How to describe Dubai....

How to describe Dubai to anyone who hasn’t been there is a challenge. Most of us have built parts of Dubai when we played around with piles of legos as a kid – tall towers erected one after the other, laid out in such a way that the functionality of our lego city would be challenging but not impossible.  Dubai is one part Vegas, one part Disneyland, and one part Gotham City, but without the trashy people, ungracious kids or Wonder Woman in a jet that was pointlessly invisible since she herself was not invisible so it would just look like a buxom woman moving in the air while in the sitting position, respectively.  Dubai’s urban planning was possibly completed on Sim City by a classroom of second graders who ate a box of Twinkies each beforehand.  It’s home to the world’s tallest building, world’s largest water fountain, world’s only indoor ski slope, world’s only housing development in the shape of the planet, and other “world’s only”-laden landmarks.  At some point, the “world’s only” designation is overkill.

Everything  in Dubai is so clean and often so luxurious. I went for a run and the sidewalk was adorned with tiles that reminded me of ones I recently ruled out for a flooring project because they were too expensive.  The government recently announced that they were purchasing police cars with a pricetag of more than $500,000 each. That wasn’t a typo. One Dubai police car is more than the value of everything I own, or more accurately stated, that my bank mostly owns but is willing to let me buy from them over the course of 30 years.

Actual photograph of one of many Dubai skylines, this one from 124 floors up

And it’s hot.  Hellish hot.  I went on my tile sidewalk runs around 5am because much later and the temperature becomes unbearable, and at that hour I also didn’t have to run by anyone else and wonder if running is what anyone else does in Dubai or if they figured I was an ex-pat just up to some insensible ex-pat activity in the heat because we need to retain our routine. As it was, I returned from these at-dawn runs as a sweaty mess, looking like at some point I fell into the nearby 30-acre manmade Lake Dubai that was constructed in front of the 5.4 million square foot Dubai Mall and in the shadows of the 163-story high Burj Karifa building. Unfortunately I couldn't cool down by swimming in Lake Dubai because it’s prohibited, I assume because of the danger of swimming in a lake with hundreds of underwater fixtures for the elaborate 275 meter fountain located in the lake. Further, the fountain is choreographed to a combination of more than 25 songs that includes Lionel Richie, Beyonce, Celine Deon, Andrea Bocelli and the national anthem of United Arab Emirates (UAE).  Something for everyone, except the Lionel Richie stuff because certainly no one has liked the music of Lionel Richie since 1991.

UAE is the country in which Dubai, one of seven emirates (think of an emirate as a state), is located. The country itself isn’t large; the entire north-south length can be driven within a few hours. Two of the emirates --  Dubai and Abu Dhabi --  – have the concentration of wealth in this country, and their respective leaders (called “sheikhs”) have essentially been engaged in an intra-country duel for at least a decade to out-build, out-glitz and generally out-do the other, which is why both Dubai and Abu Dhabi have their over-the-top images.

Dubai baffles me that it even exists.While its roots are in fishing and pearl harvesting, those industries were not so abundant that a country of nearly 8 million people and the 13^th highest per capita GDP in the world could emerge from a desert with essentially no nearby source of fresh water.  I associate most large cities in the world as having to pass through a blue-collar, industrial phase or be home to a massive seaport, on its way to significant post-industrial economic wealth. The U.S. and many European cities had their industrial revolutions.  Australia had its coal-driven heyday.  Dubai seems to have skipped that phase; it went straight to post-industrial.  

Of course there’s oil around here – UAE is a top 10 world producer -- but UAE and Dubai’s wealth doesn’t stem only from petrol. The country’s leaders had more foresight than to put all of their chickens in one oily basket.  Dubai is geographically situated in close proximity – relatively speaking – to Europe, Africa and Asia.  As the shift began to the global economy, particularly as the earliest signs emerged that India, China and the African continent were ripe for impressive economic growth, Dubai postured itself as THE place for companies to locate a branch, a division, a department of their organization.  Solicit, market and advertise that over a few decades, throw in a lot of tax-free incentives and the novelty of taking your kids on a camel ride in the desert, and voila, you have an influx of wealth, ex-pats and today’s Dubai.  Dubai’s airport and its government-run airline, Emirates, is an example of this “global hub” vision. A look at the Emirates departure screen at the airport is staggering. Nonstop flights to all of the world’s major cities on the globe; their vision is for anyone in any major world city to be one-stop away – Dubai – from any other major world city. Impressive.

The city has a weird vibe, or maybe it’s better to say it lacks a clear vibe, or a defined soul unless it can be defined by mega-malls, and I hope we don’t ever elevate malls to some kind of cultural iconic status. Here’s my analysis of this “soulless-ness”.  Dubai’s population is 80% ex-pats. That’s mind-boggling to me.  Most of them are here with similar plans to work for 5-10 years to make a much higher and mostly tax free income than they could at home, then return home and coast for awhile with your savings, or send that savings home each month so your kids can go to a university or your family can be more comfortable. There’s A LOT of sacrifice in Dubai of people working, particularly in the service industry, who live thousands of miles away from everything that is comfortable and familiar in order to send  money home for the well-being of their families. Then there’s the ones who are here more simply to get rich. Tolerate the heat for a decade and be rich in the end.  Why not? It’s not for everyone.  One of three people I keep in touch with from high school moved to Dubai at his suggestion with his wife and young child a few years ago, and they were back home in the U.S. months later, begging his wife to please talk to him again someday.

