Midnight Taxi From Dubai to Al Ain

My first job in the UAE, several years ago, was in Al Ain. They gave me a huge, four bedroom apartment with 3 baths for me and a servant's wing with another bedroom and bath for my servants (lamentably, I never actually had any servants, so one wing of the palace was totally wasted). It was the largest place I have ever lived in in my entire life. The rooms were huge, sqare, and without so much as closets. They gave all new hires £5,500 to furnish their places. We were all given four days in a hotel during which we had to furnish our places or sleep on the floor.

The previous year, a couple of the new hires took their £5,500 and departed the day after arrival. So the year I arrived, we were told, 'There is no bus service from Al Ain to anywhere except out in the countryside around Al Ain, and you are not allowed to drive, even a rental car, until your papers have been processed.' They had taken our passports for 'processing' when we first arrived.

The company took care of everything. They arranged for electricity, and water (a truck that came by twice a week and filled a tank, but the pump system that was supposed to pump the water into my place didn't actually work for the first month). They got most of us land-line telephones, so they knew our home phone numbers (a few of the new hires, but not I, knew about how the system worked and demanded mobiles, and one colleague refused to let them get him a telephone at all, since a) he didn't want them knowing his home number; and b) he didn't want to pay for the phone).

Finally, after two months, we got back our stamped passports, and the company took us all to get driver's licenses (even those who didn't know how to drive), after which we were told we could leave Al Ain on weekends, if we liked. No one was willing to sleep on the floor without a fridge for two months, so the new employees all spent their £5,500 on furniture, and no one who came in with me ran off.

After two months, I thought I'd seen enough of Al Ain, but didn't know how to get out, since I don't drive. 'Take a taxi,' said another confirmed pedestrian. Where I'm from, taxis are not allowed to leave the city, and, if they were, I couldn't possibly have afforded the fare. But a taxi from Al Ain to Dubai was only about £15, and there was a place where people queued to split a taxi five ways, so I figured £3 to Dubai was reasonable.

The taxi from Dubai to Al Ain is, however, rather more than £3. The usual cost is at least £50 (and my £5,500 was long gone), so I explored cheaper ways to return. There was the Dubai Transport Bus, which costs about £5, but the last bus (at that time) left around 10:00 p.m. and arrived around 1:00 a.m.

As I waited for the bus one evening, someone whispered, 'Abu Dhabi?' in the same tone as if he were selling dirty pictures. 'No,' I replied, 'Al Ain.' 'Follow me.' And I did.

The illegal taxi back to Al Ain was just £3, and took just one hour. So I stopped taking the bus.

Normally, I'd have a great meal, then catch the (illegal) taxi around 11:00 p.m. or midnight, and sleep all the way back to Al Ain. Most taxis were more comfortable than the bus, and certainly much more convenient.

So, one night as usual, I had taken an illegal taxi and had just started to drift off on my way back to Al Ain when I heard the driver and my fellow passengers (all compatriots, but I was too new to the UAE to have any idea from which country) talking:

'You know, in our country if strange person like you get in our car, we kill him, take all his money, and leave body on road. In our country, never any problem for us. But here in UAE, that impossible. Police quickly catch, and punishment very bad.'

I didn't get much sleep that trip. And I started taking the bus back to Al Ain. And I'm very happy that the UAE police have the excellent reputation that they do among my fellow travellers.