I discovered the dollar store during my recent visit to Canada and my sons had a tough time keeping me away from this shop full of treasures.
This place was huge and the wonderful thing was that everything cost just one Canadian dollar (Dh2.79, plus tax, of course) or a couple of dollars for foodstuffs and medicine.
“Dad, you don’t buy foodstuffs from a dollar store,” said my son, but I did not pay much heed to the advice as my favourite chocolate filled cookies were just a few cents and there was Italian pasta and canned foods that I loved.
It was raining heavily now, so I also picked up an umbrella for $3 and the moment we stepped out there was a heavy gust of wind and the umbrella turned upside down. I tore open the cookie box at home and put the kettle on the stove. The cookies tasted like cardboard and the chocolate left a funny taste in my mouth.
The dollar stores in North America are similar to the Dh10 shops you find here. I had asked the shopkeeper in Sharjah once how he could afford to sell stuff at such a low price, and he had explained that he picked up ton loads of goods from the wholesalers as they were unloaded at the port.
On one shelf at this Dh10 shop I found a shampoo that suspiciously looked like the expensive version that is sold in pharmacies. The logo was similar but the name was changed to something hilarious.
There is a ton of fake stuff you can buy online and recently I read a report that the Dubai Municipality had confiscated a huge consignment of fake designer bags. Counterfeit bags are a best seller here because not many can afford the real thing. One Filipina blogger says she felt jealous when she first landed here and saw her compatriots carrying bags that would cost hundreds of thousands of pesos back home.
She then realised what was really happening after a few trips to some back alley shops in Karama. “I learnt how to tell the real from the fake,” she writes. “If the woman carrying a Louis Vuitton bag is holding a plastic grocery bag in the other hand, the designer bag is surely a fake,” she jokes.
Everyone living here for a couple of years must have been approached by watch sellers selling a fake Rolex or a fake Rado in the Gold Souq. I am not sure how many visitors buy gold and also a counterfeit watch as a present for someone, unless they hate that person. A municipality official advises people never to buy counterfeit stuff as it not only looks and feels terrible but it could also be dangerous to your health. Consider this: fake perfumes not only contain anti-freeze but, believe it or not, also urine.
The FBI (US Federal Bureau of Investigation) said in a recent report that a sample of fake perfume confiscated in New York City contained DEHP, a toxic chemical linked to cancer that can damage the liver, kidneys and reproductive system. The way to tell if a fragrance is a fake is that there will be something a little off about the scent, and the colour of the fluid in the bottle will be different from the original.
Not only are the counterfeit perfumes dangerous but the urine in them can cause a skin rash and people might look at you strangely when you travel on the Metro. I did go back to the dollar store in Canada to pick up some household items like dish washer soap and I wondered why I was scrubbing and scrubbing and nothing much was happening and the grease was still on the plate.
Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ mahmood_saberi.
