My apartment is brand new, on the 6th floor of a brick block that looks like it was transported from South London, with stunning views over the islands and gulf to Abu Dhabi city about 20km away. It's in a fancy new complex with three swimming pools, tennis courts, a half-built gym and a quarter-built restaurant. Spinneys - the local supermarket chain that caters to particularly British expats (and sells Waitrose-brand products at the same price as in Sussex) just opened last week, so now I only have to walk across the courtyard to pick up the milk and paper. Its Eid - a public holiday - and this morning I was able to have bacon and eggs, hi-fibre toast and Tetley's tea for breakfast while reading The Times Middle East and Asian Edition. Spinneys stores its enormous range of bacon and pork products in a secret back room, that is quite difficult to find. I thought it was illegal to sell pork here, but perhaps it's just culturally unsound and therefore best not to advertise it. Or perhaps they have a special licence because they didn't give me a brown paper bag for my bacon.
I am typing this sitting on my brand new sofa. It is a luscious donkey-brown leather Italian model and deliciously comfortable. I've never owned a leather sofa before. In fact, all but one of my previous sofas have been hand-me-downs and bargain mart buys. The one I bought new about 20 years ago was a wooden frame model with a futon mattress for guests to stay over on - and over the years it became a dog bed, and most of my guests refused to sit on it, let alone sleep on it. I have been agonising for weeks about whether to buy this couch. I fell in love with it when I happened across it in a shop in Al Wahdah Mall, but I felt so utterly guilty about spending the money when there are so many people starving in the world and my mortgage needs paying off and I could just have well bought a second-hand one or even a cheap(er) Ikea one. But in the end I celebrated actually getting paid after two months of work, by handing over my bankcard.
Yesterday, it arrived. The removal men were early, and I was still slopping around in my pyjamas, so I threw on some clothes and dashed downstairs to let them into the building. (I still haven't worked out how to use the phone thing to open the building door for people who ring.) There were three of them. They came in and looked at the lift, and shook their heads and talked excitedly in their language - probably Malayalam because there are so many people here from Kerala, or maybe Hindi, or possibly a Pakistan language - then they went out again and got a tape measure, and came back in and measured up, and shook their heads and conferred some more, and eventually, the head man said the lift was too small. We called the concierge and asked if we could take the ceiling out of the lift, and I had a long conversation with him about it, which ended up with him suggesting I pop to security to see if they would take the ceiling out. But then the removal Headman said that wouldn't work either because of the metal frame holding the ceiling up.
I made a phone call to Aldar Customer Service to see if they could think of some other way of getting the sofa up to the apartment. (Aldar administers the apartments on behalf of all the various landlords) The customer services man on the phone got all flustered and said I should have got an email which stated the size of furniture that would go up in the lift. I said thank you very much. Then the removal men started looking at the stairwell and talking and shaking their heads and looking concerned. They explained that the stairwell was too narrow, and it would be very difficult to manouevre the sofa up the stairs and around all of the bends (and, they didn't mention this, but there were 12 tight bends between every flight up to the 6th floor!)
By this stage I was cursing myself for buying the damned couch. If I'd bought an Ikea one, they could have taken it apart and put it back together in my apartment.
They did some more measuring and talking and then the Headman made a phone call, and eventually passed the phone to me. The man on the other end explained the situation to me - ie that the sofa was too big for the lift (!) so the men would take it up the stairs and I needed to pay them for it. I said OK, how much should I pay them? He said he couldn't possibly say. It was up to me. I said: But I have absolutely no idea how much to pay them. He said: It's up to you madam.
After that the men took the couch out of the van and started wrapping it up more securely, and while they did that I went into a panic about how much I should pay them. I checked my wallet and I only had 50Dhs cash. So I popped to Spinneys and got some milk I didn't need, but the girl behind the counter said they did not give cash change. So then I went back to the removal team, who were almost ready to start taking the wrapped and padded couch into the building, and said I had to go out to the cash machine to get some money for them (the Headman looked mightily offended when I said this - obviously mentioning it was a complete no-no!) but I would be back in 10 minutes and the door to the apartment was open.
Off I went, screaming down the road to Alba Towers, which is a block of apartments and shops slap-bang in the middle of the desert, about 2 km from my block. Etihad Airlines built it for their staff. I found a cash machine, remembered my pin number, and got some cash. Then I needed to get change for the 500 Dhs note. On the road, I had decided that maybe 200 Dhs each would be enough. I popped into a cafe and asked for some change, and, when the till-lady didn't have any, a nice British man offered me some. Since he was obviously friendly, I asked him how much he thought I should tip the removal men. He said: How many of them are there? I said: three, I think, or maybe four (by this time I was so stressed that I couldn't remember!) He said: Maybe 20 or 30 Dhs. I said: Oh, I was going to give them 200 each. He looked shocked and said: No no no. These guys get paid so little - virtually nothing - they will be greatful for 20 or 30 Dhs between them. If you want to get carried away, give them 20 Dhs each. But make sure you give it to them after they have delivered the furniture. I thanked him profusely, thinking: Crikey, I would have really wasted some money there if I hadn't met him!
I got back to the apartment just as the removal men reached the top of the 6th floor stairwell. They emerged from the stairwell door panting with sweat running off them into pools on the floor. One shook his head and did a wet-dog-emerging-from-the-sea-impression (Not of course meaning to, but he had his arms full of couch and couldn't see for the sweat running into his eyes) and spattered the corridor walls with sweat droplets.
They brought the couch in. I gave them glasses of water. (I don't have any bottled water because I don't believe in it, so I may have offended them by offering them tap water, but they drank it.) And they unwrapped the couch, picked up the mess, and gave me a very damp sweaty form to sign. I gave them 100 Dhs each. They looked pleased and then they disappeared down the lift well.
I was left to admire my new couch, and realise that it is far too big for my apartment! It takes up half the lounge. In hindsight, buying it was an error of judgement brought on by the excitement of getting two months worth of pay all at once, and I will definitely buy all my other furniture from Ikea. But, OMG, it is so, so, sooooooo comfortable. I have already napped on it twice, and I love it.
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