Abu Dhabi : A Quotidian Querencia
an essay on bullfighting and growing up third-get Gulf Malayali
Hello, it’s been a while. Life has been busy but I plan to revive this blog soon. This essay was originally in FAYD digital but the magazine has closed down so reposting the essay here.
Tercio de Varas (the first round of Spanish Bullfighting)
There were no posters of any show or musician or franchise in the rooms I called my own because I was not allowed to stick double sided tape or pins to put up posters on the walls of the rented apartments I lived in while growing up in Abu Dhabi. If it was damaged, my Acha would have to pay to repaint it when we had to move. After the first time we moved houses, I refused to stick my favourite glow stars with double sided tape on the ceiling again because what if we had a new ceiling again? White ink that I used to mask mistakes in my classwork doubled up as a quick cover up tool to hide accidental spots of ink on the wall that came from the pen I shook too hard. My Amma arranged the suitcases to be at the most accessible place in our house. There was one drawer for our family’s Indian passports, the most essential part of our existence in Abu Dhabi, ready in a plastic packet that could be immediately picked up if we needed to leave. I always lived with one foot out of the door, trained to move the moment I got the signal to leave–a bull about to be let out into the ring to face the torero (the bullfighter).
I never knew when the door would open and the torero would step forward. I am the child of Indian migrants to the UAE, who are rendered “temporary residents” by law and most have no access to citizenship. Despite these roadblocks, these “temporary residents” have now grown into generations of families that are part of the country’s history and development, making up around 90% of the UAE’s population. As we are not permanent residents/citizens, we will be forced to leave if we get laid off from the jobs that sponsor our visas or crises such as the pandemic render us vulnerable in a world defined by borders. The anxiety of being “temporary” permeated my everyday life in Abu Dhabi, all twenty-three years of it.
Tercio de Banderillas (the second round of Spanish Bullfighting)
My Acha, who migrated to UAE in 1993 as an architect to provide for his family, was part of the construction teams that helped develop some of the iconic structures that represent Abu Dhabi, such as the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and the Gate Towers on Al Reem Island. He specialised in working on site and ensuring the blueprint designs can be made in real life. When me, Acha and my Amma (mother) would walk or drive around the city, he would always point out the buildings he worked on. It became a tradition to yell “Acha!” whenever we passed by the ones he showed us. At home, blueprints from work and books on architecture were part of our bookshelf. There are photos of me as a toddler at construction sites, asleep in my Acha’s hands.
My Acha, among ten thousands of labourers, engineers, technicians, accountants, architects, electricians and many more helped build those buildings with their skills and years of their lives. If anything, Abu Dhabi’s buildings are full of life and memory–a testament that this city exists because of its expats. I am here because of that history. My Amma joined him in Abu Dhabi after their marriage in 1997. I was born in 1998 at Abu Dhabi’s Corniche Hospital on an early October morning and became one more baby that was born in that hospital (it’s a running joke with my friends that we were born on the same floor at some point).
However, it would be irresponsible to romanticise how they were built, even with my personal attachments to the city. When reports about the abuse of construction workers and the working class show up on the news, my Acha would grip the closest thing tightly and the guild would always hung heavy over us. The monthly event of worrying about whether we have enough money for the increased rent begins when Amma sits staring at the cross on our wall and Acha’s forehead creases increase every second he looks at the accounts. The loans never end but we maintain the facade that we are okay, that we have the Gulf dream fed by the liquid gold named oil.
In a twisted way, my life as an Abu Dhabi kid is tied to the buildings. I am inherently part of the system and although this may be a stretch, created because of it. Gentrification that is taking over Abu Dhabi’s older areas upset me because my childhood spots were being erased in front of me, but the irony is that the city’s need for new buildings, attractions and renovations is what sustains my father’s job and in turn, allows him to keep me and Amma with him in Abu Dhabi.
