6 November 2006: Dubai City of Dreams

We arrived in the desert city of Dubai on a hot Monday morning. The simple robes and head wear of the officials that met us as we went through customs immediately captivated both Nick and me. The men dress in all white and the women dress in all black, both sexes from head to foot. The combination is alluring. People seem to float like angels.

Dubai reminds me of decorating sugar cookies at Christmastime. As a kid, when the process is still exciting and new, you spread on as much frosting as possible and then dump heaps of sprinkles of all colors and flavors. What you end up with is a bit over the top. Nice effort, but too much of a mouthful of sugar for the average Christmas visitor. Instead of cookies, imagine all sorts of shapes of land. Open sand and desert really. A blank palate, if you are artistically inclined. And the financial means to decorate it however you want. The Emiratis seem to have abandoned questions and instead flaunt ‘why not’ to every possible proposed use of the parcel. It makes for some outlandish (personal opinion) creations. Like the world’s largest indoor ski slope (in one of the world’s hottest countries), the world’s tallest building (rising a floor a day thanks to the labor of thousands of Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian workers) and exact replicas of Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower. Just incase you, like the majority of tourists, are from the UK and France and want to see what your country’s icon looks like in the middle of the desert.

I was swimming in the Gulf today when this man swam up and asked me if I had seen the world yet. I misunderstood his accent. He pointed excitedly seawards where a few ships were milling in the distance. ‘We are building the world over there’ he said. A replica of the world in islands of sand, to be exact. Rod Stewart has already bought England. A Belgian extravagant wanted to buy Belgium, but found the island too small and asked the engineers to build Belgium bigger. He was refused on the basis that you just can’t go around the world making countries bigger than they actually are. Ironically, you can build countries in Dubai in the first place.