Out of The West
(an old piece, newly exhumed)
I am in Dubai and it is a strange tropical paradise. Russia was killing me, with its winter and its winter people. Here I stepped off the plane and was immediately assailed by warmth and the smell of the ocean. And later, other smells: cooking food, diesel exhaust, the garlic-eating masses. The sun rose this morning in a clear blue sky. I put on my sunglasses, felt the sweat
began to seep out of my skin, and was home.
Of course, Dubai is truly weird, just as promised. This desert port — it’s not even the capital — became a huge skyscraper hub virtually overnight, all in the last ten years or so. They’re still going. There are huge swaths of sand being converted to dense skyscrapers wholesale. Literally blocks upon blocks of towering office buildings and luxury condos all under construction, all topped by yellow cranes. I am told that Dubai used up every available crane in the world at one point in its recent history. There are the golf courses, amusement parks, and “investment parks”, just squares of former desert marked out between massive new highways, farther and farther from the old fishing port. Superlatives abound to the point of insanity: the Emirates Mall has a an indoor ski run, and the tallest building in the world is a hotel that rises 500 meters — and it’s still under construction (planned height: 703m). Then there are the man-made islands, dozens of installed, paved and gardened sandbars which form the shape of an enormous palm tree. That’s “The Palm” of course, and there’s also “The World”, which is a huge (kilometers wide) archipelago in the shape of a world map. I hear Brad and Angelina bought Ethiopia. Fortunately, there will be lots more islands for sale because two more palms are under construction. Everything in under construction, including a massive amusement park and what will soon be the biggest airport in history: “Dubai World Airport.” All of these unbuilt things are on the tourist map, a combination of cartography and wish list.
Most of the people living in Dubai are not from Dubai. 85% are expats, mostly with serious amounts of money. But not the ones with jobs. As soon as I arrived in the airport I noticed that most of the people in line at passport control were not Arab. The people actually working in Dubai here are all from India, Pakistan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Nepal. They’re all brown; they all speak English (more or less) because that’s the only language everyone can agree on. My cab driver yesterday makes the equivalent of $800 a month, and sends it mostly home to his family. This is not a lot of money in Dubai, but it’s hugely more than he could make in Pakistan. The class divide (which is also usually a race divide) makes me deeply uncomfortable. I wonder how these Emirates and the expats living here can deal so easily with the fact that everyone who works to provide their vast array of vital services makes essentially no money, and probably never had and never will get a real education. There is something weird and wrong about it all, and I like to remind myself that this is really just a microcosm of the global situation. It might be good for us to see this reality on a daily basis, it might bring about some changes — but maybe not, as the equilibrium of Dubai shows.
It’s a city all based on oil money, black money; but then America is a country based on oil consumption. There isn’t really public transit to speak of. The scale of the streets is huge, and the sidewalks are often broken or missing; but then Dubai is just amplifying all the worst mistakes of Los Angeles. I’m probably the only person wincing at the carbon emissions from the huge airports, I’m probably the only white person ever to ride the bus.
But for all of its fearsome scale and hostility, Dubai took me in when I found Bur Dubai, the old town, the low town, the souk. Here the smells multiplied as I walked down narrow streets fronted by ugly three story-apartment buildings with balconies and an air-conditioner sticking out of every window. It was beautiful to me, because the streets were alive. I was looking for hardware to maintain my battered laptop: some memory and a new battery, wandering along through the electronics quarter. Interspersed between the ramshackle computer shops were restaurants: Indian, shawarma, Halal, the food of Middle Asia. Rich smells wafted into the streets where men in white robes and white caps walked briskly about their business. Other
men wore suits, or the pan-cultural uniform of jeans and t-shirt. Some pushed carts; others haggled in front of the shops, angling for a price on, say, twenty 100 Gb hard drives. Women were rare and not necessarily covered; I saw no veils, but a sudden trio of schoolgirls giggled from beneath their black robes. And above it all, the call to prayer ringing out in synchrony
from the scattered minarets of the quarter.
I hadn’t realized how accustomed to Muslim cities and South Asian crowds I have become. I’ve now spent months upon months of my life in Malaysia, Morocco, Indonesia, and Islamic Africa. I’ve befriended the Indian quarters of Toronto, San Francisco, Singapore and Hong Kong. Although this is my first time in the genuine, Arab Middle East, I find that I am completely
accustomed both to the texture of Islam at ground level, and to a type of street life never seen in richer, tighter countries. No — “street life” is too weak. It’s a sort of hustling joy that suffuses the best of urban living among those who industrialized not so very long ago, who still have a cultural memory of a time before cars, loitering laws, and vendor permits.
My travels have changed me. Culturally, historically, genetically, I have far more in common with brittle Russia than I do with the bizarre cosmopolitan confluence of Dubai, but I rejected Russia, or it rejected me. A desert city of the Middle East populated by Arabs and Indians now rings the bell of of home in me. I eat my curry with my right hand, look up at the
hot blue sky, and feel a clear joy.
