Dubai is called a fake city because visitors come here just to see what is built for them to see, shopping malls, great resorts, indoor and outdoor entertainment, and so on.
Only people who call it fake are those who visit the city for a very short time or those who are themselves are socially isolated and/or are closed minded. How can a city that has so many nationalities be fake? It does not fall into any logical explanation.
Yes, UAE is mostly desert and Dubai looks like a fake oasis built on desert dune through the eyes of visitors because they have not witnessed city’s transformation.
Ask anyone who has been living here for more than 10–15 years and they would tell you how not fake Dubai is. Most long term residents I personally know not only enjoy the tourist attractions but also appreciate the old, less glamorous side of Dubai where things hardly change by the way.
Locals are indeed very friendly, but just like anywhere else in the world, they are not angels and among them are bad and good ones. I don’t like to use the term expat simply because its historical use did not exactly mean those who chose to live outside their native place of residence. So integrating/socializing with locals is very important to see the place from a different perspective. In many cases foreigners are either afraid or don’t wish to discover the local culture and traditions, hence there are various government sponsored social programs to close that gap.
Making friends in Dubai is super easy yet challenging, due to the fact that any new friend means a new culture, tradition, social behavior etc…that one should be patient to explore, accept, appreciate and respect and this is where most people fail because it is not as easy as it sounds and, in my opinion, this is one of the main reasons why residents here prefer segregation instead of integration. But how do you cater to so many different people living under one roof, the answer is simple, use US/western model which is based on commonly accepted consumerism pretty much by everyone and this is what makes Dubai rather seem fake.
From my point of view, Dubai is called fake because the city constantly tries to adapt to visitors’/tourists’ preferences only, while long term living residents and locals live in their own microcosm. And the answer to that is non-oil economy that must flourish for Dubai to sustain in a long run. Tourists outnumber residents by far and economically speaking they are therefore a priority.
Thanks for being so much more precise about the issue. I totally agree that we should not compare UAE to other SE Asian countries but it cannot be compared to Western countries either . I think UAE and Dubai in particular is unique in many ways . The Gulf state s became rich and ‘ developed ‘ without going through the process Western and other countries usually endure . Also they are not democracies , so have a political and docial culture far different to most other developed nations. They have to be judged on their own merits and comparing them to countries out of that region doesn't make sense. They do have labour courts , by the way, and i know people who have caused their employers a lot of grief through it. ( they did not need money to hire lawyers or to process the complaint) . Like most places the region is evolving and it will improve hopefully as it evolves. I saw a documentary on Youtube on Nepalese workers. Guy was worked to death until his heart literally stopped beating in night, in sleep. He came home in a sealed coffin. I will boycott Qatar Fifa WC for same reason. Such images won’t stop coming before my eyes.
Dubai was supposed to be a Shangri-La Middle East, a shining monument to Arab entrepreneurship and Western capitalism. But as the bad times come to the city - a state that emerged from the sands of the desert, an even uglier story is emerging. Johann Hari reports.
The wide and smiling face of Sheik Mohammed - the absolute ruler of Dubai - lights up his creation. His image is displayed in each building, surrounded by the more familiar corporate rictus of Ronald McDonald or Colonel Sanders.
This man has promoted Dubai to the world as the city of the Thousand and One Arab Lights, a Shanghai-La Medioriente isolated from the sandstorms that hit the region.
It dominates the Manhattan skyline, lighting up rows and rows of glass pyramids and hotels fused in the shape of piles of gold coins. And there stands the tallest building in the world - a thin spear, projecting beyond the sky that any other human construction of history.
But something has darkened Sheikh Mohammed's smile. The ubiquitous cranes have stopped at the horizon line, as if frozen in time. There are countless half-built buildings, apparently abandoned.
In the most luxurious and new constructions - like the vast Atlantis hotel, a gigantic Pink Castle erect in 1,000 days for the price of 1.5 billion dollars, with its own artificial island - the rainwater is filtering through the sky and the tiles are falling from the ceiling.
This Land of Neverland was made over the Never-Never - and now the cracks are beginning to be seen. Suddenly it looks less like Manhattan in the sun than an Iceland in the desert.
Once the unbridled explosion of construction stopped and the whirlwind slowed, Dubai's secrets are slowly seeping. This is a city made out of nothing in only a few wild decades of credit and ecocide, oppression and slavery.
Dubai is a living metallic metaphor about the globalized neo-liberal world that may be collapsing - at last - in history.
I. An Adult Disneyland
Karen Andrews can not talk. Every time she starts telling her story, she tilts her head and collapses. She is thin and angular, and possesses the worn shine of the once wealthy, though her clothes are as wrinkled as her forehead.
I found her in the parking lot of one of the finest international hotels in Dubai, where she is living, inside her Range Rover. She has been sleeping here for months, thanks to the kindness of the Bengali employees of the parking lot, who do not have the heart to expel her. It is not here that she thought her dream Dubai would end.
His story flows between stuttering, for four hours. Sometimes, his worn voice - witty and warm - breaks down. Karen came here from Canada when her husband was offered a job in the first division of a famous multinational.
"When he said Dubai, I answered him - if you want me to wear black and stop drinking, sweetheart, you're with the wrong girl. But he asked me to try. And I loved it."
All his worries melted when he disembarked in Dubai, in 2005. "It was an adult Disneyland, where the Sheikh Mohammed is the Mickey mouse," he said. "Life was fantastic.
You had these amazing huge departments, you had an immense army of employees, you did not pay anything in taxes. It seemed that everyone was a CEO. We were partying all the time."
Her husband, Daniel, bought two properties. "We were getting drunk from Dubai," she said. But for the first time in his life, he began to mismanage his finances. "We were not talking, you add immense, but he was beginning to get confused.
