Chapter Eleven

The Lifestyle

 

 

LEA KNOCKED ON Cara’s bedroom door and waited for an answer. They had lately come to an arrangement; she would not barge in unannounced, and in exchange Cara would turn up for meals on time.

‘Hang on a minute.’ She waited while Cara came to the door, opening it a crack. The blinds in her room were drawn shut. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’m going into the Old Town this afternoon. Want to come?’

She smoothed down uncombed hair. ‘It’s Sunday.’

‘Yeah, which means that everything’s open. We could get you a haircut. Come with me, I could use the company. I’m going to try and find some freelance work.’

‘How are you going to do that?’

‘I’ve got a couple of leads. Something called Gulf Coast magazine. Milo put me onto them. And Dream World is putting together a quarterly magazine about the resort.’

‘I’m supposed to go over to Norah’s this afternoon. We’re building a website.’

‘What time?’

‘Four.’

‘No good, I won’t be back by then. I have to update my CV and sort out examples of work before I go.’

Cara looked sceptical. ‘You really going to find a job?’

‘Don’t make it sound like I’m going to track down the Ark of the Covenant. I can freelance from here. You can help set me up with an office in the spare room. I can’t seem to get my contacts onto my phone.’

‘I saw you had some synchronisation issues.’

‘When? Have you been in my stuff?’

‘I’m just trying to get everything to work together. I’ll set up your office.’

‘Okay. Just do me a favour and don’t make a big deal about it with your father.’

‘You’re going to tell him you’re looking for work, aren’t you?’

‘There’s no point in us talking about something that hasn’t happened yet. I don’t want another argument.’

Roy was on site, supervising the relaying of the first of the damaged marble walkways, so Lea headed to the Old Town alone. The area around the creek came as a complete contrast to the high-rise modernity of the coastal hotels. Here, she saw just how separated the imported Europeans were from the Arab world. The older men still wore black dishdashas and white kiffiyeh scarves, and the women had robe-like dresses that covered the whole body. In clothing store windows, the word ‘modest’ appeared as a desirable description, yet discordant bolts of fabric clashed against each other in retina-searing limes and golds. Lea noticed that many of the young Muslimahs were now dressed in western jeans and shirts.

Arranged around the mouth of the creek was a terrace of dilapidated two-storey buildings, flat-roofed and covered in plastic signs and satellite dishes. Lethal-looking necklaces of electrical wiring festooned the peeling facades of shops selling fruit and vegetables from plastic baskets.

She parked, checked her notebook and found the office. The rickety, dark staircase to the first floor office did not look promising.

Andre Pignot was an elegant fifty year-old French-Algerian, a former archaeologist who had been editing Gulf Coast magazine for over twenty years, although how he managed to do it in such a cramped, hot room was a mystery. He seemed surprised by Lea’s arrival, even though she had called ahead, and jumped up to shake her hand.

‘I’m afraid we’re rather old-fashioned,’ he warned, moving a stack of papers so that she could sit down. ‘We’ve been here a long time because we keep our advertisers happy. We run news items that supplement an aspirational lifestyle.’

The lifestyle was hardly visible from Pignot’s headquarters. Around the walls were pinned yellowing Gulf Coast covers featuring speedboats, crystal-set dining tables, elaborate watches and women in furs. Below in the street, Lea could see a man selling mobile phone covers from plastic buckets.

‘I can work to a brief,’ Lea said, handing over a folder containing her resume and some articles she had written for Eva. She sipped sweet mint tea and waited for Pignot to read, but he slipped the articles back into their folder, having barely skimmed them.

‘I’m afraid that’s all a bit progressive for us,’ he said apologetically. ‘We’re looking for upbeat features about hotels, car rallies, summer fashions, that sort of thing. Our readers are mostly holidaymakers. We don’t cover crime, politics, social issues. It’s all rather bland, but who wants to be troubled with the world’s problems on vacation?’

‘I could write you some pieces on a trial basis,’ she persisted. ‘You’d only need to buy them if you liked them.’

‘I suppose that might work.’ Pignot did not sound too convinced.

Lea decided to reduce his pain. ‘Well, you have my number,’ she said, rising. ‘I’m sure you’re a busy man.’

‘No,’ he said, tapping the edges of his desk in mild bemusement, ‘not really.’

Her second appointment took her to a white building that occupied the whole of one side of Creek Square. It took her a while to find the office because the company signage was in Arabic.

A Muscovite, Maxim Karpova, headed Dream World magazine, the first issue of which was already printed even though the resort had yet to open. In the icy reception area, blow-ups of the front cover featured an attractively modest girl in a black, gold-trimmed abaya standing beside a computer generated horizon pool, flanked by gaudy baroque armchairs. Clearly, Gulf Coast magazine’s days were numbered, because here was the future; a Western ideal that had dispensed with vanity advertising in order to sell a single cohesive fantasy.

Lea rubbed at her suntanned face. No matter how much moisturizer she used, she couldn’t prevent its tightness, and the air-conditioning gave her the sensation of always being about to catch a cold. Waiting to be seen by the assistant editor, she realised how far she had drifted from her student days, when she had only written for the liberal press. Her youthful idealism now felt like naivety.

She was seen by a young Arabic woman called Nathifa who regarded her coolly through tinted oval glasses before offering carefully measured responses to her questions. Nathifa was confident, almost arrogant, knowing that soon she would be fielding requests from the world’s press eager to discover more about the resort’s roster of celebrity visitors.

‘It is in our interests to employ staff with connections with the resort,’ said Nathifa, in a clipped manner that suggested she had attended business studies at an English university. ‘I would be keen to know how you feel about the aspirational core values espoused by the DWG brand.’

‘Are you asking me if I would be uncritical?’ Lea asked.

‘The resort will set a new world standard for the luxurious bespoke lifestyle,’ Nathifa told her without a hint of irony. ‘We are unlikely to commission anything’— she searched for an appropriate word—‘abrasive.’

‘I appreciate that. It would help me to understand whether the magazine is simply to be a quarterly advertorial for the resort’s featured attractions or whether it aims at something more.’

‘Mrs Brook, we think our magazine can provide the highest level of quality without making people uncomfortable.’

‘Then you don’t need a writer,’ Lea replied, ‘you need a publicist.’ Rising, she politely thanked Nathifa and left.

On the way home she passed the laughing girl on the Dubai Pearl poster, promising the bespoke lifestyle. I can’t be you, she thought, because you don’t exist.