Caffeine

I pulled up my charcoal grey Chevrolet on the parking pavement. I watched the woman in white carelessly. Startling white designer tops and a fish cut denim. She had a swaying gait and the chunky waist belt danced in waves. She entered the ‘Valley of coffee’ café.

A white Mercedes Benz steered beside the towering sky scraper in which the café was located. The woman in white greeted him, “Salaamalaikkum.” She seated him in the low cushion spread on the manicured grass and started preparing the traditional Arabic shisha pipes. She moved in feline grace and held up a delighted conversation.

I sat in my parked car and watched her all the time. I sipped the scalding coffee from the Styrofoam cup. It kept me warm in the desert breeze of the winter night. Ever since I remembered, I have been a part of this country, this Arabic culture. India was like a distant dream, a place to visit on vacation, a nationality on my passport. I was the epitome of identity confusion, the belonging dilemma of the millions of expatriates who thrived in this melting pot of countries and cultures, languages and lifestyles of the UAE. Technically speaking, I was an Indian, but otherwise speaking, I belonged to this country in a twisted, culturally flawed way.

Sudden desires to smoke shisha arose in me. “When in Rome, do as Romans do,” someone whispered in my head. I closed my eyes. The image of the distant woman in white and the smell of ruhafza like shisha fumes filled my mind, just as potent as reality.

I fumbled in my wallet. 50 Dhms. The café charges per hour must be at least around a royal 200 bucks. Suddenly I hated all third world countries that had no money, that send its youth to Mediterranean countries, with not enough means to thrive in life. And countries like Sudan and Ethiopia, with chronicles of war ridden escapes. Those, which send their girls to work in cafes and joint, half hooking, half entertaining.

Each poor country could easily be switched with the other, only skin colors changed, wheat skinned to yellow skinned to brown skinned to burnt skin, the poverty, the desperation, the need to earn somehow to live, the bare hand to mouth existence, were all the same.

Frustration seethed through me. Disgust at my poverty angered my mind. Jealousy clawed vigorously into my innards. Racism, morality, war infested incest, trauma, mass migration, thrust of economic difference, class divide, the more I thought, the more I felt the world deserved it.

I dunked the Styrofoam into the trash bin and inhaled deeply into my Dunhill. Nicotine enhanced the caffeine in the veins.

“Whazz ze time?” A heavily Arabic accented voice quipped.

“1.45.” I replied to a face caked in foundation, devil’s red lipstick and tar dripping mascara.

“How mucz you pay me for one night? 20?!”

I smiled at the woman in white. When food was scarce and memory of those left behind in war infested home countries ate into your soul, service came cheap.

She smiled back from killer black eyes. I locked my Cher with sensor keys as we walked together to her apartment.

The thought of metaphorical coffee and shisha seared my senses.