It was so different from the usual Daniel, I was surprised. We got into debt a little. " After a year, she discovered why: Daniel was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
A doctor told him that he was one year old; another told him he was benign and that he would get better. But his debts kept growing. "Before I arrived here, I had no idea about the laws of Dubai.
I presumed that if all these big companies came here, it should be quite similar to Canada or any other liberal democracy, "he added. No one told him that the concept of bankruptcy did not exist. If you fell into a debt that you could not pay, you ended up in jail.
"When I realized that, I faced Daniel and said, listen, we need to get out of here. He knew that he was guaranteed compensation if he resigned, so we said - well, take the compensation, pay the debt and leave. " Daniel then resigned - but was given less compensation than his contract suggested.
The debt remained. As soon as you give up your work in Dubai, your employer has to inform your bank. If you have any important debt that has not been covered by your savings, then all your accounts are frozen, and you are forbidden to leave the country.
"Suddenly our cards stopped working. We did not have anything We were thrown out of our apartment. " Karen could not talk about what happened immediately afterwards for a long time; she was trembling.
Daniel was arrested and made to disappear the same day of the eviction of both. Six days passed before she could talk to him. "He told me that he was put in a cell with another debtor, a Cingales of only 27 years old, who said he could not face shame with his family.
Daniel woke up to see the boy swallow a razor. He knocked on the door asking for help, but nobody came, and the boy died in front of him."
Karen managed to beg for help from her friends for a few weeks, "but it was so humiliating. I never lived like that. I worked in the fashion industry. I had my own businesses. I never ... ", I remain silent.
Daniel was sentenced to 6 months in prison in a trial he could not understand. It was in Arabic, and there was no translator. "Now I'm illegal here, too," adds Karen, "I have no money, nothing.
I have to put up with it in some way for nine months, until he gets out. " Looking towards the horizon, almost frozen with embarrassment, he asks me if I can buy him something to eat.
She is not the only one. Throughout the city , foreigners are ruined, sleeping secretly in the dunes, at the airport, or in their cars.
"The first thing you have to understand about Dubai is - that nothing is what it seems," Karen finished. "Nothing. This is not a city , a scam. They attract you telling you that this is so - a super modern place - but behind the surface is a medieval dictatorship."
II. The Rolling Bushes
30 years ago, almost all contemporary Dubai was desert, inhabited only by cactus, rolling plants and scorpions. But in the center of the city there are remains of the city that was once, buried between metal and glass. In the dusty fort of the Dubai Museum, a sanitized version of the story is told.
In the mid-18th century, a small village was built here, south of the Persian Gulf, where people would dive off the coast looking for pearls. Little by little it began to accumulate a cosmopolitan population that disembarked of Persia, the Indian subcontinent and other Arab countries, all hopeful with making their fortune.
They named it in honor of the local lobster, Daba, which consumed everything in its path. The city was soon captured by the arms of the British Empire, who took it by the neck until almost 1971. When they raised anchors, Dubai decided to ally itself with the 6 surrounding states and form the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The British left, exhausted, just when the oil was just being discovered, and the sheikhs who suddenly found themselves in charge of a sovereign dilemma. They were mostly illiterate nomads who spent their lives riding camels across the desert - but now they had a gigantic gold chest. What should they do with it?
Dubai had only one oil thread compared to neighboring Abu Dhabi - so Sheikh Maktoum decided to use the revenue to build something that would last. Israel used to boast of making the desert bloom; Sheikh Maktoum resolved to turn the desert into a juicy investment.
He would build a city that would be the center of tourism and financial services, sucking money and talent from around the globe. I invite the world to come, without taxes in between - and the world came in millions, drowning the local population, which today is only 5% of Dubai.
It seemed that a city fell from the sky in only 3 decades, whole, complete and boisterous. They accelerated from the 18th century to the 21st century in a single generation.
If you take the Big Bus Tour in Dubai - the passport to a pre-processed experience of each major city on earth - you get stuck with the propaganda vision of how this happened.
"Dubai's motto is 'Open doors, open minds'," says the tourist guide in shades of cut, before depositing in the souks to buy camel-leather teapot covers. "Here you are free. To buy fabrics, "he adds. As you pass by each monumental building, he tells you: "The World Trade Center was built by His Highness ..."
But that is a lie. The Sheikh did not build this city . It was built by slaves. They are building it right now.
III. Hidden to Full View
There are 3 different Dubais, all revolving around each other. There are foreigners, like Karen; there are the Emiraties, led by Sheik Mohammed; and there are the foreign lower classes that built the city, and they are trapped here.
They are hidden in plain sight. You see them everywhere, in dusty blue uniforms, guitoned by their superiors, like a troop of convicts condemned to hard labor - but you're trained not to see them. It's like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city . The Sheikh built the city . Workers? What workers?
Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young people who lifted Dubai are transported in buses from their work sites, to a vast wasteland of concrete an hour away from the city, where they are locked up almost as in quarantine.
Until only a few years ago, they were transported in cattle trucks, but the foreigners claimed that it was horrible to see, so now they are transported in small metal buses that function as greenhouses under the heat of the desert. They sweat like sponges being slowly squeezed.
Sonapur is a vast piece of land filled with garbage, miles and miles of identical concrete buildings. Some 300,000 men live piled here, in a place whose name in Hindi means " City of Gold."
In the first field that I stopped - impregnated with the miasma of sewerage and sweat - the men swarmed around me, eager to tell someone, whoever it was, what was happening to them.
Sahinal Monir, a slim young man of 24 years, from the deltas of Bangladesh. "For you to come, they tell you that Dubai is a paradise. Then you get here and you realize it's hell, "he says. Four years ago, an employment agent arrived in the village of Sahinal in southern Bangladesh.
He told the men of the village that there was a place where they could earn 40,000 takka a month (£ 400) just for working from 9AM to 5PM, on construction projects. It was a place where they would be provided with great accommodation, great food, and treated very well.
