Epiphanies Galore Typing and Photocopying

I don’t like Abu Dhabi. People never look you in the eye when you pass them on the sidewalk, and they think you’re weird if you smile at them. I can feel their thoughts like a gust of sandy wind blowing against my face. Weird girl. 

At work I sit alone in my cubicle pretending to be busy. 

“Hi Roselle, I have a slightly unusual task for you today.”

Amy has coffee stained teeth and one of those British accents that sounds like she’s chewing a pickle. She calls me “lovely,” and says things like “fab!” and has lived in Abu Dhabi for thirteen years. She isn’t mean, but she only listens so she can speak. She’s white, like most of the people in our office. Sometimes her hair gets staticky and the baby hairs rise up around her part. More than once, I’ve thought about snipping them with a pair of nail scissors. 

“As you know, I’ve been working very hard on my memoire lately. I barely have any time for my actual job. I know it’s your weekend, but I really need you to type up my old journal –”

Once I’ve understood the task I find it almost impossible to listen to Amy. It’s not just the British accent; it’s her presence. She grows bigger while she talks about herself, pressing me and everything else into the walls.

I nod and smile the appropriate amount, then say, “fab, I’m happy to.” Until I started working here, I’d never used the word fab. 

After dinner in the mall cafeteria, I decide to walk back to my studio on Reem. It’ll be a long night of Netflix, so I’m in no rush to get back. Plus the night is cool enough, and the streets are safe. I’m wearing comfortable shoes. 

As I walk, the people who use electric scooters to get from Reem to work and back whiz past me with the latest airpods tucked in and their briefcases balanced on the handlebars. So, this is the future. Coronavirus passed a couple years ago, but sometimes I feel like we never wriggled out of our collective isolations. What would happen if I flagged down a scooter and asked to hitch a ride home? I once saw a movie with a couple sharing a vespa and since then I’ve always wanted to be whisked away. 

I cross from Al Maryah to Reem Island on a bridge that is much better suited to cars than pedestrians. A taxi slows beside me and pips his horn. For some reason this makes me angry. 

“No.” I bark, waving my hand and frowning. “No, no!”

Aren’t I allowed to walk in this city? Is it so strange to see a young woman in no hurry to get inside? 

I’m not being fair to the driver, who is just trying to get paid.

Other parts of Abu Dhabi are peppered with shops that have funny or interesting names. Like the tailoring and abaya shops, with names like Fine Look, Personality Tailoring, Cute Queen Cloak, or Sea Queen Abaya. Some shops have names that are equal parts funny and mysterious: Man of Cave, Eastern Touch, Face Chicken. What do they sell? 

Reem Island is a much glossier part of the city. Fake canals snake through its heart, sparkling in the sun –– do they paint the canals to make them bluer? I think of Alice, painting the white roses red. There are public parks and beaches dotted around the island. Dab dab. 

The whole island feels like a series of interconnected Starbucks coffee shops that the residents bounce between. There they all go. The moms with the nice strollers and sleek ponytails. The couples in matching sneakers. The flirty business men who smirk at me. The hopeful single woman walking her curly haired dog. It seems we are all on Reem for a nice beverage and some ambience, and we pay dearly for it because we don’t want to miss out. 

I walk beside the canal for a while, then up a set of stairs and between two towers. I’m only a few minutes away from my apartment now, but I never noticed this alley between the buildings. It’s rare to notice new things when you take the same route so often. I wonder whether there’s a Baqala here, like the ones scattered throughout the older parts of the city. Maybe I’ll go wild and buy myself a pack of cigarettes. 

There’s no baqala, only a tiny shop. Epiphanies Galore Typing and Photocopying. It’s squeezed between two identical revolving doors, both leading into the same building. There’s a white cat flicking its tail in front of the shop, regarding me with somber black eyes. It’s unusual to see a cat with such black eyes. What are you waiting for? 

I step inside, unsure of what I’m going to say when I’m greeted. 

There are six men sitting in two rows, all facing different directions, each with a mustache of varying thickness, clacking away on outdated computers. There are stacks of paper piled throughout the room. None of them look up. An old AC unit rattles in the back, spitting ice on the desks underneath it. One of the typists brushes a snowflake from the top of his monitor. His face glows blue in the computer light. 

