During work hours I usually pray in a mosque resembling a portacabin, in fact it is a portacabin! A customized portacabin embellished with the same overzealous enthusiasm a reformed glue sniffer might lavish on his chav mobile. The portacabin is fitted with a make shift minaret and other arabesque trimmings giving it that almost-authentic mosque look and feel. The concept of the mobile mosque might actually be a good business proposition in the West. If, and when the shadow of public outrage falls upon “the Muslims” the faithful can just load up the mosque, hitch it to the back of a transit van and head to the hills for a few weeks, or at least until there is something good on telly to distract the masses. Anyway our local workplace porta-mosque ™ is affectionately known as ‘the blue mosque’ despite the fact it is actually painted a supernatural shade of yellow. Our blue mosque derives its name from the battalions of laborers who regularly attend the prayers there, all of them decked out in the blue, standard issue, all-in-one, canvas uniforms; each with his function embroidered across the back, “maintenance”, “health and safety”, “sanitation”. This sight is perversely futuristic, a kind of 21st century color coded caste system, a mass of blue underlings, a few designer non-conformists, and a ruling minority that wear white.
Outside of my futuristic work zone the Mosque-scape in the UAE is architecturally rich, but it is richness born of creative poverty. The skyline is punctuated with amazing looking mosques all thrusting javelin sharp minarets into the soft blue stomach of the cloudless sky , a mini Taj Mahal here, a larger than life Sultan Ahmed there, but no real sense of any distinctive, innovative, defining native architectural style, a little bit like the UK mosque-scape in that sense. Despite this lack of architectural inspiration several of the mosques here are still able to have a profound impact on at least two of your senses, touch and smell. Occasionally you walk into a mosque that is burning the most amazing incense, pure frankincense from Oman, top grade Oud from India, and they all invariably have the AC whacked up to temperatures that can freeze water. The impact as you walk in from a hot, humid, dusty, stinking street can be tranquilizing.
In addition to the signature smells of some mosques the cosmopolitan composition of the emirates has many mosques carving out ethnic niches, The mosque near my house, Qanat al Qasba, has been set up to cater for English speakers, the Friday sermon is in English only. You struggle to find a sermon in England in English and ironically here in the heartlands of Arabia a Brooklyn-ian accent bounces off the walls as the Friday sermon reverberates through the streets around Qanat al Qasba in evangelical American English. “You sold your Deen* for jeans brothers” the preacher screams lamenting the wonder lust for contemporary consumer culture at the expense of more spiritual and religious values. As you might expect the English sermon attracts the Brits and Yanks who attend in great numbers, and come from all over the Emirates to hear the English sermon. You can spot the Brits and Yanks by their footwear; overly complex sandals, trainers or timberland boots. Another distinguishing characteristic of the Anglo American worshipers is that each Friday without fail they will be the last to leave the mosque fore-court. They congregate in the shade of palm trees in small groups to chat and reconnect with their compatriots. “Where you from den?” – “Essex in it ?”, “Oh my cousin lives in Illford?” – “what’s his name, I might know him?” - slowly they feel each other out searching for some common ground or shared attitudes additional to their Islamic monotheism, searching for something that may give them a richer connection than the de-facto relationship of co-religionists. Most of the Brits and Yanks in attendance were the children of immigrants, and now they themselves are immigrants in a new land, 2nd generation immigrant immigrants, maybe this is why they spend longer trying to make connections, cultivating a culture, trying to put down roots. Then again maybe they just like to gab more.
*way of life
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Dubai Expats
The UAE is full of Expats. Expatriate is a strange term that I don’t fully understand. Dose it mean that you used to be patriotic, and now you’re not because you did-one out East and went all native? It’s funny as you don’t really hear the term Expat used in Britain; everyone coming in for other than tourism seems to be either an economic migrant or an asylum seeker. Neither of these terms are very desirable, for economic migrant read (greasy money grabbing swarthy 2nd world type) and for asylum seeker, read (under educated, under nourished, cant fight/cowardly, 3rd world type). Brits living abroad however are invariably expats. The word actually has nothing to do with cultural apostasy and has the Greco Roman roots Ex (out of) and Patria (country). This term then (out of country) could quite legitimately by applied to anyone living in a country other than that of their birth. Dose language shape thought or thought shape language?
