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functional English. All of this was estimable. Outstanding was that he took it upon himself to fix the remote control problem I was having with the ceiling fan and also, as I discovered after he’d left, to swap the bathtub faucet characters so that faucet C no longer gave forth cold water, nor F hot.
    Fittingly, it was while taking my first bath drawn with alphabetic correctness that I had my one solid-gold Dubai brainwave: I decided to hire Ali full-time, as my personal assistant. He has proven himself the perfect man for the job, which may be described as follows: to assist me with the challenge of day-to-day life in Dubai consisting of one goddamned glitch after another. (For example, the aforementioned bathtub had a built-in seat. I can only assume that this feature is highly sophisticated and aimed, like everything else in this country, at the mythic connoisseur, in this case the überbather who sits up in his tub and will not rudely immerse his/her head and torso in bathwater, i.e., bathe. I mentioned my dissatisfaction to Ali, and my wish was his command. He and a workman procured and installed a new, seatless, perfect tub.)
    Even Ali is a glitch. Contrary to what his get-up led me to believe, he is not an Emirati. He is a “bidoon” (Arabic for “without,” apparently), i.e., a stateless person, i.e., a person who is everywhere illegally present. I have not inquired into the whys and wherefores of Ali’s situation, but, according to
The National
, there are tens of thousands of bidoons in the Gulf States. Most Dubai-based bidoons, I read, are the descendants of foreigners (from Iran, from other parts of Arabia) who settled here before the United Arab Emirates came into being (in 1971, I can declare off the top of my head) and who for whateverreason didn’t register as citizens of the new state. Neither
jus sanguinis
nor
jus soli
avails bidoons. They are, as things stand, fucked.
    Anyhow, none of this would be my problem if employing a bidoon were not technically cloudy. At Ali’s own suggestion, he and I have left things on an informal basis, which I’m comfortable with. Income tax is in any case not payable in Dubai, so no question of tax evasion arises. Because he is not permitted to have a bank account, Ali receives compensation in cash dirhams from my office disbursement account, and quite frankly I treat as a sleeping dog the compliance nuances of this arrangement.
Los dos Batros
have been informed in writing of the payments and their purpose. Sandro has been introduced to Ali and is well aware of what he does. Since it is customary in the emirate to employ bidoons, I can with justification proceed pro tem on the footing that all is hunky-dory or, since the case is not cloudless, that all is not not hunky-dory. That’s good enough for me. One can’t be Utopian about these things.
    I call Ali into my office. I have taken photos of Project X and I bring them up on my desktop and invite Ali to take a look. Over my shoulder, he says, “What is this … building?”
    “That’s what I’d like to know. What do you think?”
    This matter has no obvious bearing on my professional responsibilities, but I maintain that without Ali’s miscellaneous assistance I wouldn’t be able to begin to do my job.
    Ali says, “I do not recognize this.” He says, “I will check this out.” What he means is, he will acquaint himself with the whispers and pass them on to me. I wouldn’t actually know anything, but at least I would be in the know.
    “No, thank you, Ali,” I say. “That’s OK. Don’t worry about it.” Now I feel bad about having involved him. Ali is not, nor likely ever could be, a resident of Privilege Bay. He is never going to be one of the Uncompromising Few. He will always be one of the Compromising Many. My impression is that he livessomewhere in Deira, which is no great shakes but is very far from the end of the world. I will put it this way: I am socially acquainted with people who have