Kayo walked out of the hotel slowly, a little bit still in disbelief at being back in Dubai. It had been two and a half years since he last visited. The pandemic had hit things hard. Even with restrictions lifting, he had been reluctant to travel since no one knew when a new big wave might hit.
He gave DM a hug and they got into the latter’s Altima. As the car moved through the Garhoud area, Kayo looked at the murky sky where the sun was thinking about setting.
“I’ve seen way more poor people than ever here,” he said.
“Yeah man, it’s been rough,” DM replied. “Lots lost their jobs. City’s different.”
They drove past City Centre Deira, where traffic was slowing in the evening rush.
“I’m hungry as hell,” DM noted.
“There’s a whole line of Malbari cafeterias here,” Kayo pointed to his right, out of the window.
DM parked in front of one of the cafeterias – the last on the line that had in its front a small man wearing a cream-coloured salwar kameez and red baseball cap. He had a thick, black moustache.
The dwarf had been sitting, face resting in his hands with elbows on the table. He muttered something along the lines of a welcome in Urdu and asked them to sit.
DM and Kayo looked at the snacks display window and noticed just three things – pakoras, samosas and something nondescript.
The dwarf was still chittering about where to sit.
“Relax man,” DM told him.
The chittering ceased for just two seconds before it resumed, this time asking what they wanted to eat.
“Bas ek second wait karo,” Kayo told the dwarf as he looked to DM, both wondering if the selection was low.
“Let’s check the other one out,” DM said.
As they both walked away in unison, the dwarf chattered on about if they were going to sit, and then something along the lines of resignation that they were going elsewhere.
The next cafeteria was far more promising, with an array of more than a half dozen snacks to choose from.
As they sat down, Kayo was shocked that a waitress appeared.
“This is new,” he said.
“Things change, like I said,” DM explained.
Unbeknownst to them, the dwarf was ending his shift and heading off to a massage parlour, where he worked aside from as a host at the cafeteria. With so many fetishists visiting and living in Dubai, he made far more from this trade, where customers paid to pick him up and throw him out of the window.
Of course, a full-sized pattan would be waiting below the window to catch the dwarf.
“Usko pakdo,” was often heard outside the massage parlour.
Their tea arrived, along with a plate of small chicken samosas. As they ate and drank, DM and Kayo caught up about the recession and what seemed to be the slow sliding end of the world.
“Where are the pakoras?” DM asked as they finished the chicken samosas.
The waitress appeared with the bill at that moment, which Kayo paid without a word.
“We ordered pakoras,” DM told the waitress.
“Oh sir, ahm, you did,” the Delhi-walli waitress thought out loud. “Oh, you did! But sorry I got confused because you had asked for beef samosas which we did not have…so I thought the pakora order was canceled.”
“No problem,” Kayo said as he got up and walked out.
“We are godamn lucky we got those chicken samosas,” DM said as he pulled out of the parking. “We would have been sitting there eating air sandwiches. How could she forget the pakoras – we ordered them first.”
“Oh I knew she might forget,” Kayo said. “I’ve hired enough people that I knew that she could not handle the beef samosas not being there with two orders to get.”
As the two men drove into the sunset to go smoke shisha, neither realized that the dwarf was somewhere in town, giving someone a foot-job.
Rainbow Kandura 