OMAR AL-RASHID
Anything to declare? He has asked it ten thousand times and listens to every answer. Dubai is strict, he is stricter, and he knows what a watch weighs.
"Anything to declare?" Omar Al-Rashid has asked it ten thousand times, and he listens to every answer, which is the part people get wrong. He is not suspicious. He is thorough in the way a form is thorough, and Dubai's line is as strict as any on the free map: the odds are against you before you have put anything in the bag.
He is immaculate. Pressed shirt, trimmed beard, clipboard held against the chest, a pen that has never leaked. He does not raise his voice and does not need to. The rules are printed somewhere and he has read them.
His subject is watches. Dubai sells them cheap, by the floor, and Al-Rashid knows exactly what leaves the city that way and what comes back in. A bag of luxury watches makes his eyebrow move, very slightly, and his eyebrow is the only warning you get. Drones bother him too. They are legal almost everywhere else, and not here.
He takes an offer less often than most officers and never pretends he did not hear it. Declare, and he stamps the form and slides it back. Everything stays in the bag.