Dubai

Ejo #17 – A Response to A. A. Gill’s Dubai-Bashing Article in Vanity Fair

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A couple of weeks ago there was a little bit of controversy surrounding a Vanity Fair article written by Scottish restaurant critic A. A. Gill. It was a piece that rather viciously attacked the city of Dubai – but that in itself isn’t what caused the scandal. It was the fact that the article had been removed from copies sold in the UAE. There was, of course, the expected furore about censorship and freedom of information, blah blah blah. But when asked about it, the UAE censorship committee shrugged their shoulders and said, “It wasn’t us!”. A theory has evolved that, in fact, Conde Nast (the publisher of Vanity Fair) was responsible for ripping out the “offending” article from copies sold in the UAE in order to drum up publicity for the story.  If so, bravo, because it worked – it was a form of viral marketing that has stirred up far more discussion about A. A. Gill’s work than had it been just another Dubai-bashing story.

If you are interested in reading the article, you may do so HERE.

And if you are interested in reading my response to it, you may do so here:

Dear A. A. Gill,

This letter is addressed to you but it is not, in fact, directed towards you at all because I know that it would fall on deaf ears.  Based on this, and previous articles you have written, you don’t really care about anything except creating a fuss.  Congratulations, you have, yet again, succeeded in offending an entire city (if not country) and its inhabitants.  What a shame that this was actually your goal and that the tools you employed to do so included bigotry, bitchiness and bullying.

If I thought that you would actually be open to feedback and discussion then yes, I would write this for you.  However I don’t.  And thus, I am writing it for anyone who may have read your article and taken it at face value – which, admittedly, it would be easy to do as it reads just like a real article from a real travel journalist.  What most people may not realise is that you are actually just a restaurant reviewer and TV critic.  It seems that these days anyone with a passport and a pen can pose as a travel writer.  I promised myself I would not use against you the fact that you have such severe dyslexia that all your work is done by dictation, so I shall not.  I will, however, rephrase my previous sentence: It seems that these days anyone with a passport and a Dictaphone can pose as a travel writer.

Having read some of your previous scathing travel reports it would appear that being offensive is your ‘bit’.  Well done for having found something that you’re good at (and kudos to you for getting paid for it).  But let’s be honest, it’s not very nice, is it?  And even more importantly, it means that not much of what you write is actually very accurate (it’s a bit harder to be controversial when you have to stick to the facts, isn’t it?).  So, I guess the only problem I really have with your article is that it is being touted as non-fiction when it is nothing more than a deliciously nasty short-story.

For the clarification of your readers, and mine, I will now address a few of the many fallacies in your story (I don’t have the time or the inclination to correct them all).  Let’s start with the first sentence: “The only way to make sense of Dubai is to never forget that it isn’t real.”  The city I have chosen to adopt as my home town is not, as you go on to say, a fable.  Nor is it a fairy tale.  How silly of you to say so.  Of course it’s real.  It’s as real as New York, London, Edinburgh, Melbourne or Singapore.  People live here, work here and play here.  There is an art scene, a stock exchange, several universities, efficient public transport and even a burgeoning film industry.  Approximately 5 million people choose to live here and about 50 million people a year pass through this so-called “imaginary” city.  They demand (and receive) an infrastructure that solidifies it as very real indeed.  So while it sounds really good to start your story off by calling Dubai a “fairy tale”, let’s agree that it’s not true and move on.

You say that Dubai can’t buy a culture of its own.  I shall concede that argument while pointing out that perhaps it isn’t trying to.  Culture can’t be bought anyway.  Culture is grown, earned and nurtured over time.  Dubai, as a city, hasn’t had the time to attain what you refer to as “culture”.  Its history goes back only about 30 years; I challenge you to find any 30 year old you could describe as being cultured.  In that short time though, it’s gone from a small, but thriving, pearling and fishing port village to the bustling metropolis you see today.  It has never been, as you assert, inhabited by a “handful of tented families herding goats and shooting each other”.  I believe that the families you are referring to are Bedouins (from which the majority of locals in Dubai do not actually originate).  And as for your reference to them shooting each other, I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.  My guess is that you’re just trying to be inflammatory.  More silliness.

