Shoaib, Sania and Obolijabota

By Jawed Naqvi
Dubai breeds an amazing assortment of contradictions. India’s most wanted fugitive was part of such a contradiction together with his many politician patrons, film stars and cricketer fans. –Photo by AFP

Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik and Indian tennis player Sania Mirza have announced plans to marry and settle down in Dubai. There is something about Dubai that it seems to solve everyone’s complex problems.

Malik will not have to give up his nationality and Mirza will keep hers, and both are hoping to play for their country as long as form permits. They are going to be the toast of an entire community of sports fans, not just from the subcontinent but from Europe and elsewhere.

I know several Indian-Pakistani couples who settled down in Dubai because it pre-empted the need to change their passports or grovel before grudging and bilious bureaucrats for long-term visas. Many moons ago Pakistan’s stylish batsman Mohsin Khan was married to Indian actress Reena Roy. Though they didn’t get down to living in Dubai, they were frequent visitors to the emirate because of popular cricket fixtures in neighbouring Sharjah organised by Abdul Rehman Bukhatir.

The Mohsin-Reena marriage created a flutter and there was the inevitable banter between Indian and Pakistani cricket enthusiasts over Mohsin’s loyalty to his team. Pakistanis had nicknamed him Jeeja, or sister’s husband. I remember a crucial moment in an India-Pakistan match, when Mohsin called his partner, probably Mudassar Nazar, for a cheeky single. The Pakistani corner of the Sharjah stadium erupted with shouts of “Don’t. Don’t. Jeeja will get you run out.” For no fault of Mohsin Khan, I must emphasise, his partner was indeed run out.

Among the best things about Dubai in the 1980s was the mingling of Indians and Pakistanis in a lighthearted relationship. It was in Dubai, with the Khaleej Times and Gulf News that I got an opportunity to work with the finest editors in the subcontinent, and most of them during that particular point in time from Pakistan.

The era of the great Chhalapti Rau and Frank Moraes had come to an end in India. But Pakistan, possibly because of its relentless repression of journalists, had continued to produce defiant editors. One of them was Aziz Siddiqui, who unlike any Indian counterpart and like several of his Pakistani contemporaries, had been to prison under Ziaul Haq.

Indians and Pakistanis shared a convivial relationship in Dubai and were usually found together at the same watering hole. They often became partners in the craziest of ventures. Forgery of passports was a headache for the local police in the 1980s. And there was an ethnic angle involved. Working class Pathans made excellent watchmen. Their access to secure places in office buildings enabled some of them to acquire blank booklets for various types of passports. They were the procurers. But they were illiterate and needed a forger.

The Keralite from southern India with his high literacy background was the natural choice. He, according to countless police records of that period, became the forger.

This in my view was the most exciting bonding anywhere in the world that transcended the national and ethnic divide for as long as it lasted in a great clandestine enterprise. It is another matter that the Pathans and the Malabaris of Dubai, as Keralites are called there, suffered a great deal from exposure to a culture of consumerism they were not used to.

Their families suffered more from what came to be known as the Dubai syndrome. It triggered depression and ennui in a race for acquisition of goods that were often useless — like a fridge or a TV taken to regions in the NWFP that had never known an electric bulb, much less electricity.

Dubai’s prosperity attracted a wide array of political free agents who drove in for funds or respite from their struggles. Their brisk speed left observant diplomats and sleuths gasping for breath.

There was this friend at the Indian consulate whose lazy curiosity in my reports led me to conclude he was from an intelligence unit. Since he was a friendly and polite person I indulged his awkward curiosity anyway. “So where did you meet Gulbuddin Hekmatyar?” he asked me one morning after reading a news report to that effect. It was common knowledge that the Afghan Mujahideen were coming in droves to collect funds and there was no difficulty in finding out where they stayed. It was usually a building attached to some mosque.

One day at the cricket match in Sharjah we spotted a banner near the deep fine leg boundary which said ‘Long Live JKLF’. The photographer was quickly activated, the picture taken and published. The caption said that while Kashmiris might not be the most enthusiastic cricket players, the willow came from them, and so did the JKLF banner.

“Where did you see that banner?” came the expected query the next morning, not without a trace of nervousness that comes when you are caught sleeping at the wheels. “That was when you were shaking hands with Dawood Ibrahim,” I told my friend plainly.

Dubai breeds an amazing assortment of contradictions. India’s most wanted fugitive was part of such a contradiction together with his many politician patrons, film stars and cricketer fans. No prizes for guessing where he lives now.

Dubai officially treated subcontinental politicians neutrally. It hosted journalists and other professionals from Pakistan with dignity though they were virtual fugitives from Zia’s tyranny. In spite of their overt neutrality I think the rulers of Dubai were partial to the Bhuttos in Pakistan and to Indira Gandhi in India. She was the last official guest in 1981 of the late ruler Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed al Maktoum. and thereby hangs a tale that continues to amuse to this day.

As a journalist with Gulf News I was keen that Mrs Gandhi should visit the working class Indians who lived in squalid conditions there. The well-heeled Indians made sure that would not happen. They were able to influence the consul general, whose name was O.P. Gupta, to keep Mrs Gandhi busy elsewhere.

Several weeks after the visit, the diplomat paid a courtesy call on the ruler of Ras al Khaimah in Dubai’s neighbourhood. The official news agency carried a protocol picture with a caption in Arabic. Since there is no ‘g’ or ‘p’ sound in Arabic, the genial Sudanese translator spelled O.P. Gupta’s name Obi Jabota. Somewhere along the route that the bromide normally takes through compositors and proof readers, somebody added an ‘l’ and an ‘i’ in the name to make it perhaps sound logical. They called him Indian consul general Obolijabota!

As editor of the Gulf News, Aziz Siddiqui was aware I had no role in the transmutation of poor Mr Gupta’s name. But the livid diplomat never believed him and I never insisted that he should accept the truth. As they head for a new life together in Dubai, Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza will at least not have the problem faced by the unfortunate diplomat. Their names seem quite compatible with Arabic.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.