5

  Alam James Chowdry, a South African man of mixed parentage - Indian father and European mother – had, at the advent of black rule, left South Africa in search of employment. His travels had landed him in Dubai, where, after initial struggle, he had found employment in a local firm selling appliances and electronics. Starting as a salesman, he had risen rapidly to the post of manager.

  It was a comfortable, if sometimes-tight, existence, and in due course he began harbouring thoughts of marriage. His parentage allowed him to claim he was Muslim, and indeed, with his name and his father’s most Islamic name, it would have been suicidal to deny Islam and be found guilty of heresy – a charge carrying the death penalty.

  His Muslim roots had helped him meet women other than European, and when he had begun going out with a Moroccan girl, he had proposed. The proposal had met with favour, and led to him getting a wife - and acquiring credit cards.

  At the time Al got hold of his first credit card, he was convinced he would use it solely for international travel, hotels and car rentals. Carrying traveller’s cheques and cash when travelling had proven to be both risk and incident free - but the treatment meted out at hotels was atrocious, bordering on insulting.

  As the bulk of his international travel was work related, he always had enough money on him, courtesy of his employers, but cash, he discovered, was a highly suspect thing to offer as payment – lights flashing on his room phone, the message, pay up, pay up; room service not available, sir, pay up; electronic room key disabled, pay up. And all the while the hotel would have been holding a disproportionately large cash deposit against default.

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  He had since concluded that, no matter how insignificant he felt and however low-key his presence, hotels must have been onto him the moment he checked in. Watch that bastard closely - he carries cash.

  Thus, when Al was headed to Morocco to meet his would-be wife’s family, fear of public humiliation, of being made to step out of queues and stand around like a suspect, convinced him to apply for a number of credit cards, three simultaneously. It was a veritable gold rush - he got them all.

  Now, at last, he had become somebody, a force in any queue. He rarely saw anyone at hotel counters attempting to pay in cash or traveller’s cheques, but he discovered other benchmarks to facilitate looking down his nose at the less fortunate. His main credit card was a Citizenbank Visa Card. He had two other cards from a small local bank, but, for shame, never used them, and, when the year was up, cut them both in half and sent them back to the disgraceful bank, asking it to never bother him again, which was a bit unfair, as both cards had been issued at his request.

  He had Citizenbank. And the way he looked down his nose, taking years’ worth of revenge on hapless souls - people proffering inferior cards issued by regional and local banks. Issued in Poland? Issued in Egypt? Good grief, man, how did they ever let you board the aircraft? Or have you walked or swum across? The pretty tormentors behind hotel counters now became his allies, heaping scorn on petty crooks with inferior cards, turning them over and over and inspecting them most embarrassingly, the cards, not the crooks.

  In due course, Al discovered that though he was well placed in the hierarchy, versus the obviously lower ranked, he was still subject to shame and humiliation in the presence of the truly exalted, strutters with precious metal cards - gold and platinum.

  The following year, when twelve months on his Visa Card were up, Citizenbank sent him a renewed card, and, without his asking, seeking, enquiring, requesting, demanding or applying, a Citizenbank MasterCard. Al was thrilled at this unexpected promotion - more credit, more digital money to spend, and another plastic to flash.

  Eventually he acquired a gold card from HABC, and found now the means to handily hold his own against other gold and platinum bigwigs. He flashed it about whenever they flashed theirs about, but, as the years rolled by, he learned that viewing a credit card tells practically nothing about a man, and absolutely nothing about his financial condition.

  For, by then, his cards were full, and his pockets empty.