All they had to do was pay an immediate down payment of 220,000 takka (£ 2,300) for the work visa - a down payment that they would easily pay in the first six months of work. So Sahinal sold his family land, and asked for money from the local lender, to go to that paradise.
As soon as he arrived at the Dubai airport, his passport was taken away by his construction company. He has not seen it again.
He was told abruptly that from that moment, he would work 14 hours a day under the desert heat - where western tourists are advised not to be outside for more than 5 minutes in summer, when the thermometers reach 55 degrees Celsius - for 500 dirhams per month (£ 90), less than a quarter of the salary promised.
If you do not like it, the company said, go. "But how can I go back home? You have my passport, and I do not have money for the ticket, "he replied. "Then, you better get to work," they retorted.
Sahinal panicked. His family at home - his son, daughter, wife and parents - were waiting for the money, excited that his boy had finally done it. But he would have to work for more than two years to just pay the cost of getting there - and all to earn less than he earned in Bangladesh.
He shows me his piece. It is a tiny and miserable concrete cell with three-level cabins, where he lives with 11 other men. All his belongings are stacked on his cabin: three shirts, a pair of extra pants, and a cell phone.
The piece sucks, because the lavatories in the corner of the field - holes in the ground - are saturated with excrement and clouds of black flies. There is no air conditioning or fans, so the heat is "unbearable, you can not sleep.
All you do is sweat and scratch all night long. " In the middle of summer, people sleep on the floor, on the roof, wherever they can pray for a moment of breeze.
The water provided for the field, in immense white containers, is not properly desalinated: it tastes like brine. "It makes us sick, but we do not have anything else to drink," he says.
The work is "the worst in the world, " he adds. "You have to lift bricks and blocks of 50 kilos of cement under the worst heat imaginable ... This heat - it's like nothing in this world.
You sweat so much that you can not urinate, for days, for weeks. It is as if all the liquid came out through your skin, and you stink. You get sick and feel bad, but you are not allowed to stop, except for an hour after noon.
You know that if you boot something or you slip, you can kill yourself. If you take sick days, your salary is frozen and you are trapped here for longer."
He is currently working on the 67th floor of a bright new tower, where he builds upwards, towards the sky, towards the heat. He does not know his name. In his four years here, he has never seen the Dubai of tourist fame, except the one he builds floor by floor.
Are you angry? It is thought a long time. "Here, nobody shows their anger. You can not. You can end up in jail for a long time, then deported. " Last year, some workers went on strike, after they were not given their salary for four months.
Dubai police surrounded the fields with barbed wire and water cannons, and virtually drowned them until they left and went back to work.
The leaders of the revolt were imprisoned. I try a different question: does Sohinal regret coming? All men look down, surprised. "How could we think about that? We're trapped.
If we start thinking about regrets ... "Leave the phrase lost unfinished. Eventually, another worker breaks the silence adding: "I miss my country, my family and my land. We can plant food in Bangladesh. Hache, nothing grows. Only oil and buildings."
Since the recession began, they say, electricity has been cut in dozens of fields, and men have not been paid in months. Their companies have disappeared with their passports and their salaries.
"We have stolen completely. Even if we somehow managed to return to Bangladesh, the lenders would immediately demand that we pay their money, and when we can not, we will be sent to prison.
All this is supposed to be illegal. Employers are supposed to pay on time, never take your passport, give you breaks in the heat - but I did not meet anyone who said that was happening. No one. These men were scammed to make them come and trapped to make them stay, with the complicity of the Dubai authorities.
Sahinal could also die here. A Brit who used to work on construction projects told me: "There is a huge number of suicides in the fields and on the construction sites, but they are not reported.
They are described as 'accidents'. Even so, their families are not free: they simply inherit the debts. A study by HRW found that there is a "concealment of the real volume" of deaths due to heatstroke, fatigue and suicide, but the Indian consulate recorded 971 deaths of its connationals only in 2005.
After this figure came to light, the consulates were advised that the counts will stop.
At night, with the darkness, I sit in the field with Sohinal and his friends, as they gather what is left in their pockets to buy a bottle of cheap alcohol. The end to fierce drinks. "It helps you to anesthetize you," says Sohinal with a burning throat. In the distance, the bright skyline cut from the Dubai that he builds stands aloof.
IV. Attacked in the Mall
I find myself in a state of stupor, from the fields towards the extensive marble Mall that seems to be in every street in Dubai. It is so hot here that there is no reason to build pavement; people gather in these cathedrals of consumerism to enjoy air conditioning.
So on a 10 minute taxi ride, I left Sohinal and I'm standing in the middle of Harvey Nichols, with a bored saleswoman showing me a taffeta dress of £ 20,000. "As you can see, it's cut in diagonal ..." he says, and I stop writing.
Time does not seem to happen in the Mall. The days are erased with the same electric light, the same bright floors, the same brands that I know from home. Here, Dubai is reduced to its basic sounds: purchase.
In the most expensive shopping malls I find myself almost alone, the locals empty and echoing. Officially, everyone tells me that business is going from strength to strength. Off the record, there is panic.
There is a display of hats, prior to the Dubai races, selling elaborate headdresses for £ 1,000 a piece. "Last year, we were overcrowded. Look now, "a hat designer tells me. She extends and moves her arm over an empty space.
I approached a blonde Dutch girl of 17 years, walking around in hot pants, indifferent to the swarms of men watching her. "I love this place!" He exclaims. "The heat, the Mall, the beach!" Does it bother you a little that this is a slave society? He ducks his head, almost as Sohinal did.
"I try not to think about it," he replies. Even at 17 she has already learned not to look, not to ask; that if, she feels, it would be too daring.
Among the Mall, there is nobody but the connecting fabric of the asphalt. Each street has at least four tracks; Dubai feels like a highway dotted with shopping centers. You only walk outside if you are suicidal. Residents of Dubai jump from Mall e Mall, by car or taxi.
