Helena Frith Powell

I am back at my office at the Kempinski, gazing at the ski slope. The skiing the other day began badly. We all got to the top of the slope and the children refused to go down it.

“I’ve forgotten how to ski,” declared Olivia.

“How do we get down?” asked Leo.

“I’m scared,” wept Bea.

We tried everything but in the end Rupert had to take them down, one by one. Then we hit the nursery slope, where I am at my happiest. After 20 minutes of patient training by Rupert the girls were yet again ready for world domination (their natural state). They demanded to go up to the top and asked me to lead them down. Soon they were overtaking me. Leo had a lesson and came out glowing.

“I LOVED it,” he said, his cheeks all red from the cold. “I went so so so fast.”

I am doing some work in my new office while I wait for them to arrive for another skiing session. This work includes looking at handbags in Harvey Nichols and all the designer shops in the mall to compare them with fake ones I saw last night. I am writing an article about fake versus real (I’d love to hear your opinion on this). I am also writing a piece about belly dancing.

As Muriel was told in that classic film, Muriel’s Wedding, “you’ve got to find your level”. I think I have found mine and I’m loving it. I may even get used to the skiing soon, one advantage of there being a total of two slopes.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

I am in my new office. It is in the cafe of the Kempinski Hotel which is in the Mall of the Emirates. The luxury villa we have been lent by my old university chum doesn’t have internet access, so I have to come here to check my messages. There is an interesting view on the other side of the glass wall I am opposite.

What would you expect? Shops perhaps? A camel grazing peacefully? Wrong. There is a ski slope. It’s amazing. You go along, you pay around £15 per person and they give you skis, boots, helmets, poles and SNOW. The only thing you have to buy is gloves. We are booked in for 2pm. For a nervous (and rather reluctant) skier like myself, it’s ideal. There are no black runs to terrify me, or mountain drops, or hair-pin bends. And best of all, you are limited to two hours. Then you can go shopping.

I like Dubai so far. I am especially loving being in a home. This morning we went for a walk on the beach, then I did some yoga then we had a cooked breakfast (with baked beans, yum). This afternoon we will be skiing. This evening we will be swimming in the sea in front of the villa while my risotto simmers. There are many worse days to spend a Saturday.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

When I was a teenager I had a friend who owned a Porsche. It was white, sporty and made a hell of a noise. A nice noise though. A sort of deep sexy roar. I vowed that one day I would have one.

I don’t know if it’s being part-Italian, but I do like a fast car. Not that I like going fast, that terrifies me, but I just like the roar of an engine and the knowledge that there is all that power there, should I ever need it.

The children have picked up on this. Every time we see a Ferrari or a Porsche they yell “Ferrari” or “Porsche”. Leo is the best at it. The other day he even recognised the Porsche logo on a flag above a garage.

When Rupert first told some friends about our plans to move to Abu Dhabi they said “you’ll be able to buy a really cheap second-hand Porsche. They throw them away there”. Finally my dream was going to become reality I thought. Obviously now I have three children the sporty convertible is not an option, it would have to be the four-wheel drive. I started fantasising about abandoned Porsches littering the roads with notes stuck on their windscreens reading ‘please look after this car.’

This has not happened, although we did see one brand new BMW for sale at a knock-down price. The explanation? “Unwanted gift”, read the ad. How could you not WANT a brand new BMW?!?

Every time we see a Porsche Cayenne (the four-wheel drive) Leo shouts “there’s the Porsche we want.” This happens every ten minutes, because here they seem to be the car to have. They are even more ubiquitous than the Swedish flag in Sweden.

He has even decided that we need the sporty one as well. “The good thing about Porsches,” he told me very seriously yesterday, “is that you can get a big one and a little one.” Now there’s an idea which would send our bank manager to an early grave.

Clearly it’s unrealistic. We can get a perfectly decent car for less than a third of the price of the Porsche and we’re here to consolidate, not race around the Corniche pretending to be as rich as everyone else clearly is.

But if there was ever a time when we just maybe could do it, it’s now. They really are cheap. Well, cheaper than at home. And so lovely. And as the advertisement rather cleverly says: “You have to ask yourself. Do you want a car, or do you want a Porsche?”

