Joseph O’Neill - The Dog

‘I can see that,’ I say.

Eddie says, ‘The problem, from your point of view, is that, as the Foundation Treasurer, your name is all over these transfers to Africa.’

I say, ‘I think you’ll find that my role has always been pro forma. I have disclaimers stamped all over the recent transfers. My position is very clear.’

Eddie is sympathetic. ‘I’m sure it is, but they’re going to look for accountability. You know that. They’re not going to let technicalities get in their way.’

Accountability? What’s going on?

Eddie says, ‘What we’re hearing from Mahmud, and I can tell you he’s reliable, is they’re going to go after you. To make an example of you.’

‘But I’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘I know that. Everybody knows that. But that’s not what this is about.’

I’m stunned.

‘Listen,’ Eddie says, leaning forward. ‘You’re not going back there. That’s what I’m telling you. You’re staying right here. You do not go back to Dubai.’

‘Wait a minute. I’ve done nothing wrong — and my head rolls?’

Eddie makes a dismissive gesture. ‘We don’t know that. We don’t know how it’s going to pan out. We’re getting our lawyers all over it. We’ve got Mahmud on the case. They’re going to raise hell. You’re going to come out of this just fine.’

I’m spluttering. ‘It’s monstrous. I have to fight this. What’s it going to look like if I stay here? I’m going to be a fugitive from justice? Eddie, I’m an attorney. If they do me for money laundering, I’m finished. I’m on the street.’

Eddie says, ‘We’ll figure something out. We’ll take care of you.’

‘How are you going to do that? This is my good name we’re talking about.’

‘Your name?’ He laughs. ‘What name? Nobody has a name.’ He leans forward once more. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘you don’t have a job to go back to. As of now. I hereby terminate your employment. Do you understand? There’s nothing to go back to.’

I’m fired? Again? ‘Why am I fired? What are the grounds?’

‘Come on, now,’ Eddie says. ‘Don’t be like that. Here,’ he says, filling my wine glass. He raises his glass, and I’m in such a daze, I do the same. ‘Land without rent and death in old Ireland,’ Eddie says, as if this were a toast from the old days, which it isn’t.

It’s not just because I’m half-asleep, blinking stars, and maybe not entirely sober — Eddie and I wound up singing ‘Dirty Old Town’ in a bar near Times Square at three in the morning, and I returned to the Marriott only so as to pick up my suitcase en route to Heathrow — that, when I arrive at Dubai International Airport, Terminal 3, it’s as if I’m a dreamer. From the gate, one passes on a moving walkway through an unprecedented forest of silver-coloured pillars and then, by the paranormal merger of escalator and floor, one is delivered to the border-control stations, an archipelago of kiosks between which coasting border controllers, their all-white apparel copied in the sheen of the floor, make oneiric white shadows. I sail through their attentions. The dream intensifies. I am in a vast white palace filled with rows of the grandest white columns in the world. These fluted, mysteriously twinkling, enormous uprights, maybe ten feet in diameter, point to a civilization, wiser and more advanced than ours, elsewhere in the cosmos and elsewhere in time, and the sensation of otherworldly transportation — not expected by the air traveller, who has the idea that she has completed her journey — is reinforced by the decorative metal band on the white ceiling above the central concourse, an airy argentine river containing lights and the images of the same lights, reflected from the marble floor, and the images of those images: this overhead reflection of reflections, a pluperfect constellation, is repeated underfoot, where the dots of light on the ceiling, an infinity, are optically doubled; and so there are heavens above and heavens below. This is the realm of the luggage carousels. Gigantic circling coelacanths, their scaly black belts carry suitcases from Manchester and Trivandrum and the Seychelles. It almost feels like an option to hop aboard and go around like a bag for ten minutes and be picked up and towed away on one’s little wheels and, in the fullness of time, be taken wherever — Dar es Salaam, Rio de Janeiro, Ho Chi Minh City. A taxi and an elevator move me from the airport to my bed, and I wake up in a Tuesday morning refreshed and clear-eyed — and still it seems as if I’m dreaming.

There is no awaking from the facts. I have no job, no car, and (a futile attempt at online banking confirms) no access to my dirhams: my bank has frozen my accounts, presumably upon being notified, by the Batros Group, that my contract of service has been terminated. I have no right to be here. Unless I promptly find employment — very difficult for anyone, in this economy; very, very difficult, for the tainted jobseeker — I will be forced to pack my bags: a foreigner is permitted to live in this country only if, and for so long as, she or he is a worker sponsored by an employer. (‘Employer’, in this sense, cannot include oneself: the sole contractor or freelancer is a juridical nonentity in Dubai. One cannot be one’s own boss.)

And I have no Ali. I’m assuming he, too, has been formally canned. I cannot be sure, because he is not responding to my messages. That isn’t illogical. I am no longer his manager; he is free to ignore me. And why wouldn’t he? I put him in the way of harm. I failed him.

Yet from a different tributary of feeling come strength and excitement. I’m pumped up as I head off to the DIFC for my encounter with the regulators. They want a piece of me? I’ll give them a piece of me.

When I arrive at the FSA office, high up in The Gate, I’m told the rendezvous has been cancelled. After waiting around and pushing for answers, I’m informed that the regulators have been made aware that I’m no longer a Batros employee and that consequently they lack jurisdiction to meet with me. It does no good to explain that I offer myself as a volunteer, in order to be of assistance. There will be no encounter.

So be it. My day will come. I will have my say. This will not stand.

‘This will not stand,’ I repeat to Ollie, very importantly. We have convened for an emergency drink, in the afternoon, at Calabar. Our table overlooks the artificial lake that serves as a waterfront for Dubai Mall. I well remember the huge cavity that was here before, and I regret not having witnessed the record-breaking inundation that produced this body of water.

Ollie says, ‘What won’t stand?’ When I start to reply, he interrupts with, ‘Yeah, I know all that. I’m just saying, there’s nothing to take a stand against. I know they’ve sacked you, but what you’re talking about hasn’t happened. Nobody’s coming after you — yet.’

‘You think they won’t?’

Ollie says, ‘I wouldn’t stick around to find out. I’d be gone. There’s nothing for you here except a shitstorm. Mate, get out while the going’s good.’

I don’t answer him. What Ollie doesn’t understand is that I will not be bounced from country to country. I can be pushed only so far and no farther. There comes a point when I draw a line in the sand.

Ollie says, ‘Are you all right for money? Just say the word.’

I’m OK, I tell him. (Although my Dubai cash is inaccessible, I have funds in my New York account — 26,455.70 USD — and I have my old New York credit cards. I’m not completely illiquid.) To be honest, I’m a little disappointed with my old buddy of the depths. When I told him about Sandro’s despicable conduct, he didn’t really react. I’m not expecting Ollie to tell Sandro Batros to go fuck himself and find someone else to take care of his fungal feet; but I think I detect, in his demeanour, evidence of a self-interested computation: he has his commercial interests to consider. This unspoken reckoning of utilities may not be inconsistent with mateship, but neither is it pretty.