City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism (42 page)

Khalaf’s final caller suggests they are cowards. “People say one thing to the faces of our sheikhs and they say another thing behind their backs. Stop being hypocrites! If you have anything to say, say it to our rulers’ faces. We can’t deny that our hotels are the best, our streets are clean, everything is beautiful. Let’s not forget what our rulers have done for us.”

On a Friday in July 2008, thirty-six-year-old Michelle Palmer, a sales manager for a Dubai publisher, went to a champagne brunch at the Le Méridien hotel, near the airport. Friday brunches are a Western expat staple. While Muslims head to the mosque for the sermon, Dubai’s hotels offer buffets crammed with every delicacy imaginable: Maine lobster and raw oysters, roasts on the bone, hearts of palm, tiramisu, and all-you-can drink booze.

The brunches brim with Roman-style excess. I’ve been to a few. I usually ask a friend, by way of a joke, to direct me to the vomitorium, so I can gorge some more. Sometimes Friday brunches descend even deeper into the moral mire. The Double Decker, a British-themed bar and restaurant in the Murooj Rotana hotel, is the favorite of blue-collar Brits whose composure tends to melt when the booze arrives.

“It’s unlimited drink so people tend to get a bit loud and sometimes there’s fighting, but we have a lot of bouncers who take care of these things,” said Julio Rodriguez, a supervisor at the Double Decker. “Sometimes the police get involved. We would call them if there was a big fight with blood all over the place, or if property was being destroyed.”
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The afternoon Palmer went to brunch, she and her friends began guzzling $100-a-bottle Bollinger champagne. She met a British businessman, thirty-four-year-old Vincent Acors, who’d been in Dubai just a few days. Palmer, with a round fleshy face and black hair, told friends that she’d gotten extremely drunk and lost her sense of judgment. She and Acors departed on a Dubai pub crawl that took them to Jumeirah beach at sunset. Palmer took off her Jimmy Choo high heels and clasped them in her hand as she and Acors strolled the strand. When the police spotted them, the pair were writhing in the sand, clamped together at the hip. Britain’s
Sun
tabloid quoted a policeman as saying Palmer had straddled the prone Acors and was “moving up and down.”

The police accosted the sweaty pair. Probably because they were Europeans, the linchpin of Dubai’s tourism sector, the police let Palmer and Acors off with a warning. They told the couple to uncouple and left them on the beach. When the officers returned, they found they’d only briefly interrupted their lovemaking. Palmer and Acors were back at it. They strode up and forcefully told the drunken Brits to stop. This time
Palmer lashed out with a high-heeled pump at one of the cops. The police immediately arrested the pair. They woke up in jail with cracking hangovers, facing six years in prison. A few months later, a judge sentenced them both to three months in jail, followed by deportation.

The press picked up the story and it boomeranged between the UAE and England. UAE papers focused on a clampdown on carnal post-brunch behavior. Police combing the beaches arrested more than seventy people for lewd acts. British tabloids veered toward outrage at Dubai for subjecting paying tourists to Muslim-style punishments over a harmless tryst. As the story picked up steam, the pair seemed to lose sympathy at home. Most observers seemed to think it was funny. A few Britons were quoted saying they wished their English bobbies had the nerve to clamp down on such behavior.

It wasn’t the first time Dubai’s amorous beachgoers got themselves arrested. A couple months earlier, police arrested a Lebanese woman and her lesbian lover, a Bulgarian woman, after beachgoers at Mamzar Park dialed 911. “The Lebanese woman was lying atop the Bulgarian and the two were cuddling and kissing each other in front of us,” a witness told police. The two women got a month’s jail and deportation.
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Drunken tourists having public sex was not what Sheikh Mohammed had in mind in 1985 when he proposed that Dubai build a tourism industry. These stories give Emiratis the feeling that their country has been overrun by foreigners with whom they have little in common. They also stoke opposition to the Maktoums’ development choices that fuel immigration. Just before the beach romp, an e-mail circulating in the UAE pleaded with Western women to dress more modestly. The message, titled “Modesty=Respect,” described offensive scenarios including Emirati men emerging from prayer at the Jumeirah mosque to encounter bikini-clad women walking to the beach. The e-mail urged women to wear midlength skirts and cover their “chest, bosom, back, thighs and knees.” The author also warned that Westerners shouldn’t misjudge Arab women as backward because of their modest dress.

