Four months in a hotel
a short period of bliss and happiness.
This story is about a short time; I worked in the hospitality industry in sunny Dubai. It was too short, just four months. Yet, it was an experience like no other, filled with fun and candour. It is also about the incredible and friendly boys and girls I met then. Many of them have remained my lifelong friends.
I arrived in Dubai to work as a telex operator at the Inter-Continental Hotel. Dubai was my first overseas visit, an ideal place for a lad looking out for life’s adventures. After clearing the immigration, my friend Brian took me to the hotel’s staff quarters in Rashidiya, a suburb five kilometres from the airport.
My apartment was on the ground floor in the staff quarters. There were two bunk beds in the room that I shared with three others. My roommates were Nicky, Sena and Rajakaruna, hailing from Sri Lanka. I made friends with them immediately. Nicky and Sena were a few years older, and Rajakaruna and I were the same age. All three had worked in the hotel industry in Sri Lanka. Like in a family, the top beds belonged to the youngest of the lot. So Rajakaruna and I were pretty happy with that.
The apartment blocks were marked separately and segregated by gender and marital status. One block was marked for women, and one was for married couples. The rest were for single men, married or unmarried, who were in Dubai without their spouses.
The hotel provided three meals for its workers. Hotel buses regularly plied them from the quarters to work and back. The majority of service workers lived in the quarters. They came from the sub-continental countries in South East Asia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Lankans totalled about thirty-five, mostly young men.
On the next day, I started work in the telex department. The hotel’s uniform department fitted me with a black suit as workwear. I looked awkward in it because they could not find pants that fit my tiny waist of 26 inches. With my oversize pants tightened to the bone with a belt, I started my work.
I met my colleagues in the telex department and was quickly onboarded on the job. It involved sending telex messages on behalf of the hotel’s guests in Dubai for business. The majority were Westerners. Telex messages exchanged involved business deals. A telex transmitted in time meant more business for them. Satisfied guests did not hesitate to part with some cash as a tip, most of the time, a ten Dirhams note, sometimes more. Almost every day, I came home with some tip money. That was a lot of money for a young lad doing his job.
Back at the quarters, life was full of fun. Out of all nationalities, Lankans were famous for their free spirit and fun. So I gravitated to the boys and girls from my country. They lived their lives and dressed well. Then there were these cool boys and girls from Goa, India. We had many similarities, including culture, Western orientation, and zest for life. Some lads had girlfriends within the hotel. Those who did not have girlfriends were out there trying to lure the remaining single girls. Some unattached girls were acting hard to get. The ones who had made headway in relationships had their courting on display, sometimes competing with others. The remainder lads with no girlfriends had their walls plastered with sexy pictures of models.
Almost everyone owned a music system, possibly the only valuable thing they owned. Some had huge music systems that were three feet high with many decks. Higher the decibel, the better the sound system. Some competed with each other blaring their music for the whole block to hear. One could listen to Boney M, Tina Charles, Rod Stewart, Leo Sayer, Demis Roussos and many other pop stars of the day through the common passage. Music fanatics spent most of their money on payday buying records and cassettes.
Living next to the airport
The road to the quarters from the hotel was parallel to the runway. One could see planes taking off and landing all the time as the staff buses raised to and from the hotel. Each time a Pakistani Airlines plane took off or landed, Pakistani compatriots clapped with glee. Lankans found this quite amusing. Pakistanis did this to show their patriotism by seeing their national airlines in the sky above. My friends, in their innocence, quipped that clapping was because there was no crash. Unfortunately, PIA had a dismal record for air safety at the time.
There were many air hijackings following the conflict between Israel and the Arabs. Hijackers regularly blasted planes with dynamite when their demands were not met. Hijacked planes stood parked on the corners of the Dubai runway when negotiations were underway between hijackers and the authorities. From the rooftop of our quarters, we watched hijacked planes stranded in Dubai airport from afar, in case we had the odd chance of seeing a rescue or an explosion.
The food from the hotel cafeteria was not great. Plain white rice and meatballs were often the usual meal. I missed my Lankan food with its exotic curries. Jaya and Cassim regularly cooked Lankan meals in their apartment and invited me for dinner. That was the tastiest meal I had eaten in a long, long time. It was a gracious and kind act. A couple of weeks later, Sheriff and Stella hosted me for a meal in their apartment. Another treat.
