The third person

Dubai's summer promotions are out, and you can tell from the copy who they were written for. Two people. A tourist, who is not coming in July, and a resident, who left last week.

Half of it is a welcome, written for someone arriving with a suitcase and a list. The other half is a farewell price, a last chance before the flight, aimed at a family already at the gate. Between them they cover everyone who is not here.

The person who is here is a third person, and the plan has no drawing of them.

So I will draw one. She is in her thirties. Her leave was not approved because her manager took his. Her flatmate has gone home to Cairo, her friends are in London, and the group chat has gone quiet the way group chats do when everyone else is somewhere with weather. She works a full week in an office a third full, in a city a third full. She has a salary that nothing is spending, a car, a Saturday with nothing in it, and a mall that is the only place in July where a person can walk for twenty minutes.

Nobody needs to cut a price for her. What would move her is somewhere to be at eight on a Friday that is not her sofa. A table that is easy to get. Something to do with the one friend who also stayed. Money has never been her constraint. Company is, and heat is, and the feeling that the city has paused without her.

July is the one month of the year when the audience is small enough to describe as one person. Most plans use the smallness as a reason to stop, and the rest use it as a reason to cut the price for someone who was never asking.

The summer plan does not fail because the city is empty. It fails because nobody drew the person who is still in it.