Fake Plastic Souks: The Fear Returns

By Alexander McNabb

I always said if the first volume of blog posts sold over ten copies I'd do another one and, to my considerable bewilderment it has... so...

From the uncelebrated failures of the war on terror to the schadenfreude of the Dubai-bashing British press via ranting and raving at banks and call centres, here's another bunch of witterings from 2009-2011.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexander McNabb
• Release date: Mar 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311743664

Alexander McNabb

ALEXANDER MCNABBAlexander McNabb has been working as a journalist, editor and magazine publisher in the Middle East for some 30 years. Today he consults on media, publishing and digital communications.Alexander's first serious novel was the critically acclaimed Olives - A Violent Romance, a work exploring the attitudes, perceptions and conflicts of the Middle East, exposing a European sensibility to the multi-layered world of life on the borders of Palestine. Published in 2011, the book triggered widespread controversy, finding a receptive audience in the Middle East and beyond.Olives was followed in 2012 by testosterone-soaked international spy thriller Beirut - An Explosive Thriller. His third Middle East-based novel, Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy, about a man dying of cancer unearthing a deadly past, published in 2013. Together, the three form the 'Levant Cycle'.A Decent Bomber, set in Ireland, published in 2015. It tells the story of a retired IRA bomb-maker forced to resume his old trade, pitching 'old terror' against 'new terror' in a battle of wits between an Irish farmer with a violent past and Somali extortionists with a questionable future.Alexander's latest, Birdkill, is a psychological thriller about a teacher who has lost her recent past to 'The Void', a terrible incident she can't recall and nobody seems to be in a hurry to tell her about. Her friend Mariam embarks on a race to uncover the truth before Robyn is driven over the edge into insanity.You can find Alexander and his books at www.alexandermcnabb.com.

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Fake Plastic Souks

The FEAR RETURNS

2009-2011

Alexander McNabb

Copyright © Alexander McNabb 2012

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

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Introduction

This is the second volume of collected posts from my blog, Fake Plastic Souks. I published the first one as I needed a text for a book publishing workshop and copying/pasting the blog gave me the requisite block of wordage.

I said at the time if I ever sold more than ten copies, I’d do another one. Oddly enough, that potty little collection of half-thoughts and distracted musings has sold considerably more than ten copies and so I have eventually got around to plucking my favourite posts from the subsequent couple of years and putting them together into a second ‘book of the blog’.

The times were, of course, a-changing. Social media was driving change in the region and wider world, we had the Iranian street protests, Tunisia and Egypt. The recession was biting hard and I was spending a lot more time throwing nuts at our compliant and timid local media for some reason.

I guess I didn’t make many friends at Gulf News, but then I had always seen myself as a reader who was being let down rather than as a PR guy who should be fawning to them rather than holding them up to a standard. I can imagine clandestine meetings where they got together with the HSBC team to stick pins in plasticine models of me.

At the same time, I was busy at work and even busier at home – you can see from the blog posts when I decided to start work on second novel Beirut – An Explosive Thriller and how writing was playing a bigger role in life.

Looking back over the posts, I still find myself occasionally tickled by them and, having forgotten the majority of what I’d written, even entertained now and then. I can only hope they do the same for you.

Alexander

I’d changed the names to protect the innocent, but this was actually a story that originated with my brother in law, who works onsite with big AC plant and the like. It’s a true story from the amusing side of the ‘war on terror’ and tickled me pink…

Saturday, 18 April 2009

Terror Alert

So our man, let’s call him Paddy, buys a replica AK47, one of those welded ones that trade in the UK across the counter, openly, for around £80 - the Lord alone knows why, but he does.

Paddy takes the gun to work to show his mates on the construction site (in London) that they're working on and colleague Moikey uses Paddy's mobile to take a snap of yer man goofing around with the gun. Fun had, the fake shooter's pushed under a desk somewhere in the site office and everyone forgets all about it.

Paddy, a strangely avid AC/DC fan, manages to lose his mobile down at the pub one night, about three weeks ago, but thinks no more about it as he's busy at work and has to somehow fit in a hectic schedule of AC/DC gigs. In fact, over the next three weeks he travels to Barcelona and Amsterdam to AC/DC concerts and then goes to New York travelling for work.

