The Businessman in Dubai
hand and was thumbing through them, looking for one page in particular. When he found it, he pulled it from the stack, lay it down on the desk, right below his computer monitor, and placed the rest of the stack off to one side. He picked up a pen and slowly ran the tip of it down the page until he found the item for which he was searching. With the pen, he circled the item on the page, then put the pen down and moved both of his hands to the keyboard. He looked at the screen and began to type. He was not accustomed to working into the small hours of the morning, but he was also not used to having such important business to attend to with so little time to complete it. Still, he would be done with this task in another fifteen to twenty minutes. Then, he could go home to his comfortable bed and sleep until noon if he so desired. It would be a good, peaceful and restorative sleep because he would fall asleep knowing that he had completed very important work in these early hours, and the profits it would bring to his business would be far beyond anything he could have dreamed.
He finished typing and looked up at what he had just entered on the screen. He smiled. Just one more piece of information to find in these piles of paper and type into the computer, and his important project would be complete.
He turned to pour himself a glass of water from a pitcher sitting on the corner of the desk. As he lifted the pitcher, it shattered in his hand and the water drenched the papers. Pieces of glass fell with such force that they cracked one of the floor tiles. The Arab businessman was motionless for a few seconds, then bent his head down and looked at his starched, white shirt. It was covered in blood, like it had been splashed on him from a bucket. He tried to stand up but quickly lost his balance and tumbled out of the chair, hitting the tile floor with a thud.