My friends lived their lives to the full. They were fun to be with — an uninhibited lot. I made lots of new friends. Brian, my friend, continued to look out for me. Everyone knew me as Brian’s friend. My friends were great workers in the restaurants, laundry, room service and bars in the hotel. They lived for the day and lived openly. They were witty all the time. Amusement and entertainment were in their bones.
Brush with Dubai Police
Rajakaruna, my roommate, had a bit of a temper and liked his drinks, a deadly combination. One evening, after work and a few shots, he was at the restaurant in front of our quarters for a late-night dinner. He got into an argument over food at the restaurant and beat the owner in haste. The poor fellow, helpless and distressed, ran for his life to the nearby Rashidiya police station.
Lo and behold, a hullabaloo erupted in front of the hotel quarters. Everyone congregated near the restaurant by the side of the road. The boys knew that Rajakaruna was in serious trouble with law and order. It was a matter of time before the cops would come for him. Rajakaruna was not only drunk but now had a possible assault charge. Serious offences.
Rajakaruna’s buddies had little time to act. They took him away to hide and brought him to our apartment. They lifted and pushed him through the room window to the next property. The police emerged soon afterwards to arrest him. The cops went from room to room, opening wardrobe cupboards and looking for him. No sign of Rajakaruna. All this while Rajakaruna was hiding in the open next door in a bare desert land. The boys kept mum, and nobody gave him away. My other roommate, Sena, had been with Rajakaruna at the restaurant at the time of the assault. The cops took innocent Sena into custody. Brave Sena kept mum and did not give up on his friend.
The saga continued. Innocent Sena was kept in custody at the Rashidiya police station overnight. On the next morning, Rajakaruna had sobered up. The lads gave him a cold shower and accompanied him to the police station to surrender. The cops took pity on young Rajakaruna and sent him away with a stern warning. Lionhearted Sena was thankfully released. Happy ending, thanks to the grace of the policemen.
The weekend was restricted to one day, Friday, the Islamic religious day. On Friday afternoons, I toured the markets with my friends. I bought fashionable clothes from street vendors ney I earned. Very quickly, I added shirts, T-shirts and jeans to my collection. I made up for the lack of imported clothes in my adolescent years in Sri Lanka by spending generously.
Dubai was quite different to the Dubai one would see today. It was filled with sand and very few buildings. When I landed, Dubai had gained independence from the British five years earlier. It was on the verge of development. The population, including migrant workers, was less than a million. The local Arabs were simple people, and very few spoke English. The majority of the workers were from the subcontinent and were unskilled or semi-skilled. They hardly spoke English either. Transport was basic, with shared taxis driven by dhoti-wearing Pakistanis. With our superior command of English, my Lankan and Anglo-Indian lads and girls found innovative ways to enjoy themselves and make the best of the new lifestyle. Young and free.
Leaving the hotel
My job in the hotel’s front office was an easy one. I was the youngest in the front office. Soon, my senior colleagues realised that I was more skilled than them. I could read the Baudot-Murray code, which gave me a tremendous advantage over them in speed and efficiency. They had learnt to operate the communication systems on their own with no formal training. They saw me as a threat and were not entirely welcoming toward me. I knew my future was not in this job despite my good time with my friends after work. Within a few months, I was on the prowl to find a new job in the new country. Within three months, my search was to come good.
I came to know that a vacancy existed in the Chartered Bank, an English bank run by British expatriates. I applied for the role and got an interview immediately. The Interview was conducted by Barry Northrop, an Englishman, the accountant and the second most senior manager in the bank. I nailed it, my second-ever interview. The first was when I was 18. Barry was impressed with my skills and command of English. He offered me the job at the end of the interview. The salary on offer was around $800 per month, $550 more than my monthly salary at the hotel. Brimming with confidence, I had the guts to ask him for more, gunning for $900. He agreed to a raise after I complete the three months probation. I took up the job straight away. I aced it.
I resigned from the hotel. Then, the dramas began. In Dubai, there was a rule that no one was allowed to break an employment contract. I had signed up for a two-year contract. If a worker broke the contract, he or she had to leave the country. The immigration stamped the departing worker with a six-month no-entry rule. That meant one could not travel back to Dubai for an alternate job. This kept the labour market in check that suited employers. With no free movement of workers within the labour market, it kept wages in check, and employees were at the mercy of employers. Employers also retained the employee’s passport. My passport was impounded and retained by the hotel. That was the norm. It was modern-day bondage in the seventies.
