Mirage

Well, I’m back from my jaunt. I started writing this from high above the planet en route (non-stop 15+ hours) from Dubai to SFO. (I hope you got my interim posting (sent from the plane while near Moscow).

I spent just 2-1/2 days in Dubai and the adjacent Abu Dhabi after a couple of weeks in several spots in Africa. I’ll talk more about Africa later, but here are some impressions/reflections on a brief tourist stop in the United Arab Emirates.

While both Dubai and Abu Dhabi are rich oil emirates, they each have a different feel about them. Dubai seems more splurgy and chaotic, with little sense of city planning and cohesion. Bold and brash, the implicit motto is: “Go big or go home.” The world’s tallest building, immediately adjacent to a humongous mall, with dozens of other striking towers scattered about town. There’s no road grid, and no apparent reason why buildings are placed where they are. The resulting traffic patterns are bewildering and rush-hours can be quite severe.  Abu Dhabi, in contrast, seems more coherent in its layout; if no less overwhelming in grandeur.

Dubai first. About 3-1/2 million people, almost all expats (both elites and workers) with more 5-star hotels than New York. The place oozes money and freneticism. Bold architecture yes; but it’s all so new and ungrounded in culture and place. When I say “ungrounded” I recognize that there is a strong commitment to Arabian culture and Islam, but it seems more a framework for what is essentially a cosmopolitan conglomeration of people. It’s all new: the population now is 70 times what it was 60 years ago; the vast majority are laborers from various parts of Asia. There are about as many Westerners living there (mostly in pretty posh quarters) as there are native Dubaians. Economically, oil is now a small and diminishing source of revenue, most activity is focused on construction, trade, tourism, and finance.

I have to say a few words about the Dubai Mall, adjacent to the Burj Khalifa. 1200+ stores, including over 100 restaurants and just about every brand name you can think of—both high end and mundane—not to mention an aquarium and ice rink (there’s a snow skiing resort in another mall nearby). It gets about over 250,000 visitors every day. As we wandered this seemingly endless commercial cavern, we must have passed at least six outlets for Peet’s Coffee, and several Tim Horton’s (think Canadian, donuts). It says something that these North American franchise chains as well as a spread of European brands (I’m guessing several hundred of the total Mall store count) seem to generate enough value to be so prevalent. It can’t just be the Western tourists; Tim Horton advertises that they have over 300 outlets across the Middle East.

Whew! I’m exhausted just thinking about it (and the trudging over all those marble floors was hard on the feet). Btw, did I mention that the entire country is HOT (90+; it’s the desert after all). The place couldn’t work at all without air conditioning.
 
The next day, we took an Uber (ubiquitous and easy) about 90 miles to Abu Dhabi. Our first stop was the Grand Mosque, built in 2007, it’s also spectacular and a worthy successor to the great cathedrals of Europe. The publicly-stated construction cost was over $500M, but I think that’s well understated. My favorite “fun fact” about the Mosque is the carpet in the main sanctuary (room for 7000 worshippers), it’s over 60,000 square feet and took 1200 weavers two years to construct. We ended the day in another example of grandeur: the National Palace (aka Qasr Al Watan, completed in 2017), the latest imitator of the Palace of Versailles, but in a modern, Arabic, vernacular. It succeeds on many levels, including a central dome of over 120 feet in diameter and immense grounds and outbuildings. Indeed, after trooping through these public buildings and considering the residential and hotel spaces, it’s surprising there’s much marble left to be quarried in the world.

In between, we made two stops in the emerging cultural district, anchored by a branch of the Louvre. I liked the building and the curatorial theme: the universality of art. The collection was also quite good, even if the Paris Louvre didn’t send their best stuff (only one Rembrandt and one Leonardo). Then we visited the intriguing Abrahamic Center: an important gesture towards toleration, it includes a church, synagogue, and mosque, each of the exact same dimensions; together with a shared interpretative/cultural center. It was a useful reminder that Islam (like Judaism and Christianity) comes in many flavors and the simplistic image usually portrayed in the US dominated by “radical” Islam and violence is only one part of the story.

I will conclude this highly selective travelogue by noting that the title of this blog posting is: Mirage. Coming on the heels of visits to three countries in Southern Africa (each with their own range of modernity and wealth); there was something surreal about the whole stopover. The buildings are solid enough, the food was delicious, and the luxury was tangible (if transitory); but I came away with a sense that the UAE could easily enough float away.

Was it worth seeing? Yes, but I’m glad I capped it at two days. It’s a unique corner of the world and helped—especially in contrast to my African stops—to confirm the sense of value in travel: to open my eyes to the immense range of human difference and the stunning range of physical/environments which are spread around the globe. Travel is a great spark of imagination and a deep well of humility.