In Greek mythology it was Icarus, son of Daedalus, who equipped with wings made of feathers and attached with string and wax, attempted to escape the Minotaur’s labyrinth with his father. His father warned him not to fly too near the sun for the heat would melt the wax. Icarus, ever the adolescent, was drunken with the thrill of flying and transcending the feeling of a mere mortal, of course flew too close to the sun. The wax melted, his feathered wings feel off, and well you can guess the rest of the tragic tale.
The city of Dubai could be the incarnation of that same self-destructive adolescent drunk with confidence and the misguided belief that he could do what other mortals could not. Dubai also showed a blatant disregard for every law of nature. But the tale of the golden city in the desert is much more sinister and dark than that of Icarus, despite the bright shiny skyscrapers and Mercedes.
Dubai went too far too fast, their fault being the overwhelming desire for riches beyond measure, so when the boom busted on their shores the implosion was so fast, so drastic, it sucked the air from across the desert and shattered the illusion of the glass towers.
Now that the tide has receded in Dubai, the dead bodies can be seen by the world. Without the cover of riches, the ugly side of an ancient culture glares in the desert sun. Johann Hari writes a fascinating, in-depth article on the dark side of Dubai for The Independent, a British newspaper.
It delves into a Dubai seldom seen during the boom years, populated with slave laborers, the once wealthy living out of their Mercedes and Land Rovers and prisons populated with white-collar debt-laden expats, all under the benevolent eyes of an ambitious dictator with a beautiful smile.
The world was astonished by the audacity of Dubai’s verve. Their “build it and they will come” confidence did indeed entice the world to come build it for them. And they came from every corner of the world, to collect their piece of the astonishing wealth. Can a Mecca be carved out of the desert? Dubai was Las Vegas on steroids, all an illusion.
Many of the titans of western business were partners in the real estate boom of Dubai. This may well prove to be the worst commercial real estate disaster in the world. The word “unsustainable” cannot begin to describe the Dubai economy. The over-the-top skyscrapers that were being erected, each trying to outdo the last, were an architectural landscape of superlatives, “The Largest”, “The Tallest”, “The Greenest”. The irony now is not lost on the “greening of Dubai.” Developers were creating towers touting their self-sustaining, low carbon footprint structures at the same time they were building in an environment that is likely to become an ecological nightmare. The scenario could make a most excellent science fiction disaster movie.
Another interesting aspect to Dubai’s future is an underlying threat to the closely guarded moderate Islam ideology that may come from the fervent Muslim leaders of the other Emirates members who came to the aid of bankrupt Dubai with their version of the bail-out checks. Their more conservative reins over the city could once again change the landscape of religious toleration now enjoyed by foreigners. Party’s over?
The unbelievable seedy and sinister story of a dark Dubai is heightened by the equally unbelievable height of excess that catapulted a poor Arab village into a modern day Babylonia in three short decades. Hari’s expose is truly an extraordinary journey that I encourage you to read at leisure. It is way better than fiction.
I hope I’ve convinced you to read Hari’s entire extraordinary piece. If not I’ll tempt you with what are only a few excerpts, although it seems quite a bit of the story, it is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg in the desert…
The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed – the absolute ruler of Dubai – beams down on his creation. This man has sold Dubai to the world as the city of One Thousand and One Arabian Lights, a Shangri-La in the Middle East insulated from the dust-storms blasting across the region.
… B
ut something has flickered in Sheikh Mohammed's smile. The ubiquitous cranes have paused on the skyline, as if stuck in time. There are countless buildings half-finished, seemingly abandoned. In the swankiest new constructions – like the vast Atlantis hotel, a giant pink castle built in 1,000 days for $1.5bn on its own artificial island – where rainwater is leaking from the ceilings and the tiles are falling off the roof. This Neverland was built on the Never-Never – and now the cracks are beginning to show. … Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history.
