time

 Awake through the night in Dubai… I don’t even know which time zone I am in anymore. There’s no booze in the room, there is no light, there is no sound. A day ago, I was eight hours behind my parents, now I am two hours ahead of them. I got up and went for a short walk, walked to the elevators, and pressed the button to summon one of those bullet speed shafts to the 17th floor. The elevator arrived, the doors opened, there was a matrix-like wall blocking it. My eyes adjusted and I discovered it was a rack of baggage that one of the hotel staff was taking downstairs. Inexplicably, he rolled the rack out of the elevator so I could get in and then rolled it back in again to go down with me. He told me that it was beautiful to walk along the canal, so I walked outside and went down to the canal, but I was wearing flip flops and sleeping shorts… I wasn’t prepared. It made me think of a warm and quiet River Thames. It occurred to me that the canal had probably been designed to look precisely like the Thames. One of the features of the developing Dubai lifestyle was to claim a taste of European living from the Mediterranean to London. I tried to work out what the time was in London… I had no idea. In fact, I didn’t even know what the time was where I was standing. A sudden need for coffee overwhelmed me, so I walked back to the hotel and up to my room to make a cup. I climbed back into bed and sipped the watery warm liquid with a feeling of satisfaction and peace. I longed for further sleep but, sitting up I felt tired, lying down I felt wide awake and ready to run a marathon… my brain processing millions of thoughts simultaneously. Miniscule details like ‘how will everything fit into my backpack?’ and ‘where is my luggage?’ to ‘is someone feeding the stray cat in Dallas?’, ‘how do we remain inactive in a war?’ and ‘why are people hungry and homeless?’ A few hours later, I boarded a plane to South Africa.




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