One of the stereotypes of the expat is the “couldn’t make it in London so I’m trying Hong Kong” type. Sadly this is very accurate in the UAE and many of the Westerners out here could not dream of the positions and kudos afforded by the spiraling desires and naiveté of the so called developing world. In Dubai it is not too unusual to have some BS merchant from London turn up with nil skills and a forked tongued looking to stake his/her claim to a slice of the Dubai Pie. The plucky guy/gal may be creatively bankrupt and cognitively challenged but they could still end up being allowed to run a multimillion dollar investment into the ground. In fact the corporate governance structures appear to reflect the country’s civil governance arrangements, democracy no, meritocracy no, bureaucracy yes. In terms of acquiring top-jobs English as a 1st language is highly desirable to most employers, and white skin doesn’t hurt. In certain contexts you will find the Brits consciously or unconsciously hamming up their English and in some cases their Englishness (even those of non European origin). This phenomenon coupled with the overly servile manner of the “migrant workers” gives the whole place a reminiscent whiff of colonial India. There is a pretty obvious and palpable cast system in operation, for example, it appears to be a status symbol to have a Pilipino housemaid as opposed to just a plain old Indian one. You will see advertisements in the gulf news “Professional expat couple seek Pilipino maid”. You would never ever read “Wanted: Emirati Housemaid” that’s just not going to happen. Recently, a newly made acquaintance offered us some cake explaining that her maid had prepared it, further qualifying this offer by exclaiming, “Pilipino, of course!”, as though Pilipino was some kind of brand or kite mark that would seal the deal on her offer of cake.
Although I prefer to think of myself as an asylum seeker I am at present on the fringes of an “Expat Community”. Birds of a feather flock together and opposites attract, I’m not sure which? It’s kind of strange as most of us are from very different backgrounds and probably would not gravitate towards each other in the UK. Despite our surface differences we meet up very informally but already there are signs of “group formation”, like its hard-wired in us to find people to cultivate and share our opinions with. There is the emergence of a pecking order and unconscious alliances and agreements are being formed laying the foundations of what will eventually become a more rigidly defined group structure\community.
A friend of mine wrote to me today and said "A polluted community is better than a pure sect". I think one of the problems/realities of groups (sects & communities) is that there is an unspoken expectation that others will or need to conform to the implicit rules/tastes (culture) of the In-group. There is little tolerance for those perceived by the group as too “sad” “glad”; “bad”; or “mad”. In some groups “being serious” is over emphasized, Jokers/Fools are shunned or at best marginalized. In other groups levity and warm smiling faces are over emphasized and many of the members project fabricated smiling countenances, like sun lamps, not the real thing but maybe they do the job, at a cost.
That is why it is great to be a stranger, a traveler an expat, there are none of the expectations to conform and no one is threatened by the prospect of you replacing them in the social pecking order. An Andalucian Psychologist ‘Ibn Hazm” suggested over 1000 years ago that the cure for envy was to imagine that the person one envied was either 1000 miles away or from a place a 1000 miles away. Either way, this cognitive exercise allows us to safely misattribute the envied-person’s good fortune/success to geography, as opposed to any personal qualities they may have and we may lack.
“… Be in this world as though you were a stranger or a traveler/wayfarer” God’s Prophet said, and “ …give glad tidings to the strangers”, I’m not sure what this means exactly, but its good advice. However as with the patience/cowardice conundrum, I’m conscious that my ambivalence towards groups and social ties could just as easily be motivated by selfishness as by any higher aspirations.
Now where is my Ipod
One of the stereotypes of the expat is the “couldn’t make it in London so I’m trying Hong Kong” type. Sadly this is very accurate in the UAE and many of the Westerners out here could not dream of the positions and kudos afforded by the spiraling desires and naiveté of the so called developing world. In Dubai it is not too unusual to have some BS merchant from London turn up with nil skills and a forked tongued looking to stake his/her claim to a slice of the Dubai Pie. The plucky guy/gal may be creatively bankrupt and cognitively challenged but they could still end up being allowed to run a multimillion dollar investment into the ground. In fact the corporate governance structures appear to reflect the country’s civil governance arrangements, democracy no, meritocracy no, bureaucracy yes. In terms of acquiring top-jobs English as a 1st language is highly desirable to most employers, and white skin doesn’t hurt. In certain contexts you will find the Brits consciously or unconsciously hamming up their English and in some cases their Englishness (even those of non European origin). This phenomenon coupled with the overly servile manner of the “migrant workers” gives the whole place a reminiscent whiff of colonial India. There is a pretty obvious and palpable cast system in operation, for example, it appears to be a status symbol to have a Pilipino housemaid as opposed to just a plain old Indian one. You will see advertisements in the gulf news “Professional expat couple seek Pilipino maid”. You would never ever read “Wanted: Emirati Housemaid” that’s just not going to happen. Recently, a newly made acquaintance offered us some cake explaining that her maid had prepared it, further qualifying this offer by exclaiming, “Pilipino, of course!”, as though Pilipino was some kind of brand or kite mark that would seal the deal on her offer of cake.
