Chapter 1- The Lasalas Club
1480 Words
The Lasalas Club
Every morning in Abu Dhabi began before sunrise.
Before traffic filled the roads.
Before office phones started ringing.
Before the desert heat slowly swallowed the city whole.
On the fourteenth floor of a polished residential tower stood a spacious three-bedroom apartment carrying fourteen different lives inside it.
To outsiders, it sounded impossible.
Fourteen men in one apartment?
People imagined noise, mess, and chaos.
But Lasalas Club was different.
The apartment was crowded, yes — but organized with almost military discipline. Shoes aligned properly near the entrance. Ironed office shirts hanging neatly behind doors. Kitchen shelves arranged carefully. Beds folded every morning before leaving for work. Even the refrigerator followed an unspoken system everyone somehow understood.
The apartment looked less like a bachelor flat and more like a carefully managed hostel built by men who had learned survival far away from home.
They proudly called it:
“Lasalas Club.”
A strange name carrying a simple philosophy:
Eat whatever you want.
Live freely.
Enjoy life fully.
But always with discipline and respect.
And somehow, fourteen men with different professions, personalities, tempers, and dreams made it work beautifully.
These were not irresponsible boys wasting life abroad.
They were white-collar workers carrying families, responsibilities, and expectations on their shoulders. Business partners. Sales executives. Engineers. Self-employed professionals. Bankers. Men who smiled during phone calls with family while silently calculating expenses inside their minds.
At exactly 5:01 AM, Burhanuddin Saifee opened his eyes to the familiar sounds of Lasalas Club waking up.
One alarm rang endlessly from the hall.
Someone searched desperately for his towel.
Someone ironed clothes while still half asleep.
Near the kitchen, Yusuf had already started complaining before sunrise itself.
“Who finished my peanut butter?”
Without opening his eyes, Ali Abbas replied lazily from his mattress,
“In this apartment, ownership is temporary.”
Laughter erupted instantly.
Burhan smiled softly.
Another day.
The central air conditioning hummed quietly above him while the scent of detergent, tea leaves, and freshly ironed clothes floated gently through the apartment — the smell of hardworking bachelor life.
His phone screen glowed beside the pillow.
5:01 AM.
He sat up slowly and carefully stepped between neatly folded mattresses arranged across the hall. Every inch inside Lasalas Club had purpose. Timing here was survival. If you woke up late, you lost the washroom. If you lost the washroom, you lost breakfast. And if you lost breakfast, your mood remained ruined until evening.
Despite fourteen men sharing one apartment, the place functioned almost like family. Everyone had responsibilities — bathroom cleaning, kitchen duty, breakfast turns, room organization. Nobody was treated like guest. Everyone contributed equally.
Back then weekends in UAE were Friday and Saturday, and those weekends became the soul of Lasalas Club.
Summer weekends usually stayed indoors. The heat outside felt merciless, forcing everyone into the apartment where movies, cricket video games, UNO cards, chai, and endless late-night conversations became entertainment. Sometimes they stayed awake till fajr discussing business ideas, marriages, politics, family pressure, or simply laughing at stories they had already repeated a hundred times before.
But winter and spring…
winter and spring belonged to memories.
Those were the seasons when Lasalas Club truly came alive.
Every year, one picnic was fixed without fail. It was almost tradition. Planning started weeks earlier and became the main topic of discussion during dinner.
“Mountain side this year.”
“No, lake side.”
“Garden is better for cricket.”
“Someone arrange charcoal this time.”
And somehow, despite fourteen different opinions, the plan always happened.
The night before picnic felt like festival preparation inside the apartment.
Chef Abdul took complete control of the kitchen.
Large steel bowls covered the dining table while Abdul Husain bhai carefully marinated chicken and meat for tikka and kebabs like an artist protecting his masterpiece. Red spices stained his fingers while the aroma of yogurt, garlic, lemon, and charcoal masala filled the apartment.
“No one touch this marinade,” he warned seriously.
“You people don’t understand balance.”
Fakhri bhai laughed loudly from behind him.
“You speak like MasterChef judge.”
Meanwhile, Yusuf and Ali Abbas packed Pepsi bottles into ice boxes while Aziz carefully counted khuboos packets like national treasure. Someone packed hummus tubs. Someone searched for picnic mats. Someone checked BBQ skewers at midnight.
