The Road to Purgatory

 

On the white, sandy coast of the Arabian Gulf, where shallow, turquoise water laps gently on the never-ending, beautiful beaches is a place called Dubai. Located in the heart of the Middle East, it is marketed as a vacation paradise. Glittering, seven-star hotels rise from spectacular man-made islands, shiny new emerald courses designed by golfing legends pleasure the sporting senses, food and drink from every corner of the globe is in abundance, and traditional Arabian hospitality ensures the best of attention for every holiday-maker.

It's not only the holiday companies that are giving it the hard sell. Employment agencies dangle the carrot of year-round sunshine and a luxurious, tax-free lifestyle to people in the West and offer unbelievable, life-changing opportunities to the people in the less well-off countries of Africa and Asia. The very size and nature of the development going on ensures that Dubai is never far from the free advertising offered by features on TV news and travel channels; in newspapers and magazines. The branding exercise by the rulers is wide-reaching, with sports sponsorships by the likes of Emirates Airlines keeping the destination present in the subconscious mind.

The truth about Dubai is somewhat different to that advertised. Having lived there for 15 years, I have the experience to back this statement up. I have seen many family friends move to Dubai, solely based on what they’ve heard about it from what they’ve read. Brushing aside any word of caution from people who actually live here they come to chase the carrot dangling in front of them like a loyal but slightly dim donkey. But from the moment they arrive, they realize that the image of Dubai that they had built up in their minds was just that: an image.

This fact is evident as soon as you walk out of the doors of the airport in the middle of the night and get hit by a wall of heat akin to the blast felt when one opens an oven door to check the cake within. I experience it every summer; more so on returning home from State College, Pennsylvania where what people call ‘hot’ there is like a mild winter in Dubai terms. The summers never change, if anything it gets hotter as the years progress.

I still recall what it first felt like when I first moved to Dubai. It must have been more than thirty degrees Celsius, and it was nearly midnight. The following morning, I woke up to the haunting strains of the Call to Prayer at a nearby mosque echoing around the streets, and upon opening the window blinds, I was half-blinded by the sheer brilliance of the Arabian sun and the glare of the sandy-colored buildings, which almost seemed to amplify its heat and light.

It wasn't long before I learned that for around 5 months of the year, people are generally confined to air-conditioned surroundings - moving from the villa or apartment to the car to the office, and at the weekend to the shopping mall or the hotel. Of course, I knew there would be heat, but I wasn't prepared for the ferocity of it, or the way it didn't abate by a great deal at night-time. But people still go to Dubai all year round. I can't personally see the attraction of spending two weeks confined to a hotel, but then that's just me.

Over the years I realized that the weather was a minor disappointment when it came to the “Paradise City” image that Dubai portrayed. There were bigger and much more pressing problems. As I grew older, I saw the portrayal of Dubai peel away, like an onion and its layers, till I was left with the raw and quite disturbing truth of the situation.

The next layer of the image to fall away was the promise of a tax-free lifestyle and the resultant opportunity to live like royalty. Everyone who has moved to Dubai with the tax free incentive has been disappointed. Not only is the cost of living high but property rates, even the cost of renting is through the roof. Even the cost of education is phenomenal, equating to approximately the same cost of tuition in a reputed university. There are a dizzying number of fees and charges added here there and everywhere. Although not necessarily taxes, people still find that more money comes out of their pockets than what goes in.

I will admit that mine and the lifestyle available to the middle and upper class is good. Sumptuous brunch buffets for reasonable prices can be indulged in every weekend. When the weather isn't too hot to breathe, you can venture to pleasant, palm-lined beaches (although the number of public, free beaches is diminishing all the time as more of the coastline is swallowed by new hotels and resorts). Glamorous, sprawling shopping malls with high-end outlets and indoor ski slopes shelter you when it is too hot, tempting everyone to give the plastic a good battering, and Arabian-souq-themed resorts with idyllic - but essentially fake - surroundings enchant those who like their experiences packaged, clean and safe like a Disney movie.