There’s large communities of countries represented here.  Brits and Americans hold a lot of the skilled labor positions. Indians seem to have a significant portion of the small business market. Filipinos, Bangladeshis and people from many African countries appear to comprise much of the service sector. But since everyone is here temporarily, I didn’t get the feeling that many invest in establishing some kind of integrated celebrate-the-differences community. Sort of like middle school, people stick to their zones of familiarity and talk poorly about those outside of that group, until you’re forced to be on (warning: junior high memory coming up) a sacket ball team with Jennifer Freed and find out that actually, she’s not so bad.
    

Instead, people in Dubai seem to stay within the familiarity of their country groups and well, everyone just tolerates each other. They seem to stick to their own norms for how to drive, how to do business, how to communicate, how to behave at a Lionel Richie fountain show.  Those norms aren’t always compatible, as evidenced by the abundance of car honking and the number of times I hit shoulders with a passer-by on a crowded walkway or store and received a glare rather than anything that resembled “oops, sorry!”  

Within my brother’s social world, however, I didn’t meet another American or European among the lot, so there are exceptions to what I just wrote. It just has to happen with intention. My brother’s friend Khalid, a Moroccan, took over my brother’s kitchen for hours to make a traditional Moroccan meal, which is to say it used nearly every spice on the rack, and it was shared among the three of us, their Greek friend Anna, and their Emirati friend, Omar.  This is why I love food and cooking – it can be about so much more than caloric intake, and facilitate fellowship and camaraderie.

With my brother's friend Khalid, buying spices for a Moroccan meal.

My brother met Omar when Omar smashed into my brother’s vehicle. That's a surefire way to meet other people. Since my brother drives a vehicle that is roughly the size of a Burlington Northern locomotive, his vehicle didn’t sustain much damage but as it was told to me, Omar’s vehicle crumpled like an aluminum can. The process of accident reporting took hours, and feeling guilty for taking up so much of my brother’s time, Omar invited him to his family’s home for dinner.  I’m sure that seemed like an odd proposition by the person who just wrecked his car by smashing into yours, but Scott accepted, and they remain friends today. I'd have at least four more friends in my life if I took this approach.

My Dubai plans included some time and guiding by car-smashing Omar on a few occasions. With Omar, it was also an opportunity to talk to someone more poignantly about life in a predominantly Islamic country.  I have a few Muslim friends at home as well as in Kenya, though both are countries in which the Muslim faith is a significant minority to the presence of Christianity.  Omar and I got courageous with our questions with each other, and occasionally stumbled upon untruths we each held.  He was surprised to learn, for example, that it was legal for a U.S. president to be non-Christian, perhaps a mistruth he picked up at a tea party (subtle?).  I was surprised at how approving he was of his government that is ruled via an absolute monarchy.  “Our government gets things done,” he said. Valid point.  My current government, particularly at the federal level, would never be accused of being overly, or even sufficiently, okay, even marginally, productive.  

We paddled into some deeper waters on occasion, and I suppose the topics were fairly predictable for an American and a Emirati Muslim: U.S.-Arab nation relations, U.S. role in world matters, religious tolerance and freedoms, women’s rights, who has the bigger shopping malls, why skiing outdoors is better than in a place where you have a view of The Gap, and so on.  He was surprised at some of my remarks since they are often in contrast to my brother's perspectives. My brother and I don't have a lot of common ground on a lot of this stuff, probably because he is taller, dark hair, dark eyes and with a darker complexion, so why not let those differences carry over into our politics as well. It's not a problem so long as neither one of us actually talks to the other ever about anything. My mom swears we have the same biological parents.

In the end, Omar and ended up where these conversations have often gone with others around the globe with whom I’ve conversed, which is this: generally speaking, we’re all going about our days similarly. We wake up, we do things to meet our fundamental needs whether it be going to work, getting water, attending school, or whatever that means for our respective lives, and along the way we hope the days include moments that induce a feeling of happiness, fulfillment and maybe even laughter. How that shared vision for all seven billion lives on this planet gets lost amidst religious differences, wars, terrorism, violence, oppression and so on is the most colossal of failures. Now, I just over-simplified things there, and realize there are more layers of complexity to this stuff, or so I think. Though Omar commented that maybe it really was that simple. Maybe so. 

Dinner at a swanky Arabic restaurant in the desert. 

While in Dubai, I went on the world’s fastest roller coaster (three times), went to the 124^th floor of the world’s tallest building, bought a shirt in one of the world’s largest malls, had one of the world’s greatest buffets (my label) of Arabic food at a swanky resort in the Emirati desert, and visited a spectacularly beautiful mosque. I admire that my brother can live in a place that is so hot and so unclear about its identity aside from economic opportunity, and a bit jealous that he can have a meal with four people from four different continents after sending out a few text messages.  He goes to places like Bahrain and Sri Lanka on his days off, not to mention the places he stays for layovers as part of his pilot life.  And he’s a 10 minute walk to a Lionel Richie fountain show.