Too little, too late

The Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority (Sewa) recently did something quite out of character recently and apologised for making people's lives miserable during the dark and dramatic days of this month.

During the crisis, it had acted like it was the Black Gate of Mordor, that none could approach or pass through. I hope its inspectors saw the havoc and pain they unleashed on an unsuspecting populace.

The scene is an internet café on Maliha Road on the third continuous day of the power cuts. It was like a sci-fi movie, showing the bleak and dark future of humankind. Men, barely in their 20s, were sitting in a blackened room, their shirts damp and sticking to their backs and their faces lit blue by the screens in their cubicles.

"We can't sleep in this heat so we thought of coming here and calling home," said one of them. The computers were being powered by a generator at the entrance, which was noisily producing electricity. I am sure not one of them said to the person on the other side of the world, "I am missing you. Wish you were here."

Megan, our photographer, and I got to a man living two floors up in a building. The taps had also run dry because of the power cut. When we came out of his apartment, it was somewhat eerie. It was absolutely quiet. There was no sound of children playing or crying, or the grocery delivery boy ringing the doorbell.

The only sound was the wind blowing in from an open window at the end of the corridor. The whole building had been abandoned — as if families had fled from an oncoming deadly virus.

Luckily for Sewa, many of the residents of Sharjah are expatriates from Asian countries who have acclimatised, to an extent, to the terrible heat, because of similar power cuts back home. When a summer heatwave hit Europe seven years ago, about 35,000 people died.

As the temperature climbed to the high 30s that year, elderly people stuck in their suffocating flats were the first to go. (A colleague of mine mentioned that not many people can afford air-conditioning in Britain.)

Peak temperatures

Between July and August, many expatriates and residents leave the UAE for their annual holidays. It is the time of the year when the temperature climbs into the searing 40s and humidity fogs your glasses.

As we stepped out of our nice, air-conditioned car, droplets of sweat immediately formed on our faces and arms and my vest started clinging to my chest. When we got back in after a while, the air-conditioning gave us goose bumps and we had to drink a bottle of water to compensate for the loss of fluid.

It was lunchtime when we stepped into an Indian restaurant. It was in total darkness and as we walked in, it was even hotter than outside in the sun. The cooks, behind the glass partition, looked like they had come out of a shower. Even when a customer walked in, the expressions on their faces did not change. They wore blank looks. It was as if they had made peace with what destiny had brought them.

"Only take-aways," said the manager to a customer. "Where will I take it away to?" asked the customer.

A day after Sewa's apology, the brownouts continued in the industrial areas. In one district, the outage started from 10am and ended at 1pm. There was relief for two hours, but then the power went off again from 3 until 5pm. Then, after a 45-minute respite, it went off again until 11.30 in the night.

"So, what do you think of Sewa's apology to you?" I asked one man living in the area.

As he started to splutter, I had to make a quick getaway.