Although I prefer to think of myself as an asylum seeker I am at present on the fringes of an “Expat Community”. Birds of a feather flock together and opposites attract, I’m not sure which? It’s kind of strange as most of us are from very different backgrounds and probably would not gravitate towards each other in the UK. Despite our surface differences we meet up very informally but already there are signs of “group formation”, like its hard-wired in us to find people to cultivate and share our opinions with. There is the emergence of a pecking order and unconscious alliances and agreements are being formed laying the foundations of what will eventually become a more rigidly defined group structure\community.
A friend of mine wrote to me today and said "A polluted community is better than a pure sect". I think one of the problems/realities of groups (sects & communities) is that there is an unspoken expectation that others will or need to conform to the implicit rules/tastes (culture) of the In-group. There is little tolerance for those perceived by the group as too “sad” “glad”; “bad”; or “mad”. In some groups “being serious” is over emphasized, Jokers/Fools are shunned or at best marginalized. In other groups levity and warm smiling faces are over emphasized and many of the members project fabricated smiling countenances, like sun lamps, not the real thing but maybe they do the job, at a cost.
That is why it is great to be a stranger, a traveler an expat, there are none of the expectations to conform and no one is threatened by the prospect of you replacing them in the social pecking order. An Andalucian Psychologist ‘Ibn Hazm” suggested over 1000 years ago that the cure for envy was to imagine that the person one envied was either 1000 miles away or from a place a 1000 miles away. Either way, this cognitive exercise allows us to safely misattribute the envied-person’s good fortune/success to geography, as opposed to any personal qualities they may have and we may lack.
“… Be in this world as though you were a stranger or a traveler/wayfarer” God’s Prophet said, and “ …give glad tidings to the strangers”, I’m not sure what this means exactly, but its good advice. However as with the patience/cowardice conundrum, I’m conscious that my ambivalence towards groups and social ties could just as easily be motivated by selfishness as by any higher aspirations.
Now where is my Ipod
Outdoors in Dubai
The idea of public space is very alive in the emirates. It is common to see people sleeping, praying and picnicking on what are essentially grassy traffic islands. The people own public space in a way that has become pretty alien in the West. Despite the many restaurants and cafes available, numerous families still opt to load up a bag with food and hit the streets, sitting together on straw mats watching the sun slowly submerse himself into the loving waters of the Persian Gulf. This appeared a little strange to me initially, as sitting on a street or at the side of a motorway in the UK is synonymous with homelessness, mental health, and skateboarding gothic types.
This outdoors culture appears to be more than just a symptom of the emirate’s proximity to the equator. For example, I was recently invited by one of the “ex-pats” to a picnic at one of Sharjah’s many public parks. To my honest surprise there were actually queues to get into the park. I surmised that the congestion must be as a result of some fading B-list celebrity performing a free concert; but no, the people had turned out in their thousands just to see the sun, sky and each other – weird. It’s a shame there were no CCTV cameras to capture this outbreak of public serenity.
The parks in the emirates are well used and very well kept. In the UK the park is typically a nature reserve, a bit of nature that has not been tarmac-ed over and built on; yet. By contrast the parks in the emirates are bits of desert, the natural landscape, that have been forced into bloom and had turf and flower beds laid over them, in short, unnaturally beautiful, and high maintenance, kind of like a fading B-List celebrity. More naturally beautiful are the beaches especially those on the Indian Ocean. The one stretch of shore line that struck me as particularly beautiful is called Kal-ba. According to one local narration the name Kalba derives from the 14th century explorer Ibn Battuta’s description of this particular piece of shore line as being B shaped, in Arabic Kal = ‘like the’ and ba = ‘the letter B’). The dark brown sands of this B shaped strip of shore line embrace the gentle blue green waters of the Indian Ocean. Sun blackened fisherman toil with nets all along this glorious shore bringing in all manner of exotica from beneath the Ocean’s surface. The shoreline is also alive with the everyday people, families, friends, lovers, heroic youth and wizened elders, sitting, talking, walking and just contemplating. At Kalba the sunsets behind the mountains and the moon rises over the Ocean. Watching the moon get high over the Indian Ocean was a first for me and a sight I will never forget. Initially as the moon rose above the horizon a long thin white line illuminated the ocean’s reflective surface from horizon to shore, once the moon reached her zenith the white line disappeared and the ocean reflected a brilliant ball of moonlight which it’s self was a veiled reflection of the sun’s light – smoke and mirrors but magical none the less.
