Where’s the fire?

I need to share with you this rather mortifying experience I had last night.

Following one of our usual, fiery arguments, I had abandoned Adi and his friends and stormed off home last night from the Souq in Manama. Please don’t ask me what we were arguing about as I can’t remember and undoubtedly it would have all been my fault and over something silly. It’s always the same, it seems like the biggest deal ever at the time of arguing but then you wake up the next morning realising it was all very silly. Well I felt more than silly this morning when I woke up as it seems I am accountable for the following drama which took place last night.

Having returned home last night and leaving Adi in the souq with his two friends, I decided to sleep off the thunderous mood I was in. It was after all 10 o clock so I took this opportunity to have an early night and get some decent sleep. I decided to switch off my phone wanting to have an undisturbed sleep; I knew Adi was going to go out with his friends for the evening so I was not expecting any phone calls from him. Since I was home alone I locked the front door and also my bedroom door. At around 2.15pm I was woken up by some very loud banging on the bedroom door, it was Adi. Dazed and confused I was greeted by a very angry looking boyfriend who seemed to be equally confused as me. ‘What’s going on!?’ he shouted, ‘I have had to break down the front door!’. I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about but it was then I began to realise that the fire alarms were ringing in the building and on realising this I started to panic. At this point Adi still hadn’t explained to me what was going on, but I assumed the worst, that there was a fire in the building and I had been potentially trapped inside and Adi had come to my rescue. As I was frantically trying to put on some clothes I was making a mental note of the things I should save from the fire, I had visions of me having to jump from our balcony because of this raging fire that had triggered the alarm bells. I rushed out of the apartment seeing that Adi had indeed smashed down the front door (wow, he is strong!) His two friends were analysing this door giving me a look that could only be interpretated as ‘stupid cow’. I wondered why these guys were not rushing for their lives and told them to get in the lift as there was a ‘fire, fire!’ They looked at me dumbfounded but did not budge an inch! Adi proceeded to drag me into the lift without his friends.

I was still half asleep; I was confused, I was cold, and worst of all I had no underwear on! (Such things are unimportant when your life is at risk!) On the way down, some guy on the fifth floor got in and asked us about the idiot who smashed down his front door because his girlfriend was so stupid to leave the keys in the latch thus making it impossible to get into the apartment, thus the door being smashed down, thus the alarms being set off! ‘That was me’ said Adi brazingly, ‘Oh’ said the man. Oh no!!! Then the truth dawned on me…there was no fire, the alarms were set off because Adi had broken into our apartment, and the reason he broken into the apartment was because his girlfriend didn’t hear the buzzer ring, his girlfriend had for some stupid reason switched off her phone, his girlfriend is type 1 diabetic and he had panicked that she had suffered a hypoglycaemic attack rendering her unconscious thus making it necessary for my partner to smash down the door and check that I was okay. As this was being relayed to me my head started spinning and the blood rushed to my face, it also dawned on me that we were drawing nearer to the ground floor, and if there was no fire then where the hell were we going! The lift doors opened and I was astonished to see the whole of my apartment block in the lobby, they all looked tired, they were all in pyjamas, but worst of all they all looked extremely annoyed…at me! They were all looking at me, and there was absolutely no where for me to hide, I couldn’t even hide behind Adi as he made sure to walk away from me, and even worse, I felt so vulnerable without my underwear! How had everyone got to hear about this anyway I wondered. I suppose it was not hard since our neighbours were frequent spectators in our dramas (although I might add we are equally spectators in theirs!)

I made my way through the crowd making sure I was looking at the ground and only the ground, if there was one thing I wanted the most in the whole world it was for the floor to swallow me up right now! The crowd’s body language said everything, arms crossed, long, impatient signs, the odd tut here and there not forgetting the silent disapproving stares. They thought I was stupid, and they were right, but really it was a mistake, I thought about explaining myself but I didn’t fancy getting lynched by this mob. I just wanted to cry and it took a lot of effort to control the quivering of my bottom lip as tears threatened to gush. I didn’t even have Adi to protect me, he was angry with me and he was feeding me to the lions to teach me a lesson. Adi was trying to explain to our porter what had happened. The porter hadn’t a clue what Adi was saying, one because of Adis French accent, two because the porter himself was half asleep. They were trying to work out how to switch the alarms off which they eventually managed after 5 minutes. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and they all clambered into the lifts…to gossip about me I am sure. We proceeded to squash into one of the lifts but an English man pointed out the fairly obvious fact that I was stupid and how he didn’t appreciate being woken up at 2 in the morning. This was the wrong thing to say Adi who was already fuming and having his patience tested to the limits. He retaliated by saying that the man would have done the same thing in his position if worried about his diabetic girlfriend, ‘no, I wouldn’t’ replied the man, but the argument ended there as the lift doors closed on us.

We went back upstairs where I was preparing myself for the inevitable argument. His friends were still analysing the damage on the door and I didn’t have the bottle to look them in the eye as I approached. Still bewildered by what had just happened, I asked them for their version of events. They told me what I already knew, that they had tried for 10 minutes to get in but since I switched off my phone they had assumed the worst had happened. ‘But Adi has a key to get in’ I offered weakly, ‘But you left your key in so his won’t work…everybody knows this!’ There was not much I could say to that; it was now clearly evident that I am indeed an imbecile! To add to this Adis friends had been witness to my earlier tantrum in the Souq and probably thought I was doing this on purpose to annoy Adi, if they didn’t already think I was a high maintenance, emotionally unstable drama queen, they sure did now! I went to my bedroom where I sought the comfort of being hidden under my duvet, it really was just a mistake, but it was not going to be that easy, the argument with Adi finished at 5.30 this morning.

I woke up this morning with a banging head and puffy eyes. I escaped the bedroom quietly thankful for the pending distraction of work. However as I made my way downstairs in the lift, it stopped…twice. Some of my neighbours got in and it was all eyes on me. The 15 second journey down felt like 15 minutes and my now seriously flushed cheeks were practically begging for the fresh air outside. But it seemed today was not going to be my lucky day as blocking the exit was the porter for the building, he was with another guy and they were discussing how to work the fire alarm, the one that I had inadvertently set off. On seeing me approaching both men moved to let me pass, not before the porter had something to his friend in his language and then both greeted me with shifty looks and fake smiles. I was thankful to see my driver but even he looked like he knew about last night, he is after all the porters friend. I pretended to sleep the whole way to work.

So here I am now, at work, finding the whole thing slightly comical but embarrassing more than anything else. I feel ashamed at my apparent stupidity and I think I am going to hibernate for the rest of the year. To top it off the porter has told Adi he will be faced with a hefty bill of 500BD to replace the door. So it looks like I am going to have to be a dutiful wife from now on as some way of making it up to him, I endeavour to cook, wash his clothes and allow him to watch as much TV as he wants. Me, on the other hand will never ever switch off my phone, I will avoid my neighbours at all costs and think twice next time I want to storm off at the Souq!