Not too far from the track is a small village. Don’t ask me the name, it’s only written in Arabic. Once off the big cities and major highways, signs in english tend to disappear. Again, I need to learn. For security reasons I have a memo with a few useful sentences in case I run into trouble and have to explain myself. But that is no help when it comes to names and other road signs. We are far from the big city indeed. Far from the stereotypes of Dubai. No bling bling here. A mosque, a few houses, a food stuff store, and a few camel farms in the distance. Expats like me are not seen around here often. It’s not touristic. No place to brunch, no Chanel store, too far away for dune bashers to come play in this sand. They are left alone, and it’s probably better that way.
As soon as I stop to look for something to shoot, kids ridding donkeys surround me with curiosity. They turn around the car, laughing. An old man in a truck waves at me. I wave back. I know that if I spend a few more minutes here, someone will come to check on me and invite me to his house for breakfast, and it will be hard to say no, even though it’s one of the few arabic word I know. There is nothing like local hospitality in this part of the world, and it’s not something you can refuse.
