There was something different about her. The makeup was flawless even in the simmering desert afternoon and she was still running crazily, trying to gather her four children from different corners. But the burqa or abaya, as it is called in West Asia, was gone, replaced by a long, trendy denim dress and a fashionable scarf on the head. “This is the next thing I want to get rid of,” she tugged at her hijab, narrowly restraining herself but unleashing barely subdued golden hair.

Haya (name changed) and I met a few years ago, when our kids joined the same nursery school in Abu Dhabi. Seeing the burqa, I had immediately cast her as the stereotypical local, conservative not easy to befriend. For someone always frustrated with foreigners labelling India as the land of cows and snake charmers, this time I had made the cardinal sin, judging so quick that like the sand of the desert, my imagination slipped through my fingers. Actually, my opinion was formed long ago when, like many Indians, I had dismissed the Abu Dhabi in Sex and the City 2 as hogwash.

But when you integrate, you learn, and when you assimilate cultures, you begin to respect. Slowly, the Arab world became more than just an unknown land full of men in white attire, where women are restricted to their homes. I instead learnt to differentiate a Saudi from a Dubai man based not just on their headscarf or hatta but also the length of the outfit. I soon realised that the Lebanese speak more French than Arabic, Yemeni doctors sell botox even to their mothers, and that behind closed doors, many Emirati women are mean belly dancers.

And so, Haya and I slowly formed a bond. “ Mashallah , Indian” she almost jumped in excitement. “Bollywood! I love Bollywood, Aishwarya Rai is so pretty, I admire her,” she continued breathlessly. “I love her saris in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam ,” she continued uninterrupted, as my mind tried to recap through a Bollywood haze that I seldom sit through. We spent a few hours googling every sari the actress has ever worn, Haya growing in fascination while I cringed in gaudy despair.

“I feel like I should have been an Indian,” she reminisced another time, looking disapprovingly at me. “Where is your married necklace that everyone wears and I find so pretty?” It was too complicated to explain to her how no one could trace the mangalsutra at my wedding, and that today, the traditional designs are seen only in a soppy soap opera. But she knows that part already; she watches a few.

***

Haya is what many of us become when we live an expat life, taking a step back from expectations and fixed belief. She is a Jordanian Palestinian who has lived most of her life in the UAE, but being a doctor who works long shifts, she could be at home anywhere in the world. During Ramadan, which she welcomes as a weight-loss exercise, she expects those not fasting to eat and drink in front of her; her stories of sister-in-law politics can be any of ours, and she openly talks of how she met her husband and there was nothing arranged about the marriage.

Haya has friends who drive late at night, sits alone in a café smoking hookah, and talks of how the younger generation is trying to bend the rules. It’s a common sight on any weekend to see young girls shrug off the abayas to disclose trendy tattered jeans and crop tops, but Haya doesn’t give it any importance.

The UAE is a melting pot where the Pakistanis run to in search of a better future, where if you are an Indian, you must be from Kerala, and where sometimes, especially in Abu Dhabi, choppers outnumber taxis.

Abu Dhabi is a life where my daughters knew Khalid just as well as they did Sophia or Lisa. It is how we were in school, growing up in India, never knowing a Bengali from a North-Easterner. Today when even a health issue such as air pollution becomes a polarising debate on religion, it may not be long before my children are made aware of Khalid’s religion, but I hope they will also find a Haya, who will teach them to leave the regressive and hurtful behind.

“Are you from Krishna’s side?” she surprised me once, adding how she loved reading stories about him. “Some of us are stuck to traditions but I take what I like from each religion. It is better to just flow and take what you see is right. I follow what I believe in and not what I should be believing in,” she said.

For now, I am back in India. We still manage to meet a couple of times in a year. Nothing much has changed — her job is still gruelling and her son has a male chip on his shoulder, but something is slowly altering. Knowing Haya, one day she will be walking with her flowing blonde hair, that headscarf a memory in her cupboard.

I haven’t been able to find her that Aishwarya Rai sari but she wants more of the red bangles, the ones I bought from Delhi’s Hanuman Mandir. Her biggest dream, though, is to visit India for Diwali. “I wanted to come this year, but there is that mosquito disease, it has scared me.”

Jyotsna Mohan Bhargava is a freelance journalist based in Delhi

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