Story time from 9A…

Tomas Pueyo’s recent tourist brochure on Dubai stirred some controversy in these pages, as his usual blend of history, boosterism, and market analysis rubbed some people the wrong way. I’ve enjoyed Tomas’s takes on Argentina and other places, but I understand his angle is necessarily a high-level perspective and incomplete. In order to add to the conversation, I offer another very narrow and incomplete contribution, based on stories of Anglos who worked in Dubai. These are things you won’t hear from your taxi driver as you pass the world’s tallest building on your way to your seven-star resort hotel. I learned these from friends in the aughts, so it’s possible that the experiences described below are now happily non-representative. But that would mean that the culture of the wealthiest Emirate has changed dramatically in the last 30 years, and aside from a vast increase in wealth, the structure of Emirati society doesn’t seem to have shifted that much. Draw your own conclusions. As this kid likes to say on the interwebz: Your mileage may vary.

The flight attendants

If you read Pueyo’s article, you know that Emirates Air is the number one long-haul airline in the world. Like Dubai’s resort industry, it boasts high quality service and attracts a lot of wealthy passengers. One of my good friends had gone to school with a couple of sisters who went on to be flight attendants for Emirates Air. They were Anglo women from California who had an adventurous streak and wanted to work for a carrier that would take them to interesting places. What they had not counted on was the sexism of Arab men. They were expected to put up with a lot of groping and harassment in order to do their jobs, especially if the passenger was in first class. While American feminists like to posture about how we live in a “rape culture” run by “toxic masculinity,” the overwhelming majority of American men know better than to treat flight attendants like their personal escort.

The businesswoman

I met Anneke in Durban, while I was doing volunteer work in South Africa. Anneke was an Afrikaner (white South African of Dutch descent) recently returned from Dubai, where she had spent a few years in women’s prison.

Anneke had been attracted to Dubai because of its reputation as the world’s market, especially as related to fine jewelry. She had opened a retail jewelry store there. But there’s a catch: Foreigners aren’t allowed to start businesses in Dubai without a local sponsor. In practice, that often means a form of rent-collection in which a UAE native collects tribute in order to put his name on some important documents and lets you run your business as you see fit. Or so Anneke had been led to believe.

Her jewelry business did well. So well in fact, that her sponsor took an interest in having more control. To do so, he accused her of various financial crimes and had her thrown into women’s prison. Her word and her bookkeeping, etc. weren’t worth much in court against the testimony of native Emirati men. He got a business that she had labored to develop; she got a criminal record and lost her freedom and assets.

She told me that at least she had been treated respectfully in women’s prison. After a few years (I honestly don’t remember how many — perhaps two to four), she was released on condition that she return to South Africa. Her chances of doing more business in the not-so-Disneyland of global commerce were forever obliterated — all because she had been too successful and had a corrupt sponsor. If you think I was just taken in by a self-serving narcissist, consider that others have faced similar fates, such as this guy: https://www.detainedindubai.org/hunger-strike-uae

Whose reality is it anyway?

I made this a post because it was too long for a comment, and I might want to link to it in the future. I have no personal experience in Dubai or the UAE, but if I did, I would probably want to discuss things like spoiled youth drag racing Lambos, Muslim women who are taken there from the UK to be married off to a stranger, or the fact that Sharjah (the more Sharia-devoted emirate) and Dubai need each other, just like Iran and Bahrain need each other. But for now I’ll leave those discussions for people who know the material more deeply.

If you just want sordid police blotter dirt on the UAE, then consider Detained in Dubai’s news page. It’s an interesting counterweight to the tourist brochures.