Dubai: First Impressions of a New Transplant

I've moved to Dubai to start a new job with Al Arabiya and have recorded a few of my first impressions, from my incredulity at the amount of construction underway to the palatable feeling of segregation that permeates this new city-state I will be calling home.

I arrived in Dubai Thursday as the sun rose over the Arabian Gulf (as the Persian Gulf is known here) casting a florescent gold hue over the still waters interspersed with odd formations of man-made island. The airport was super modern and I had to do an iris-scan before going through passport control. Southeaast and East Asians and Africans dressed in bright red shirts with "May I help You?" emblazoned on their chests stood throughout the airport ready to offer the bewildered traveler assistance in English. Men in white flowing robes and headscarves intermingled with Indian women in colorful saris, Americans and Europeans in jeans and sun dresses, and Arabian women in bejeweled black hijabs in the most multicultural crowd I've ever been in.

As the taxi drove me from one side of the city to the other I got a brief taste of the city I'll be living in for the next year or so. Nearly every building boasted at least one crane, with new buildings springing up everywhere, like weeds. Skyscapers jut out of the dessert and into the smog in a surreal landscape of modernization and development at warp speed. Yet despite the astronomical amount of living space being created seemingly overnight there is apparently a dearth of available apartments for rent as I found out when I went apartment hunting yesterday afternoon. I figured I might as well hit the ground running so I made an appointment with a rental agent to see a few places. Similar to the New York real estate market, renters must go through agents to fine a place then pay 5% of the yearly rent in agency fees. But unlike New York, the renter has to pay the entire year's rent plus 5% security deposit plus 5% agency fees up front! For now my company is putting me up in an apartment hotel, which is surrounded by other - seemingly empty - residential skyscrapers and an inordinate amount of construction. Other than the construction what has impressed me most in my one day here is the friendliness and helpfulness of the people working in the service industry (with the exception of taxi drivers).

On my first day here I headed over the Mall of the Emirates, famous for it's indoor ski slopes. Now, I doubt those who have made it to Tahoe, Aspen or even Big Bear would bother to even take a spin, but to see Arab kids outfitted in poofy little snow suits for their tour down the "mountain" , their mothers clad in black abayas in tow, is quite a site. From my brief tour through one of the largest (the largest?) malls in the world I realized I need not have worried about shopping before I left the US. There are many of the same chains here and from what I can tell the prices are fairly comparable. I've never been much of a fan of malls but I suppose I'll have to learn to love them, as going to the mall is pretty much the main recreational activity from what I've heard so far. I suppose this is why people say it's hard to save in Dubai!

Yesterday I took a bus because I couldn’t find a taxi and figured why pay for a taxi when I could take the bus for 2 dirhams, or about 25 cents. I got in line and only after a few minutes did I realize that the women were queued separately from the men. After waiting outside of the air-conditioned bus (a nice, modern one, no micro-buses here) for the driver to finish his brake we were finally permitted to board, the women first followed by the men. How civilized! (Note: how different from the airport at Lebanon where the men pushed and shoved to get in front of women with children and babies in tow, now pre-boarding for them and no common courtesy). As I looked around I was once again struck by the segregation of this new society I am going to be living in. I was the only non-Asian or African. From the conversations around me I could tell that most of the women on the bus worked as maids or babysitters, most of the men appeared to be in construction.

One of the most striking things about Dubai, other than the construction, is the feeling of segregation that permeates every aspect of daily life. I feel like I am getting a taste of what it must have been like in the United States during the segregation era. Nearly all of those in the service industry here hail from Southeast Asia, East Asia and Africa, with a few Arabs thrown in for good mix. The friendly helpers at the Mall of the Emirates, the hotel staff, the shopkeepers, and the taxi drivers, none of them appear to be of European heritage. This is not to say that there are not people of these backgrounds shopping at the mall and driving the insanely expensive cars that line the valet parking lots. But as someone who grew up in the multicultural milieu of Southern California I am very cognizant of this racial disparity in the service industry and it makes me uncomfortable.

And sad. Yesterday the Khaleej Times reported that several Pakistani workers had died in a fire at a villa where they were living upwards of 20 to a room in conditions that were most likely illegal. But it was apparently the only way they could afford housing in this crazy economy.

Tomorrow I start work, the first day of Ramadan. I've never been in an Arab country during the holy month of Ramadan, in which people do not eat, drink or smoke during daylight hours. Here is Dubai it is illegal to even carry a bottle of water openly during the day. In one of the apartments I looked at yesterday a sign in the elevator announced that all vending machines would be turned off during the month of Ramadan. I cannot help but think of the fortitude and dedication to their faith of those who must work all day in the scalding dessert sun, building tower after tower without even a drink to quench their thirst. Ramadan Kareem.