How do you feel if this is your country, full of foreigners? Unlike the foreigners and the slave class, I can not approach the native Emiraties by asking questions when I see them walking by - the men in fresh white robes, the women in scorching black robes.
If you try, the women are disturbed, and the men look offended, and they tell you abruptly that Dubai is "fine". So I look through the Emirati blogger scene and I find some young people typically Emiraties. We get together - where else? - in the mall.
Ahmed al-Atar is a handsome young man of 23 years with a neat and trimmed beard, perfectly cut white tunic and rectangular metallic frame lenses.
He speaks perfect English American, and quickly proves that he knows London, Los Angeles and Paris better than most Westerners. Sitting in his chair in a perfect replica of a Starbucks, he announces: "This is the best place in the world to be young! The government pays for your education up to the Doctorate level.
They give you a free house when you get married. You have free health care, and if it's not good enough here, they pay you to attend to you overseas. You do not even have to pay for your phone bills. Almost everyone has a domestic employee, a babysitter and a driver. And we never pay taxes. Would not you like to be Emirati? "
I try to make some potential objections to this artificially optimistic summary, but he approaches and says: "Look - my grandfather got up every day and had to fight to get to the well first to get water. When the wells dried, they had to bring the water on camels.
They were always hungry, thirsty and desperate for jobs. He limped throughout his life, because here there was no medical treatment available when his leg was broken. Look at us now! "
For the Emiraties, this is a Santa Claus State, giving away sweets while making their money somewhere else: through land rent to foreigners, gentle taxes on them, such as business and airport charges, and the remaining oil thread what is left Most Emiraties, like Ahmed, work for the government, so they are protected from credit failure.
"I have not felt any effect, nor my friends," he says. "Your job is safe. They only fire you if you do something incredibly wrong. " The laws are currently being toughened, to make it almost even more impossible to fire an Emirati.
Sure, the flood of foreigners can sometimes become a "visual annoyance," says Ahmed. "But we see foreigners as the price we had to pay for this development. How could we have done it? Nobody wants to go back to the days of the desert, the days before anyone came.
We went from being an African country to having an average per capita income of $ 120,000 per year. And are we supposed to claim? "
He says that the lack of political freedom is fine for him. "You will find it very difficult to find an Emirati who does not support Sheikh Mohammed." Why are you afraid? "No, because we really support it. He is a great leader.
Just look! "He smiles and says:" I'm sure my life is similar to yours. We had a good time, we had a coffee, we went to the movies. You'll be at a Pizza Hut or Nando's in London, and at the same time I'll be in one of them here in Dubai, "he adds, ordering another Latte.
But all the young Emiraties see it this way? Can everything really be so bright in the political arena? At the luxurious Emirates Toser Hotel, I met Sultan al-Qassemi.
He is a 31-year-old Emirati, a columnist for the Dubai press and a private art collector, with a reputation as a liberal opponent, advocating for gradual reforms. He wears Western clothes - blue jeans and a Ralph Laurent shirt - and speaks incredibly fast, becoming a maniacal whirlwind of arguments.
"People here are becoming lazy and overfed babies!" He exclaims. "The State Nanny has gone too far. We do not do anything by ourselves! Why does not anyone of us work for the private sector?
Why can not a mother and a father take care of their own child? "And even then, when I try to mention the slavery system that Dubai built, it looks annoying. "People should give us credit," he insists. "We are the most tolerant people in the world . Dubai is the only truly international city in the world . Everyone who comes here is treated with respect."
I meditate, and I think of the vast fields in Sonapur, only a few miles away. Do you even know of its existence? He looks irritated.
"You know, if there are 30 or 40 cases of workplace abuse a year, that sounds like a lot, but when you think about how many people are here ..." 30 or 40? This abuse is endemic to the system, I say. We are talking about hundreds of thousands.
Sultan is furious. He replies: "Do not you think that Mexicans are mistreated in New York? How much time does Britain spend in treating people better?
I could go to London and write about homeless people in Oxford Street and make your city look like a terrible place, too! The workers here can leave whenever they want! Any Indian can leave! Any Asian can leave! "
But they can not, I tell him. Their passports are confiscated, and their wages are withheld. "Well, I feel bad if that happens, and anyone who does that should be punished. But their embassies should help them.
" They try. But why do you forbid - with force - that workers go on strike against exploitative employers? "Thank God we do not allow that!" He exclaims. "Strikes are inconvenient! They take to the streets - we do not have that here.
We will not be like France. Imagine a country where your workers can simply stop whenever they want! "So what should the workers do when they are cheated and lie to them? "Let them resign. Leave the country."
I'm sighing. Sultan is enraged now. "People in the West are always complaining about us," he says. Suddenly, he adopts a mocking tone of complaint, imitating those unpleasant critics: "Why do not they treat animals better?
Why do not they have better shampoo ads? Why do not they treat their workers better? "It's a revealing order: animals, shampoo, then workers. He becomes more heated, uncomfortable in his seat, pointing his finger at me.
"I gave my workers safety glasses and special boots, and they did not want to use them! What bothered them! "
And then he smiles, coming out with what he thinks is his final argument. "When I see Western journalists criticizing us - they do not realize that they are shooting themselves in the foot?
The Medioriente would be much more dangerous if your Dubai falls. Our exports are not oil, it is hope. Poor Egyptians, Libyans or Iranians grow up saying - I want to go to Dubai. We are very important for the region. We are showing you how to be a modern Muslim country.
We do not have fundamentalists here. The Europeans should not celebrate our demise. They should be very worried ... Do you know what would happen if this model fails? Dubai would fall on the Iranian path, the Islamic path."
Sultan is rearranged in his seat. My arguments have clearly bothered him; he says in a softer and conciliatory, almost pleading tone: "Listen. My mother used to go to the well and get a bucket of water every morning.
