It was the first night in Abu Dhabi and after the longest two days of being awake it was finally time for bed. Everyone in my villa, exhausted, tried to have an early night as we had to be up and ready for school the next day. Again, fuck you hindsight, that probably was a sign too.
When I woke at nine that night, disorientated, to a loud banging at my bedroom door I was beyond annoyed!
The villa we moved into was opened mere hours before our arrival to it. It was also not one hundred percent complete. There were issues with the air-conditioning in some rooms, other rooms needed to have vital pipes installed in their bathrooms, and so on. The villa was also in desperate need of a thorough clean but that would have to wait until the weekend.
When I put on pants and unlocked my bedroom door to discover the culprit of the noise so that I could shit on them with all the wrath of fire and brimstone, I found Azam, the watchman of the villa, running around from one room to the next with two or three men following him around like lost ducklings. I made eye contact with one of my villa mates. While my mouth hung open in disbelief, she managed to read my mind by answering my question before I had a chance to ask it.I have been told by numerous people that I have a very animated face. So much so that I cannot play poker as a result of my face betraying me. Apparently, Azam was supervising these lost ducklings of his in fixing various problems that we had encountered in our rooms and bathrooms. The banging was a successful attempt at waking me up so that they could get into my bathroom. For the life of me I do not know what needed to be fixed in my bathroom, but I am sure it could've waited until I returned home from work the next day. And so Azam and his men went to work while we returned to our beds and left our doors open for him in the desperate hope that we wouldn't lose out on much more sleep as a result of this disturbance. Azam finished in my room last, after ten that night, and I was grateful to go back to sleep properly.
About two nights later, I had a second dose of night time shenanigans when after eight the yellow school bus parked outside our villa and two British girls got out and started offloading their belongings. They were moving in in the not so middle of the night. I left them to it for about thirty minutes before finding out who they were and what their story was exactly.
I quickly learnt that people in the UAE have no respect for time. African time and Arab time are pretty much the same thing. If someone says that something will be done today, best you believe it'll get done tomorrow at the earliest and five minutes is more likely to be a couple of hours. Arab time is an absolute pain in the ass with the exception of one instance; the malls! Malls in the UAE are open for shopping, food, groceries, movies, etc. until late at night. Because of the intense heat in the summer months especially, people tend to sleep late or be dormant, hibernating in their homes until it becomes cool enough to venture out.
Now I have come to expect night time shenanigans when Arab time is involved.
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