“One of the effects of sun-and-sand tourism is that it starts bringing in the kind of excessive behavior that we’re seeing,” says government adviser Yasar Jarrar. The city learned that it can’t pick the tourists who visit, but rather it is they who pick Dubai. “When you open the gates to a sector like tourism, you get a lot of side effects.”

Emiratis are liberal by Gulf standards, but sex before marriage is
against the law and the rules of society. Marriages are typically brokered by the mother and sisters of a young man, who approach the parents of an eligible bride, usually without the girl’s knowledge. In more liberal families, typically those of the Persian
Ajam
, there may be courtship between the man and the target of his affection. But many Dubai couples meet for the first time just before their wedding. There is no kissing, no handholding. Premarital meetings are monitored by parents. The only kissing done in public is by men, who give each other pecks on the cheek or, even more traditionally, rub noses. Even married couples don’t kiss in public.

Many locals feel that European women are deliberately insulting them by romping in malls with bulging cleavage and bare legs. “Some of it has to be deliberate. The skirt is so short you can see their underwear,” says Hamda bin Demaithan, a twenty-one-year-old Emirati who usually wears the conservative
niqab
, a piece of black cloth covering her face. “There are limits to how much we can take. Because of this a lot of old people don’t go to the mall anymore.”

The British beach frolic turned out to be a milestone. It turned up Muslim heat up against Western excess. But it also delivered a message that the Dubai expatriate gravy train is too good to allow a few degenerates to spoil. There was a call for self-control.

“What happened on the beach is the tip of an iceberg of contempt. It’s jeopardizing the tolerance of the UAE and the Muslim community,” says Eddie O’Sullivan, who heads the Dubai office of the
Middle East Economic Digest
. “It’s tarred everyone here. It isn’t the police or the government that needs to deal with it. It’s got to be the British community saying, ‘I’m not going to have this scum.’”

Law professor Mohammed al-Roken has been lecturing for sixteen years about the dangers of expatriate domination. Since he began, the proportion of Emiratis in the UAE has slipped by 10 percentage points. Al-Roken thinks tolerance has run dry. It isn’t normal for passive Emiratis to give their rulers a verbal lashing on the radio. Criticism is usually done in the privacy of the ruler’s
majlis
. Even so, he says, the leadership isn’t ready to roll back the country’s liberal immigration policies.

“They don’t give a damn about the imbalance,” he says.

At Sheikh Mohammed’s Executive Office, however, advisers are devising policy to turn around the imbalance without savaging the economy. Nabil al-Yousuf, the office’s director, says the shrinking proportion of locals is Dubai’s single most pressing problem. “It’s dangerous,” he says. Then again, skilled foreigners are vital to Dubai’s bid to become a global capital. It’s a problem requiring a deft policy hand.

“Economic growth cannot be sustained by the local population. We will always need expatriates. But the balance is, we don’t want to be a complete minority in our own country and lose control,” al-Yousuf says. “There are ways to achieve both.”

The first step is to diversify foreign residents. Police chief Khalfan has publicly stated that no single ethnic group should hold a majority. The government is taking steps in this direction. Emiratis might be a minority, but as long as the other groups are also minorities, there is less danger that one will take over. In practice this means replacing Indian and Pakistani laborers with Chinese, Nepalese, Bangladeshis, and North Koreans, as well as bringing in more Arabs.

Another obvious solution is to be generous with citizenship. The UAE is studying naturalization standards in Japan, Canada, and Australia with the aim of creating qualifications and a transparent application process. Citizenship would still be tightly controlled, but open to longtime Arab residents and perhaps Iranians, Pakistanis, and others who fit. Foreign husbands and children of Emirati women are another easy source of new citizens. Also under consideration are those with valuable skills or degrees, or those with thirty or more years in the country.
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But naturalization is a taboo subject. Many Emiratis, especially those with deep tribal roots in southeastern Arabia, are against it. No one wants privileges eroded so foreigners can be granted citizenship.

What is an Emirati? Hamda bin Demaithan grew up in a Bedouin family. Her ancestors roamed the deserts around Dubai for thousands of years. Her elders still talk of the ways of the nomad, the edible plants, the intricacies of hunting, weaving tent fabric from goat and camel hair, and the ancient rituals of Bedouin hospitality. Bin Demaithan is deeply patriotic in the sense that she feels attached to the
land
of the UAE, rather than to the privilege of being a daughter of Dubai. How can a foreigner understand this?

