree with me because he believes that his being a man means he has an automatic right to make the decision, and the fact that the fact that I am a woman means I have no right to disagree with him. So, I have had to go against every single one of my feminist instincts and ask him indoors to deal with him from now on.

I moved here with my eyes open, I knew such attitudes exist here, but I found it pretty shocking because it was the first time in nearly three years that I have come up against it. In many ways, the UAE is very forward thinking. The Minister of State and leader of Dubai's recent successful Expo bid is a woman, for example, and there is broad recognition that equality for women is vital.

And, I know I should not let this man upset me, but, I did find it pretty shocking, particularly as it is the first time I have experienced this kind of attitude head on, and, I think I had started to believe that such ignorance did not exist here. Silly me, it would seem it does not take much for certain people to resort to it if a woman is behaving in a way they do not like.

It caused me to do something I have never done before, and went running to the forum on ex-patwoman.com where I found some good advice about reporting him to the landlord regulator RERA. As is often the case, I am not sure I can be bothered with the bureaucracy. Perhaps I will, but in the mean time, the priority is to just get the flippin' washing machine fixed. I am aware of the somewhat pointed symbolism of a broken household appliance being at the root of my pondering of perceptions of gender roles in the UAE. Perhaps I should get back into the kitchen and get on with trying to get the bloomin' thing fixed rather than rambling away on my blog.

Why everyone should see Champ of the Camp

For the first time this year, instead of talking about how nice it would be, we actually made it to a screening of a film at Dubai International Film Festival. Our chosen film was Champ of the Camp.

I have been reading about the film in the local press for some time, and had begun to doubt that it would ever be released, due to the fact that the treatment of the labourers who are basically responsible for making the enormous construction boom possible in Dubai, the UAE and the wider Gulf, is a fairly sore point as it has been the subject of such international criticism.

It is impressive that the director and producer managed to get it not only released, but screened at the the Emirate's film festival, and, at a 1,000 seat open air event right next to the Burj Khalifa, one of Dubai's best-known symbol of audacious wealth and determination to be the biggest and the best.

Please excuse the poor quality pic, I forgot to take my camera with me so it is from the Crackberry, but this gives a little sense of the atmosphere. Champ of the Camp tells the story of a singing contest that is held during the summer months at the labour camps where the construction workers live. The men audition to compete in a Bollywood singing game show, held in camps across the country, where singing ability and encyclopaedic memory of the thousands of songs written for the Indian film industry are key to being crowned Champ of the Camp. The winner in 2012 received a cash prize and an enormous flat screen TV. What is the true heart of the film, though, is the lives of the men and the solace the simple act of singing a romantic song from a Bollywood movie can bring to them, while they are thousands of miles from home, working long hours in searing heat for small salaries with often little prospect of seeing their loved ones for years at a stretch.

I can't remember ever before being so excited to see a film, or so pleased that it had actually been screened here. The screening itself reminded me of one of the central scenes in Cinema Paradiso, when the residents of the town gather in the square to watch the movie projected on to the wall because their beloved cinema is closed.

OK, it was a lot more official and high-tech than that, but the sound system was such that the singing of the men echoed from the speakers and the sound bounced off the Burj Khalifa, which one of the subjects of the film had been involved in building. The divisions between the lives of tourists and richer local and ex-pat residents in Dubai is such that he had never before been back to actually see the building as a visitor. A trip with the film makers was the first time he had ever got close up to simply stand back and look at it and watch the Dubai Fountain in the adjacent Burj Lake. It may have been a happy accident, but the point in the film when the fountain was shown was the exact point when the real life fountain behind it started to do its watery and flashing light stuff, another coup, even if it was not deliberate.

There are several scenes where the film makers simply train their cameras on individual workers standing in certain Dubai spots, beaches, building sites, near the Burj Al Arab, and they sing their hearts out. It is moving to see these songs, often ballads for lost or longed for loved ones, in such a different context, away from the glitz, the glamour and the frenetic dancing of Bollywood. I challenge anyone not to fill up at the sight of one contestant sobbing at the thought of being so far away from home and unable to be there in the event that something should happen to his aging parents. It is pretty sobering for a privileged ex-pat like me, who walks past hundreds of these workers on a daily basis, toiling away in 40+degrees, without really giving much thought to what their lives must be like.

There was only one slightly jarring moment in the film, that did not seem to quite fit, where two workers had a discussion about why one worker, from Pakistan, should happen to know songs from Bollywood, which felt as if it had been rather staged, and in my view, was completely unnecessary as there was plenty of other context to explain the use of Bollywood songs. Other than that, I cannot really begin to stress how impressive this film is, how fascinating an insight it is, the sheer quantity of work that must have gone on behind the scenes to navigate UAE bureaucracy to obtain permissions to film.

Much was made in media interviews with the director in the run up to the screening about how the media had previously only given a very small insight into the poor conditions inside the camps, the implication being that there is a much bigger pictures and it is not all bad. Well, his film showed conditions of eight men sleeping in bunks in one room, lack of air con in cooking facilities (no joke in the summer when it is 50degrees) and men disclosing that they receive a salary of Dhs1,000 per month (just over 166pounds). The fact that Mahmoud Kaabour was able to show this is pretty miraculous and I have already decided if I ever need to get something really very tricky done in Dubai, it is Mr Kaabour and producer Eva Sayre that I will be asking!

The winner of the contest, the film revealed, returned to his home country for a short while because his contract expired, and has since relocated to Saudi Arabia. Another, from Bangladesh, had actually been in the UAE illegally having overstayed his visa, but also managed to return home thanks to a visa amnesty last year. Another is back in Pakistan. Four of them attended the screening and each sang a song for the audience afterwards, their voices once again bouncing off the Burj Khalifa.

During a post screening interview, what really struck me was how one of them said that he never thought "people of such calibre" (ie rich and privileged people) would come to watch the film. Growing up in a society like the UK where one is taught that everyone is equal, no one is "better" than anyone else, whether or not their parents own land or have a lot of money or whether or not they have a brown or white skin, I always find such things upsetting to hear. Imagine, thinking the place where you were born or your parents' lack of money means you are not "of the same calibre" as others. I just can't, yet this is clearly how some of these men who are building the skyscrapers that are always springing up around us feel. Everyone should try to imagine what that feels like to appreciate what they have, and, that is why everyone should see Champ of the Camp. Now the real test will be to see whether the film will reach a wider audience and whether it will be the cause of any improvements in the lives of the men.