I’m weary of this. And I’m living it. I can hardly imagine how any of you might feel. You don’t have to read it. But I can hardly think of anything else.

Where did we leave this? I thought we had an apartment? Was that it?

Well, we still may have an apartment. The same one. We’ve even turned over a significant sum of cash to the agent who — and how did I not see this coming? — has since stopped doing anything to seal the deal, now that he has been paid. Leaving me to wonder if this is about real estate agents all over the world … or a specific cultural event.

So. The latest.

On Saturday, we called back the Syrian guy we tried to dump … who then turned in a batch of paperwork … which led to the housing guy at the newspaper calling us up to sign off … and we did, two weeks ago.

Then our guy goes off the air for more than a week. Not a word. Maybe he’s hurt that I told him to go away and never bother me again. Or maybe he took off all 10 days of the twin vacations we just had here in this country.

So, Saturday night, I call him. What do we have to do to wrap up this thing? We’re supposed to be able to move in … on Thursday. It’s getting close. And we’re supposed to be out of the hotel by the following Wednesday.

Sure, no problem, our guy says. We can meet at a bank not far from here, and we can take out the semi-significant amount of money … and pay him his fee and put down a security deposit.

Next morning, we have a better idea and call the newspaper housing guy, first thing. Back in the office after the long break. He has the contract. Yes. But we shouldn’t give anyone any money until we come to get the contract at the office and have it signed by the landlord.

We call back the agent and tell him this. Gotta have the contract. He grasps that. Not going forward without one because, really, the deal is between the landlord and the newspaper, which puts up the one-year rent money and then takes it out of my check on a monthly basis. We’re paying only the agent fee and the security deposit, out of our own money. Sure. No problem, our guys say.

So, we get to the office, and eventually the contract is done. It is in quadruplicate … as well as in Arabic. I sign on the dotted line. I don’t understand a single thing on the page except for a few numbers. The housing guy shows us where the landlord is to sign.

We call the agent. He is all “efficient businessman.” If he can meet us at the paper, he will drive us to the bank, then we can go to the landlord and sign, and bing-bang-boom we’re done. Maybe we can get a key, too.

Our guy shows up 15 minutes later. He said 10, but for him, being five minutes late is a personal record. He’s usually in the hour-late range.

He looks at the contract while driving. And he makes a call in the middle of driving and reading. We’re all lucky to be alive. He is muttering, “OK, OK, OK.” He calls someone. He speaks in Arabic. He hangs up.

We get to the bank, one of the few branches in town that actually has money, and stand in line for 25 minutes. Our agent waits outside. In a weird twist (this is a small town, apparently, especially if you’re talking about expats who are not from India or Pakistan) we see two people we know in the first five minutes. The cousin of my brother-in-law, the helpful guy we met with a couple of weeks ago, who was so nice to us … and a reporter from the newspaper. All of us at the bank.

Anyway. I digress.

We get the money. We put our agent’s fee in one envelope and the landlord’s security deposit in the other.

On the way back, our agent takes us on a detour to pick up another client he is in the process of jerking around; this other client has been waiting for him to show up, but he’s made her wait because, hey, he’s about to get paid by us.

She follows us … not to the landlord, but back to the newspaper.  But before we know what our destination is, he produces a formal-looking receipt that seems complete,  acknowledging that he has received a semi-significant amount of money from us as his commission in this deal. I look at it. It looks OK. We give him his envelope of cash.

A few minutes later, he confides, oh, yeah, that the landlord isn’t actually in town. This comes when I ask, “where is the landlord’s office located?” It doesn’t matter, because he’s not around. He is in Dubai! So, we’re not about to wrap up this whole thing. Instead, we have blown an hour (both of us) in the middle of the shift basically just to go pick up money. That’s it.

Sensing my, oh, annoyance … our agent suddenly volunteers to take the contract to the landlord, have him sign it, and bring it back to us at the office on Monday. All signed and ready to go, and then we can give him the deposit, and it’s all over. Well, OK, that would save us a trip … and we’re not giving you any more money. He doesn’t ask for any.  OK.

Oh, and as he drops us off, he gets very serious and says there have been misunderstandings here. Like he’s been hurt that I was brusque with him two weeks ago. (And he was quite quiet during this whole hourlong process.) And he’s semi-convincing …

So. Next day. Our agent is supposed to bring the contract back to me at the office, after 2. But when I call him, to see where he is, he says the landlord is still in Dubai. But the landlord will be in Abu Dhabi tonight, and sign things, and our agent will come by our hotel in the morning to hand it over and take the cash. “Between 9 and 10.”

Then, overnight, I get the willies. We still have never actually met the landlord. There is a name on the offer sheet, but what does that mean? Are we about to get a bogus signature on an Arabic-language document, hand over more cash … and have nothing? This haunts me much of the night.

I make a decision that I am not going to meet with the agent here. I want to talk to the housing guy at the newspaper first. Maybe have him make a call. Check on more things. Like, is the landlord a real person? So when the agent calls at 11:45 (or almost two hours after he said he would), I just let it ring.

At the office, I go up to see the housing guy. I tell him the agent’s plan … come to office, drop off the contract, take our money. The housing guy doesn’t go crazy, but he says it would be better to take the money, ourselves, to the landlord. Meet him. Make sure he is real. Makes sense. Of course.

Meanwhile,  I just want this over. I don’t ignore our guy, but I find the phone number for the landlord … and I call him. And a different voice, alleging to be this individual, answers. Yes, he knows this contract. He has signed it and given it to our agent, along with a signed receipt for the money we are going to turn over. I say, “you are OK with this?” He says yes. Hmm. Maybe this is legit?

I send an e-mail to the company housing guy, asking if I’m crazy to do this, after talking to someone on the phone who claims to be the landlord. He says, “well, maybe … but make sure the signature on the offer sheet matches those on the contract and receipt.” And this makes me nervous because it is a signature in Arabic, and it looks basically like a V laid on its side. No letters. Just a sideways V.

I call the agent. Maybe I will go through with this, after all. First, he chides me for not being available in the morning. I remind him he was going to be here between 9 and 10. He said he told me 11. Which he did not, but what’s the point or arguing it with this guy. And, anyway, he called at 11:45.

He said he can’t come by my office, anyway, because he’s in the suburbs. Maybe in 90 minutes. I say, well, that might work because I will be in the office until 10 p.m.

And, of course, he never called back. He never came.

And now I am done with him … for the second time.

In the morning, I will call the landlord. I will ask him to fetch the contract from our cheesy, no-account agent. I will ask him where he is, in town. I will waste what I’m sure will be an hour (if I’m lucky) to physically go find the landlord and meet him, face to face, and get the contract from him … and I will give him the money. The agent is out of this. Done.

So, that is the plan. If the guy is in town, and I can find him, we will turn over the deposit one day before we’re supposed to be IN the apartment, by contact.

Yes, this is a never-ending story that is boring and frustrating. But it is taking over my life, except for those nice moments when we’re busy enough at the newspaper that I forget about it for a moment.

Again, is this just a semi-common apartment-rental story that could happen anywhere? Is it just ratcheted up another level because it’s being done in another language in an alien culture and nobody trusts anybody? For good reason?

Remember, the backdrop here is … lots and lots of people telling us to be careful, that renters here get ripped off all the time. So. Yikes.

Tomorrow, we are done … or I find out I’m a sucker and the agent has a nice chunk of cash we never will see again. Or maybe nothing happens at all.