Let’s continue.  You state that Dubai’s economy is maintained by oil rich families.  Not so.  Yes, these families do exist, of course.  But Dubai, unlike Abu Dhabi, doesn’t have a huge amount of oil.  As a result they’ve had to work for their money and they’ve done that by creating an international city with first class facilities to entice tourists.  The economy is driven by those 50 million travellers that pass through each year.  And the reason they come is that a member of one of those rich families, Sheikh Mohammed (the Ruler of Dubai), realising that the emirate’s meagre oil supply would be insufficient to feed the growth of the city, invested that money in making Dubai a destination city; making it attractive to tourists; making it a beautiful, strange oasis in the middle of the desert.

And guess what, it worked.  The tourists came and they had a good time.  And yes, some people, including David and me, decided to move here.  Not because we are, as you say, “mercenaries” or “parasites”.   Sure the tax free salary was a contributing factor in our decision but the reality is that we don’t actually make that much more money here than back home.  The primary reason for moving was to take up the opportunity to work abroad.  The options were Dubai or Ireland and I don’t like the cold.  The secondary reason was adventure.  We love to travel and compared to Australia, geographically, Dubai feels like the centre of the world.  In the two and a half years we’ve been here we’ve been overseas nine times and have another three trips planned for 2011.  We simply could never have enjoyed this lifestyle back home.  The money came much further down the list.  So as easy as it is for you to call western expats “greedy sycophants”, in our case (and several others) it simply isn’t true.

Next, you claim that Emiratis are “born retired” and are unable to “even change a fuse”.  I know for a fact that you must not know any Emiratis otherwise you couldn’t make such ridiculous statements.  I do have the pleasure of knowing a handful, and the truth is that they do have to work, and they are actually good at what they do.  Not all of them are born rich and not all of them have been rendered useless by a menagerie of servants.  Yes, people like that do exist but they are not representative of the entire nationality.  Broad statements like that are usually referred to as being “racist”.  Please be careful Adrian.

Finally, I’ll address your crude statement that the Burj Khalifa is a “monument to small-nation penis envy”.  I wonder what kind of envy you suffer from to make such an observation.  Phallic-centric, much??  The Burj Khalifa wasn’t built out of any kind of envy.  It was built as a monument of beauty and incredible architecture.  A feat of modern engineering.  I look upon this building from my living room window every day and I honestly think it is an amazing structure.  As a resident of the city I am very proud of it.  Were the Eiffel Tower, St. Paul’s Cathedral or the Sydney Opera House built because their designers had small willies??  I don’t think so.  All of these buildings may be considered ostentatious too if you look at them through your mud coloured glasses.  What they do all have in common is that they were built by people who had a dream to create something memorable, lasting and unique.  The Burj Khalifa is an incredible achievement; a testament to human endeavour and vision.  I defy anyone to stand before it and not feel some sense of awe.  You don’t have to admit that you felt it Mr. Gill, but I bet that you did.

It seems almost naive of me to even bother writing this response to your article.  I’m sure you’re not even invested enough in what you wrote to care what people think.  I debated with myself whether writing this letter would be falling into the trap of doing exactly what you wanted me to do.  In the end I decided that even if that was the case, I didn’t mind.  I had to respond.  Dubai is very far from perfect and you did actually make a couple of salient points regarding the city’s terrible human rights record.  The treatment of construction workers here is abysmal.  It’s getting better but the process is frustratingly slow and, unfortunately, I can’t see an improvement of the situation in the near future.  But you didn’t write about it in order to find a solution.  You did so for entertainment and that, sir, is just as despicable as the act itself – if not more so because, indeed, you have a platform to bring attention to the plight of the labourers in order to effect a change for the better.  To help them.  Instead, you chose to use it only as a means of belittling the city.  Shame on you.

Dubai is certainly a strange creature, and most definitely not to everyone’s liking.  Anyone who reads my ejos knows that there’s lots about it that really annoys me too.  But it doesn’t deserve to be lambasted by the likes of you.  Leave the lambasting to people who live here and know it intimately and can complain about the real issues.  You, almost certainly, visited here with the intention of being mean and looking for faults.  Sure it makes a great article, but you know what A. A. Gill?  If that’s the way you go through life, I imagine you’ll be unhappy wherever you find yourself, and all I can feel for you is pity.

