10 June 2022

Dubai

Really don't know how to react to this city. Should I be impressed by its wealth and prestige? Should I ignore the enforced poverty of its minions? Those thousand construction workers toiling in an Arabian heat bleached by the desert and covering the city like the breath of an angry monster? What has been built here? An old desert city has been remodelled into the perfect capitalist sideshow. The buildings defy scale and contemporary design, being bigger, better, more modern, more designed than anything else en masse in the developed world. Arriving at our hotel, I looked up to see 2 large photo portraits of the ruling sheiks. Youngish handsome men looking clean and calibrated, wearing the traditional Arabian dress. Their extreme wealth is not questioned in this Emirate. How can I use my 'liberal' western ideas to describe a completely different world? Is this city just an impression of how modern capitalism can be drawn onto a different canvas, one that has emerged onto a global playground as an impressive imitator with only conflict as common ground. That ancient ongoing battle that looked like one religion against another, or was it more than that? Too hard to tell, just know it has become clothed in perpetual distrust. It would be ingenuous to conclude the wolf has learnt how to dress like the best of sheep. These roles have become interchangeable now.

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