I. An Adult Disneyland
Karen Andrews can't speak. Every time she starts to tell her story, she puts her head down and crumples. She is slim and angular and has the faded radiance of the once-rich, even though her clothes are as creased as her forehead. I find her in the car park of one of Dubai's finest international hotels, where she is living, in her Range Rover. She has been sleeping here for months, thanks to the kindness of the Bangladeshi car park attendants who don't have the heart to move her on.
This is not where she thought her Dubai dream would end. Her story comes out in stutters, over four hours. At times, her old voice – witty and warm – breaks through. Karen came here from Canada when her husband was offered a job in the senior division of a famous multinational. "When he said Dubai, I said – if you want me to wear black and quit booze, baby, you've got the wrong girl. But he asked me to give it a chance. And I loved him." All her worries melted when she touched down in Dubai in 2005.
"It was an adult Disneyland, where Sheikh Mohammed is the mouse," she says. "Life was fantastic. You had these amazing big apartments, you had a whole army of your own staff, you pay no taxes at all. It seemed like everyone was a CEO. We were partying the whole time." Her husband, Daniel, bought two properties. "We were drunk on Dubai," she says. But for the first time in his life, he was beginning to mismanage their finances. "We're not talking huge sums, but he was getting confused. It was so unlike Daniel, I was surprised. We got into a little bit of debt." After a year, she found out why: Daniel was diagnosed with a brain tumour…
Read on…there is a "rest of the story."
… "The thing you have to understand about Dubai is – nothing is what it seems," Karen says at last. "Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job. They lure you in telling you it's one thing – a modern kind of place – but beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship."
III. Hidden in plain view
There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats, like Karen; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city. The Sheikh built the city.
Workers? What workers? … Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young men who build Dubai are bussed fro m their sites to a vast concrete wasteland an hour out of town, where they are quarantined away. Until a few years ago they were shuttled back and forth on cattle trucks, but the expats complained this was unsightly, so now they are shunted on small metal buses that function like greenhouses in the desert heat. They sweat like sponges being slowly wrung out. … A British man who used to work on construction projects told me:
"There's a huge number of suicides in the camps and on the construction sites, but they're not reported. They're described as 'accidents'." Even then, their families aren't free: they simply inherit the debts. A Human Rights Watch study found there is a "cover-up of the true extent" of deaths from heat exhaustion, overwork and suicide, but the Indian consulate registered 971 deaths of their nationals in 2005 alone. After this figure was leaked, the consulates were told to stop counting.
V. The Dunkin' Donuts Dissidents
… Why is the state so keen to defend this system of slavery? He offers a prosaic explanation. "Most companies are owned by the government, so they oppose human rights laws because it will reduce their profit margins. It's in their interests that the workers are slaves."
… And today? Sheikh Mohammed turned Dubai into Creditopolis, a city built entirely on debt. Dubai owes 107 percent of its entire GDP. It would be bust already, if the neighbouring oil-soaked state of Abu Dhabi hadn't pulled out its chequebook. Mohammed says this will constrict freedom even further. "Now Abu Dhabi calls the tunes – and they are much more conservative and restrictive than even Dubai. Freedom here will diminish every day."
Already, new media laws have been drafted forbidding the press to report on anything that could "damage" Dubai or "its economy". Is this why the newspapers are giving away glossy supplements talking about "encouraging economic indicators"?
… Everybody here waves Islamism as the threat somewhere over the horizon, sure to swell if their advice is not followed. Today, every imam is appointed by the government, and every sermon is tightly controlled to keep it moderate. But Mohammed says anxiously: "We don't have Islamism here now, but I think that if you control people and give them no way to express anger, it could rise. People who are told to shut up all the time can just explode."
VI. Dubai Pride
There is one group in Dubai for whom the rhetoric of sudden freedom and liberation rings true – but it is the very group the government wanted to liberate least: gays.
… Beneath a famous international hotel, I clamber down into possibly the only gay club on the Saudi Arabian peninsula. I find a United Nations of tank-tops and bulging biceps, dancing to Kylie, dropping ecstasy, and partying like it's Soho. "Dubai is the best place in the Muslim world for gays!" a 25-year old Emirati with spiked hair says, his arms wrapped around his 31-year old "husband".