Maybe I should leave. 

One of the men looks up and smiles at me. He doesn’t break eye contact when I smile back. 

“Can I help you?”

That’s when I remember Amy’s journal in my bag. That must be why I came in here. I’m relieved to have a reason. I approach his desk, aware that the entire room is looking at me even as their fingers fly across the keyboards. They’re all wearing beige polo shirts. Their mustaches quiver in identical anticipation. 

“I was wondering how much it would cost to have this journal typed up?” I slide the journal across the desk, avoiding a slushy puddle. 

He names his price, and I imagine my weekend, blissfully free of Amy’s inner thoughts. Would I pay to get my weekend back? Absolutely. 

“That sounds good, should I pay now or later?”

“Wonderful ma’am, pay later. It will be done by Sunday morning if that suits you.”

I agree. I can come early before work.

“Would you like to take our card, in case you have trouble finding us later?”

“No, that’s okay thanks. I live right around the corner.”

The man has black eyes like the cat outside. They’re sparkling with mirth. “Sure ma’am.”

I turn around to leave and realize the door is not behind me: instead there is a row of filing cabinets. I could’ve sworn it was there. I turn back around and realize it’s in front of me, behind the man I was talking to. His eyes are back on his screen, fingers jumping like grasshoppers. It’s impossible to read his expression with that mustache. Is he laughing at me?

I walk past him, open the door, and realize it doesn’t lead outside. Instead it puts me into one of the many tunnels that run underneath the buildings on Reem. I’ve been in these tunnels before; they usually lead to service elevators and parking lots. I could turn back around but something draws me further into the tunnel. The door clicks behind me and I don’t think I can stand the typist silently laughing anymore. I’ll just find my way out from here.  

The tunnel stretches on; fluorescent white. There are metal lockers on either side of me, and more doors leading to more white hallways. Eventually, I’m forced to choose a direction. I’ll go right, and through these double doors. Straight, and through those doors. There is a distant, tiny sound. Is that a saxophone? There’s no way someone is playing music down here. 

The sound is intoxicating.

I follow my ears, taking lefts and rights at random until I find it. A woman wearing a shimmering dress is playing the sax for a small crowd. A hat full of silver change sits at her feet. I’m grinning. She’s good. The air is unusually warm for a service tunnel.

The music swells and I stand there listening until my knees and feet ache. It must be midnight by now and the typing shop feels very far away. I should go. Reluctantly, I leave the crowd, brushing hands with a stranger, which makes me shiver. I wonder how many other people in this city are desperate to be touched. I wonder whether the stranger felt the electric surge too.

I have no idea where I am, but I’m almost happy. I thought art was absent from this dusty metropolis, but maybe it has just been tucked away. I pass a door with disco lights and faint EDM music playing behind it, but I really should be getting home now, so I walk on. Another door has the most delicious smell behind it, but I tell myself I’ve already had dinner. Who knew Reem was this huge. Do the tunnels go on forever? Do they stretch under the sea?

Finally, I reach a dead end with a set of silver doors: an elevator. I push the button and scramble inside. The doors close behind me. Inside the metal box, there are no floor numbers or buttons, only an electric pad for swiping a key card. I look at the pad. At the closed doors. All around the elevator but all I see are smooth metal walls.

I’m a mouse in a trap.

I’ve never been claustrophobic so I’m not really afraid –– just perplexed. My phone has service but I don’t know who to text or how to explain where I am. My uncle lives in the city but we aren’t close enough for me to call him this late. Amy? The thought makes me laugh, which rattles the metal cage. I sit down to think. I could call the police, but it’s just so embarrassing. Maybe I’ll sleep in here; someone is bound to stumble onto me. The situation is almost funny. Maybe I should live tweet it, or make an Instagram story.

But my phone stays in my pocket. If I strain my ears I can still hear the saxophone player. Does she stay down here all night? Is that legal? Does she have another job? 

I can’t sleep in here, that would be ridiculous. Maybe there’s something in my bag; I dump the contents onto the ground. 

My wallet is unzipped and a load of change hurls out with a handful of plastic cards. There’s the key card for my building lying among them. I look at the elevator pad. Then look back at my card. This isn’t my building so it’s not going to work but I stand up and swipe it anyways. There is a green light and a beep. 