Those with a more adventurous bent can explore the real souqs scattered around the Dubai Creek, with their hustle and bustle and sights and smells, selling gold, spices, textiles and what traders will unashamedly refer to as "genuine fake Rolexes". It's in these places that you start to see the true heart and nature of the place. You see what the real make-up of the city's population is. It is a society of carefully-choreographed and jealously-protected levels of wealth and power, only a few of which are openly displayed in the brochures and advertisements. It is hierarchical and then some. The Sheiks of the Maktoum family sit at the top with absolute power, and are completely unassailable and beyond criticism. They are seen as men of vision and wisdom who have brought great prosperity to the area on the back of the oil money, and, admittedly, they are building something quite unprecedented.

The non-royal locals are the next level, just above the Western expats, and then come the higher-caste, educated sub-continentals. Behind them are the service staffs, a lot of them from places in Asia, like the Philippines and India. Ethnic origin counts for everything. It is a common occurrence that after a car crash, fault is assigned based on nationality and skin color rather than who was actually to blame. There’s more however, if a driver runs over a camel, which is the national animal, they are required to pay more blood money than they would if it were a human being.

 

There are more levels in this pyramid of privilege. The poorest and lowest levels have the most people in them. When you finally become aware of them, whether on vacation or in your first few weeks of living there, you take more notice of the dirty white buses ferrying laborers all over the city and the Emirate, to the hundreds of building sites that mark their presence with spindly, towering cranes.

 

You quickly come to the realization, mostly through informal channels and word-of-mouth, that these men - generally from the poorer parts of the Indian sub-continent - are here for one thing and one thing only: Work. The affluent lifestyle is not available to them. They are here to build the place, but they aren't really welcome in any other capacity. They are turned away from the magnificent malls that they built and won't even get within 50 yards of a five-star hotel. Even in public areas they are seen as a nuisance, with public beaches becoming notorious for being ogling posts for men who have never seen a woman showing more naked flesh than her face and hands.

 

While you belt along the Sheikh Zayed road in your air-conditioned, gulf-spec car towards another hotel or mall, you spot these white buses, with their barred-over windows and dirty exhaust fumes, and you can't help but thank your lucky stars that you aren't one of the men aboard. These men stare blankly at the unreal surroundings, either on their way to work a 12-hour shift or being conveyed back to their filthy, cramped labor accommodation to eat as little as possible so they can afford to send as much of their meager earnings (US$200 a month or less) back to their families in India, Pakistan or Sri-Lanka.

 

The summer is the worst. Most people are desensitized to the common sight of these men as they drive past construction sites. Dubai never stops building, and it is usually at the expense of these men. They work in 45 degree heat, even during midday when the sun is overhead and the heat is at its peak. Most of us would faint, and people have. Yet these men continue to toil. The stains of sweat patches cover most of their blue overalls. They are not allowed to take their helmets off, even though the sweat makes their forehead itch because they would be a liability to the company should anything happen.

 

These men were enticed. They were made promises. Their dreams were exploited, and they are often trapped in this existence as unscrupulous employers hold their passports.

 

You see it all the time, newspapers will report about the living conditions in labor camps, how some employers haven’t paid the laborers for months, and god forbid if they ever try to do anything. On one occasion about 200 laborers decided to sit on Sheikh Zayed road to protest their living conditions and wages. There is a rule against striking and protesting in Dubai. You’re just not allowed to do it. Those laborers were deported and their visas cancelled.

 

Some people have observed their plight. And some have been troubled by it. It troubled me, because I realized that I was living a lifestyle at the expense of these people. Above everything else - the wafer-thin facade, the oppressive heat and the hidden costs - this was the thing that affected me most, and ultimately it contributed to my decision to leave. That's not to say I regret going there, because I don't. It opened my eyes - not just, to how things are in Dubai, but to how they are in the world at large. For me it is a microcosm of how the world works, with a few people at the top holding all the money and power, while the great majority live in poverty, often unwittingly subsidizing the lives of those above them.

 

 I now wonder if things have really moved on since the days of Egypt, when slave labor was employed by Pharaohs to construct amazing structures in the sand. But things haven’t changed; situations have forced people into a life very similar to that of slaves and now humanity is dangling by a fine thread.