You got sacked? Your small business is going through hard times? You had to leave your place because you couldn’t pay the rent?

A lot of people went through this experience and had to sleep in their cars for some time. You could also buy a 45 Dirham tent from Carrefour and sleep at the beach. Keep your Fitness First membership on, and remember that it offers you free showers, sauna, coffee, magazines and internet. A credit card is essential in these circumstances.
A lot of people can’t take such conditions and prefer to crash at a friend’s place. You could alternate between the two worlds. When you can’t take it anymore remember you can rent a bed space for 700 Dirhams but that would of course be you and four or five others in one room in a very old building in a very dirty area. You will need a side investment in deodorants and perfumes.

Food can be free. Dubai has a very rich calendar of events all around the year. Bring it up on your free Fitness First internet, and register yourself in each and every one of them, as long as it’s free, regardless of the subject. They usually all have coffee and lunch breaks. The good thing about this is that you get to learn a lot of things: engineering, financial markets, biology, energy, etc. while you enjoy free food in four or five star hotels and venues.

Friday means St Mary’s Catholic church. Free food again and a chance to be closer to God. And nearby, the Holy Trinity thrift store sells clothes and household items at very cheap prices. Anything you can’t find there go to one of the Day-to-day or Everything 1-5 shops.

If you happen to be someone who enjoys Indian food like me, there are monthly food subscriptions for just 300 Dirhams.

Try to make some money while you’re looking for a job. Dubai is a place of cultural diversity. You will always find people who are interested in learning your mother tongue. Consider giving evening lessons for some cash. Most of your hosts would also offer you snacks and tea. Teaching also applies to other things such as sports, computers, dance, makeup, etc.

If you got skills in programming, graphic design, technical writing, you can make money online by taking on small assignments. Build up your profile now on www.elance.com and www.guru.com.

Sell all the stuff that you’re not using on Dubizzle or Souq.com. When you’re done reading a book sell it immediately. That old mobile phone in your drawer is still worth some Dirhams for someone. Even if you can’t sell those things you’re not using, try to get rid of them anyway. It is so healthy to live without stuff especially when your place is a rental.

You want to buy that book about writing a better resume or that glossy fashion magazine? You really don’t have to. You can read it for free at Borders Mall of the Emirates.

You don’t really have to leave town do you?

AED 300 Petrol + AED 400 Fitness First + AED 300 Food + AED 500 Walk around money + [Optional] AED 700 Bed Space

What do you think can also help in frugal living all the way through the end of this crunch?

My dad has an elegant black leather briefcase that has a combination lock and a yellow Lufthansa sticker on it. He always stows it in the upper shelf of the cabinet in our living room, on top of a vitrine that displays scores of crystalware, objets d’art, and empty as well as half-filled bottles of liqueur of which one has a pear that grew inside of it.

On special occasions my dad would bring that briefcase down, open it briefly, show us something and then put it back in a ritual way. I loved to watch him. I never had the chance to see what’s inside the case in entirety. My dad didn’t like people standing next to him while he flipped through yellowish papers, photos and stuff in there.

We knew for sure that it was full of memories, sweet and bitter ones perhaps. Some of the things I remember seeing were photos of my step sisters in black and white; postcards from Europe; small letters, crop-outs and drawings done by me when I was six; bank statements of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya and other documents from the days when we were in Spain, and finally a stamp.

He had shown me that stamp a couple of times before I left Syria. It was wrapped with awe in small sheets of paper, pale blue and had the very serious headshot of King George VI of the United Kingdom.

The granddad of my dad’s first wife was a leader of the Ottoman army in Sudan. His weapons and things are still displayed in the National Museum in Egypt. The stamp however came from a letter from the UK addressed to him, and ended up in the hands of my dad. He kept it for so long and trusted it to appreciate in value over the years.

Many a hard times in my family’s life my dad would bring up that stamp as something that could help us with a couple of thousands. Thousands of what I wasn’t quite sure. He never said, and he never took any action about it.

Comes a time when after more than five years of working in Dubai, the region’s gold mine many people believe, I have been going through financial hardship. I always hid that fact from my family and preferred to sort things on my own. Of course the old man could go past my flowery phone conversations and read through the muffled laughs over the dirty jokes we share, and he definitely knew that I was struggling to make ends meet. That’s why, during my last visit to Syria, he gave me the stamp.

He insisted that I try selling it online offering that “it could help”. Nevertheless, although my knowledge in stamps is worse than my Chinese, I had no reason to believe that it could actually help.

Last night I thought I should look it up on the Internet. At the end of the day nothing is fictional, magical or literary anymore these days. You just click and you get naked facts splattered on your laptop screen or your phone. There’s no such thing as an exciting tale that you heard from a traveller who came back from the land of far far away after six months in the ocean.

The glorious stamp turned out to be worthless, even less than one Sterling Pound. To be worth thousands it had better been a limited edition from the days of Queen Victoria.

In the wake of that, I find it hard to resist the melancholic thought of lying to my dad and telling him that the stamp was actually worth something, or a lot. I don’t want to see his wrinkly face become disappointed more than it already is. I really miss him. I miss the smell of his neck on a wintery morning in Damascus. I miss his warm voice while he stuffs his pipe with Captain Black tobacco.

I will give my dad the pleasure of feeling that he helped me because I know he is striving to do it in his own silent ways. I will then start my own briefcase of memories, albeit twenty-first century style, and I will keep that stamp in it. It means a lot more to me than just one pound.