Gravity shifts as the elevator moves up and I scramble to put everything back in my bag. When the doors slide open, I find myself spat out into an empty mall. Which mall is this? I’ve been here before.

I’m not on Reem Island at all. This is the middle of the city: a twenty minute drive away. 

Something weird is going on; I couldn’t have possibly walked that far, and there aren’t any tunnels between Reem and the city. 

I don’t want to think about it; my head feels like a cup that’s brimming with water. If I try to figure out what just happened and how I got here, I’m going to crumble like some pathetic sandcastle. I’ve spent so long trying not to fall apart in this city –– trying not to ponder too many of its unique mysteries. I’m tired, and Netflix and my IKEA bed are just a short drive away. 

The city is quiet, dark. It’s full of taxi drivers and cats. I get into a taxi and tell the driver the name of my building.

He makes some small talk, which doesn’t really catch my attention until he says, “you’re a good girl, but other people always come into my taxi drunk at this time. They’re always saying, go straight, go straight! But they never know where they’re going.” 

Usually ‘good girl’ would annoy me, but I can tell he says it without any intended condescension. 

I laugh. “That sounds annoying.” 

I can see the side of his face where there’s a little stubble –– thick hair, a serious mouth. I notice his casual grip on the steering wheel, and his eyes, which are large and glassy in the rearview. He has long eyelashes. We’re about the same age.

“These drunk people are usually from the U.K. Where are you from?”

“Canada,” I smile into the mirror.

His eyes flick away, then flick back to mine. “I have friends in Canada.”

“Oh, that’s nice. Do they like it there?”

He pauses, frowning. “My friends in Canada are stupid.”

“Why is that?”

“They got rich and forgot about me.”

The conversation ambles on, but my heart squeezes. Most times there is a barrier between me and the people who drive taxis. I haven’t heard something so honest from anyone in months. 

He and I continue talking, asking each other questions. When we arrive beneath my building, he looks at me in the mirror and I can tell he’s both wary and curious.

“Madam, is it okay if I ask you something?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Okay, did you get in a fight?”

“A fight?”

“Yes you look…” He opens his mouth to speak, seems to think better of it, then gives an exaggerated frown in the rearview.

“I look sad?”

He exhales. “Yes, you look sad.”

Am I? 

I tell him it’s my work, because it both is and isn’t, and because I have no real language for the feeling he’s put his finger on. I thought everyone who lives here must feel this way. I ask how his work is and he says the only people who have it harder than taxi drivers are the people who deliver food. I agree, and he presses the screen to end the trip. 

Thank you for using Gazelle taxi. Please take your receipt and remember to take your belongings with you when you leave the taxi. 

I wish I could ask to exchange phone numbers with him. I imagine myself talking to him while he drives his other customers around, telling me about the drunk ones who insist he go straight.

But asking for his number would be crossing an invisible line. It would ruin everything that happened tonight. It would make him uncomfortable, and then he would stop looking people in the eye through the rearview mirror. He would stop calling them ‘a good girl’ with tenderness and he wouldn’t dare to ask whether people are sad. The city needs him to never stop doing those things, so I tip him, slide out of the taxi, and tell him to take care.

I hope he does. I feel like crying or laughing or calling someone who knew me when I was a child, but instead I flop on my bed and turn on the TV. When I fall asleep my dreams are full of the sound of the saxophone. 

The next morning I look for Epiphanies Galore Typing and Photocopying but it isn’t where I thought it was. Of course. I walk all around Reem, and finally stray to the other side of Abu Dhabi, to peel back the layers and search through the side streets and small shops. I pass honey shops, spice shops, shoe repair stores and gift stores. I bump into someone carrying an easel. A photographer snaps a photo of a man hanging laundry on a balcony. There’s a tiny sticker on a lamppost with an illustration of a lion eating a witch. I’m sure there are brass instruments playing, and I could hear them if only there were no cars whooshing by. If only I was here alone at night. 

Each cat has black eyes. Each typist smiles knowingly when I inquire about the shop. 

“Epiphanies Galore Typing and Photocopying? Yes, it’s just around the corner.”

Photograph by Vamika Sinha