Afternoons with Malek

After signing up for driving lessons in August, the driving school finally started Ben on his lessons in October. 3 times a week. After each lesson, Ben would come home with funny stories about his instructor, Malek, and how his lesson went. The first lesson, the instructor asks Ben if he’s driven before, and when Ben says not at all, the guy decides to start him on the basics…

“Ok, Mister Ben-JA-min, this is the car key… This is the steering wheel, s-t-e-e-r-i-n-g, steering… This is the hand brake, h-a-n-d-b-r-E-A-K, hand BREAK…”


Second lesson, they drive around a carpark on first gear. After the fourth lesson, Ben calls me and exclaims, “Today I went on 2nd gear!”. Woohoo… This is how the instructor conducted the lesson. With the car parked outside Burj Al Arab, the instructor posed with one leg propped up, elbow leaning on raised knee and chin resting on knuckles (like a Bollywood version of Rodin’s ‘thinker’). As Ben approached, he straightens from his pose, places his hands on his waist and in his Pakistani accent says,

Malek: So Mister Lim, today I am ready for suicide. Today you sit in the driver’s seat and drive from here.

Ben: Drive on the main road?

Malek: Yes! Today you are like a bird. You must fly. But when you fly, you will fall.

So they drive along Jumeirah Road, and after a while, the instructor gets Ben to switch to 2nd gear much to his excitement. Upon reaching a traffic light that just switched from green to amber, Ben asks “How?” and our friend says, “Go faster!”

They also have funny abbreviations to learn. When switching lanes, Malek says, “Ok Mr Lim, what must we do now?”
Ben: M.S.M.
Malek: Yes very good! What is MSM?
Ben: Mirror. Signal. Manoeuvre.
Malek: Mirror. Signal. Manoeu-wer. Very good! And what is manoeu-wer?
Ben: P.L.S. Position. Look. Speed.
Malek: Very good!

After a couple more lessons, Malek advances Ben to third gear.

Malek: Ok, now switch to third gear… Yes… I like how you switch to third gear. Go back to second gear --- now switch to third gear --- yes, very nice, very smooth --- Now go faster --- faster! Do it! Do it, Baba, do it!”

Baba (like Bubba) is something like “brother” or “ah neh” I think. So I guess Ali Baba was just Abang Ali lah.

Another time when an impatient driver behind them kept honking, Malek shouted out (not that the driver could hear cos the windows were up), “Give the learner a chance, Baba. Just give them a chance, please, Baba! Give the learner a chance!”

The first time it rained in November, Malek was busy answering phonecalls from his wife. “My wife says the weather is very good. She’s calling me all day to ask me to bring her somewhere nice to enjoy the weather.”

Ben & Malek

Another day, he had some packed lunch in the car and Ben said it smelled really good. “My wife asked me to go and buy this fried fish. Must buy from this shop at Jumeirah. Best fish. Big! Eat with chapatti.” And he places one palm on top of the other like making a fish sandwich with his “chapatti” palms.

Ben has completed his 35 lessons. He’s passed his parking test and signal test (road sign test), and just needs to get through the road test. Now this is crazy. Here, they make you take two road tests - one tested by someone from the driving school, and the other by the traffic police. Now the school insists that as long as you don't pass your final test with the TP, you have to continue taking lessons till your next scheduled road test. So after completing the compulsory 35 lessons, Ben had to pay another 450 dirhams for 10 additional lessons. Then during the road test, the bugger failed him on purpose!

The "tester" was this Pakistani imbecile, and there were two Pakistani guys there taking the test with Ben. Ben said they could hardly drive, and the car kept stalling, but after driving a short distance, they were passed. Then the dude tested Ben, made him drive all over the place, made him make last minute turns, etc, then failed him. Ben was so damn pissed.

And so, he had to pay another 450 dirhams for another 10 lessons, plus another 50 to re-take the test! I told him if they were gonna fail him again I'd write in to Gulf News and threaten the school with a whole load of other stuff. At his 2nd attempt, the instructor was a different guy and did not fail Ben, but he needed Ben to re-take the test AGAIN, just to be sure, but he didn't need to pay again. This was because a week before that, the police were tipped off that one of the school's instructors was passing Pakistani drivers even though they couldn't drive. So the other instructors all kan-cheong a bit.

So now Ben has to wait again till they can officially pass him, continue paying for more unnecessary lessons, and then take the actual traffic police road test. Like everything else here in Dubai, Ben n I just want to get it over n done with... the sooner the better.