When did my ‘Dubai friends’ become my ‘actual friends’, wonders

Devinder Bains

Acouple of days ago I found myself in what is a customary conversation as soon as winter kicks in: ‘What are you doing for New Year’s Eve?’. As someone who is totally averse to the over-priced, unnecessary celebrating of any one single day of the year (unless it’s the very important anniversary of my birth) I did a kind of shoulder-shrug meets eyeroll and quickly ended the chat with a simple ‘probably nothing’.

It got me thinking though. If I was to do something, what would it be? And more importantly, who would it be with? The New Year’s Eve conversation had been initiated by my ‘Dubai friend’ Dave, who I met about three years ago, shortly after I moved here. He’d suggested that our group of ‘Dubai mates’ go away together to maybe Thailand or Berlin. And actually, it sounded quite tempting.

However, up until now, I’d never been on a trip abroad with my ‘Dubai friends’. All occasions that involved short or long haul air travel had been reserved for my long-suffering better half Mark, my family and the ‘actual friends’ I’d made over the many years I’d lived in England.

This concept of leaving Dubai soil (sand) with ‘Dubai friends’ was alien to me, but I really fancied giving it a go. I was willing to spend, what is to many is a very important day of the year, with Dave and other people who weren’t my ‘actual friends’.

You know ‘actual friends’ – the ones who pay for your dinner or let you use their Entertainer app even though they know you’re too poor to ever repay the favour, the ones who simply ‘know too much’ about you. Those are ‘actual friends’.

Hang on a minute. Something shocking was dawning on me: HAD MY ‘DUBAI FRIENDS’ BECOME MY ‘ACTUAL FRIENDS’ WITHOUT ME EVEN REALISING? When had this happened? Who was behind this? I bet it was Dave! It’s always Dave! This is so typical of Dave!

I decided to do what I always do when I’ve been left confused by a traumatic discovery: I turned to the internet.

From ‘top ten ways to make friends when you’re an expat’ (useful) to ‘how to get rid of boring friends’ (harsh) and ‘the ultimate quiz to tell if someone is your best friend’ (probably designed for 11-year-olds but very enjoyable all the same), the web had ‘friendship’ covered. I also stumbled across a study that claimed that one in ten of us don’t have a close friend. I’m sure some people are happy being a lone wolf but I found this statistic a little sobering. If you can leave behind a group of amazing friends in one country and build a close friendship group in another, it’s time to feel very lucky.

And this is what most of us expats in Dubai have done. The transitional element of Dubai and the fact that many of us put a rough time limit on how long we’ll be here, quite often before we even leave our home countries, can stop us relaxing into friendships that may have blossomed much quicker at home.

This is especially true if you bring a piece of home with you, like I did, in the form of Mark and my younger sister, Suki. I didn’t really need to go out and make friends if I didn’t want to but somehow Dave and a few other persistent humans broke through my buddy-block barrier.

And maybe there’s more ‘actual friends’ to be made in Dubai. I’ve met so many lovely people and rarely followed up on the coffee, pizza and ballroom dancing invites but that’s about to change. As for Dave, I think I may have found an annoying, pretty much useless friend for life, one who I’ll be ringing in the New Year with.