Day 296 - Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz

Image of a Diplomatic license plate from an Arab country
(see the "CD" in the license - the Arabic letters are the same)
by woody1778a, via Flickr.com

We had our five-year-old Plymouth shipped to Abu Dhabi. Unleaded gasoline was available in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, although not always in the more out-of-the-way places or in neighboring Oman. But we figured we could get by without risking damage to the catalytic converter so long as we stayed close to the two main cities.

But Alex knew he would likely end up having to travel to those out-of-the-way places for work, so we started looking for a second car. And that's when we started facing the differences between our life in Abu Dhabi and our expectations based on previous experience in Doha. The biggest difference was that Alex had been hired and brought into Doha as an employee of Qatar National Telecommunications. That meant that he had a work permit, but no diplomatic status. In Abu Dhabi, on the other hand, he had been recruited to come into Abu Dhabi as an employee, but he didn't need a work permit to arrive. He had a diplomatic visa in his diplomatic passport. And the Emiratis had trouble figuring out just how to deal with him.

The first issue came up with his new job. When he showed up in Abu Dhabi without needing Etisalat, the telecommunications company of the United Arab Emirates, to buy a ticket for him and sponsor his work permit, they decided to give him a different job than they had at first planned. The job he understood he would have involved liaison between Lucent Technologies and Etisalat as Lucent installed telecommunications lines and equipment for the Emirati military. Etisalat were concerned that Alex's connection with the embassy would result in him being pressured to provide their military secrets to the embassy. The face-saving explanation for the switch was that it would be difficult for Alex to get around to all the sites since he wasn't familiar with the country. They assigned another Brit who had been in the country for several years to the job Alex had expected.

In the end, Etisalat insisted that Alex enter the country on his tourist passport so that they could issue a work permit for him in that passport. So Alex flew out of Abu Dhabi and into Doha where he applied for a visa in his tourist passport and returned the same day. In the end, Etisalat managers learned that this extra step didn't give them the control over Alex they had expected, but that's a later story.

When we began looking for a car, the issue of Alex's status came up. As a married diplomat with the embassy, I had the right to register two vehicles with diplomatic plates, but again Etisalat was not comfortable with the idea that Alex would drive onto work sites in a car with diplomatic plates. They had official vehicles he could use once he arrived at work each day, but those vehicles couldn't be driven home at the end of each day. And it was always possible that Alex would have to drive directly to a site at the beginning or the end of the day.

We had to find a solution that wouldn't upset Etisalat management without jeopardizing ownership of the vehicle.

Alex began looking at old cars, cars that we wouldn't have much invested in if it became necessary for us to leave it behind. He could then get it registered with his status as an employee with a work visa in a tourist passport. It looked like he had found a great deal on a 20-year-old Mercedes Benz.

Image of Mercedes Benz by datenhamster.org,
via Flickr.com

And it was a great deal - if cost was the only factor. In fact, the car was in such bad shape that Alex decided right away that only he would drive it. He wanted to have a second car for the following summer when our son would be visiting us, but he also declared that our son would not be allowed to drive it.

When I was in Stuttgart, many of my colleagues bought used Mercedeses. But each of them who did had arrived in Stuttgart after having served a tour in a hardship post where they were able to put away a good amount of cash. Stuttgart was my first assignment and I arrived with money I had to borrow from a friend. I had to pass up that easy access to Mercedes Benzes. And now, in Abu Dhabi, where both Alex and I were working, getting good salaries, with housing provided, we ended up with a Mercedes Benz that I couldn't even drive.

But it was red!

Within a year, Alex was no longer working for Etisalat. He was working instead for Lucent Technologies, overseeing the communications installations at Emirati military bases, the work that Etisalat was not willing to have him oversee from the Etisalat side of the relationship. And Lucent provided him with a vehicle that he could take home at the end of each day. That meant we no longer needed the Mercedes.

Getting rid of it was not easy. For some time it looked like we might have to pay someone to take it away.

But I'll always be able to say we owned a Mercedes once.