On her wedding day, she was given an orange as a gift, because she had never eaten one. Two of my brothers died when they were babies because the health system was not yet developed. Do not judge us. " He says it again, with his eyes full of intensity: "Do not judge us."
V. The Dissenters of Dunkin Donuts
But there is another face for the Emirati minority - a small gathering of dissenters, trying to shake the Sheikhs from abusive laws. Near a mega-center Virgin and a Dunkin Donuts, with "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt, sounding after me, I met with the Public Enemy # 1 of the Dubai dictatorship.
As an introduction, Mohammed al-Mansoori declares, with his white tunic and hard face: "The Westerners come here and see the Mall and the tall buildings and think that means we are free. But these businesses, these buildings - what are they for? This is a dictatorship. The royal family thinks that they own the country, and that the people are their servants. Here there is no freedom."
We managed to find the only Arab restaurant in this Mall, and it says everything that is forbidden - under threat of imprisonment - to say in Dubai. Mohammed tells me that he was born in Dubai, from a fisherman father who taught him a permanent lesson: Never follow the flock.
Think by yourself. During the sudden explosion of development, Mohammed studied law. By the 1990s, he had already ascended to the leadership of the Association of Jurists, an organization created to make Dubai's laws consistent with international human rights law.
And then - suddenly - Mohammed hit the limits of tolerance of Sheikh Mohammed. Horrified by the "system of slavery" on which his country is raised, he denounced it to the HRW and the BBC. "So I was arrested by the secret police who warned me: shut up or you will lose your job and your children will be unemployed," he said. "But how could I keep quiet?"
He was robbed of his lawyer's license and his passport - becoming another person imprisoned within his country. "I'm on a blacklist, as are my children. The newspapers are not allowed to write about me."
Why is the state so firm in defending this system of slavery? He offers a simple explanation. "Most companies are owned by the government, so they are opposed to human rights laws, because their application would reduce their profit margins. It is in your interest that the workers are slaves.
The last time there was a depression, there was an outbreak of democracy in Dubai, controlled by force by the Sheikhs. In the 1930s, the merchants of the city united against Sheikh Said bin Maktoum al-Maktoum - the absolute ruler of the time - and insisted that they be given control over the country's finances.
It only lasted a few years, before the Sheikh - with the enthusiastic support of the British - crushed them.
And today? Sheikh Mohammed turned Dubai into a Creditopolis, a city entirely built on debt. Dubai owes 107% of its entire PGB. It would already be bankrupt, if the neighboring and oil-saturated state of Abu Dhabi had not taken out its checkbook.
Mohammed says that this will take even more freedom. "Now Abu Dhabi is the one who dictates the rules - and they are much more conservative and restrictive even than Dubai. Freedom here will decrease steadily."
Recently, new laws on information have been enacted, prohibiting the press from reporting anything that could "harm" Dubai or "its economy". Is this why newspapers are delivering luxurious supplements that speak of the "optimistic economic indicators"?
The whole world here uses Islamism as the latent threat on the horizon, ready to explode if their advice is not followed. Today, every Imam is appointed by the government, and every sermon is carefully controlled to keep it moderate.
But Mohammed says nervously: "We do not have Islam here now, but I think that if you control people and give them no means to express their anger, it could arise. People who are told to shut up all the time can simply burst."
Later that day, again with the background of another similar corporate building, I met another dissident - Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, professor of political science at the University of the Emirates.
Their anger focuses not on political reform, but on the erosion of Emirati identity. He is famous among locals, a rare interpreter of his rage. He says somberly: "There is a break here. This is a totally different city from the city where I was born 50 years ago."
He looks around at the glittering floors and Western tourists and says: "What we now see did not happen even in our most impossible dreams. We never thought that we could be such a success, a model, a guide for other Arab countries.
The people of Dubai are deeply proud of theircity , and with justice. But still ... "He shakes his head. "In our hearts, we are afraid that we are building a modern city , but we are losing it in the hands of all these foreigners."
Abdulkhaleq says that each Emirati of his generation lives with a "psychological trauma". Their hearts are divided - "between pride on the one hand, and fear for the other." Right after saying this, a smiling employee comes over, and asks us what we would like to drink. He orders a Coca-Cola.
VI. The Pride of Dubai
There is a group in Dubai for whom the rhetoric of a sudden democracy and freedom sounds true - but it is precisely this group that the government least wants to liberate: the gays.
After a famous international hotel, I enter - possibly - the one gay club of the Arabian Peninsula. I find a United Nations of tank tops and beefy biceps, dancing with Kylie, taking ecstasy and enjoying it as if it were Soho.
"Dubai is the best place in the Muslim world for gays!" A 25-year-old Emirati tells me, with her hair standing with gel, her arms around the neck of her 31-year-old "husband". "We are alive. We can meet. That's more than for most Arab gays."
It is illegal to be gay in Dubai, and is punishable by 10 years in prison. But the locations of the newest non-official gay clubs circulate on the Internet, and men flock in, seemingly not afraid of the police. "They may fall into the club, but they just disperse us," one of them tells me. "The police have other things to do."
In every big city, gays find a way to recognize themselves - but in Dubai it has become the compensation chamber for homosexuals in the region, a place where they can live in relative safety.
Saleh, a thin soldier in the Saudi Arabian army, has come here for a Coldplay concert, and tells me that Dubai is "great" for gays: "In Saudi Arabia, it's hard to be heterosexual when you're young.
Women are absolutely forbidden by what everyone has homosexual sex. But there they just want to have sex with boys - 15 to 21 years old. I am 27 years old, so I am now too old. You need to find true gays, so this is the best city . All gay Arabs want to live in Dubai."
That said, Saleh is dancing across the floor of the club, towards a Dutchman with big biceps and a broad smile.
VII. The Lifestyle
All the tourist guides call Dubai a "melting pot", but as I travel through the city , I find that each group meets each other, in its small ethnic enclaves - and becomes a caricature of itself . One night - in the heart of this citytired, exhausted Mall and fields - I'm heading to Double Decker, a move for foreigners of British origin.