If my father was a tool used to build this product called Abu Dhabi, I was its accidental byproduct, along with the other gulf kids of my generation. While I have so much gratitude for the life I had because my parents chose Abu Dhabi (or vice versa), I am navigating my place in the grief of not belonging and the guilt that comes from the awareness of the realities that made my home around me and financed my life.
Tercio de Muerte (the third and final round of Spanish Bullfighting)
A querencia is a place the bull naturally wants to go to in the ring, a preferred locality... It is a place which develops in the course of the fight where the bull makes his home. It does not usually show at once, but develops in his brain as the fight goes on. In this place he feels that he has his back against the wall and in his querencia he is inestimably more dangerous and almost impossible to kill.
— Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon
Hemingway wrote the above in his non-fiction book Death in the Afternoon after watching a bullfighting event in 1920s Spain. I have never watched a bullfight live, only through clips from the news and Acha would then tell me not to wear red around bulls because bulls did not like the colour red and that’s why it would run to the bullfighter.
Why would a Malayalam-speaking girl from Abu Dhabi city be so attached to a word in a language she does not speak? When I first saw the word, it was the height of the pandemic. My Acha, the breadwinner, was forced into unpaid leave and it was lockdown in many parts of the world. Life was bleak. On the bad days, my family would suggest contingency planning for moving back to india. The imminent departure from the home I knew came too close for comfort. Curious about the word’s origins, I googled it and found that Querencia is a metaphysical concept in Spanish that roughly translates to “home ground” and it refers to a spot in the ring the bull feels safe in to stake out and defend itself from the bullfighter.
Even in my circumstances, Abu Dhabi is a space I know intimately. I insist everywhere it is home outside of legal papers and bordered belongings and that I am from Abu Dhabi. On the internet, I see citizens of the city lash out at those like me for claiming space in the city, insistently gatekeeping it. The context in “Querencia '' suggests there is both violence and safety in what can be familiar and what is considered home, which makes sense to me. The perceived safety, strength and familiarity I found in Abu Dhabi city, through running down the slopes of its underpasses, walking on its sidewalks with my parents and running across the zebra crossings squealing with my friends was much like a bull who was nurtured to only know the ring.
The violence of my legal status wrapped my life so that now it feels like I and my family were fighting all our lives against some invisible bullfighter, dodging the muelta (the red cloth) and the estoque de verdad (the sword) to be able to stay in Abu Dhabi. My paternal family made this existence their Querencia a long time ago. My Appapa, a tailor by trade, entered the ring by moving to Oman in the 1960s to earn more money for his family. When my Appapa returned penniless from Oman in the 70-80s due to being betrayed by a business partner, his son, who was my Acha, took his place with another profession in the same ring. The Torero has not changed. I am the third generation, born into the ring. Did you know the bulls meant to fight are bred for their aggression? Everyday, I was brought up to prepare for departure. This fight was all I knew. it was what I was brought up to survive.
Like what Hemingway describes above, there are days it looks like the possibility of departure from Abu Dhabi for us is not in our periphery because there are moments it feels comforting and we pride in being able to have withstood this transience so far. It was much later I learned the myth about bulls hating red was untrue and in fact it was the movement of the muelta cloth the bull hated, never the colour because it was a taunt. Our imminent departure haunts us, even taunts us like a Torero with the muelta. A year and a half later into the pandemic, the memory of my Amma crying at the balcony of our home during June 2020, begging me to find a way out of the UAE repeats like a running film reel, reminding me that my family is drained from the fight and frankly, so am I.
Towards the end of the fight after the Torero has won, if the president of the bullfighting event pardons the bull and the ranch it belonged to is willing to take it back, the bull leaves alive. When I learned this, I wondered if the bull could ever adjust back to not being hunted, agitated at the flitter of laundry in the wind and of the staff in the hands of humans who approached it. Did the mind of the bull ever leave its Querencia? I doubt it.
Here I am merely pacing the ring, studying why the ground I bleed upon is the only place I can call my own, our suffering made normal. If I ever leave for other lands, my mind will always be searching for Querencia, to put up a fight, make myself useful, to exist. That’s what Abu Dhabi taught me.