“Citizenship is identity. That’s what I’m worried about,” she says, her green eyes shining with intensity. “What if they don’t love this land
as much as we do? I would want to live here even if there was nothing, like my ancestors did. Life was harsh. Still they stayed. It wasn’t about the economy.”

Problem is, immigration is outpacing even a sensible naturalization policy. Without democracy, there is no effective way for citizens to influence policy. “It’s a one-man show,” al-Roken says. “People need to have a say in the future of their country. That might put a brake on what’s going on. We’ll understand it’s our future, too, and we’ll plan accordingly.”

The breakneck development pace has sent cracks ripping across the city’s façade. Inflation is one of them. Dissent is another. Traffic overpowers every effort to contain it. Foreign domination is nearly total. Energy is running low. And greenhouse gas emissions are the world’s highest. Is Dubai sustainable?

Al-Roken looks out his office window.
Abras
jammed with passengers chug across the creek, as they have for a century. His mobile phone rings. He ignores it.

“No, it is not,” he says.

Can the lifestyle be maintained?

“No, it cannot.”

Sheikh Mohammed has said he could stop immigration tomorrow. That would prevent foreigners from investing and block skilled managers and technicians from filling job openings. The economy would be crushed. The boss appears to prefer to let things run their course. At the time of writing, Dubai was slowing. In an environment wracked by triple-digit real estate gains, things usually go into reverse for a while. The immigration problem was starting to fix itself. As the building boom tapered off, thousands of foreigners were leaving. The city’s strategic plan calls for further cuts in labor-intensive industries, and an emphasis on high-skill sectors. But beyond that, foreigners will always handle Dubai’s maintenance and middle management jobs, while training Emiratis to take the commanding heights.

My friend Jim and I step into the taxi after a night at the bar. Our driver is a fastidious man. He wears pressed Western clothes, a dress shirt tucked into his trousers. His gray hair is cropped and neat. His face is cleanshaven. His glasses are spotless, as is his English. He reminds me of a favorite uncle. As we get under way, I notice that his driving is as competent
as his looks. He flicks his turn signal, he keeps his distance from cars ahead of us, and he carefully overtakes other vehicles on the left. And he knows Dubai’s streets! It’s practically a miracle. Who is this guy?

I start asking questions. Quizzing cabbies became a favorite pastime since I heard a rumor that Sheikh Mohammed pays cabdrivers to report suspicious customers. I’ve yet to find one who confirms this rumor. The driver, whom I’ll call Anwar, is from Pakistan. He says he took up taxi driving three years ago after the collapse of his export business.

“I had to do the same thing once,” I tell him. It’s true. I briefly drove a cab in Brooklyn when I couldn’t find another job. Anwar, it turns out, also has a degree in political science. “So do I,” I tell him. He says he’s been living in Dubai for twenty-five years. “Twenty-five years!” I exclaim. “That makes you an old-timer. I bet you’ve seen a few things.”

Then it starts to flow. Dubai has gone way downhill since Sheikh Mohammed started his building program. “This place is such a mess now. I really can’t stand to live here anymore,” he says.

I’m startled. It’s not something you usually hear. He grumbles something about Arabs.

“Do you feel discriminated against?” I ask.

“These Arab motherfuckers. They think they’re civilized because they put on a suit. They are ruining this place. You watch. In five or six years they will fuck this place up just like they fucked up their own countries.”

Anwar says he comes from a cultivated background. His father and grandfather served in Britain’s Indian Army. Both were decorated for bravery. They lived by strict moral standards. “They were gentlemen. They knew how to behave. They treated people with respect. Not like these motherfuckers here.”

Anwar’s driving is starting to get erratic. He cranes his neck to look at Jim and me in the backseat as he rants. He nearly rams someone. I ask him to be careful. But he’s just getting warmed up. He moves on to the locals, to Emiratis, who, he says, pull rank on him anytime there is a dispute. They refuse to discuss it. No matter what the circumstances of their encounter—a traffic accident, a place in a theater queue, stepping into an elevator—he is forced to defer to them. “They say, ‘I’m a national. You are in my country. I am right.’ They treat us like shit.”