At the entrance there is a red telephone booth and signs for London buses. Its wooden interior looks like a cross between a club colony of the Raj and a teenage album of the 80s, with lights of flashing colors and pop at full volume.
When I enter, a miniskirt girl faints at the door, falling on her back. A guy with a pirate hat helps her get up, throwing out her beer bottle, with a loud laugh.
I start talking with two women who are sunburned, around 60 years old, who have been slowly getting drunk since noon. "You stay here for the Lifestyle," they tell me, inviting me to sit down and order a few more drinks.
All Foreigners talk about Lifestyle, but when you ask about what it is, the idea becomes vague. Ann Wark tries to sum it up: "Here, you go out every night. You never do that at home.
You see people all the time. It's great. You have a lot of free time. You have servants and employees, so you do not have to do anything at all. You just have a good time! "
They have been in Dubai for 20 years, and are happy to explain how the city works. "They have a hierarchy, right?" Says Ann. "They are the Emiraties at the summit, then the British and other Westerners come.
Then I guess the Filipinos come, because they have a little more brains than the Indians. Finally, in the background you have the Indians and the rest."
However, they admit that they have "never" spoken with an Emirati. Never? "Do it is united among them". Even so, Dubai has disappointed them. Jules Taylor tells me: "If you have an accident here, it's a nightmare.
A British woman we knew, ran over an Indian, and was imprisoned for four days! If you have a tiny particle of alcohol on your breath, they'll fall on you with everything.
These Indians are thrown in front of the cars, because they and their families have to pay them money for blood - you know, compensation. But the police simply blame us. That poor woman."
A 24-year-old woman, named Hannah Gamble, takes a break from the dance floor to talk to me. "I love the sun and the beach! It's tremendous here! "He says. There is nothing wrong?
"Oh yes!" He says. Ah: one of them realized, I think with relief. "The banks! When you want to make a transfer you have to use the fax. You can not do it online. " Anything else? She thinks more. "The traffic is not very good."
When I ask the British how they feel about not being in a democracy, their reaction is always the same. First, they are amazed. Then the offended ones are made. "It's the Arab way!"
An Essex boy yells back at me as he tries to put reindeer horns on his head, pouring some beer into his friend's mouth, who is lying on his back on the floor, gargling.
Later, in the hotel bar, I start talking with a bad-tempered American who works in the cosmetics industry, and who is desperate to get away from these people. He tells me: "all these people who could not succeed in their own countries, end here, and suddenly they are rich and promoted above their real abilities and they begin to boast of how great they are.
I have never met so many incompetent people in such high positions anywhere in the world . " He adds: "It is absolutely racist. I have Filipino girls working for me, doing the same job as European girls, and they get paid a quarter of the salary. The people who do the real work are paid nothing, while these incompetent managers pay themselves £ 40,000 per month."
Except for her, a subject is repeated in the mouth of all the Foreigners with whom I speak: her joy of having service that does the work that would ruin their lives in their homelands.
The whole world , it seems, has a housemaid. The employees used to be predominantly the Philippines, but with the recession, the Philippines have been considered too expensive, so a nice Ethiopian maid is the newest fashion accessory.
It is an open secret that once you hire a maid, you have complete power over her. Take your passport - the whole world does; you decide when to pay them, and when - if it is - you can rest; and you decide who she talks to. He does not speak Arabic. He can not escape.
In a Burger King, a Filipino girl tells me that it is "terrible" for her to wander around the Mall in Dubai, because Filipino servants or nannies are always snatched from the family for which they work, and beg for help.
"They say, 'Please, I'm a prisoner, they do not let me call home, they make me work at all times, seven days a week.' At the beginning, I would say 'My God, I'm going to notify the consulate, where are you staying?' But they never know the address, and the consulate did not care.
Now I avoid them. I still think of a woman who told me that she has not eaten any fruit for four years. They think I have power because I can walk everywhere, but I do not have power."
The only hostel for women in Dubai - a grimy private villa on the verge of being auctioned - is full of maid escapes. Mela Matari, an Ethiopian of 25 years, with a beautiful smile, tells me what happened to her - and thousands like her.
An agency promised him paradise on the sands, so he abandoned his four-year-old daughter and came here to make some money for a better future. "But they paid me half of what they had promised me.
I was placed with an Australian family - four children - and the employer made me work from 6AM to 1AM every day, without a day off. I was exhausted and I begged for a break, but they just yelled at me: 'Here you are to work, not sleep!' Until one day I just could not take it anymore and the boss hit me.
I hit with fists and feet. My ear still hurts.They did not pay my salary: they told me they would pay me at the end of two years. What could I do? I did not know anyone here. I was terrified."
One day, after another beating, Mela fled to the streets, and asked - in a bad English - how to find the Ethiopian consulate. After walking for two days, she found him, but was told that he had to ask his employer for his passport.
"Well, how could I?" She says. She has remained in this shelter for six months. She talked to her daughter twice. "I lost my country, I lost my daughter, I lost everything," he adds.
When he says this, I remember a phrase in the air that I heard in the Double Decker. I asked a British woman named Hermione Frayling about what was the best thing about Dubai. "Oh, the servitude!" He exclaimed. "You do not do anything. They do everything! "
VIII. The End of the World
The world is empty. It has been abandoned, its continents unfinished. Through the binoculars, I think I can make out Britain; that real island, empty under the salty breeze.
Here, off the coast of Dubai, designers have been rebuilding the world . They have built artificial islands in the shape of all the land masses of planet Earth, and plan to sell each continent to be built on them.
There were rumors that the Beckhams would buy Britain. But people who work on the nearby coast say they have not seen anyone there for months. "The World is over, " suggests a South African.
Throughout Dubai, crazy projects that were "In Construction" are today "In Fall". They were building an air-conditioned beach here, with cooling pipes going under the sand, so that the super-rich would not burn their fingers on their way from the towel to the sea.