This outdoors culture appears to be more than just a symptom of the emirate’s proximity to the equator. For example, I was recently invited by one of the “ex-pats” to a picnic at one of Sharjah’s many public parks. To my honest surprise there were actually queues to get into the park. I surmised that the congestion must be as a result of some fading B-list celebrity performing a free concert; but no, the people had turned out in their thousands just to see the sun, sky and each other – weird. It’s a shame there were no CCTV cameras to capture this outbreak of public serenity.
The parks in the emirates are well used and very well kept. In the UK the park is typically a nature reserve, a bit of nature that has not been tarmac-ed over and built on; yet. By contrast the parks in the emirates are bits of desert, the natural landscape, that have been forced into bloom and had turf and flower beds laid over them, in short, unnaturally beautiful, and high maintenance, kind of like a fading B-List celebrity. More naturally beautiful are the beaches especially those on the Indian Ocean. The one stretch of shore line that struck me as particularly beautiful is called Kal-ba. According to one local narration the name Kalba derives from the 14th century explorer Ibn Battuta’s description of this particular piece of shore line as being B shaped, in Arabic Kal = ‘like the’ and ba = ‘the letter B’). The dark brown sands of this B shaped strip of shore line embrace the gentle blue green waters of the Indian Ocean. Sun blackened fisherman toil with nets all along this glorious shore bringing in all manner of exotica from beneath the Ocean’s surface. The shoreline is also alive with the everyday people, families, friends, lovers, heroic youth and wizened elders, sitting, talking, walking and just contemplating. At Kalba the sunsets behind the mountains and the moon rises over the Ocean. Watching the moon get high over the Indian Ocean was a first for me and a sight I will never forget. Initially as the moon rose above the horizon a long thin white line illuminated the ocean’s reflective surface from horizon to shore, once the moon reached her zenith the white line disappeared and the ocean reflected a brilliant ball of moonlight which it’s self was a veiled reflection of the sun’s light – smoke and mirrors but magical none the less.
Shopping in Dubai
Dubai has carved a niche for itself in the popular imagination as a shopping Mecca. The sartorially weak, the infirm, and people who have never even walked (in Prada) visit this Arabian Lourdes and are miraculously cured. People travel thousands and thousands of miles to Dubai just to shop, a recent marketing slogan doing the rounds, straddling the border of genius and stupidity exhorts visitors; “Do buy in Dubai”. In fact so central is shopping to the Dubai lifestyle that the Emirate has actually invented a holiday which it calls the ‘Shopping Festival’. There is none of the religious pre-text that generally accompanies other shopping-sprees like Christmas; the Dubai shopping festival is a pure, undiluted, and unashamed celebration of consumerism. The festival is not a time for family, it is not the remembrance of some significant long ago event, it is not about sharing or giving, it is a time for simply celebrating your freedom to buy things from malls for slightly discounted prices. In un-spun terms the “Shopping Festival” is really just an end of season sale where you can pick up the odd end-of-line designer bargain. Despite this diaphanous re-branding and over-exaggeration of the sale concept, the spin seems to work, and millions of pilgrims/tourists flock to this sun blessed shopping utopia in January and February of each year.
In line with this commercial ethos, the UAE, and in particular Dubai, boasts a mall infested landscape. There are more malls per head of population in Dubai than anywhere else on the planet. As if there was a shortage of places to shop there is currently under construction the ‘Mall of Arabia’ which makes the 1980’s style promise of being the largest mall in the world, fore-telling of 10 million more square feet of shopping space. When Ronald Reagan famously declared of the USA: “we shall be second to no one” he must have meant militarily. Dubai aims to have the biggest mall and amusement park in the world stealing both titles from the US. Bigness, why, and at what cost? Is an important question, a recent USA Today headline reads “UAE Beats America’s Environmental Harm”. According to WWF data the average person in the Emirates puts more demand on the global ecosystem than any other, giving the country the world's largest per-capita "ecological footprint,"; the United States runs second, sorry Ronald.
