When did it happen for you? When did you start calling the UAE “home”?
I thought I’d crossed that threshold a few years ago, when I mastered the local lingo, and words and phrases such as “make it warm”, “backside” and “revert” crept into my vocabulary.
When I found myself angrily shouldering through the crowds watching The Dubai Mall fountain, rather than turning to gawp in awe. And when I started carrying a shirt jacket with me at all times, to wear indoors.
I realise now these were just early signs in an ever-growing acclimatisation process. I still had a long haul to truly earn my expatriate stripes.
The penny finally dropped when, some weeks ago, I mentioned to friends that I’d be out of the country for a fortnight. Where was I going, they naturally asked.
Without thinking, I said: “Oh, just the UK, you know”, a hearty sigh signalling a sense of obligation and resignation.
Suddenly my interlocutors all turned and squared up to me.
“Ha – it finally happened,” one declared, pointedly waving a finger with inexplicable glee.
“What happened?” I innocently asked.
“You don’t even want to go back – this is your home now,” replied my companion, sagely.
It hit me hard. He was right – the first time I touched down in Heathrow, seven months into my UAE adventure, I ran like an excited child to the baggage collection.
I arranged a huge party that first night, eager to tell everyone I’d ever met everything I’d seen and felt. I bumbled round London, relishing public transport, sleeping in eight beds (or rather on couches) in nine nights.
I was driven by a desperate urge to “reconnect” with friends whose existence seemed under a very real and present danger – and they responded in kind, greeting me warmly with gifts and affection, like a heroic soldier, returned from the front lines.
Fast forward three years to now, and my fifth (or sixth?) visit “home” did nothing but confirm this new sense of belonging elsewhere.
It was clear in the little things – the weird sensation of driving on the “wrong” (left) side of the road; the shock at coming upon green, open spaces; the way I found myself converting pounds into dirhams, after all those years of doing just the opposite.
And it was clear in the bigger, less concrete things, including my feeling of connection to the place and people. Turns out my passion for sharing colourful Middle Eastern anecdotes has decreased in proportion to my audience’s desire to hear them.
Conversely, the more empathetic catch-ups came when I returned to the UAE, where eager friends waited to hear about my exotic London adventures, and demanded updates on mutual friends they had met when I had guests visiting me in Dubai.
Because that’s the strange truth. Whatever I thought before, now, at last, it seems my life is finally here. The UAE is my home.
rgarratt@thenational.ae