The projects completed just before the global economy collapsed, look empty and ruinous. The Atlantis hotel was inaugurated last winter at a $ 20 million end-of-siecle party, with the assistance of Robert De Niro, Lindsay Lohan and Lily Allen.
Seated on its own artificial island - shaped, of course, from a palm tree - it looks like a giant upside down tooth in a slightly decaying mouth. It is pink and with turrets - the architecture of the pharaohs, like the imaginary Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Its Great Lobby is a monumental dome covered in glass balls, supported by eight monumental concrete palms. Erect in the middle, there is a giant glass structure that looks like the intestines of every guest who has been to Atlantis. Unexpectedly, it's raining; the water falls from the roof and the tiles are falling.
A young public relation South African shows me the most sought-after pieces, explaining that it is "the greatest luxury that the worldit can offer". We walked through the commercial premises that sell diamond rings of £ 24,000,000, inside a hotel inspired by the lost sunken continent of, yes, Atlantis.
There are huge water tanks full of sharks, swimming between abandoned abandoned castles and sunken submarines. There are more than 1,500 pieces here, each with an ocean view.
The Neptune Suite has three floors, and - I gulp when I look at it - looks directly at the vast shark pond. You lie on the bed, and the sharks look at you. In Dubai, you can sleep with the fish, and survive.
But even luxury - reminiscent of the hiding place of a villain from James Bond movies - is also being abandoned. I reserve a few nights at the classiest hotel in the city, the Park Hyatt.
It is the favorite hotel of fashion designers, where Elle Macpherson and Tommy Hilfiger spend their nights, a beautiful and underrated palace. It feels empty. Wherever I eat, I'm the only one in the restaurant.
A member of the staff whispers to me: "here used to be full. Now there is hardly anyone. " Wandering around the place, I feel like Jack Nicholson in "The Shining," the last man in an abandoned and haunted house.
The most famous hotel in Dubai - the proud icon of the city - is the Burj al Arab hotel, located on the beach, in the shape of a gigantic glass sailing ship. In the lobby, I start talking with a couple from London, who works in the city.
They have been coming to Dubai for 10 years, and they tell me they love it. "You never know what you'll find here," he says. "On our last trip, at the beginning of the holidays, our window looked towards the sea. At the end of the season, they had built an entire island there."
With my patience exhausted with all this excess, I discovered aggressively asking: do not you bother all that ubiquitous slave class? I hope you have misunderstood me, because the woman answered: "That's why we come here!
It's great, you can not do anything for yourself! "Her husband intervenes:" When you go to the bathroom, they open the door, they open the water tap - the only thing they do not do is take it out when you go to piss! "And both of them they burst out laughing.
IX. Facing the Desert
Dubai is not just a city living beyond its financial means; is living on the edge of its ecological means. You stand in front of a perfect Dubai lawn and watch the sprinklers shooting water around you. You see the tourists crowding to swim with the dolphins.
You walk around a cooler the size of a mountain, where you have built a real snow skirt for skiing. And an inner voice murmurs: this is the desert. This is the most waterless place on the planet. How can this be happening? How is it possible?
The same land is trying to refuse Dubai, to dry it and fly it out of sight. The new Tiger Woods Gold Course needs to pump four million gallons of water on its land day by day, or simply shrink and disappear in the wind.
The city is regularly hit by sandstorms that darken the skies and transform the horizon into a blur. When the sand part, the heat burns through. Cook everything that is not constant and artificially watered.
Dr. Mohammed Raouf, the environmental director of the Gulf Research Center, sounds somber when he sits in his Dubai office and warns: "This is a desert area, and we are trying to challenge the environment. It is very unwise. If you face the desert, you will lose."
Sheikh Maktoum built his city- model in a place without usable water. Nothing.There is no fresh water, very little humidity, and one of the lowest rainfall levels in the world. So Dubai drinks from the sea.
The water of the Emirates is stripped of salt in gigantic Gulf desalination plants - transforming it into the most expensive of the earth. It costs more than oil to produce, and it expels vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere during the process.
It is the main reason why a resident of Dubai has the highest average carbon residue than any human being - more than double that of an American.
If the recession turns into a depression, Dr. Raouf believes that Dubai would run out of water. "At the moment, we have financial reserves to allow us to bring as much water as possible to the desert center.
But if we have lower incomes - if, say, the world changes to a source of energy other than oil ... "he shakes his head. "We will have a very big problem. Water is the main source of life. It would be a catastrophe.
Dubai only has enough water to last a week. There is almost no storage. We do not know what will happen if our supplement fails. It would be very difficult to survive."
Global warming, he adds, makes the problem even worse. "We are building all these artificial islands, but if the level of the seas rises, they will disappear, and we will lose a lot. The designers continue saying that everything is fine, that they have taken it into consideration, but I'm not sure."
Is the Dubai government worried about all this? "There is not much interest in these problems," he tells me sadly. To just stand, the average Dubai resident needs three times more water than the average human. In the coming century of lack of water and a transition from fossil fuels, Dubai is uniquely vulnerable.
I wanted to understand how the government of Dubai would react, so I decided to observe how it has done with an environmental problem that currently exists - the pollution of its beaches.
A woman - an American, working in one of the big hotels - has written in a lot of online forums, arguing that it was wrong and getting worse, so I called her to arrange a meeting. "I can not talk to you," he told me seriously.
Not even off the record? "I can not talk with you". But I do not have to put your name ... "You are not understanding me. This phone is tapped. I can not talk to you, "he replied harshly and shortly.
The next day I appeared in his office. "If you reveal my identity, I will be sent on the first plane out of this city"He says, before starting to walk slowly with me on the beach. "It started like this.
