Open Democracy
Dec 24 2004

The three faces of Christmas
Maryam Maruf
23 – 12 – 2004

>>From Warrington to Abu Dhabi, shami kebabs and plastic trees, crap TV
or a day at the beach? Maryam Maruf’s quirky tale of a child’s
Christmas in the Persian Gulf.

There is a saying in Pakistan that the only place you will ever
really feel at home is in the city where you were born. When I was
nine years old I went back to Dubai, the city of my birth, for the
first time. I got off the plane with my father and fifteen-year-old
brother that December night, and walked down the metal staircase to
the shuttle bus. The surge of warm air made our jeans stick to our
legs. I remember the look on the visa man’s face when he saw our
British passports; the exhausted-looking Afghani taxi drivers waiting
patiently in the heat by their un-air conditioned cars; and a row of
palm trees, all artificially planted in a straight line, stretching
for miles along the Airport Road. But I remember, most of all,
feeling strangely happy and at peace, and at home.

We had just spent fourteen hours flying from London with airport-only
stops in Frankfurt and Muscat, and while my father got to sit in
First Class, my brother and I sat in Economy in the middle aisle next
to a sleeping man who smelt of horseradish sauce and burped in my ear
all the way to Muscat. We had come from Warrington, a town in
Cheshire, northwest England, where we were the only Pakistani family
in our neighbourhood, and where it had been raining because it was
still December. To go on this holiday, I had finished school, where I
was the only Pakistani child, two weeks before anyone else.

Now I spent long days on Jumairah beach with my cousins; took trips
to City 2000, in 1989 the biggest amusement park in the United Arab
Emirates; ate ice creams at 39 Flavors, before it became Baskin
Robbins; had endless rides on the dhow on the Dubai Creek; and
watched all the American sitcoms – Who’s the Boss, Different Strokes
and Family Ties – which they didn’t play on British television. At
that moment everything that felt home to me was everything that was
not English.

Five years later, a few days before my fourteenth birthday, I went
back to the UAE, but this time to Abu Dhabi, the capital city, and
the city where I wasn’t born. This time I was with my mother and we
were going to live indefinitely with my father, who I hadn’t seen
since he said goodbye to me and my brother at the boarding gate at
Dubai airport. This time we were coming from Manchester, not
Warrington, where we had left after my mother’s car had been set on
fire and PISS OFF PAKIS sprayed in white paint on our front porch.
This time, though I was happy to see my father again, I hadn’t wanted
to leave England.

I had woken up one morning and realised I just had my first dream in
English, and then I was thinking in English, and when I spoke, it was
no longer in my Pakistani-American sitcom accent: I spoke like the
other English kids I knew. Urdu gradually lost its importance, it
became the language my mother used to ask me to get some milk from
the corner shop, it became the language I had to talk with tiresome
Aunties, who weren’t really my Aunties, who would come round on Eid,
a previously important event which now became an occasion where my
mother would wake up early to make biryani and we would have to
entertain tiresome Aunties. And also by then, Michael J Fox had
become just some American actor. It wasn’t the place where I was
born, but I felt that England, at that moment, for those childish
reasons and more, had become my home.

In mid-December, three months after my mother and I arrived in Abu
Dhabi, and exactly five years after my brother, father and I left for
Dubai via Frankfurt and Muscat, I was stood in the school playground
with my four friends and realised with a shock that it was the day
before Christmas Eve.

The school that I went to, for one year only, was called Al-Worood,
and was on the outskirts of the city and near nothing but the desert.
I hadn’t been looking forward to starting at a school where my
uniform was an ankle-length grey smock; where the boys had classes on
the first floor, and the girls on the third, and the only time we
would get to see each other was in the car park or in assemblies
where we would be standing in straight lines facing each other; and
where the headmistress was a tyrannical old woman called Mrs Hayat,
who wore royal blue blazers and who, at the start of spring term,
would slap me across the face during assembly as she caught me
chewing gum.

The school playground, where we also had assemblies, was a long
courtyard with a border of rose bushes. I was sat on a bench in front
of a rose bush with my friends Zaynab, an Iraqi girl with green eyes
who had lived in New York for a year; Greta, a tall Armenian girl;
Lizanne, who was new like me, a Canadian girl with small piggy blue
eyes and long blonde plaited hair and would later be expelled for
smoking in the carpark with the boys; and Mona, who like me was a
Pakistani-Muslim, but unlike me, took her culture and religion
seriously.

“It’s the day before Christmas Eve,” I said and looked around at the
others. Zaynab and Mona shrugged their shoulders and continued
talking about the new Maths teacher, Mr Jalal. Greta, who was born in
Abu Dhabi, didn’t look that excited. She was a Christian, but she
said her family didn’t really exchange gifts and that they just went
to church for a bit, then turned towards Mona and Zaynab and voiced
her opinion on Mr Jalal. But Lizanne, who was also interested in
discussing Mr Jalal, looked at me like she knew what I meant.

“At least it’s on the weekend so we get the day off school”, I said,
now just talking to Lizanne.

“Yeah. It makes me miss home”, she said in a bored voice. “You don’t
really feel that it’s Christmas here. I want to see some snow. We
don’t even have a tree, and I don’t think Dad can get a turkey.
Spinneys is sold out.”

Spinneys was a supermarket in Khaldiya, a prosperous neighbourhood on
the other side of town from us, where Lizanne lived, along with most
of the North American, British, Australian and European people.
Spinneys was the only place in Abu Dhabi where you could get HP baked
beans, British newspapers, which included only The Times and the
Daily Mail, and turkeys.

“Hey, listen,” Lizanne said to me, still in a bored voice. “What are
you doing tomorrow? The British Club are having a special Christmas
party-dinner-thing. D’you wanna come?”

“I’ll have to ask my dad, he doesn’t really get on with the guy who
runs it, so I don’t know if he’d want me to go there.”

“Oooh”, said Lizanne, not sounding bored anymore, and her little blue
eyes shining. “Did they fight? What happened? Did your dad write
anything about it in his paper.”

“Dunno, it was a long time ago and not such a big deal really,” I was
purposely vague, not wanting to give Lizanne any more gossip about my
father, who was a Deputy Editor of a big English daily paper in the
UAE, and had an argument at the British Club because they refused him
entry to a show that he was supposed to be writing about because he
didn’t have the right ticket.

“Okay”, Lizanne sounded a bit disappointed. “Ask tonight and let me
know, I know the people sorting the party out so I can bring special
guests. Oh, bring your brother as well, he’s over for the holidays
right?”

In the end my brother and I went for the party but didn’t stay for
the dinner as there was no room at the table, and Lizanne had
forgotten to say that we were coming. Unsurprisingly I felt awkward
at the British Club. It was like being in Warrington again, minus the
spray paint and burnt cars. We were surrounded by a group of people
asserting their Britishness and their right to be in one place over
ours. Like Warrington, we knew we didn’t really belong there, which
made us miss our home even more.

The next day was Friday, the last day of the weekend, and Christmas
Day. My dad had received an invitation for a posh Christmas lunch at
the Sheraton. We laughed and remembered the first time we ever
celebrated Christmas in our council flat in Warrington. We had put up
a plastic tree my mother had bought in the market and my father
cooked a special curry of okra, shami kebabs and naan.

We went and had our lunch and then phoned my sister who was in
Manchester, where it was raining and there was crap TV on. After
that, we all went and sat on the beach.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress