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Published: March 25th 2009
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One thing about working while traveling is that it quickly doesn't feel like traveling. Called into focus are the daily skills which paid for the trip, and diminished to a blurred background is the surroundings in which the work falls. A sort of office routine normalcy can dull the senses of observation.
But not to complain. I count myself fortunate to have a job and downright blessed be able to work and be located in a place where I can to have a chance to traipse into foreign territory. It's just that when people ask me why I haven't written about Dubai, this is why: I forget that there is much to report here. In truth I am guilty two months later of continuing to use Dubai as shorthand for the United Arab Emirates in the way that people from half-way around the world will mistake Hollywood for California. This is non-blogging of the worst sort of laziness. The kind that suckles the bosom of fame, riches and luxury, then balks like a rebellious teen when a ray of unwanted reality sheds its light on the need for responsible accountancy of little things like... oh geographic pin-pointing.
If I
haven't well parsed for you dear friends that I am in Abu Dhabi and not Dubai, perhaps I was waiting for name recognition to hit some target and light a spark - and this week Abu Dhabi threw the dart. The largest emerit of the UAE in which I reside bought some portion of Daimler... did you hear?
Abu Dhabi is about as far from Dubai as Santa Barbara is from Hollywood. And the similarities don't end with the local. While the names of each (from an International perspective) don't ignite the excitement of their uber-famous siblings, their standing as a habitat of choice is without question. Abu Dhabi's quiet conservatism have brought it neither the headlines nor the bankruptcy court, instead landing it solidly in the realm of where one would choose to live if balanced rather than excessive living were the priority.
Not to abuse Dubai though, it just found itself the target of idolatry last year which, by journalistic law, places it as this year's villain. Any public figure has an understanding of the higher you fly the harder the fall, and that Dubai took center stage of the Middle East Dream during the boom
years was perhaps not as much inflated ego as winning the nomination for a modern middle eastern city to step up the image of an outdated life style in the desert.
"In Dubai, nothing is worthwhile if not flashy," a new friend from Brazil who had lived there six months told me.
"It is like Rio is to San Paulo; you'd much rather live in San Paulo, but you go to Rio to party." I nodded with understanding (having never been to South America). It's a human phenomenon more than a personality of a city, build to destroy, we've been doing it since we had wooden blocks to play with.
So what is the personality of the city and country in which I now reside? This is a question I find harder to answer after two months then I did in Paris after 48 hours. Somehow it is easy to assimilate here and not quite know what the personality is, With only 800,000 locals in the emerit of Abu Dhabi, the remaining 6 million are easier to spot. Perhaps that is what all the honking is for.
"Have you ever noticed that towns with a small percentage
of foreigners user their car horns much less frequently than say drivers in New York, Mumbai or Cairo?" I asked the one local I have met here so far. "Try Palestine." He answered. I'm still not sure if that was an agreement or dismissal, but it sums up my ability to gain information about how locals feel about their homeland. Arabs appear to be amazingly tolerant.
If the locals are accepting, the laws here are very intolerant; you need a license to buy liquor and can't get one if you are Muslim or a non-resident. Of course this creates a black market which appears to be patiently overlooked as those who do have licenses are allowed to buy about a thousand dollars worth of liquor a month, and it is not uncommon to see these residents delivering boxes into cars driven by men clad in while robes. The world here arrives as upside down to me, in many ways as the current economic climate. While simple vitamins are hard to find and over the counter Sleep-Eze or No-doze outlawed, there are pharmacies on every street corner and sacred Mosques dot the interior between buildings and shopping malls. Four times
a day loudspeakers sing out in Avan or prayer. It almost becomes white noise. But in the soothing way of TV’s in a convalescent homes, comforting and sweet in the distant ceremonial chant assurin gone that lives all of sorts are going on - with or without you. Reverent in its regularity, if you are near a mosque, and everywhere in Abu Dhabi you are near a mosque, you hear the call of prayer at 6:30am, noon, 4pm and 7pm and the whole city stops (well Muslims anyway).
And yet the cities here were built for the night. In the evening after the locals arise from a short nap and have had their last calling, the city lights up. Dinner begins at 9 and clubs are empty before 11:30; but the city is lit from dusk and the streets feel fresh and alive with all that light. The cranes are lit brightly something like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree -bare but celebrated. Looking down on the rooftop pool and the cars below it the size of my thumb, I want to go out. But it is early, only 10pm, and so I stay in awhile and write to you, to
tell you what the world I find myself in feels like tonight.
As a melting pot, the UAE surpasses anywhere I have been in America. As a nation standing for freedom and self expression, that banner has red white and blue all over it. The UAE's self-identity is a push-pull of open internationality meshing with one of privacy and placidity- a Muslim world I am not invited to participate in. While over 70% of the population are ex-pat, here to assist in the mission of building and developing an infrastructure of a destination city, most of us remain on the outside, creating our own culture of "other than." This is an oddly cohesive group of people with often nothing more than in common than "I'm not staying" sort of approach to getting to know one another. An increasingly entrenched set of norms belonging to members whose vow commonly centers around the opening remarks "I am here for a year." A subtle tension underscores the separation between the temporary mass of workers and the edicts of the ruling class; a dichotomy that ruffles the nationals not in the least - accustomed as they are with their superiority of elite birthrights
as illustrated as a Burka clad Muslim women shopping alongside the ex-pat Pakistani taxi drivers while their husbands smoke in the front seats of a new Maserati or Carrera.
If it sounds like I'm an unappreciative guest, it's not the case. It seems to me that the Arabs have a stoic resolve that has been grown in adaptation to circumstance. With a heritage of flat lands, blistering heat, little water and few resources (before oil); they seem to have an appreciation for standing still in the midst of a whipping sandstorm, innately understanding that what moves quickly is, Enshallah, temporary and therefore worthy of watching it pass, rather than trying to adapt to it as a permanent landscape. A gaggle of hurried foreigners is no reason to get yourself wrapped up in their business after all. There is no history of these Arabs scurrying to far away lands, plagued by persecution or in desperate search of anything other than what Allah has given them.
For the most part, the Arab International scene, despite all of the doomsday reporting on Dubai, seems remarkably accepting of the changes wrought by the "economic downtown." Perhaps it is a practice of endurance
directed by endless months of oven temperature heat that has the natives unshaken by whatever standby the financial crisis has brought to their projects. By contrast to their calm resolve, Americans love to panic. But if you believe that the world will recover, you have to believe that Dubai will be leading the pack... or at least, following right behind Abu Dhabi, where I will reside for another few days before returning home for a few weeks to see you all and pick up such precious supplies as calcium and Sleep-eze.
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