We all know what Leo wants.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

Things are, as Leo would say, much more better. It is a strange thing, but getting to grips with life here is notoriously difficult. When you tell people you have been here for a day, or a week or even a month they look at you as if you are recovering from some serious illness and tell you things will only get better.

I really feel as if we’re finally settling into life here because I now find myself telling people who have just arrived and have that ‘I have been weeping all night’ look I used to have that things will get better.

Today I have been busy. It is only 3pm and I have already been to the bank (where they gave me two new credit cards which I am course not going to use), had the final blood test I need for my visa and been into the office. Not bad for a Sunday eh?

I am going to take Leo to ballet any minute now and can you guess what I can just about see from his ballet studio? OUR NEW HOME. I can hardly bear to be excited about it just in case this one falls through as well but I think we may FINALLY have somewhere to live. And not just somewhere to live; an apartment with a (bit of a) sea view, right on the Corniche, bang in the best part of town and for a (just about) affordable rent.

I have been trying to stop myself but am as pathetic as a girl with a new boyfriend, constantly imagining us in the apartment, cooking, reading, watching TV, just doing normal things. I have even been wondering if Max might be happy there.

Added to which an old university chum of mine who is moving out at the end of the month has offered us his villa in Dubai on the beach. So now we have a weekend home too. I told you things get better……

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

I have just finished a book called Burned Alive by a woman called Souad. She was a teenager when her brother-in-law poured petrol over her head and set fire to her. Her crime was serious in “honour” killing terms among Palestinians; she was pregnant. But every year hundreds of women are murdered for just looking at a man, or sometimes doing nothing wrong at all.

In Saudi Arabia a couple of weeks ago a girl was stabbed to death by her father who caught her looking at a Christian website. I assume he is still walking free.

The beginning of Souad’s book is one of the most compelling I have ever read. She describes how she walks, quickly and with her eyes on the ground, so as not to risk anyone accusing her of illicit behaviour, such as eye contact with a man, which would lead to her being branded a charmuta (a whore) and certain death.

When she is in hospital a few months after the burning, rescued by a woman working for an organisation called SURGIR, she sees nurses talking openly to doctors. “I won’t be seeing them tomorrow,” she thinks to herself. On the West Bank, where she comes from, they would be killed for less.

It seems incredible that these medieval atrocities still go on. But they do. Souad is only a few years older than me. In Afghanistan today a woman dies in childbirth every 30 minutes and 80% are forced into marriage.

Souad describes the plight of women as worse than animals. She tells how her mother used to suffocate new-born girls. Now she feels revulsion at this, but at one stage she felt they were better off dead.

I think many things when I look at my lovely, free, happy, noisy, clever little girls. But after reading Burned Alive my most pressing thought was that I am happy they will never suffer the kind of opression many women all over the world suffer. And that they will never allow themselves to be treated worse than an animal. And that their life expectancy is more than 44 years (average for a woman in Afghanistan) and that life for them is a series of adventures and happy events, not just fear, terror, hunger, enforced ignorance and horror.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

Here is the first of my special guest blogs, it is an email from Bea, aged seven, to her grandmother…….

dear mormor

lots of love beaxxxxxxxxxxxx

It is a well-known fact that no one outside Sweden speaks Swedish. I have found this particularly useful when it comes to dealing with the children. To outsiders they seem seamlessly polite, with their pleases and thank yous and please may I get down from my delicious lunches. Little do they know that I am constantly whispering instructions in Swedish. It also means I can threaten them with unspeakable things in public when they misbehave. Not that it seems to make any difference.

It is most useful should you ever want to talk about anyone in the same room, or even leave a party early. Rupert now knows enough Swedish to understand “jag vill ga hem” – I want to go home.

Imagine my surprise then when I was in the locker room at the Hiltonia Beach Club on Friday and a woman asked me, in flawless Swedish, if I was Swedish. It turned out she had lived there as a child and still spoke it. She is from Switzerland and also has children at the French school. I was jolly pleased to have made another friend here, especially one I can gossip with about the other women around the pool.

By the time the girls and I went back into the locker room to get changed I was less jolly. They had been awful again, insisting on spending their time in the adult pool even though I had asked them not to, Olivia lost her shoes, all the usual stuff. A woman came in carrying a screaming child.

“Oh God,” I grumbled in my grumpiest Swedish. “Who on earth is this now with a screaming child?”

Then I heard the woman speak. In Swedish. I mean, what are the chances of meeting two Swedish speakers in the same locker room on the same day? About a trillion to one I’d say.

“She’s speaking Swedish,” whispered Olivia in French as I hid behind my locker, well aware that our secret language would not work with the Swedish woman around.

“What’s going on?” said Bea. There was only one thing for it. I leapt out from behind the locker and gave her my most charming smile, saying how lovely it was to hear my mother-tongue and shouldn’t we swap numbers. She agreed and smiled and the baby even stopped crying, but I’m not sure she was convinced.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

This is the conversation the children and I had in Suda’s car yesterday.

“Are you all happy to continue our adventure, or would you prefer to go home?” I asked.

“I’m happy to continue my adventure,” said Olivia.

“Abu Dhabi is my best village ever,” said Leo. “I want to go back to the Emirates Palace hotel.”

“I would like to rewind my adventure,” said Bea. I knew what was coming. I turned around to see her bottom lip trembling and then the tears came. “I miss Max,” she wailed. “I want to go home and see Max.”

“But darling girl,” I said. “We’re going to see lots of really interesting things, like India and Oman and the desert.”

More tears from Bea. “There’s nothing more interesting than Max,” she said, looking wistfully out of the window.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

Here I am again in the middle of the night wondering why I am awake. Yesterday was not a great day. The flat fell through. I would have wept but was unsurprised by the inevitability of it.

Rupert, as always, looked on the bright side. He suggests we use the money we save in rent to join the most beautiful and exclusive beach club here. The children agree. I, sensibly, think we should use any money we save to pay off debts. But then again there will always be debts and just how happy is reducing them going to make me compared with strolling along the beach at the Emirates Palace Hotel in a pink bikini?

So I sat in a chair after the call informing me that we don’t in fact have anywhere to live having just had my eye-brows threaded (cheaper than Harvey Nicks by a long way) and thought; we are back to square one. But then I remembered square one. We were in a horrible hotel, we were dazed (no change there), we had no friends, the children weren’t at school or at ballet or football or rugby (starts tomorrow) and I had no idea where in Abu Dhabi to get my nails done or where Marks & Spencer’s was. We had not discovered the marvels of the various gyms, yoga classes and other things you can do if you live in a city.

So I am trying to adopt a Life of Brian approach (always look on the bright side of life da da, da da da da da) and remembering all the good things about life here; our new friends, the view along the Corniche, the kindness of the people (one man got out of his taxi to let me have it the other day declaring that “you have children, it’s not fair” I couldn’t agree more) and the vast shopping possibilities open to me if we chose to live in a caravan (possibly on the Emirates Palace beach).

But it would help if I could sleep.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

Proof, if it was needed, that my neural pathways are well and truly blocked comes from the fact that I am finding it impossible to get my head around Sunday being Monday. Today (Monday), for example, feels like Tuesday and I woke up thinking about all the things I am doing Tuesday. Because yesterday (Sunday) I was in the office.

When I first realised my week was about to start a day earlier I just thought ‘oh that’s fine, it’s a day earlier, I’ll easily cope with that’. But no. I am like a senile old person constantly having to ask people what day it is and wondering if tomorrow will be a work day or the weekend.

That’s the other complicating factor. Friday is the new Sunday. And Saturday is like, well, Saturday at home.

Good news from Leo. He declared his day at school yesterday “much more better” but still misses his teacher from home and of course Louis or Los as he writes his name. But he does have a friend, a Canadian boy called Oscar who also showed up in tears yesterday so they bonded, especially after they were told they have “the right” to speak English together by Leo’s teacher. His ballet class went very well, he showed me the moves last night and I think he’s a shoe-in for the Royal Ballet School.

The girls start their ballet tomorrow (Tuesday) and not today as I was convinced when I woke up this morning and prepared their kit. I can’t wait. I have also signed up for a class called vertical flex dancing – yes I had to ask what it was as well……Heaven knows what day of the week it is on, but I have until September 30th to work it out.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008