Living in multicultural Dubai gives you an international perspective and all that, but trying to decipher what people are saying drives me crazy.

“Change tah-toos?” asked the Asian woman at the immigration office in Jafiliya as she looked at the pink-coloured visa paper in my hand. I was not sure what that meant.

“Stah-toos change”? she asked again impatiently.

I believe I am good at languages, mainly because I sense what the person in front of me is saying, even though he or she is saying it in a strange tongue.

“You watch the hand gestures, the body language, and as many words are similar in many languages, you take a guess and answer,” I had told my wife some time back, thinking she would look at me with awe.

This time I drew a blank and looked foolishly at the woman behind the counter. “Yes, status change.” said my wife, from the side. “That will be Dh 550. Go to counter 14,” said the woman.

The typist from the sub-continent, mumbled something under his breath at me. I had sat down in front of him with a plastic grocery bag that had my marriage certificate (it has been a while since I saw that and thought we had lost it), my wife’s degrees, and my son’s birth certificate in Hindi that we had got from a border town in Haryana state, next to Delhi. “Chaa-bi-ri ?” he said, pointing at me.

I was already frazzled as I had been to the immigration office in Jebel Ali, and after going back and forth to my home for papers, I found out that a new residence visa under my wife’s sponsorship could be applied only at the downtown Dubai office.

I had pulled my wife out of her classroom as I wanted to get the paperwork done before the weekend, as I had an overland trip to Oman planned.

“Chaa-bi-ri?” I said, and looked askance at my wife. “Yes, Saberi,” said my wife. (Just for your information, my family name is pronounced as ‘saa-bri’ in Urdu, though it has an extra ‘e’ for good luck.

The pronunciation is actually wrong as it is an Arabic name and it should be, ‘sb-ree’, from the root word ‘saboor’ (patience), but that’s another story. “Mother name?” the typist asked. As this question came out-of-the-blue, I could not recollect my mother’s name. “Why do you need my mother’s name?” I asked, trying to stall.

In India, it was always, “What’s your father’s name?” as it is a patriarchal society. But we never said fatherland, and called our country, the motherland.

Chatty typist

This happened to my friend once when he got to talk to a Bollywood actress and a real looker. “This is my friend,” he introduced me. “My name is….” and he could not remember his name and went red in the face as the diva played with her earring.

The Afro-Arab typist at the medical centre was chatty. I next came here to give a blood sample for testing for infectious diseases. I needed the test results quickly to get the residence visa approved quickly. The man at the counter asked, “24 hours, 48 hours?

“What’s the difference,” I asked. “Dh 510, you get the test results tomorrow. Dh 410 you get it day-after.”

“24 hours,” I told him and ran to the ATM machine once again.

“Tell me what does “mehram” mean I asked him, showing the Arabic word on my visa paper. “It means that she is your wife and you are her husband and you are in a relationship”, he said.

“Doesn’t ‘mehram’ mean a spinster who should only be accompanied on a trip by a close family member,” said my wife, grinning.

“This is my ‘arbaab’ [boss] now,” I told the typist.

Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai.