December 14, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Dubai Grows Up
By CLAUDIA PUGH-THOMAS

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

THE morning after the United Arab Emirates turned 38, the streets were deserted but for the foreign workers dressed in orange coveralls. They swept the confetti from Dubai’s beach road, wiped Silly String from the lenses of the traffic cameras and retrieved the carcasses of rockets. Long gone were the crystal-encrusted Hummers and Escalades that had paraded up and down in their finery. A cacophony of horns and cheers and firecrackers had filled the night; now everything was quiet.

Abandoned near a bus stop, one S.U.V. still bore the signs of Dec. 2’s celebration: heart-shaped green stickers peppered the hood, streamers in the national colors fluttered at the rear window, the windshield was plastered with an image of Dubai’s ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. His hundred-yard stare is meant, one imagines, to convey the impression of a man gazing at the glorious realization of his vision. But as the emirate teeters on the brink of economic meltdown, Sheik Mohammed’s enigmatic expression seemed more like the look of a man who is seeing his dream rapidly turn sour.

At 38, the brashest, and best-known, of the seven emirates is facing something of a midlife crisis. She has lost the blind optimism of her youth, when the oil rush brought Mercedeses and McDonald’s drive-throughs to the desert, but she has yet to gain the wisdom of old age. Despite constant, furious reinvention and desperate attempts to direct the world’s focus to her door — Come see the world’s tallest tower! A fountain visible from space! A shopping mall that sprawls across 12.1 million square feet! — this city is in danger of losing her oxygen. Without positive publicity, Dubai ceases to exist meaningfully on the world stage.

And if the money really is gone, there will be a significant demographic shift within the expatriates who constitute the majority of the population. We all come here for the money. Some choose to stay for the lifestyle, some for the lack of a better alternative. Many see life in Dubai as a welcome break from civic responsibility; the expat can skim the surface, cream off the good, ignore the bad, live the dream. As long as there’s an economy to speak of. If that fails, you have to leave. No work, no visa, goodbye.

All summer there were reports of cardboard-box shortages and serried ranks of dusty vehicles abandoned at the airport’s international terminal; there were telephone calls from concerned friends and family: “Are you O.K.?” “When are you coming home?” In the air hung the expectation that thousands would leave to ride out the global recession back in their country of origin. Surely, with the end of the academic year, families would pack up their possessions and head off.

But the fact is, many Western expatriates are less capable of escape than they like to believe. They now consider Dubai to be home, for better or worse. They have opened bank accounts and started businesses; they have mortgages on houses in incongruously named developments like the Springs, the Lakes, the Meadows. They are tied to the fate of Dubai as a viable business hub, and if they leave, they stand to lose everything.

So the registrars at the myriad schools catering to European expats say that their waiting lists are still long, their classrooms at capacity. And the mothers gathered in the playgrounds to pick up their children talk of things other than the economy — plans for Christmas, the change in the weather, Rihanna’s New Year’s concert in Abu Dhabi.

Their husbands have reassured them that it will be quite all right. It’s not as bad as has been reported, they say. All countries have financial problems. America’s debt is bigger than Dubai’s. Britain’s economy is in freefall. What we need to do is be optimistic. Abu Dhabi, Dubai’s wealthier, more conservative neighbor, will bail out the prodigal son. And where are you getting your turkey from this year?

Yet there are, behind the glittering facade of marble and the bright masses of bougainvillea, signs of change that are getting harder and harder to ignore. The for-rent signs that last year would have vanished in a flash as thousands came to set up a new life here now hang askew from villas and apartment blocks. Twelve months ago, you paid what you had to even if the landlords were doubling the rent overnight, but if you’re looking to move now, you can haggle, get the bathroom fixed, update the kitchen, knock thousands of dirhams off the asking price.

With the dust storms that move in this time of year, it’s hard to discern which half-constructed tower is actually still being developed and which has been abandoned. Only a matter of months ago, whole swaths of the city — the older parts, some dating back a whole 10 years — were destined for destruction; now dowdy bungalows are being repainted, reappointed and put back on the market. Behind plywood hoardings advertising the latest “integrated community” there is nothing but leveled sand.

What has undeniably changed is the relationship between the local population and the expats. It has always been an uneasy one, the inherent tensions manifest only when an accident on the road occurs and the foreigner is assumed to be in the wrong. Part of this strain is surely growing resentment that the boom, in which Western expats played such a pivotal role, is now over. We might rue the collapse and suffer the economic consequences, but our sense of national identity has not been undermined by Dubai’s rapid demise; we were just along for the ride. For the locals, there is no alternative, no moving on, not ever. The next generation of Dubaians stands to inherit a ruined legacy.

The emirate’s Islamic identity has also suffered over the past decades. How could it be otherwise? Dubai welcomed expatriates from Jersey to Japan, Ethiopia to Estonia — but turned a blind eye to the ills that such a multicultural, transitory mix can spawn, at least until that rootless diversity threatened to become the emirate’s defining trait. The locals complain, rightly in some cases, of a lack of respect for their religious sensitivities, while simultaneously openly embracing many of the less desirable elements of the secularized West.

So we, the foreign workers, are now chastised for our failure to integrate, to engage with local culture and heritage. We are urged to assimilate as best we can. “With what?” is the question. There is no need to speak Arabic in daily life; there is little indigenous culture to explore.

Last week, there was some confusion over what food my children should take into school for the National Day festivities. What exactly is local cuisine? If this were a wedding it would be roasted camel hump. But the supermarket does not stock camel, and as Dubai borrows heavily from Lebanese, Egyptian, Indian and Pakistani cuisine, it is hard to identify what dish is uniquely Dubaian. To feed a class of 7-year-olds, we yielded to the inevitable appeal of cupcakes, iced and decorated with Christmas sprinkles. In festive red, white and green, they lacked only something black to pass as representing the colors of the national flag.

Dubai has become what it is today partly through defiance of normal expectations: here are islands shaped like palm trees, the world’s only seven-star hotel, the world’s richest horse race. But the result is a place that lacks coherence, both physically and psychologically. In many ways, it resembles a glorified film set, awaiting the arrival of the swashbuckling hero to tie all the loose strands together and give this fantasy some credibility. But this most unconventional of places is not immune to reality. How Dubai negotiates this rite of passage will determine whether it will ever be taken seriously. That we are being told this is all just negative publicity, merely a marketing blip, is not a promising sign.

Meantime, the malls are decked with Christmas trees and tinsel. We are reminded to dress modestly as we shop for artificial snow at the indoor ski slope before stopping to watch the roller-skating penguins or to sip a hot chocolate in front of an open fire provided courtesy of a wall-mounted projector. The malls still hum on the weekends and if the shops are offering discounted items, who is to say whether it’s a seasonal affair or a barometer of economic collapse?

Claudia Pugh-Thomas is a writer.