"We are alive. We can meet. That is more than most Arab gays." It is illegal to be gay in Dubai, and punishable by 10 years in prison. But the locations of the latest unofficial gay clubs circulate online, and men flock there, seemingly unafraid of the police.
VII. The Lifestyle
... With the exception of her, one theme unites every expat I speak to: their joy at having staff to do the work that would clog their lives up Back Home. Everyone, it seems, has a maid. The maids used to be predominantly Filipino, but with the recession, Filipinos have been judged to be too expensive, so a nice Ethiopian servant girl is the latest fashionable accessory.
… It is an open secret that once you hire a maid, you have absolute power over her. You take her passport – everyone does; you decide when to pay her, and when – if ever – she can take a break; and you decide who she talks to. She speaks no Arabic. She cannot escape.
IX. Taking on the Desert
Dubai is not just a city living beyond its financial means; it is living beyond its ecological means. The very earth is trying to repel Dubai, to dry it up and blow it away. The new Tiger Woods Gold Course needs four million gallons of water to be pumped on to its grounds every day, or it would simply shrivel and disappear on the winds.
… Dr Mohammed Raouf, the environmental director of the Gulf Research Centre, sounds sombre as he sits in his Dubai office and warns: "This is a desert area, and we are trying to defy its environment. It is very unwise. If you take on the desert, you will lose." Sheikh Maktoum built his showcase city in a place with no useable water. None. There is no surface water, very little acquifer, and among the lowest rainfall in the world. So Dubai drinks the sea.
The Emirates' water is stripped of salt in vast desalination plants around the Gulf – making it the most expensive water on earth. It costs more than petrol to produce, and belches vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it goes. It's the main reason why a resident of Dubai has the biggest average carbon footprint of any human being – more than double that of an American.
… If a recession turns into depression, Dr Raouf believes Dubai could run out of water. "At the moment, we have financial reserves that cover bringing so much water to the middle of the desert. But if we had lower revenues – if, say, the world shifts to a source of energy other than oil..." he shakes his head. "We will have a very big problem. Water is the main source of life. It would be a catastrophe. Dubai only has enough water to last us a week. There's almost no storage. We don't know what will happen if our supplies falter. It would be hard to survive."
… The water quality got worse and worse. The guests started to spot raw sewage, condoms, and used sanitary towels floating in the sea. So the hotel ordered its own water analyses from a professional company. "They told us it was full of fecal matter and bacteria 'too numerous to count'. I had to start telling guests not to go in the water, and since they'd come on a beach holiday, as you can imagine, they were pretty pissed off." She began to make angry posts on the expat discussion forums – and people began to figure out what was happening.
Dubai had expanded so fast its sewage treatment facilities couldn't keep up. The sewage disposal trucks had to queue for three or four days at the treatment plants – so instead, they were simply drilling open the manholes and dumping the untreated sewage down them, so it flowed straight to the sea.
X. Fake Plastic Trees
… I ask the Filipino girl behind the counter if she likes it here. "It's OK," she says cautiously. Really? I say. I can't stand it. She sighs with relief and says: "This is the most terrible place! I hate it! I was here for months before I realised – everything in Dubai is fake. Everything you see. The trees are fake, the workers' contracts are fake, the islands are fake, the smiles are fake – even the water is fake!"
But she is trapped, she says. She got into debt to come here, and she is stuck for three years: an old story now. "I think Dubai is like an oasis. It is an illusion, not real. You think you have seen water in the distance, but you get close and you only get a mouthful of sand." As she says this, another customer enters. She forces her face into the broad, empty Dubai smile and says: "And how may I help you tonight, sir?"
The moral of the story? Don't fly too close to the sun and don't mess with the laws of nature.
Click here for photos from The Independent.
The Independent - Entire article - The Dark Side of Dubai
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