I have visited most of the big shopping malls in Dubai, but 2 in particular stand out for me. The first is Burjuman mall which is a hive of designer boutiques Donna Karen, Christian Lacroix, Fendi, to name just a few. This is one of the higher end malls and is always teeming with tourists and locals stalking their latest designer prey whilst sporting the fare from their previous expeditions, Louis Vuitton handbags and Chanel shades appear a perennially popular combo. As I walked through this mall I began to have something of a panic attack. The deeper I went into the mall the more overpowering the advertising became, every spare inch of wall space housed huge indoor billboards projecting images of impossibly glamorous models pouting and posing in close proximity to a spectrum of banal products, bags, shoes, perfume. In the background I could hear the infectious slurred hook of a 50 cent song playing; “Man you's a window shopper, mad at me, I think I know why”. The further inside the mall I went the larger and more overpowering these images became until I imagined I had been reduced to the size of an ant and left to roam chaotically over the pages of an abandoned copy of Vogue magazine for all eternity.
The second mall to strike me was the massive Ibn Batutta mall. This mall is named after the African, Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Batutta, a 14th century explorer who traversed 73,000 miles, outdistancing his near contemporary Marco Polo and actually reaching China. Ibn Batutta vividly documented his travels in a work entitled A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling . In keeping with the explorations of Ibn Batutta the mall is themed after the various places visited by the explorer, India Hall, Persia Court, China Gardens, The Garden of Lions. Each of the halls boasts something of an exhibition; a life-sized Chinese ship/junk in China Court, a life-sized automated wooden elephant in India, and a larger than life replica of the garden of the lions is to be found in Andalucia/Spain. Additionally throughout this mall there are informational and museum-style exhibits, old swords, coins, navigational equipment etc. Shopping, history, and the science of navigation seem at first glance unhealthy bed fellows, but there are enough captive and jaded shoppers to just about make it work. One of the things I noticed about myself as I walked through this mall was that I lit up and became excited every time I saw a branded store that I associated with England, “look there’s a Next, wow look they even have a Woolworths and a Mothercare” This strikes me as particularly bizarre as these aren’t even stores I shop at. Traversing the mall-scape a further reminder of globalization hits you as familiar tribes of teenagers congregate in front of Starbucks. These teenagers are Arab and Indian versions of the same mall rats from back home, spiky haired wannabe boy band types, bandana wearing wannabe 50 cents, and the baggy jean sk8er boy brigade, in fact the full spectrum of western teen culture is on parade. However one distinguishing factor amongst all the familiar branded stores and branded teen identities are the small groups of Emerati men dressed from head to toe in white and the larger groups of Emerati women slightly more decoratively gift wrapped in black. About the ancestors of these city-dwelling sedentary Arabs, Ibn Batutta wrote:
[they] are very elegant and clean in their dress, most of them wear white garments, which you always see fresh and snowy. They use a great deal of perfume and kohl… The [women] are extraordinarily beautiful and very pious and modest. They too make great use of perfumes to such a degree that they will spend the night hungry in order to buy perfumes with the price of their food… When one of these women goes away the odour of the perfume clings to the place after she has gone.
If Ibn Batutta sat sipping a caramel frappachino today, his observations in relation to the modern day Emerati mall goers would need little revision. Emerati men are still usually clad in snow-white box-fresh robes and the women still leave perfumed contrails as they float elegantly across the mall-scape. I doubt, however, if these days many Emerati women need to forsake their meals in order to afford their ration of Coco Chanel. In addition to the Channel be-drenched air space surrounding the black abaya clad shoppers there is also an affected air of 19th century Parisian grace, all trailing hem lines, small steps, straight backs, raised chins, and limp wrists; more often than not the limp wrist projects some huge gemstone encrusted display of wealth.
If shopping were an Olympic sport then the Emerati women would take gold, silver and bronze, dominating in the way the Eastern European women used to dominate athletics. Shopping may not yet be a sport, but there are still prizes up for grabs, one of the malls has a logic defying raffle, where the highest bill/receipt wins. This ensures that the person least in need of the prize gets it. The raffle prize at one mall is currently a private jet, although I’m not sure if that comes with flying lessons or your own personal pilot.