We started receiving complaints from the people who used the beach. The water looked and smelled funny, and they started to get sick after getting into it. So I wrote to the health and tourism ministers, and I expected to hear from them immediately - but nothing happened. Silence. Hand deliver the letters. Nothing yet.
The quality of the water worsened more and more. The guests began to see sewage, condoms and sanitary napkins floating in the sea. So the hotel ordered its own water analysis from a professional company.
"They told us that it was full of fecal matter and bacteria too numerous to count." I had to start telling the guests not to get in the water, and because they had arrived in the beach season, as you can imagine they were quite angry.
" She started to write furious post on the Foreigners discussion forums - and people began to realize what was going on. Dubai had expanded so rapidly that its sewage treatment facilities could not cope.
The sewage disposal trucks had to stand in line for 3 to 4 days in the treatment plants - so instead of doing that, they were simply drilling the drains and throwing the sewage and untreated water into them, so that flowed directly to the sea.
Suddenly, it was an open secret - and the municipal authorities finally recognized the problem. They said they would fine the truckers. But the quality of the water did not improve: it turned black and stale. "It has chemicals. I do not know what it is. But this substance is toxic."
She continued to claim - and started receiving anonymous phone calls. "Stop embarrassing Dubai, or your visa will be canceled and you will be expelled," they said. She adds: "Foreigners are terrified to talk about anything.
A critical commentary in the newspapers and deport you. So, what was I supposed to do? Now the water is worse than ever. People really get sick. Eye infections, otitis, stomach, itching. Look! "There are stools floating on the beach, in the shadow of one of the most famous hotels in Dubai.
"What I learned about Dubai is that the authorities do not give a damn about the environment," he says, enduring the stench. "By God, they are throwing toxins into the sea, the main tourist attraction.
If there are environmental problems in the future, I can tell you how they are going to deal with them - deny that something is happening, cover it, and continue as usual until it is a total disaster ". As he speaks, a sand storm roars around us, as if the desert were trying, slowly and insistently, to recover their lands.
X. False Plastic Trees
On my final night at Disneyland Dubai, I stopped on my way to the airport, at a Pizza Hut that is next to one of the endless, wide and open roads. It is identical in all respects to one near my apartment in London, even the vomit colored decoration.
My mind is saturated and distracted. Maybe Dubai impressed me too much, I think, because here the entire global distribution chain is condensed. Many of my assets are made by semi-slave populations, desperate for a change, 2,000 miles away; is the only difference here, they are only 2 miles away, and sometimes you get to see their faces? Dubai is the Fundamentalist Globalization of Markets within a City.
I ask the Filipino girl behind the counter if she likes it here. "It's okay," he says cautiously. Really? I insist I can not stand it. She sighs with relief and says: "This is the most terrible place! I hate it! I was here for months before I realized it - everything in Dubai is false.
Everything you see The trees are false, the employment contracts are false, the islands are false, the smiles are false - even the water is false! "But she is trapped, she says. She is indebted to come here, so she is stuck for 3 years: an old story at this point. "I think Dubai is like an oasis. It is an illusion, not real. You think you've seen water in the distance, but once you get close and you only get a bit of sand."
When he says this, another client enters. She forcibly changes her face in a wide and empty Dubai smile and says: "How can I help you tonight, sir?"
None of your arguments justify the exploitation of laborers. Employers always have to abide by the International Labor Standards, no matter what. A person’s implied agreement towards mistreatment can’t be an excuse.
Choosing to do something and willing to do it are two completely different things. Just because someone chooses to be a slave, you can’t make him your slave as choices are always derived from external factors.
Like, a poor Bangladeshi working for a rich man in Qatar, forced to pull 14 hour days, can’t complain as he would be expelled without given his due salary and left unemployed, or to be worst framed in wrong charges.
I speak from experience. Iv lived there many years and know people from all all walks of life who continue to live there. People in low paying jobs too who refuse to come back to their native countries. For a large large chunk of people from countries like Pakistan, India, Philippines, Eritrea ( just a few i could think of) Dubai has been a boon that put their kids through school and gave thrir families a more than decent living standard.
Dubai is called “FAKE”. Because under the 800metre skyscrapers are exploited migrant workers that haven’t seen their family in years and live in horrendous conditions.
This is so strange- Dubai has wealth, resources, oil yet they choose to use it to build glitzy projects just to get into the Guiness World Record book? Boost the nation’s ego? Instill patriotic pride? There are thousands of other ways money can be used to improve Dubai, e.g. Stop exploiting migrant workers, fix wealth inequality gap.
This was how Dubai looked like 15 years after the oil resources were found. (Dubai-1980)
Fast forwarding 33 years, the transformation is radical. (Dubai - 2013)
Lets briefly hover through the 50 year history of Dubai to find answers :
The transformation of Dubai was achieved through the revenue obtained from oil resources. Until then, population of Dubai was homogenous (though it contained a share Iranians). But the need for more workers in oil reserves extraction availed jobs, not just jobs, but plenty of jobs. Thus there was an influx of workers from foreign land, mainly India and Pakistan.
In the due course of time, the immigrant population became the majority (85% - as per survey, 2013). But it wasn’t one among the concerns of the Dubai monarch as they followed Monarchy and not a ‘democracy’.
The initial fate changer of Dubai was the oil reserves. But it being a depleting source of income that decreases in course of time, the money from oil reserves were used to build world's tallest skyscraper: Burj Khalifa, artificial islands: Palm islands, and many more man made megastructures to attract tourists.
The plan was a massive success. As of 2013, Dubai is the seventh most visited city in the world.
Dubai progressed, but they had to pay a price for it, they lost their culture. It was damn heavy price. The reason why people visit Rome, Venice and Varanasi is the cultural heritage and historical significance of these places. But not Dubai, the attractions of Dubai are mainly man made megastructures, which indeed makes it soul less city.
But to call Dubai fake is disparaging.
Dubai is not fake, but different, habibi.
Image credit - cnbc
0 Comments