Ejo #13 – My Life As An Air Traffic Controller at Al Maktoum International Airport and Introducing You To Dangerous Doug

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OK, I’ve had writer’s block.  To be honest, I’ve never really been able to write very easily when I’m employed as an Air Traffic Controller.  Perhaps that’s just an excuse, or maybe it has something to do with how I need to use the different sides of my brain.  Let’s go with the latter (though we all know it’s almost definitely the former).  There’s nothing like a bit of self-denial to get the ball rolling anyway.  But at least it’s rolling.

So, most of you know that I’m employed as an ATC at Al Maktoum International, the new airport in Dubai.  Some of you are aware that the airport has had a most unillustrious beginning.  Meaning that so far there’s been virtually no air traffic.  Before the airport actually opened we were warned of (and dismayed at the prospect of dealing with) only 60 movements a day.  And no, a movement (in this case anyway) has nothing to do with going to the toilet.  It refers to the number of times an aircraft uses the runway.  So an aircraft that lands at midday and then takes off two hours later counts as two movements.  So 60 is not very many considering that when I left Melbourne Tower we were handling 500-600 a day.  And it’s absolute peanuts compared to what David handles at Dubai International Airport – over 900 a day and creeping towards a grand.

So sure, the thought of 60 movements a day was somewhat disheartening.  But the reality has eventuated as even more depressing.  Honestly, the most movements I’ve ‘controlled’ in a single shift has been about eight.  Which is why (you may have noticed) I’ve not once referred to myself as ‘working’ as an ATC but rather as being ’employed’ as one.  There’s a vast difference.

Still, I am employed.  And the fact is that one day Al Maktoum International is slated to be the largest airport in the world (of course!).  It will have five parallel runways and be capable of processing 160,000,000 passengers a year.  That’s a lot.  But really, that reality is a long way off, and so I have been confronted with the question of, “What should I do with my time?”.  I started off whiling the hours at work away by playing solitaire on the computer.  Not very productive and it got very boring, very quickly.  So I decided to do a little bit of self-education (and make a bit of money hopefully) by studying investing.  You know, so that I could be more informed about dabbling in the stockmarket.  Well, what I learned is that I shouldn’t dabble in the stockmarket.  I also managed to learn a few other valuable bits of info though; enough to actually feel comfortable investing in equities for the first time in my life.  I am now the proud owner of a (very) small percentage of a few banks and a mining company.  Thrilling.  Now I just have to hold onto the shares that I’ve bought and in about 30 years I’ll have made my fortune.  But that still doesn’t answer my question of what to do in the meantime???

I decided, dear friends, that rather than do a course by correspondence (which is an idea I seriously flirted with), what I would do is snuggle up to my other dear old friends, words.  And I would, once more, make a serious attempt at writing something fit for publication.  So now, what I have is an idea to work on, plenty of opportunity (with the added bonus of being paid to do it), the equipment (a desk has finally arrived in the tower break room), a New Year’s Resolution to have the first draft of a book finished by the end of 2011, and absolutely NO MORE EXCUSES.

Wish me luck (again) please.

Oh, before I bid you all adieu, I have been reminded that in my last ejo I promised you all a funny story.  OK then, here it is:

I work with a wonderfully weird (and simply lovely) guy called Doug.  I want you all to get acquainted with Doug because he is the protagonist at the centre of countless strange and bizarre experiences and stories, which I would like to share with you over time.

Anyway, Doug is a never-married (but twice-engaged) gentleman in his fifties, though he doesn’t look that old as he takes very good care of himself.  Saying that though, I must also point out that Doug has absolutely no ego whatsoever.  He’ll always be the first to laugh at himself in any situation (and trust me, there are many, many situations).  I want to be as frank as possible here: the man is a poo magnet.  If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong when Doug is around, and furthermore it will go wrong in spectacular fashion.

