Nocturnal Visitors: 2 2 0

At the beginning of the evening, with the Brit and Julia also present, Svetlana had seemed to be in marketing mode, but all marketing had been switched off for some reason after she went outside to smoke. Now that the Brit and Julia were gone, I was alone with Svetlana and Olga, who were both drinking whiskey and cola...

I asked Svetlana and Olga about themselves. Svetlana said she was from Siberia, and Olga said she was from Stalingrad. I asked them what they did in Dubai, though the Brit had already confided their profession to me. Their English was quite good, better than any of the other women of their profession I've met in Dubai, and I wanted to hear their story.

Svetlana didn’t speak, but Olga responded. Her voice was flat and numb.

Olga said that salaries in Russia for women with her training and education were just $300 a month, out of which she had to pay for food, housing, school expenses for their children, and other expenses. $300 was not enough. If they didn't go hungry, she couldn't pay her child's school fees and buy schoolbooks.

Then she'd heard of a way to get rich quickly by coming to Dubai. She knew that there is only one kind of work that pays so well for a woman without any technical business skills, but she came anyway. She wasn't foolish enough to think that Dubai paid secretaries and shop assistants huge salaries, as Julia had. She'd known what to expect.

Olga said that, when she works, she earns enough to send $200 home every night after paying all her expenses in Dubai, and that she generally works twenty nights a month. I asked her where she worked, and she gave me the name of a well-known nightclub near the Internet and Media Free Zones. She said it had been very hard work, much harder than she'd expected, and she was now completely exhausted. Her voice sounded drained. She said it was time for her to go home for good.

For some reason, Olga and Svetlana had become quite cool and distant, as if we’d concluded a certain transaction that we had, in fact, never even initiated. They were like this even before I tried to get them to talk about themselves. What had happened when they went out to smoke together, I never knew.

We tidied up a bit, I packed the leftover food in a plastic bag, and told them they could take it and, perhaps, give it to Julia.

They asked me to get them a taxi, because, they said, they might be picked up by the police if they were spotted standing outside my building at 6:30 a.m., so I got Svetlana’s mobile number and left them in my flat while I went to flag down a taxi. As I stepped out, I saw a rather large pile of cigarette butts beside my door.

I stepped outside and waved until a taxi stopped. I dialled Svetlana's mobile, but, as I was calling, the taxi drove away.

I went back up and got them to come down with me and wait in the lobby of my building. I flagged another taxi, told him to pick up the two women waiting in the lobby, and watched as they rode away.

When I went back up, I found they had left behind the plastic bag of food and the bottle of cheap vodka, but they had taken the expensive whiskey. I tossed the leftover food and the vodka in the bin.

Then I noticed that one of them had left behind her expensive mobile. I tried using my mobile to call the only number I had for them, but I only rang the mobile that was sitting in my flat. Then I started calling the contacts on that mobile, and I reached Olga, who said she usually only sees Svetlana when they are both invited to birthday parties. Then Svetlana called to say she would drop by to pick up her phone later in the day.

It was 6:30 a.m., and I was finally able to go to bed and get some sleep. I wondered what might happen when Svetlana came back, alone, to pick up her mobile.