In line with this commercial ethos, the UAE, and in particular Dubai, boasts a mall infested landscape. There are more malls per head of population in Dubai than anywhere else on the planet. As if there was a shortage of places to shop there is currently under construction the ‘Mall of Arabia’ which makes the 1980’s style promise of being the largest mall in the world, fore-telling of 10 million more square feet of shopping space. When Ronald Reagan famously declared of the USA: “we shall be second to no one” he must have meant militarily. Dubai aims to have the biggest mall and amusement park in the world stealing both titles from the US. Bigness, why, and at what cost? Is an important question, a recent USA Today headline reads “UAE Beats America’s Environmental Harm”. According to WWF data the average person in the Emirates puts more demand on the global ecosystem than any other, giving the country the world's largest per-capita "ecological footprint,"; the United States runs second, sorry Ronald.
I have visited most of the big shopping malls in Dubai, but 2 in particular stand out for me. The first is Burjuman mall which is a hive of designer boutiques Donna Karen, Christian Lacroix, Fendi, to name just a few. This is one of the higher end malls and is always teeming with tourists and locals stalking their latest designer prey whilst sporting the fare from their previous expeditions, Louis Vuitton handbags and Chanel shades appear a perennially popular combo. As I walked through this mall I began to have something of a panic attack. The deeper I went into the mall the more overpowering the advertising became, every spare inch of wall space housed huge indoor billboards projecting images of impossibly glamorous models pouting and posing in close proximity to a spectrum of banal products, bags, shoes, perfume. In the background I could hear the infectious slurred hook of a 50 cent song playing; “Man you's a window shopper, mad at me, I think I know why”. The further inside the mall I went the larger and more overpowering these images became until I imagined I had been reduced to the size of an ant and left to roam chaotically over the pages of an abandoned copy of Vogue magazine for all eternity.
The second mall to strike me was the massive Ibn Batutta mall. This mall is named after the African, Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Batutta, a 14th century explorer who traversed 73,000 miles, outdistancing his near contemporary Marco Polo and actually reaching China. Ibn Batutta vividly documented his travels in a work entitled A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling . In keeping with the explorations of Ibn Batutta the mall is themed after the various places visited by the explorer, India Hall, Persia Court, China Gardens, The Garden of Lions. Each of the halls boasts something of an exhibition; a life-sized Chinese ship/junk in China Court, a life-sized automated wooden elephant in India, and a larger than life replica of the garden of the lions is to be found in Andalucia/Spain. Additionally throughout this mall there are informational and museum-style exhibits, old swords, coins, navigational equipment etc. Shopping, history, and the science of navigation seem at first glance unhealthy bed fellows, but there are enough captive and jaded shoppers to just about make it work. One of the things I noticed about myself as I walked through this mall was that I lit up and became excited every time I saw a branded store that I associated with England, “look there’s a Next, wow look they even have a Woolworths and a Mothercare” This strikes me as particularly bizarre as these aren’t even stores I shop at. Traversing the mall-scape a further reminder of globalization hits you as familiar tribes of teenagers congregate in front of Starbucks. These teenagers are Arab and Indian versions of the same mall rats from back home, spiky haired wannabe boy band types, bandana wearing wannabe 50 cents, and the baggy jean sk8er boy brigade, in fact the full spectrum of western teen culture is on parade. However one distinguishing factor amongst all the familiar branded stores and branded teen identities are the small groups of Emerati men dressed from head to toe in white and the larger groups of Emerati women slightly more decoratively gift wrapped in black. About the ancestors of these city-dwelling sedentary Arabs, Ibn Batutta wrote:
[they] are very elegant and clean in their dress, most of them wear white garments, which you always see fresh and snowy. They use a great deal of perfume and kohl… The [women] are extraordinarily beautiful and very pious and modest. They too make great use of perfumes to such a degree that they will spend the night hungry in order to buy perfumes with the price of their food… When one of these women goes away the odour of the perfume clings to the place after she has gone.
If Ibn Batutta sat sipping a caramel frappachino today, his observations in relation to the modern day Emerati mall goers would need little revision. Emerati men are still usually clad in snow-white box-fresh robes and the women still leave perfumed contrails as they float elegantly across the mall-scape. I doubt, however, if these days many Emerati women need to forsake their meals in order to afford their ration of Coco Chanel. In addition to the Channel be-drenched air space surrounding the black abaya clad shoppers there is also an affected air of 19th century Parisian grace, all trailing hem lines, small steps, straight backs, raised chins, and limp wrists; more often than not the limp wrist projects some huge gemstone encrusted display of wealth.