To wit:  One day, several years ago, Doug was in his apartment (in Sharjah, a UAE emirate) making a late night cheese and tomato sauce sandwich (gross, right?).  Anyway, while making his midnight snack he was watching a show on TV, something related to surgery (possibly Dr. 90210 – I don’t really know).  Now, I’m not sure if Doug already knew that he had a tendency to faint at the sight of blood, or if it was a trait that he discovered that very night.  Suffice to say, he saw some blood on the TV show and fainted at the sight of it, and in doing so he dropped the knife to the kitchen floor.  Also on his way down, he banged his head on the kitchen bench knocking himself out cold for the next fifteen minutes.

What happened in that fifteen minutes reads like some kind of screwball comedy but I promise you all of it is true.  His downstairs neighbour (who’d been taking a bath when she heard the thump as he hit the floor like a sack of spuds), jumped out of the bath, into a robe and ran upstairs to see what the matter was.  She knocked frantically on the door and after getting no response she flung the door open, only to find Doug on the floor in the kitchen, unconscious, with blood pouring out of the wound in his head where he’d struck it on the bench.  She immediately rang for an ambulance, which turned up a short time later with a couple of police officers in tow.

The cops took one look at the scene: an apparently dead man on the floor with blood gushing out of his head, a red spattered butcher’s knife flung across the kitchen floor and a badly shaken, half naked, female neighbour in hysterics.  They quickly concluded the obvious.  The neighbour had murdered Doug.  She was promptly arrested.

Then, to shake things up a bit, Doug started regaining consciousness and protesting his neighbour’s innocence.  This, contrary to what you might imagine, did not actually help things.  What it did was lead the cops to wonder why this lady had tried (albeit failing in the attempt) to kill Doug and they came up with the only logical solution.  He must have tried to rape her.  It makes sense.  She was scantily clad, he tried to rape her, she defended herself by stabbing him in the head with a knife.  The case was all wrapped up.  And so, they arrested him too.

The two of them were then taken to the police station to be booked with their respective charges amid increasingly hysterical declarations of innocence that were only heeded once a senior police officer took the time to examine the knife more closely and discovered that the red stuff was indeed just tomato sauce and not Doug’s blood after all.  Both were let off with a warning (oh yes!): they should not have been alone in the house together as they were neither married nor related by blood.

Sharjah Police: 1, Doug: 0.

Next time I’ll relate how Doug managed to even-steven the score.  Til then, I wish you all a fabulous Xmas and I hope 2011 brings you all abundant joy, health and happiness.

Kiss

Chryss

PS David says hi!

Ejo #11 – Greetings & Salutations in Dubai and Bachelor Boys

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There is something which happens in Dubai which, even though it is initially amusing and almost flattering, occurs so frequently that eventually you get used to it and even actually come to expect it.  I am talking about the phenomenon of being called Ma’am and Sir.

Everywhere you go in this city waiters, retail staff, receptionists, taxi drivers, concierges, cleaning staff, gardeners, nurses… everyone in the service industry, calls you Ma’am and Sir.  It’s such a frequently used salutation that they’ve actually inadvertently created a new word: Ma’amsir.

Because David and I go out together often, we hear this one all the time:

“Hello Ma’amsir, would you like to sample our new beef bacon?”

“Ma’amsir, are you enjoying your free-flowing champagne?”

“Good afternoon Ma’amsir, may I spray you with Britney Spears’ new fragrance?”

When I say you get used to it and come to expect it, I don’t mean to say that I actually like it.  Only that I become so accustomed to hearing it that when we travel overseas and I don’t hear it, it seems odd.  For about five seconds.  Then I rapidly re-enter normality and forget about it until we get back to Dubai and are immediately subjected to it before we even leave the airport (duty free beckons you know).

It has become such an expected part of being greeted here that I have a funny little story to share.  In the early days of our move here, David and I discovered a lovely little Japanese restaurant close to our home and had lunch there a couple of times, making friends with the staff.  The third time we went, we were warmly greeted by our favourite waitress, Apple, who took us to our table.  After a quick chat to catch up on what we’d all been up to she asked us our names.  I told her my name was Chryss – she giggled and said, “Ah, Miss Chryss” (it rhymes you see).  She then asked David’s name, to which he responded, “Sir David”.  No-one else batted an eyelid but I nearly fell off my chair laughing at his audacity.  Anyway, next time you see my wonderful husband, you know how to properly address him.

