A wreath workshop in Dubai, and the door it couldn’t go on

Late November, a Thursday

A first evening out in a year

The babysitter was a neighbour’s daughter, home from university. Maya wrote out bedtime on the back of an envelope, in more detail than anyone has ever needed, and left a plate of cut apple on the counter. Ines did not look up from the television when she said goodbye.

In the taxi she felt the particular nerves of someone who has spent a year talking mostly to a six-year-old and her own mother on video calls. She had nearly cancelled twice. She had changed her top three times. She was, she realised somewhere on the Sheikh Zayed Road, slightly afraid that she had forgotten how to be in a room full of adults who were not discussing homework.

Six o’clock

What a wreath workshop in Dubai actually involves

The workshop was in a florist’s studio, a long table down the middle of the room covered in brown paper, with a place laid for each person: a pair of secateurs, a reel of green wire, a pair of gloves and a bare ring of twisted willow. Down the centre ran a river of greenery in buckets and crates: fir, pine, cedar, eucalyptus, bay, waxy ivy, and bowls of dried orange slices, cinnamon sticks, pine cones and velvet ribbon.

The florist showed them the method once, slowly. You make small bundles of three or four stems, lay the first on the ring, wrap it tightly with wire, then lay the next so that it covers the stems of the last, always in the same direction, until you have gone all the way round. Then you add the details. It sounds simple. It takes about two hours, and your hands smell of pine for two days afterwards.

Most workshops work like this: everything is provided, you are shown the technique, and you take your wreath home at the end in a box. Some include tea and something to eat. Ask before you book whether there is a children’s version, because Maya would later wish she had brought Ines.

Seven o’clock

The evening she stopped apologising

Maya apologised four times in the first half hour: for reaching across, for taking the last of the eucalyptus, for her wreath being lopsided, for talking too much. The woman beside her, a dentist from Pune with three sons, finally put down her secateurs and said, kindly, that nobody at this table needed an apology for anything.

There were eight of them. Two had come together, the rest alone. One had moved to Dubai six weeks earlier and knew nobody. Another was there because her mother had made a wreath every year in Dublin and this was the first Christmas without her. By half past seven they were passing ribbon down the table and comparing notes on schools, landlords and the best place to buy a decent loaf.

Maya did not apologise again all evening. She noticed it in the taxi home, and it pleased her more than the wreath.

Half past eight

The wreath on the back seat

Her wreath was not perfect. It was a little fuller on one side, where she had been talking and not concentrating, and she had used more dried orange than the florist would have. But it was dense and green and smelled like a walk in the woods, and there was a deep red velvet bow at the bottom that she had tied three times until it sat right.

She carried it home on her lap in its box, with the window down. Ines was asleep. The babysitter said she had asked for her mother exactly once. Maya propped the wreath against the front door, on the corridor side, stood back to look at it, and went to bed happier than she had been in months.

Friday morning

The email from building management

By nine o’clock the wreath was on the door, hung from an over-door hook, and by eleven there was a polite email from building management to all residents. Nothing was to be fixed to the corridor side of apartment doors: corridors had to stay clear for fire safety, and the building preferred a uniform look. Three other doors on her floor had been decorated. All three wreaths came down that afternoon.

Maya was more disappointed than she expected. Then she was practical about it. Rules like this are common in Dubai towers, and they vary: some allow a wreath on the door, some allow nothing, some allow decorations only inside the apartment, and some have rules about balconies too. The answer is to ask before you buy anything, and to have a plan for the inside of the door.

Friday evening

A wreath on the inside of the door

So the wreath went on the inside. Maya hung it from the same over-door hook, now turned the other way, with a small felt pad behind it so the wire would not scratch the paint. It faced the hall, which meant it was the first thing she and Ines saw every time they came home, and the last thing visitors saw on the way out.

She found she preferred it. On the corridor side it had been for the neighbours. On the inside it was for them, and the hall smelled of fir every time the door opened.

The weekend

Door garlands for a rented apartment

On Saturday morning Maya and Ines bought a long garland of mixed greenery and framed the inside of the front door with it. In a rented apartment the trick is to leave no trace: they used removable adhesive hooks, three along the top of the frame and one low on each side, and tested one first on the inside of a cupboard door to make sure it came away cleanly.

A fresh garland is heavier than it looks, so they chose the stronger hooks and let the garland drape in soft curves rather than pulling it tight. Then came the garland decorations: the dried orange slices left over from the workshop, a few small wooden stars, and lengths of the same red velvet ribbon tied in bows at each corner, so the door and the wreath belonged together.

It took forty minutes and one argument about whether the stars should all face the same way. They do not.

Second week of December

Keeping fresh greenery alive in Dubai

By the second week the eucalyptus had started to curl and the fir was a shade darker. Fresh greenery dries out fast in an air-conditioned apartment, so Maya changed a few habits. She misted the wreath and the garland with water every couple of days, over the bath, and let them drip dry. She kept the hall air-conditioning vent angled away from the door. She took the leftover stems from the workshop, stood them in a bottle of water on the shelf, and swapped in fresh pieces wherever something browned.

Kept like this, a fresh wreath indoors in Dubai looks good for a few weeks. Fir, cedar and eucalyptus dry gracefully and still look lovely when they have faded a little. Softer leaves and berries go first, which is why the florist had put most of them at the top, where they were easiest to replace.

Christmas week

Ines adds her stars

The balcony was the last thing. Fresh greenery outside in Dubai lasts hours rather than days in the sun, so for the balcony Maya bought a good artificial garland with warm battery lights woven through it. She tied it along the inside of the railing, with nothing hanging over the edge, after checking with building management first. This time the answer was yes.

Ines made paper stars at the kitchen table for most of a Saturday afternoon and was allowed to hang every single one. They are not evenly spaced. Some of them are on upside down. When they sit out there in the evening with the lights on, Maya says it is the best Christmas decoration they have ever had.

She has already booked next year’s workshop. She is taking Ines, and the dentist from Pune is bringing her three boys.