Tatiana has been living in the UAE for five years. Dubai became her second hometown when she became Wessam’s spouse. Although the issue of citizenship in this eastern country is quite problematic, only a fifth of Emiratis are citizens of their state, Tatiana feels quite comfortable here, which is not difficult to understand from the texts of her blogs.
… My husband and I dream of buying a nice house in Dubai.
It will cost up to a million dollars, a figure that is simply exorbitant, so for now we are looking at simpler housing, a two or three-room flat can be taken twice as cheap.
Property has never hurt anyone, but its purchase does not give the right to get a visa to the UAE for the rest of your life.
To settle here for at least ten years, you need to invest not even one, but ten million dollars in property.
Another option to get a visa is to sponsor your family, but it also needs to be renewed regularly, every three years.
And a very positive thing about Dubai is that there are no taxes on your property, service charges are an absolutely unknown concept here.
Now we live in a rented flat, like the vast majority of residents of this sunny city. This is quite normal and does not cause discomfort for me or my husband.
Many of my acquaintances, not being price-conscious, ask strange questions as to why we haven’t bought a flat yet. If we were talking about the suburbs of some regional centre of Ukraine, the question would be appropriate. There, having ‘got a change’ in the market you can go to a realtor’s office and solve the issue with a flat. In the UAE the question is a bit more complicated…
Accumulation in Dubai is very problematic because of the high cost of everything and everywhere, ‘earned-spent’ – the standard for most. You can deny yourself everything and save pennies for the future, but then it will not be a life, but an existence.
To collect and lay out cash for a house or flat is unrealistic, and loans in Dubai with a huge bandit interest, so, renting is a way out of the situation, at least ours.
There are more complicated ways to get a roof over your head. Having accumulated about one third of the cost of the flat, you can buy it on credit, but without moving in, find suitable tenants, and at the expense of payment under the contract to settle the rest of the amount, but it will take up to ten years, time, you agree, a lot.
So my husband and I are now in a creative search for our housing options.
Perhaps we will come up with something ourselves, or maybe my subscribers will give us an idea…?
I met Wessam by chance. I went to Dubai to visit a friend and met my future husband on the beach. Through mutual acquaintances we were introduced to each other, and so our oriental romance began.
The language barrier didn’t bother us much, and we didn’t pay much attention to the twelve years age difference. Nine months after the wedding, I gave Wessam our heir, David.
… Eastern traditions are incomprehensible to me. For example, the marriage of Wessam’s sister to her brother, albeit a cousin.
They got married when the bride was still at school, now there are three children in the family, the youngest is seriously ill.
Recently Wessam’s brother has done well in business and decided to take another woman as his wife. Polygamy is the norm here, as are family ties with relatives. This applies both to the remote Emirati settlements and to the state capital.
My husband has a negative attitude to this, but he does not intend to go against the family’s decision, so he passively observes what is happening, not interfering in the events.
Why is this happening? Arabs consider it right to marry between relatives, they say that it strengthens the family even more, eliminates unnecessary expenses on ‘outsiders’, thus saving the savings of relatives.
In Qatar, more than a third of families are cousins; in the UAE and Saudi Arabia the figure is lower, up to twenty-five per cent.
I do not understand brother-sister relationships as spouses, but for Arab families it is normal, and cases of brother’s jealousy of his sister are very common, because he already sees her as his wife.
Incest does not bode well for any family, but Arabs do not think much about it, paying tribute to their centuries-old traditions.
Now Tatiana has more than two hundred thousand subscribers. Her blog is very popular and gives a good income, and once the girl earned a living working at unpretentious and low-paid places, so, acquaintance with Wessam had a very favourable effect on her fate.
There is an interesting nuance in the generally accepted polygamy in the East: if the first wife does not give her consent, the man cannot bring another one into the house, so Tatiana has a certain ‘insurance’ against the appearance of other women in her husband’s house, and she is not going to forget it.
Prices and climate of the UAE do not suit Tatiana very much, as well as the wary attitude to people like her, the so-called ‘tourists’, but stability, developed tourism and general comfort compensate for it. And Tatiana told about the disadvantages of Dubai life in her next blog.
…I never want to write about negativity, but to be fair, I have to share what I myself have encountered.
To smooth the edges, I will publish along with it the beauty of beach photos.
The first thing I’d like to mention is the temperature. If you have never once faced the constant heat over fifty Celsius, you will have a very bad time in Dubai. Even those who dream of warming up after the cold of northern latitudes or the gloom of the middle zone, very quickly ceases to perceive Dubai’s warming as some great benefit. Add to this the prohibitive humidity and lack of cold water in the faucet, and the picture of summer Dubai is complete. There are, of course, air conditioners, but you will not constantly sit in a closed room and put kilowatts on the meter, electricity in this country is not a cheap pleasure….
Hay un matiz interesante en la poligamia generalmente aceptada en Oriente: si la primera esposa no da su consentimiento, el hombre no puede meter a otra en casa, así que Tatiana tiene un cierto «seguro» contra la aparición de otras mujeres en casa de su marido, y no lo va a olvidar.
Los precios y el clima de los EAU no le sientan muy bien a Tatiana, así como la actitud recelosa hacia la gente como ella, los llamados «turistas», pero la estabilidad, el turismo desarrollado y el confort general lo compensan. Y Tatiana contó los inconvenientes de la vida en Dubai en su siguiente blog.
…Nunca quiero escribir sobre la negatividad, pero para ser justa, tengo que compartir lo que yo misma me he encontrado.
Para suavizar las aristas, publicaré junto a ello la belleza de las fotos de playa.
Lo primero que me gustaría mencionar es la temperatura. Si nunca te has enfrentado al calor constante de más de cincuenta grados centígrados, lo pasarás muy mal en Dubai. Incluso aquellos que sueñan con calentarse tras el frío de las latitudes septentrionales o la penumbra de la zona media, dejan muy pronto de percibir el calentamiento de Dubai como una gran ventaja. Si a esto añadimos la prohibitiva humedad y la falta de agua fría en el grifo, la imagen del Dubai veraniego está completa. Hay, por supuesto, aparatos de aire acondicionado, pero no se sentará constantemente en una habitación cerrada y pondrá kilovatios en el contador, la electricidad en este país no es un placer barato…..
Rare rains, most of which are artificially induced, cause collapse in Dubai. Streets are submerged, the airport stops, and there is widespread panic in the city.
If you find yourself in a sandstorm, you will taste the sand, and without special glasses you simply cannot navigate in the open. Thank goodness sand flies relatively infrequently here.
Turning your wallet so that your money doesn’t go abroad is one of the main tasks in the UAE. In addition to renting a flat, which is a very large sum, you pay for every step and service – internet, communication, parking… If suddenly you have to face dentistry or other medicine, you will understand that it is simply impossible to get sick here.
Children – another and very significant item of expenditure. As you a minimum of 1000 dollars for kindergarten. This is for the younger group, for a start, then you will have to pay in increments… Free clubs? What’s that?
No terry patriotism and perception of traditions of the East, even perfect knowledge of the language will not help you to become a citizen of the UAE. Money, money and only money invested in investments, property, preferably as expensive as possible – this is the only way to get a passport with the emblem of this country.
Tatiana’s stories about the UAE are very relaxed and informative, and accompanied by interesting, professionally taken photos, have become very popular with her subscribers. Join her!
