Abu Dhabi Annabels

From the people that brought you Jumeirah Janes - welcome to the Abu Dhabi Annabels:

"After eight years in the idyllic French countryside, my husband, Rupert, and I decided it was time for a change. We wanted a taste of city life and a new experience for the children before they turned totally French. So, when we were offered work on a newspaper in Abu Dhabi, we accepted.

"I begin every day on the beach. And so do the children: Olivia, 9, Bea, 7, and Leo, 5. They go to a kids’ club where they are entertained with everything from swimming to tennis to (unbelievably) ice-skating. By nine o’clock, it is already hot and sunny. So, after a visit to the gym, my husband and I go for a swim. We head out into the Persian Gulf from the beach at the British Club (where else?)".

Christ on an old rusty bicycle wheeled around Jebel Ali in the searing heat by some ill-paid subcon labourer.

"The only acceptable place we have viewed (great location: next to the city’s only Marks & Spencer) is the size of our sitting room and kitchen back in France. It has a tiny view of the sea if you crane your neck, a sitting room, kitchen, two bathrooms and three bedrooms. Olivia declares it “too small” and demands that we move our farmhouse out here."

"Olivia" is nine years old. "Bea" is only seven, yet so precocious that she already has an in depth understanding of whingeing for sheikhly favours wasta:

“We can’t stay here,” says Bea. “We must go and see a sheikh and ask him for somewhere to live.”


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Expat wives

The intro says it all:

"Jennifer plays a wife whose husband moved the family to Africa, who was used to a relaxed, laid-back lifestyle, whilst Dawn plays a woman who lives in the United Arab Emirates, and is used to a nouveau-riche lifestyle just treating the locals with a racist stereotype."

Scroll forward about three minutes in for the real gems in this French & Saunders video. A sample:

"Pete... went off to a goat grab at Abdul's. And do you know what a goat grab is, Margaret? Have you heard of that at all? They all sit around all the men with big plates of rice and they just grab for bits of goat to eat. With their rights hands obviously because they wipe their bums with their left hands.

"What else can I tell you about the culture out there? Well, don't try to go into a church or a temple or whatever they call them in a bikini. So I did try and they wouldn't let me in. This bloke stopped me and I said: "I don't know what's wrong with you Abdullahwallah or whatever your name is, if it's because I've got my shoes on I will take them off." But he wouldn't let me in."


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A song of the sandlands

An intriguing sojourn tracking relict hominids in the Hindu Kuch allowed ample leisure for music-making around the campfire. In that remote mountainous wilderness, under endless sky and distant, icy stars, homesickness inspired a song of the sandlands:

The roadworks are such a bloody pain
Y viva Jumeira
My husband's shagged the maid again
Y viva Jumeira

It's gridlock rock around the clock
Y viva Al Deira
The hookers are strutting round the block
Y viva Al Deira

We're stuck in another traffic jam
Y viva Karama
The rent's soared but no one gives a damn
Y viva Karama

The workers still aren't getting paid
Y viva Marina
Our flat's worth half of what we paid
Y viva Marina

Guide to New Dubaians

In the Olden Days - the 1980s and early 90s - it was very easy to geographically categorise most paleface expat Dubaians. The vast majority were Jumeira Janes in bougainvillea-strewn villas: the wives of British industry and banking execs. These stolid society matrons, who spent around six months of the year back home "escaping the heat", had their feathers uncomfortably ruffled by the influx of flashy Umm Seqeim Sandras late last decade.

Today, the situation is far more confused. But to shed some light on 21st century Euro-expats, here is a rough guide to New Dubaians:

1. Countryside couples
These expats live in improbably-verdantly-themed villa developments such as "The Lakes", "The Springs", "the Meadows" and "The Leafy Forest Glades": all bang slap in the middle of the desert. Many of the old guard have moved here from Jumeira 1, converting their extortionately high rent into slightly less painful mortgage repayments. Jumeira coffee mornings have effectively gone online, with country couples spending their lives fretting about soaring service charges, unfulfilled maintance promises, and neighbours from hell.

2. Gardens inmates
These lucky detainees managed to get into Dubai's cheapest, leafiest new development before the waiting-list grew to its current length of several thousand applicants. They tend to be Tecom singles larging it at Trilogy and Bar Zar of an evening, as Sheikh Zayed road traffic now makes travelling north impossible, or subcon families organising community days on the cricket pitch. Less energetic inmates prefer to slip through the barricades for "gourmet" night at Jebel Ali Cloob.

3. Greens gang
Too late to get a Gardens cell, too poor for a country estate, young, upwardly mobile Greenies like to imagine that their life is some sort of Arabic version of Melrose Place. It is not. It is life in a large concrete goldfish bowl around a tiny concrete pool. Heather Locklear would rather eat her own feet than spend five minutes among the desperately un-Hollywood bodies slumped around the communal areas.

4. "Bidouns" or nomads
These are a hotchpotch of homeless wanderers, who migrate between villa and flatshares, unable to settle anywhere for more than a few months, always on a sadly-deluded lookout for a Gardens cell of their own. Some are Kisharoos - illegal workers hopping in and out of Iran every couple of months on tourist visas. Others drift about, regularly falling out with their ersatz landlords or being kicked out when the landlord moves back home.

Of all groups, the lifestyles of the semi-legal bidouns are closest to the traditional ways of the Bedouin. As such they should be rewarded with free Government tents and given shady camping grounds and subsidised camels.

The One and Only

Failing to find a cheap chair in The One is frustrating but not exactly surprising. It's not quite Ikea. As usual the shop was crammed to the gills with Jumeira Janes carrying out Seasonal shopping, filling their vacuous undertasked lives with overpriced cushions and floating candles. Is is a visa requirement for all White Expat Wives to have dyed blonde hair, designer clothes and dreadful children?

Karaoke at Emirates Towers: the usual medley of Elvis, Spice, and a seasonal touch with "White Christmas". Why don't Muslims sing carols? It might be fetching to have a small band of sheiklets singing hadiths every Ramadan, cheeks rosy from the desert heat and dishdashes shining angel-white in the villa floodlights.

One of the buyers from The One was at the karaoke, sharing the horrid tale of two Jumeira Janes' relentless hunt for "bathroom accessories." We left with the image of a dust-gathering dish of falsely-dyed seashells sending shivers down our spines.