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[quote=Anonymous]We are expats and are in Dubai for three months, in a rented apartment, before going back to the country where we spend most of the year in September.

We are Jewish.  This is relevant, I think.

This is supposed to be a non-smoking floor.  The man across the hall, however, is a chain smoker, and in the evenings opens his apartment door wide so that the smoke and fumes from his cooking can flood into the hallway, thus entering our apartment too.  I have asked him to please close the door several times, as I don't want our family exposed to the smoke (and it is a non-smoking floor).  He was quite rude, and I did report him to management.

Yesterday we noticed a swastika above our doorway.  It appears to have been written by a finer dipped in mud or some other fluid.

I was very upset and called the management, who were dismissive and unconcerned.  One of them sent me a message later in the day advising that "Ma'am, it is a peaceful sign in India."  I messaged him back that we are not in India, and in any case, it is a sign of hate and terrorism in many countries of the world.  And they advertise and lease their units to expats from many countries.  Plus this happened after the recent incident of reporting the across-the-hall neighbor for the smoking.  The management messaged back that "Ma'am, it is nothing.  Many of our cleaners are from India."  And then refused to respond further.  I didn't know what to make of this message or why the nationality of the Indian cleaners was relevant.  He refused to answer any of my other messages.

I was so upset.  One of the cleaners in the building, a nice lady who was sympathetic, told me that the "top boss" of the property management company is German and that the people who work in the office and in customer care positions are all Indian (this may be relevant).  She gave me the German man's first name, saying I should speak to him.  I phoned the main office number and first calmly tried to explain over the phone how upset I was about the swastika, and the man began shouting at me that we are "trouble makers" due to the issues with the smoker, and that the swastika meant nothing.  I asked him how he could know that, and how he didn't know that the smoking man hadn't written it as a sign of aggression (if it matters, the smoking man is Arabic, not Indian; the man in the management office was Indian).  He spoke over me, in a loud disrespectful tone, and then I told him I wanted to speak to the German man, naming him.  The Indian man in the office told me this was impossible and he didn't want to "bother" his boss.

I did tell him that I believed a German person would take this issue a bit more seriously than this man appeared to be doing, that we had lived in Germany and Europe and know this is considered a hate crime there.

Then he shouted at me that I am a racist and hung up.

We couldn't find the German man's contact info online on the company's website, just the main office number that was gatekept by the man who had shouted at me.

So I have googled and yes, a swastika does mean something different in India.  But we are not in India.  We are in Dubai, an Arabic country.  And it just appeared over our door in the past few days.  At home, we might call the police, but this seems inadvisable in Dubai.

What would you do?

Is it really common for Indian cleaners to put this sign on the wall or over an apartment door?[/quote]

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