And Burhan…
Burhan moved around the apartment smiling quietly at all the chaos.
Because deep inside, he knew these moments mattered.
The next morning before sunrise, the entire group loaded cars downstairs beneath the glowing tower lights of Abu Dhabi.
Tea flasks.
Portable BBQ stove.
Charcoal bags.
Plastic chairs.
Cricket bat.
Football.
Extra Pepsi cartons.
Fourteen grown men looking less like professionals and more like excited schoolboys escaping life for one day.
Sometimes they drove toward gardens hidden near lakes. Sometimes toward mountain areas where cold winds made them forget UAE was a desert country. Sometimes they simply searched for quiet empty spots far away from the city where nobody cared how loudly they laughed.
Once the BBQ started, the entire atmosphere changed.
Smoke rising slowly into cold evening air.
Chicken tikka sizzling over charcoal.
Someone playing old songs softly from car speakers.
Someone preparing tea nearby.
Someone accidentally burning kebabs while others shouted dramatically at him.
And in the middle of everything stood Abdul Husain bhai proudly guarding the grill like a man protecting family honor.
“Rotate properly!” he shouted.
“Who touched this chicken?”
The others laughed endlessly.
Plastic chairs formed circles beneath winter skies while conversations stretched for hours. Business ideas. Marriage discussions. Parents back home. Future plans. Silent fears nobody admitted during normal days.
Under those winter skies, Lasalas Club stopped feeling like roommates.
It felt like family.
Cricket mornings carried the same energy.
Sometimes before fajr itself, they gathered on open grounds while the city still slept. Fourteen roommates were enough to play full cricket matches among themselves.
Muryo bowled aggressively as if international selectors were watching him.
Yusuf argued over every LBW decision.
Ali Abbas celebrated wickets unnecessarily.
And Aziz somehow always blamed the bat.
Burhan loved those mornings most.
Cold air touching tired faces.
Sunrise slowly appearing behind buildings.
Friends shouting across the field.
Tea after exhaustion.
After matches, the entire group usually invaded nearby cafeterias for breakfast. Some mornings meant crispy dosa, idli, vada, and hot filter coffee from South Indian restaurants. Other mornings became full Pakistani breakfast scenes — halwa puri, channay, omelets, steaming chai, and loud conversations filling entire tables.
Those breakfasts always tasted better after cricket.
Maybe because happiness itself sat at the table.
Among all the roommates, Burhan carried a different habit.
He was always searching for new places inside UAE. Hidden roads. Quiet beaches. Unknown mountain spots. Empty desert routes. Whenever he discovered somewhere beautiful, he immediately planned long drives with the roommates.
“Trust me,” he would say excitedly.
“This place is different.”
And most of the time, it really was.
Road trips became another chapter of Lasalas Club memories. Loud music inside cars. Random tea stops after midnight. Missing exits. Taking wrong roads and laughing instead of panicking. Watching sunrise from highways while returning to Abu Dhabi before workdays began again.
Nobody inside Lasalas Club realized it then…
but those ordinary weekends were slowly becoming the most precious years of their lives.
Because one day, everyone would move away.
Some would marry.
Some would change countries.
Some would return home forever.
And someday in the future, all that would remain of Lasalas Club would be photographs, old w******p groups, fading voices, and memories carrying the warmth of a time when fourteen men shared one apartment…
and unknowingly shared the best years of their youth together.
Burhan picked up his car keys and walked slowly toward the apartment door.
Before leaving, he paused for a moment.
His eyes moved across the living room.
At neatly folded bedding.
At unfinished tea cups beside the dining table.
At office bags waiting near the wall.
At fourteen men trying to build meaningful lives thousands of kilometers away from home.
The apartment looked ordinary.
But to the people living inside it…
it was history.
It was friendship.
It was survival.
It was youth disappearing quietly between salaries, responsibilities, and shared dinners.
Burhan stepped into the elevator alone.
Fourteenth floor.
The mirror reflected a beared young man wearing confidence over exhaustion.
He adjusted his collar slowly and stared at himself for a few extra seconds.
Somewhere deep inside him lived a strange emptiness he never spoke about. A feeling that life was moving beautifully… yet something important had still not begun.
At that moment, he did not know that somewhere beyond borders, beyond politics, and beyond distance…
someone in Karachi was also waking up for another ordinary morning.
And destiny, very quietly, had already started moving both of them toward each other.
- Writer