If shopping were an Olympic sport then the Emerati women would take gold, silver and bronze, dominating in the way the Eastern European women used to dominate athletics. Shopping may not yet be a sport, but there are still prizes up for grabs, one of the malls has a logic defying raffle, where the highest bill/receipt wins. This ensures that the person least in need of the prize gets it. The raffle prize at one mall is currently a private jet, although I’m not sure if that comes with flying lessons or your own personal pilot.
The Library Part 2
"And when news is brought to one of them of the birth of a female child, his face darkens and he is filled with inward grief: With shame does he hide himself from his people because of the bad news about the baby: should he retain it and endure the contempt or bury it under the dust?! Ah, how evil was their verdict." (Quran 16:58-59).
"And when the female infant buried alive is questioned for what crime she was killed" ( Quran 81-8-9)
The population of Dubai is estimated at 1.1 million and 74% of these are male, bad odds for bachelors. The library was one of the few places in the Emirates I had visited that the massive male gender skew was not evident; in fact if anything it was actually reversed. If the sands of Arabia could talk they would bear witness to a particularly gruesome form of female infanticide practiced by the Arab tribes of antiquity. A beautiful baby girl made only more beautiful by the shadows her features cast across her moon lit face is lowered slowly into a shallow sandy tomb. At the moment of her premature inhumation she awakens, but her anguished cries are muffled, Mother Earth is made an unwilling accomplice in the waterless drowning of her female offspring. The arrival of Islam outlawed this macabre practice of burying female infants alive, but who knows how many female infants lay beneath the desert sands questioning the motive of their sandy and premature internment
Dubai’s extreme gender imbalance however, is not the legacy of female infanticide, or the result of more contemporary neo-eugenicist applications of advances in gynecology. The simple answer to the gender skew is the massive number of males coming to work in Dubai, a state which boasts the highest rate of employment in the world. In fact “the locals”, as native born UAE nationals are affectionately known, are a minority in their own country, out numbered 6 to 1with the vast majority of the 6 being male.
Amidst this boisterous desert of testosterone the library emerged as a calm and tranquil estrogenic oasis with at least 4 exaggeratedly graceful and modestly attired females to process my joining application. As a child of Thatcher’s Britain warped by Regan-nomics, 4 librarians seemed wasteful, especially given the apparent lack of demand. Furthermore, despite the 4 to 1 ratio it still took about 30 minutes to get my library card after what seemed like a totally improvised and unnecessarily bureaucratic process involving all 4 of the librarians; 1 to take my money, 1 to hand me the forms, 1 to give me my change and one to hand over the library card, eventually. Similarly there was a huge empty cafeteria with tea and basic snacks available, with one chronically under-stimulated individual whose job it was to pour tea and take cash, occasionally. The Thatcher-Regan-esq voices in my mind where screaming, free enterprise, privatization and vending machines.
I ordered a cup of tea, which to my surprise when it arrived already had about 6 teaspoons of sugar added to it. I sat sipping the pre-sweetened cup of tea which sent me into something approaching a diabetic comma. In this sugar induced dream-like state I saw how the library would flourish under my regime, how it would become an international beacon of knowledge and a cosmopolitan centre of excellence where the learning and great ideas of East and West would meet, cross pollinate, and blossom. Just as I was about to receive a robe of honor from the Amir of Sharjah for my services to knowledge and culture in the UAE I was awakened by the cashier informing me he now had my two dirhams change.
As I left the library with my books I felt a real sense of accomplishment, not that joining a library is any big deal, but I had achieved my first optional objective. The visa and residency stuff had all been hellish must do’s, this was me actually opting to engage with the host society. I walked victoriously to the empty car park a fully paid up member of arguably the prettiest public institution in Sharjah.
"And when the female infant buried alive is questioned for what crime she was killed" ( Quran 81-8-9)
The population of Dubai is estimated at 1.1 million and 74% of these are male, bad odds for bachelors. The library was one of the few places in the Emirates I had visited that the massive male gender skew was not evident; in fact if anything it was actually reversed. If the sands of Arabia could talk they would bear witness to a particularly gruesome form of female infanticide practiced by the Arab tribes of antiquity. A beautiful baby girl made only more beautiful by the shadows her features cast across her moon lit face is lowered slowly into a shallow sandy tomb. At the moment of her premature inhumation she awakens, but her anguished cries are muffled, Mother Earth is made an unwilling accomplice in the waterless drowning of her female offspring. The arrival of Islam outlawed this macabre practice of burying female infants alive, but who knows how many female infants lay beneath the desert sands questioning the motive of their sandy and premature internment
Dubai’s extreme gender imbalance however, is not the legacy of female infanticide, or the result of more contemporary neo-eugenicist applications of advances in gynecology. The simple answer to the gender skew is the massive number of males coming to work in Dubai, a state which boasts the highest rate of employment in the world. In fact “the locals”, as native born UAE nationals are affectionately known, are a minority in their own country, out numbered 6 to 1with the vast majority of the 6 being male.
