He had decided long ago that he didn’t want to go home. For a well-educated Emirati, Dubai was a comfortable cocoon. Which was not what he wanted. The endless round of family and a few old friends. The old traditions—camel racing, falconry, tented retreats in the desert. The new tradition—going to the mall. And then what? Camel racing, falconry, tented retreats in the desert, and going to the mall. The West was a cornucopia of excess, some of it disgusting—commercialism, exploitation, depravity. But it had a dizzying variety of upsides. You could make a fortune. You could go bankrupt. You could be mugged by a drug addict. You could invent a cure for drug addiction. You could take a walk in a park without recognizing half the men crossing your path and the obligations you owed them or they owed you. You could vote for a Communist. You could vote. You could fall in love with a fearless woman on a terrifying mountain path. Dubai, with all its modern trappings, its highways and high-rises and high-end shopping, presented itself as the West without the faults of the West. But it was a simulation and a flawed one at that. It built its ski slope inside a shopping mall. A developer had admired the architecture of the Chrysler Building, so he built a copy of it. And right next to it he built another copy of the Chrysler Building, two Chrysler Buildings obviously being better than one. But neither was as good as the original.

He had never discussed any of this with Ron who, despite his own minor flight from England to the Continent, had never made a major change in his life. He could get the same single malt in Geneva that he drank in London. His French was execrable but it didn’t matter. Switzerland, for him, was much the same as England, only with the rough edges (poverty, homelessness, hooligans, immigrants) sanded off.

Ron hit some keys on his computer and looked up. “There is some good news. The shares of Bouvier Lait are up. Our friend Stavro is losing money on his bet.”

“Not to point out the obvious,” said Majid, “but if he loses money we don’t make any. We’re in for twenty percent of gains, not losses.”

“I don’t like him,” Ron said.

“You’ve mentioned that, a few dozen times.”

“Are you still selling short for him, even into the rise?”

“I am. No orders to stop. I’ll be borrowing more shares to sell tomorrow.”

“I’ll do it,” said Ron.

“You will? You don’t like him.”

“Correct. So I want to get this over with and be done with him.”

“Fine,” said Majid. “Remember, use one of the nominee accounts. Discretion. Anonymity.”

“I heard him,” said Ron. “I know what to do.”

After Majid left, he began tapping on his computer.

Interesting

INTERESTING