The Teacher Diaries-Chapter 4-Dubai

Dubai

After a gruelling ten hour stay at the 3 star hotel in the air-AKA economy class with Emirates, we finally cleared the security check at The Sheikh Rashid Terminal-commonly known as Dubai International. I was completely astounded. It was a world within a world-a parallel universe if you will. Even with my previous travelling experience, I have never come across such decadence. 

I entered the duty free area first-with boarding gates flanked on either side on the second level. The gates were stretched so far apart that it could take one about 20 minutes to get to, say gate 35.

Duty-Free has everything you can think of. Perfumes, colognes,CDs, books, cartons of cigarettes, alcohol, and all kinds of electronic gadgets-everything that could fit in the cabin of a plane, you'll find in this shopping paradise. 

I just stood there in a trance-like state of bewilderment. As I looked around the duty free shop, I noticed happy faces, faces of content, and money didn’t seem to matter.

 “Can you charge these items to these two credit cards please,” I heard as I accidentally eves dropped on an over-entusiastic shopper.“Certainly madam,” replied the assistant with such polite excellence. It was amazing to see how the young girl behind the counter with her green jacket and  black slacks, exactly mirrored the flight attendants’ pattern of generic curtiousness-they probably went to the same school.

Duty free is like a license to allow the traveller to forget about responsibilities.Bills, debt, budgets, commitments, obviously meant nothing. Using the proverbial gifting as an excuse. “Oh, look! I got you this in Dubai Duty Free.”Your friends and loved ones would think that you actually cared enough to have bought them something while on vacation. In reality you probably just wanted to elevate your status in your social circle. I know I might be a synic, but common, they walk around with those plastic bags so proudly-as if they were getting paid to advertise Dubai. 

The Team

The eight of us decided to converge just outside the nearest smoking room. We sat on the floor, a few meters away from the Costa Coffee Shop, slouching against the framework of a travelator that stretched past all the boarding gates. We were physically and mentally drained as none of us got any sleep on the flight and were too wired contemplating the unexpected. The eight of us were in transit for about twelve hours and it was pretty normal just sleeping right there on the floor. The team was actually entitled to hotel rooms, but at the time we were totally unaware that the school included these in our tickets. I came to learn that this was the first example of their excellent communication skills.

It’s sort of late to do this, but I feel at this point for the sake of the development of characters,  I need to introduce myself and the rest of the team. Team-feels like we’re off to some kind of World Cup somewhere. Every one of us was special in one way or another. Well let’s call myself Joe for now, then there’s Allen, the Math wiz, Nizam the economist, Lester, the computer geek, Sam, the linguist and expert administrator, Ryan, well I don’t really know his speciality-then there’s also Faiq, the handwork specialist and of course the spiritual leader, Hasan. Our primary goal was actually to enhance the development of English, within our different specialities.

In a way that moment-the moment we were squatting against the sides of the travelator, is when I actually felt like we were out to save the world. In spite of our appearance of poverty, I have never felt more wealthy-being part of something so important. If only that moment lasted for the entire five years.

Chapter 5

The Unexpected

….to be continued