I was determined to make it to the bank and start earning big money in the financial sector. What did I have to lose anyway? The worst thing was they could send me back to Sri Lanka. I was ready to take that risk.
Back at the hotel, many workers started looking at me with awe. My Lankan and Goan friends were happy for me and cheered me up. Some others were aghast that a young guy who started working only a few months ago was brave enough to challenge the system. They said that I would be sent back to Sri Lanka. That I had no chance of returning to the job at the bank. I did not listen to them. But my friends cheered me up and kept me motivated.
I met Barry at the bank and explained my predicament at the hotel. Barry agreed to sort it out with the hotel and obtain my release. He asked whether I could start work straight away. My notice period at the hotel was a month, meaning I could not start at the bank immediately. I get hyper into action in a situation, and I figured I could do two jobs simultaneously. It meant hard work, working almost 16 hours a day and leaving only 8 hours to travel between workplaces, meals and sleep. What did I have to lose? I was young and did not know any better than to take risks. From that day onwards, I worked eight hours at the bank and eight hours at the hotel, travelling between the two locations crossing the Abra and sleeping in between, perhaps less than five hours a day. I did that for a month, exhausting myself. The bank liked my work. My immediate manager, Colin Beattie, was super supportive in that first trying month. I got two pays from two companies. One American and one British.
It set me up for life. I was a funky 21-year-old, pocketing over $1000 that month. That was a lot of money for a guy who only earned $60 a month just four months prior in Sri Lanka. I came down from 49 kgs in weight to 48 kgs during that tiring month. I lost a kilo but gained $1000, a whopping amount to a wild lad.
The issue of my passport had to be solved. Barry went into action. Bank’s commercial manager took me in his shiny Mercedes Benz to the hotel’s head office, spoke to some people in Arabic and retrieved my passport giving it to me. The passport was recovered even before my permanent visa from the hotel could be stamped. Immediately, the bank applied for my permanent visa. My passport has been mine forever since then. In that passport, there is no record of me working for the Dubai Inter-Continental Hotel.
Thus began my career in financial services and technology that spanned five global financial services companies, and three of the top twenty banks in the world.
The jolly fun-loving friends from the hotel became my lifelong friends. They gave me a zest for life. All that within the four short months of bliss and happiness. My daredevil friends’ free spirit has remained with me to this day to remember and celebrate. All this in just four months of youthful swagger. Even as I wrote this, I have spoken to six of them to help me to recall and write these memories of forty-five years ago.
On a side note, life is to imagine and dream. Less than twenty years later, I returned to Dubai as an Australian citizen for work. It was a transit stop on my way to London from Sydney. Ironic as it may sound, I was sent through a queue reserved for the first world countries, Europeans, Americans and Australians. I stayed in the Dubai Inter-Continental, the same hotel I worked as a youngster. But this time in a presidential suite on their top floor. How the tables had turned for the fellow who worked there just twenty years earlier is a mystery to me.
Where are my characters today?
Most of the boys and girls are scattered away in various parts of the globe. My roommates Nicky in Melbourne and Kumara in Toronto. Sadly, Rajakaruna passed away in Austria a few years ago. His bravado and escape is a folklore tale among the lads in the hotel at the time.
My friends, Brian, Sheriff, Jaya, Quintus, Errol, Alwin, Lal, Percy and David, worked in the Middle East for a while and now live in Sri Lanka. Cassim, Berty, Ajith and Jennifer have passed away. Jerome lives in Sweden and travels to Australia often. Tony, Anne, and two Nihals, Moorthy and Crispin, live in Melbourne. Maurice, Audrey and Bobby are in Sydney. Maurice and I get together occasionally for a beer over a meal and a yarn in Sydney, reminiscing the good old days of youthful adventures when we did not know any better on the sacred ground of blooming Dubai.
I met Barry in Hong Kong in the nineties during a business trip. He now lives in retirement in Hertfordshire. Colin Beattie is a member of the Scottish Parliament today. Chartered Bank has since been rebranded as Standard Chartered Bank. My time in the bank in Dubai is a story or two for another day.
Images of the hotel taken from Dubai — the good old days page
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Images belong to the original owners