Unknown to Paddy, there’s trouble afoot. For Paddy's mobile has been handed in to the polis when it was found down at the pub and they've discovered a photo on it of the owner hefting the world's favourite terror/mafia/mad Afghani Taliban gun - the simple, efficacious and eminently reliable Automat Kalashnikova Model 47. And, to their delight, the owner is... IRISH!

Woken up at 5am yesterday morning by an Armed Response Unit storming his house, torches strapped on guns and all, Paddy was, perhaps a little understandably, bemused. But not as bemused as the (mostly Irish) lads at the site were when another bunch of flak-jacketed, gun-toting heavies pitched up at work today in squad of jam sandwiches demanding that the puzzled team ‘Show them the gun’.

Once everything had been made clear, the temperature dropping to something approaching normal and the orange boiler suits and cable ties put away, one of the coppers who had been ‘looking after’ Paddy during his short arrest did admit that Paddy had been a hell of an expensive guy to follow.

Because for the past three weeks Paddy, the happy AC/DC-mad building lad, has been followed around the UK and across Europe by an increasingly puzzled crack squad of Her Majesty's Finest, intent on uncovering the link to Mr. Big, the Real IRA, the rag-heads or whoever else was behind Paddy, the gun-toting heavy from Dublin, Fair City.

They must have been killing themselves tracking a pissed and cheering Paddy through the crowds at those AC/DC gigs in case he was making contact with the rest of his cell, let alone having to chase him on his inexplicable jaunts across Europe and the States. You can almost see Plod getting all excited as Paddy drives through the grey, damp morning on his way to the ferry, his death's-head cutoff with studded bits and faded denims packed safely in the boot and Highway to Hell booming in the car.

He's on the move, Sarge! He's off ter Amsterbloodydam!

The whole stupid incident has all been an incredible waste of time, effort and public money. And all this on the day that a German tourist in London was forced by police to delete the pictures on his camera in case they breached security. The tourist, a former professional news photographer, avers the snaps were not only all completely innocuous, many were of his young son.

We’ve all gone mad, people. Quite, quite mad

Monday, 20 April 2009

JG Ballard

JG Ballard has died, aged 78, following a long battle with cancer.

Ballard's work has long had sway over me. He skittered across styles and genres, producing some of the most compelling fantasy work, The Terminal Beach being one of the first things I came across - a book published in the year I was born and one which has, along with Vermillion Sands, The Drowned World and The Crystal World, stayed with me since I was a kid.

Ballard's world was one of almost frightening, inxplicable desertscapes, jungles and fractally twisted textures, of alternative realities and surreal thought. His worlds were terminal, unsustainable, post-cataclysmic, his human characters always surrounded by, challenged by the destruction wrought by erosion, change and altered states.

From the man that systematically blotted out everything around him, creating a comfortable whiteness (killing his wife in the process) to a man left alone as the only survivor, apart from a shadowy, uncreachable figure that wanders and dances out of his reach) in an earth that has been turned entirely crystalline, Ballard's work was fired by almost incredible imagination.

His work is sometimes, despite being set a million mental miles away from any right-minded person's reality, redolent of its era - try Crash, an early 1970s book that sexualises cars and an obsession with car crashes in a disturbing study of man and technology twisted together in the ultimate bond.

Empire of the Sun was an oddity - the story of his childhood incarceration after the invasion of Singapore, it's autobiographical and probably his only 'straight' work. The Spielberg film of it is awful. The Kindness of Women is another book that sits oddly on a bookshelf containing The Drowned World and Vermilion Sands.

Latterly, his writing shifted to dealing with themes of sex, drugs and death in suburban dystopia. Well, I mean, why not? Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes and Millenium People would make compelling reading for anyone living in the Arabian Ranches (God, Ballard could have created the bloody Arabian Ranches for all we know) or Green Community, the Greens, Palms or whatevers in The Projects. These are the types of communities he created, populating them with suburban career people whose outward lives masked terrifying cabals of criminality and violence.

