The sensible half of my brain protested that this is Arabia not Greece, and Dubai Creek not the River Styx. And more to the point, I didn’t think I was dead yet. But if I was wrong on any count, I’ve got no gold coin to pay the passage. I’ll be doomed to wander these shores for eternity, another lost expat soul. The boat nudged the stone quay at our feet and a gaunt old face squinted up at us.
“Salamu alaykum!” The ferryman’s raspy voice was loud in the stillness, and a sudden wide smile creased his weathered face into a thousand wrinkles. He motioned us forward and my friend stepped carefully into the slim boat and seated himself. He turned to see if I was following. “Come on, he take us to the other side.”
I stepped in inexpertly and rocked the boat, almost tipping into the water. I plopped down quickly onto the ripped pieces of cardboard that upholstered the narrow seat. The ferryman punted the prow around to point towards the opposite shore, and as he was seated facing us, the old man examined me frankly as he began to pull at the oars. He used the Ajami dialect of south Iran to ask Ismael about this foreigner.
The utter strangeness of the situation clarified every sound. With the oars creaking and water splashing rhythmically, I was sure that I heard a faint wisp of Chris Deburg singing somewhere behind us on the barely visible shore we had just left. “Whatever you do, don’t pay the ferryman, don’t even fix a price! Don’t pay the ferryman until he gets you to the other side...”
The mist was thinning in patches, and the old man had stopped rowing. My companion had asked him to pause so I could enjoy the view. I looked along the shores and had to admit that this was a unique way to see Dubai at night. Our boat drifted slowly downstream with the slight current, and I found myself staring not at the scenery but at the gnarled knuckles of the hands at rest on the oars.
I was curious about our Charon and asked my friend to translate some questions. And thus I began to piece together the story of Dubai’s midnight ferryman. “My name is Abdullah Ali Ahmed Diwani. I was a fisherman with a spear and net in my village named Diwan in south Iran, near to Bastak. My father and his father and theirs before them all worked the sea. There was no other work to do.
“Diwan is just a small isolated village, and there used to be no roads or electricity or even schools. I was born in the reign of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and my father died when I was only two. There was a family dispute over property, and my mother lost the house and land to our uncles. They were older than me, so what could I do? And my mother was just a woman, she could not stop it.” The old man shrugged, “It was God’s will.”
The blinking neon along the Creek skittered in lurid stripes across the dark water; few cars disturbed the eerie stillness on either bank. It was as if we were the only residents of Dubai still awake. “My family was poor, so I had to find somewhere to earn money. And if I was to get married, I had to construct a house. So about forty years ago I decided to sail across the Gulf to look for work.
“To leave Iran, it was necessary to get a military dispensation. There was a law from the time of the Mosadeq government in the early 1950s that any man over forty would be exempt from military service. So we had some papers made up to show that I was over forty, though I had just started growing a beard only several years before!”
Abdullah laughed heartily at the memory of his ruse, and I noticed with surprise that his eyes were sea blue. He was enjoying the chance to reminisce. “So as a boy of 18 I travelled to Doha and found work in construction. I was making four rupees a day, and within several months I had saved 120 rupees, a lot of money for me. I bought textiles and sugar for my family and took it back home. My mother was very happy.” He grasped the oars and began to row slowly upstream again. I sat and imagined the young lad so proud of the first fruits of his labour. “Abdullah, how old are you now?”
“I don’t really know the year I was born. I don’t even know what year it is now! Time passes, we work and we sleep. In my village, it wasn’t important to keep track of the years and months and days like they do now. These days everyone is even counting minutes!” The wrinkles on the gloomy face creased into one of his periodic smiles. 
“When you left your village the first time, do you remember the things that made an impression on you?”
“Yes of course I remember, because it was a big change. I was surprised to find that if someone had money in this new place, then people respected him more than someone without. When the rich man said something, the people believed it very easily. Everybody said ‘Salam!’ to the man who had money. And now I see the same thing every place in Iran and in Dubai. People respect the rich man, not the poor man. The village was a simple place and everyone was the same. We might have been poor, but we were all the same.
“After four years of work, I managed to build a small house back in Diwan, and then I was able to get married. Yes, that changed my life, because I was really a man then. I had to concentrate on earning a living not just for me, but also for my wife and children. Now I have two grown sons and two daughters.
“I went back to Qatar but I became sick. I returned home because of fatigue and my spirits were low. I went to a traditional healer in another town, an ‘agha’ who treated me for several days and then he sent me home. It was him who told me not to return to Qatar. After I was feeling stronger, the first ship sailing out was on its way to Dubai, so I worked my passage. I arrived when this place was still three little villages on the banks of the Creek. It was kismet that delivered me here, my fate was written by my God. It was on the Creek that I made my life.
“The first work I found was at the old well in Shindagha village. The water there was sweet and good; the only other reliable well was over in Hamriya district. My job was to pull up the buckets and distribute fresh water to the houses. I was young and strong then. Sheikh Rashid and his family were still living in his father’s old house that you see across the water there.” 
Abdullah pointed one of his thick fingers over towards the Heritage Village, where the restored mud palace was the centrepiece. I could see that his eyes weren’t focused on the modern setting. “Just like my village back in Iran, there wasn’t much difference between the people then, because there wasn’t that much money to divide them. In fact, Sheikh Rashid used to help draw water from that well before dawn for the faithful to use for their ablutions before prayer. He was very good with everybody, and he was good at drawing the water too!”
Once that remark was translated for me, we all had a good laugh. The ferryman had manoeuvred the skiff next to the Deira corniche. I disembarked and told Abdullah that I would like to come back the next night to talk with him again. I pulled out my wallet to pay him, but Ismael protested, “No no no, we’ll do that later.” Abdullah looked at him slightly aghast.
The next evening I appeared at the cafe at the same late hour. Visibility was crystal clear and I could enjoy the whole panorama of the Creek. I looked for the ferryman but couldn’t see him. While I was finishing my sandwich, I asked Ismael about Abdullah, but he looked a bit crestfallen. He explained that he had seen the ferryman earlier to remind him of our appointment, but the old man had been quite abrupt. “No profit,” was all that he had to say, and then he turned away and left.
“Ah ha, you should have let me pay him last night. Does he think that maybe we’re playing a game on him?” “Well, you could say so, yes.” Ismael looked as though he had committed some grievous wrong. I reassured him, “Don’t worry, we’ll see him and give him some money. That’s all he needs.” We sat down to wait and Ismael explained Abdullah’s work to me. After the abras shut down every evening, the ferryman rows the night owls of Dubai across the Creek for a dirham, which is almost the same charge for a daytime trip on the crowded motorised launches. Abdullah makes a grand total of about 20 dirhams an evening, and he’s been doing this work for thirty years.

Contd ....