Another time, I went into a gourmet chocolate shop to buy a gift for David (I’m a good wife, aren’t I?).  As I entered the store, a delightful Russian male shop assistant greeted me with, “Welcome Ma’amsir”.  I was momentarily confused thinking that he might be addressing a couple that had perhaps stealthily entered the store behind me.  But I looked around and no, I was alone.  And apparently I was also to be known as Ma’amsir.  I don’t know if he referred to me as that because he was so used to using that salutation that it just popped out without him thinking, or if he just didn’t really know what the hell Ma’amsir was but had been trained to say it whenever a customer entered the store.  Either way I was amused.  And no matter how silly it does get, it sure beats being greeted with, “Whaddaya want?”.

There is another cultural phenomenon that occurs here which takes a little getting used to.  Two points to make before I go into it are that a) homosexuality is strictly forbidden in the UAE, and b) public displays of affection between a man and a woman (even if they are married) is frowned upon.  Between an unmarried man and woman, it is absolutely prohibited.  And here comes the twist.  We’ve noticed that amongst the labour workers in Dubai (the majority of whom are from the sub-continent) it is not unusual, it’s even common, to see two (or more) men holding hands or walking down the street with their arms draped around each others’ shoulders or waists.  If they’re sitting waiting for a bus, perhaps one can be seen caressing the other’s arm or leg.  And when the construction workers have their on-site afternoon nap, it is not uncommon to see them laying close next to each other.  Spooning even.

Now personally, I don’t see anything wrong with that EXCEPT that if David and I were to lay down that close (say in a park – yes, such things do indeed exist in this concrete jungle) we would risk being arrested, charged with indecency and possibly (if they wanted to push the point), even deported.  We do occasionally hold hands in public, usually at the mall but we are always very sensitive about the Muslims around us – we are, after all, guests in their country.

Apparently, however, between two men it’s completely fine.  Some people (David among them) believe that this affection is actually a sign of homosexual love – after all, these guys live in male-only labour camps, away from their wives and girlfriends for months, even years at a time.  I don’t actually subscribe to that notion though.  I just think that they were raised in a society in which it is accepted that men are affectionate together in a platonic way.  Either way though, I must confess that it is initially quite strange to behold.  To be honest, I think it’s kinda cute to see two grown men walking down the street with their pinkie fingers interlocked.

Speaking of all the Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers – predominantly employed in the construction industry – they are given an unusual label by society.  Check this out.  They are called “bachelors”.  Whether they are married or not.  Most of these guys come out here on a labour visa and earn a pittance.  They can’t afford their own housing so they live in over-crowded labour camps.  They can’t afford their own cars so they get carted to and from work in hot, over-crowded buses.  And they can’t even dream of being able to afford to bring their wives and family to live here.  Even a visit visa is beyond their means.  So, even though most of them have wives and several children, they live and are known as bachelors.

Bachelors really are treated as bottom of the barrel citizens here.  Even on their days off, if they go to the mall to hang out, they are frowned upon because they are seen to be lowering the tone of the place.  And it’s not as if they go dressed in their construction overalls and dusty boots.  In fact, they are usually better dressed in their long sleeved shirts, belted pants, dress shoes and pomaded hair than the Australian tourist wearing a ripped t-shirt, baggy shorts and flip flops.  But still, they are eyeballed by security from the time they enter to the time they leave and I find that shameful. 

There was a big story about a year ago of a ‘bachelor’ being refused entry to a shopping mall (albeit in Saudi Arabia) simply because he was a ‘bachelor’.  What is going on there?  Segregation?  Apartheid?  Thankfully it isn’t quite that bad in the UAE and I hope it never is.

It’s time to go now – David and I are off to Australia in a couple of days for a whirlwind three week visit and I’ve got lots to do.  Next time I’ll get a bit more stuck into the whole bachelor situation in Dubai.  It’s a complex and very confronting situation and I find that it’s something that I need to work really hard at not ignoring and actually dealing with.  I promise that the next ejo won’t take as long to produce as this one did.