do they celebrate Halloween in Dubai? Archives - Circles in the SandCircles in the Sand

There is a time of the year (it used to be a night, now it’s nearly all month) when expat communities in Dubai become satellite suburbs of the good ole’ US of A.

It starts with a few Halloween decorations here and there, a bush covered in cobwebs, creepy spiders on the wall, and by October 31^st morphs into a full-blown horror scene with grave stones and skeletons, strung-up ghosts and ghouls, along roads normally festooned with bougainvillea and desert roses.

Doesn’t DH make the prettiest girl? (bottom left)

Last night, as the sun slipped from view behind the white picket fences of our new compound and the pumpkins began to glow orange, the children took to the streets en masse, in fancy dress. They were trailed by their parents, many of whom had made a valiant effort and donned costumes too.

If you saw a blondish mother in a floor-length, gold, Cleopatra outfit with jewels dripping from my forehead, limping along (my shoes hurt), wiping the sweat from my brow (it’s still humid to be walking around clad head-to-toe in cheap polyester material) and completely lost from my kids, then that was me.

When I finally caught up with my 8yo, who waits for this night all year and gets beyond excited about dressing up and getting a massive stash of candy, it occurred to me that I should ask him what he was saying to the people answering the constant stream of door knocks.

“Are you saying thank you?” I asked.

He gave a firm nod.

“And saying trick or treat nicely?” I enquired.

“I tell them, “Give me all your sweets or you’ll die,” he replied, totally deadpan.

“You’re what?” I gasped. “ YOU CAN’T SAY THAT!!!” I felt my heart skip a beat at the mere thought of how this was going down with all our new neighbours.

Stash of sweets: The face says it all really

Stash of sweets: The gleeful face says it all really

A little chat followed that he wasn’t a prankster-gangster, he was a grim reaper and had to be polite – or I’d confiscate all his sweets – and he nodded again before running off into the darkness with his friend-in-crime.

Then there was just the small matter of getting back to our house, in my flowing robes and heels, along a road that felt twice as long as it normally does so I could cool down. “You look like Cleopatra the morning after,” quipped DH, who’d taken his shock of white hair off a long time before and was enjoying a bevvie indoors with his mother (dressed as a 1920s’ Flapper).

All in all, it was wonderful night, full of frights and sights – not least of them DH and myself!

If there’s a time when our living room resembles a scene from the movie The Hangover, it’s the Friday morning after Halloween.

I came downstairs today to find sweet wrappers strewn around the lounge, several containing half-eaten, sticky candies. Discarded costumes were still in the exact spot they’d been peeled off, and the children, who’d got up far too early considering it was such a late night, were sprawled on the sofa, pale-faced with tiredness and nursing sugar hangovers. If a chicken had wandered by, and pecked at the leftover sweets, I honestly wouldn’t have been too surprised.

Closer inspection revealed that the disembodied neck from Son 1’s headless horseman outfit had rolled across the floor, coming to rest by the TV. I spotted a gloved hand from Son 2’s zombie costume nearby and there was a devil’s fork propped against the bookshelf.

“So everyone had a good night then?” I asked, looking at my bleary-eyed, 7YO Halloweenie, who was holding his head in his hands. (A cold was compounding the sugar crash).

There was a resounding yes – and, I have to say, I did feel quite pleased that our preparations (which, let’s face it, take all month) had paid off.

I love that, on Halloween, our compound descends into collective trick-or-treatery and becomes a distant satellite suburb of the US, with spooky decorations galore. Last night, our wonderful American neighbours treated us to a pre-Halloween warm-up party; then the kids trooped round the streets in costume – gathering in porches lit by the glow of jack-o-lanterns to collect sweets.

Some villas had taken a theatrical approach, with haunted-house music and torches, and there was a witch strung high above G street, flapping gently in the moonlight.

It was a balmy evening, almost a little too hot to be wearing layers of cheap polyester, and our community was out in force – on foot and for a lucky few, drive-by style, in a six-foot trailer pulled by a quad bike.

After the commotion died down, I escaped to a party up the road, leaving DH to get the children to bed, and bringing Halloween to a wickedly fun end.

The costumes were acquired by DH on a trip to New York earlier in October

The pumpkin was bought at the fruit n veg market (12dhs, as opposed to the fortune charged by Spinney’s) and the innards were turned into this dish – my first ever pumpkin pie! We carved a watermelon too, which glowed luminous red