Booking Muhammad

Book Bag from Magrudy's

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Muhammad’s attire never changed. He wore a grey tunic, loose grey trousers and a white crocheted prayer cap. Dark-rimmed glasses emphasized his large, moist eyes, eyes that are among the most expressive and compassionate I’ve ever seen. Riding in his taxi was peaceful as he was one of the very few calm, measured drivers in a sea of vehicular madness. After living in China, the fact that his cruising speed was 110 kilometres per hour didn’t trouble me. If we had nothing to talk about, he turned on his radio to an Abu Dhabi station that played readings from the Quran 24 hours a day. To be authentic, the Quran must be written and read in Arabic. It’s read in a kind of chanting singsong – exquisitely lovely when done properly.

There’s no public transportation in the UAE so Muhammad was my lifeline, my means of exit from the remote sandy suburb of Sharjah where I lived. I was a challenge for him, I think, because routine grocery runs were the least of my needs.

I crave books the way a mouse craves cheese or the sea seeks the shore. I’d arrived with only two – Reading Lolita in Tehran and Islam for Dummies – so I was in desperate straits by the time a week or two had gone by.

That last paragraph contains a shocking falsehood. And, like little George Washington and Canadians everywhere, I cannot tell a lie. I’m going to make a confession. I’m an addict. A bibliomaniac. A book-snorter of the lowest order. I cannot pass a bookstore and have been known to rise from my bed in the dead of night to sneak in a paragraph or two. There. It’s out. I can continue to hold my head up when we sing, “The true north strong and free.”

On my way to the UAE, I deplaned in Hong Kong, put my suitcase in Left Luggage and proceeded to Guangzhou by bus. I picked up some dishes and other household items I’d entrusted to my friend Ken. I also had to make an agonizing choice. Which books to take with me and which to leave behind? I could only carry one additional suitcase. After hours of wavering, I settled on my Iris Murdoch collection – about 15 volumes – and a few tomes of poetry.

Nevertheless, as the weeks passed I left increasingly anxious and unsettled. There always have to be books in reserve, you understand, enough unread treasures to stave off nightmares and panic attacks.

“I hear there’s a bookstore at Jumeira Beach,” I said to Muhammad.

“Oh my God, Mem!” Worry lines creased Muhammad’s brow. “Jumeira Beach is very long way. It take maybe an hour to get there. Cost a lot.”

“That’s okay,” I told him. “Books are very important to me. When I lived in China, I used to go all the way to Hong Kong to buy books. I must find a good bookstore here.”

“You have address, Mem?” Muhammad had clearly resigned himself to dealing with a lunatic. And no matter how many times I asked him to call me ‘Annie’ or how well we got to know each other, he continued to call me ‘Mem.’

Muhammad chuckled and shook his head, engaging the gear as he did so. Off we whirled and spent two hours searching for the bookstore. Once we’d arrived at Jumeira Beach Road, Muhammad got out of the taxi every now and then to pound the pavement in quest of the address scribbled on an increasingly damp scrap of paper. As the sun began to set over the Persian Gulf, even I had to admit that the bookstore, if it ever existed, existed no more. I felt weak and shivery, a headache hovering just above me – the onset of withdrawal symptoms. Muhammad was upset because he’d disappointed me.

A week or so later, I found Magrudy’s Bookstore in Deira City Centre in Dubai and it became my most frequent destination. The mall also included a movie theatre, an Arabian Treasures section with a stunning display of Persian carpets, and a wonderful French restaurant where, every few weeks, I treated myself to dinner.

Now a new problem confronted me. Where to put all my books? How to house them in a dignified and fitting way?

“I need a bookcase,” I told Muhammad.

“What is bookcase?” The widening of his eyes indicated I’d been upgraded to dangerous lunatic.

“A place to put books.”

“But you have apartment, Mem.”

“I know.” My brain twisted its coils with the effort to explain. “It is a shelf to put the books on.”

“Shelf, Mem? I do not know this word.”

“A kind of furniture.”

“Oh! Furniture I know."

A peculiarity of the UAE is the placement of similar stores and services on the same streets. Banks, for example, all stand in a splendid row on Constitution Avenue. Travel agents, bless them, crowd along a street whose name I mercifully forget. And so we swiftly came to a road lined with furniture shops. I plodded through the appalling heat, closely followed by Muhammad who’d offered to serve as both translator and bargainer. Nary a bookshelf did I see. Didn’t they exist in this part of the world?

As perspiration dripped from my fingertips and trickled down my back, I remembered a remedial English class I once taught in an isolated Vancouver Island village. Getting the students to write – anything at all, even their names – was an ongoing struggle. One day I noticed that several of them had purchased sports’ lottery tickets from the basketball team. The prize was a return flight to any city in continental North America and 1500 dollars cash. Once we’d established that Amsterdam is not a city in continental North America, I asked them to write about that they’d do if they won. Silence and no scratch of busy pens.

“Let me give you an example,” I said. “If I won, I’d go to New York. I love to cook and eat and I’ve heard New York has amazing restaurants, so I’d go out for dinner as often as I could. My brother lived there for two years and he tells me there are dozens of utterly fabulous bookstores. He says that in New York you can find any book you’ve ever wanted. So I’d buy a lot of books, too, and maybe an extra suitcase to bring them home in.”

Still silence and no movement. One girl, her face pale with shock, cleared her throat. In hushed tones she said, “You mean you have books in your house?”

Back in Furniture Land, both of us drenched in sweat and our tempers fraying – and after Muhammad tried to interest me in a series of coffee tables and TV stands – I turned to him impatiently. “A bookshelf is tall,” I said, indicating the height of his forehead. “And there are shelves, like so.” I sketched the air. “And you place the books on the shelves.” I mimed sliding a book onto one of the airy shelves.

Light dawned. Muhammad chattered to the proprietor in Urdu and we headed for a back room, where, at long last, I saw a piece of furniture that would make a creditable home for my books. It had sliding glass doors over three shelves and cupboard doors hiding two ore shelves at the bottom. Its light blue colour would blend in well with the couch and chair provided by the school.
Rapid-fire bargaining ensued. I shelled out a small wad of dirham. Peace and bliss pervaded my soul.

“I learn a new word, Mem,” said Muhammad proudly.

Soon a team of Pakistanis would arrive at my apartment to assemble the bookshelf while their supervisor sat watching Buffy on my TV. But for now I leaned happily against the plastic-covered back seat, not even wishing for a seat belt as we sped homewards under the blazing desert stars.