I always thought he'd come to Dubai. I'd have loved to have seen his face when he saw the perfect dystopia - somewhere so close to his writing that he'd have been sent into shock, Vermillion Sands and Cocaine Nights intertwined with Crash. I wonder if he'd have liked it, loathed it or just been stunned that we're all living in what was, ultimately, JG's reality.

Anyway, he's gone now. And we've lost an incredible, defining imagination and talent.

Tuesday, 21 April 2009

Dubai and Negative Media

The recent spate of negative media coverage on Dubai has been an interesting phenomenon to watch on so many levels. Firstly, it has served to polarise opinion in the city itself and people have come together in a surprising and, as far as I can see from friends, colleagues and the like, strongly consensual reaction. The pro-Dubai lobby consists of cynical, snarky and critical journalists, bloggers and Middle Mirdif in general – people who last year queued up to whinge, moan, complain and generally put the boot in wherever possible. I might be accused of being in that company.

A second interesting result has been the way in which those new converts to the Cause That Is Dubai have reacted to the articles. They’ve been commenting on them. A few short years (months, even) ago, they’d only have had the opportunity of writing a strongly worded Letter to the Editor, which would quite likely have been ‘spiked’ by the ‘Reader’s Editor’ – in fact one particularly splenetic Dubai blog is subtitled ‘Because my letters to the editor never get published’!

Nowadays newspapers have woken up to the Internet and have started to post articles up with a facility for reader comment and feedback. Two** of the worst anti-Dubai rants have run recently in The Guardian, the now infamous Germaine Greer ‘Bus ride’ piece and the more recent, and no less uninformed, Simon Jenkins ‘Ozymandias’ piece which combined ignorance and pretension in a quite charming way. And both have seen their ‘comments’ sections closed after a tide of angry riposte from people that knew a lot more about Dubai than the writers in question. The Guardian has even been forced (I can tell you, most ungracefully) to correct a couple of the more glaring howlers in the Greer piece.

This is important. The Guardian is now arguably little different to Wikipedia – the process of two-way communication and egalitarianism that the Internet is increasingly empowering is starting to change newspapers and the way we consume them - it’s become self-correcting. This doesn’t stop the print edition from carrying the rubbish uncorrected. But nobody’s reading that anymore anyway, are they?

Wednesday, 22 April 2009

U.A.Q. F.U.N. R.I.P.?

The news that small and perfectly formed Emirate Umm Al Qawain is to close all bars and nightclubs appears to signal a new, more conservative approach.

It seems to be something of a KT 'scoop', BTW.

Long a favourite weekend haunt for the Lebanese community, UAQ had two 'proper' hotels, a couple of improper hooch-holes and a marina and equestrian club. It also sported the 'UAQ Tourist Club', which evolved from a barasti bar and Friday barbecue joint (run by a quite insane-sounding German person with a white hat) to being a fully-fledged beachside leisure and hotel outfit.

I learned to ride at the Equestrian Club back in the '90s - it was part of the UAQ Marina - a 'dry' entertainment venue, but a pleasant enough place to while away a beach-side Friday. The place was run by 'old school' couple Suzie and Peter Wooldridge, Peter was ex-military and had previously been stationed in the UAE apparently. It will be a very long time indeed before I forget Suzie's posh Brit voice booming across the sandy expanse of the riding school, 'Mexicaaan reeeiiinnss Arleygzaaarndar! Meeeexicaan reiins!!!'.

It was a nice little club and the stables were responsible for rescuing a number of horses, including failed yearlings, rodeo horses and even a couple of shell-shocked Lebanese nutters that had survived Israeli bombardments in the civil war. It was always fun to 'draw' one of those in the 'which horse do I get today' sweepstake. You could tell you were getting a nutter because they had white marks around their necks where they had tried to slip their rope halters during the bombardment - it's a little known fact that brown horse hair grows back white over scarring.

(Don't you learn the most marvellous things from this blog now and then, huh?)

My favourite of all was a 21-year old lippizaner called Samir. A contrary old bastard, Samir had been a beginner's school horse for long enough to know every trick in the book about how to plod around the school at his own pace no matter how much you squeezed or hupped. There were only two ways to get him moving: feed him Pepsi before the lesson or give him a smart crack on the arse with the crop. Some days it'd take both. I'd constantly touch him in the wrong places with my clumsy beginner's feet and end up doing involuntary dressage step dances across the school. The real treat when the weather was good was taking off the saddles and riding the horses bareback into the lovely waters of UAQ creek for a post-ride bathe in the warm, salty water.

They had two camels there called Larry and Alexander that they'd trained to do dressage. Funny.

Back then, a great Friday would consist of a ride out followed by a trip up to the Tourist Club, a barbeque lunch and a beer or two, perhaps a schlep out onto the creek on a jetski or one of the Club's boats and then a toddle home.

And then Suzie and Peter had a falling out with 'authority' and left, Peter selling his Porsche for a knock-down 'quick sale' Dhs 10,000 (always regretted not going for that one). Soon after, the land by the riding school was converted into chalets which always had something of a whiff of sulphur about them. Chalets that appeared to serve a 'certain type' of tourism. I shall say no more at the risk of offending the many sensitive and gentle souls amongst my readers.

I suspect the appearance of those chalets was pretty much when the rot started to set in. The KT news that some '25 nightclubs' were to be involved in the March 1st shutdown order came as something of a shock. 25 nightclubs? In lovely, quiet Umm Al Qawain?

The nightclub cleanup's fine by me, but I do hope they'll be leaving the 'old' outlets there - something that the KT story doesn't clarify.

People used to go up there and enjoy themselves quietly, not distressing, upsetting or disturbing anyone as they enjoyed the beaches and the rich marine life of the huge UAQ creek (turtles, marlin and mangroves).

And nobody, certainly, needed to worry about the provenance of the young lady accompanying you... But then I suppose they were more innocent times, no?

Monday, 27 April 2009

RTA Renews Licenses Online

Hello, RTA.

Hi. I need to renew my driving license. What documents will you require?

You can go to the nearest centre, yours is at Co-Op opposite Safa Park, Sir. You'll need the old license, a passport copy, Dhs 100 fees and an eye test. For the eye test, you need to visit an optician and you will require your passport and a photograph of yourself.

And that's it?

Yes, sir!

Wow!

How much has changed around here? When I originally got the license (way back when, you don't need to know, right?) it had taken a major internationally co-ordinated effort, the resources of three small Latin American countries and the best part of a whole morning hanging around in hopeless queues, processing paperwork and being videoed in large empty rooms filled with smiling policemen - and that was with the efforts of my powerful sponsor's mandoub.

So off I toddled. I got the eye test from a wiry thin Syrian optician whose hacking cough shook his gaunt frame every two seconds.

Cover your eye. Read the letters.

E O N F V W

Okay, now cover other eye. Read letters.

(puzzled) Errm. E O N F V W

Okay. You pass. Dhs 25.

I went upstairs to the RTA centre and proudly handed over my old license, my passport copy, my eye test (with stamped photo stapled to it to prove I wasn't using Gary Gilmore's eyes) and my Dhs 100.

The nice girl tapped on a keyboard and then smiled pityingly at me.

You must pay twifty-ten Dirhams.

Whaaat?

Yes, she smiled beatifically. Your traffic fines. Of course you must pay these.

Of course. All the documents I'd need except one omitted vital element. Luckily, the Co-Op is festooned in ATM's, so one cash scoop and about ten minutes later, I was photographed and in possession of my new license - but short twifty-ten Dirhams.

Now Gulf News tells us that the RTA is to introduce an online renewal service. All you have to do is get the eye-test and apply online by attaching a photo and the fee. The optician can send your eye test direct to the RTA, apparently. And your license gets posted to you in four days.

How will they match the applications with the eye tests without losing them or breaking them? How will they handle the payment of fines given they have no e-payment portal worth a hoot? How will they handle licenses 'lost in the post'? We have yet to find out.

But to be honest, given that the Salik portal still couldn't process online payments by Visa last time I tried (and screwed up the time before that), I'd actually rather go the Co-Op route and get a license in my hands in ten minutes more than it takes to go anyway for the eye test - and get a lovely smile into the bargain.

Funny, isn't it, that