Amidst this boisterous desert of testosterone the library emerged as a calm and tranquil estrogenic oasis with at least 4 exaggeratedly graceful and modestly attired females to process my joining application. As a child of Thatcher’s Britain warped by Regan-nomics, 4 librarians seemed wasteful, especially given the apparent lack of demand. Furthermore, despite the 4 to 1 ratio it still took about 30 minutes to get my library card after what seemed like a totally improvised and unnecessarily bureaucratic process involving all 4 of the librarians; 1 to take my money, 1 to hand me the forms, 1 to give me my change and one to hand over the library card, eventually. Similarly there was a huge empty cafeteria with tea and basic snacks available, with one chronically under-stimulated individual whose job it was to pour tea and take cash, occasionally. The Thatcher-Regan-esq voices in my mind where screaming, free enterprise, privatization and vending machines.
I ordered a cup of tea, which to my surprise when it arrived already had about 6 teaspoons of sugar added to it. I sat sipping the pre-sweetened cup of tea which sent me into something approaching a diabetic comma. In this sugar induced dream-like state I saw how the library would flourish under my regime, how it would become an international beacon of knowledge and a cosmopolitan centre of excellence where the learning and great ideas of East and West would meet, cross pollinate, and blossom. Just as I was about to receive a robe of honor from the Amir of Sharjah for my services to knowledge and culture in the UAE I was awakened by the cashier informing me he now had my two dirhams change.
As I left the library with my books I felt a real sense of accomplishment, not that joining a library is any big deal, but I had achieved my first optional objective. The visa and residency stuff had all been hellish must do’s, this was me actually opting to engage with the host society. I walked victoriously to the empty car park a fully paid up member of arguably the prettiest public institution in Sharjah.
The Library Part 1
One thing to know about Dubai or the UAE in general is that there is a tendency to group things together geographically and call it a village (Global village, Knowledge Village), a city (Media City, Internet City) or a land (Kids land, Dubai Land). In Sharjah where I now reside all of the higher education facilities are gathered together in a place know as University City which I don’t think was intended as a clever homophonic play on words.
After driving around the “University City” for about 20 minutes in search of the library it dawned on me that this place was architecturally one of the most stunning places I had visited anywhere in the region. Countless huge domed edifices projected the idea of massive elevated heads, with gigantic intellects engaged in higher learning and enlightened thought. The various faculties and campuses that dotted the University highway were typically arranged by gender ‘Women’s College of Information Technology’; ‘Faculty of Arts for Men’; and each owned a subtle variation on the be-domed Islamically inspired architecture that gave the whole place the feel of a modern-day-medieval Cairo or Damascus.
The grounds were immaculate, evenly cut lawns and flowerbeds spread out in all directions with self indulgent water features punctuating the verdant landscape with desert defying displays of aquatics resulting in the most delightful man-made occasional-rainbows. As always there were armies of lean mean dark brown men from the subcontinent in overalls; orange for cleaners, blue for gardeners, and green for general maintenance, laboring with exaggerated integrity in the mid afternoon winter sun. One thing was missing from this scene of ‘academic utopia’, possibly the most important thing for any academic institution; Students! As we drove around this gargantuan meta-campus we caught only an occasional glance of what may or may not have been a student. Similarly the massive car parks were virtually empty suggesting: as it was with out; so it was within. The immediate assumption we arrived at was that it must be a holiday period; however on further enquiry this was found not to be the case. The simple fact was, this University City, was in reality a ghost town, especially when compared to the lively, arguably over-populated, academic institutions of my own land. The sheer size of the place, combined with the scarcity of inhabitants, left me feeling as though I could occupy any one of the palatial faculty buildings and live there rent free and unmolested for a decade.
Our mission had been to join the library and eventually we arrived at our destination, another be-domed monolith that would rank as landmark in any great city in the world. This building in several ways brought to mind the Allahu Din Mosque in central Konya. This mosque was built atop a hill for defensive reasons at a time when the Mongols were ravaging the region and earning the epithet, yellow peril. Similarly the present building was elegantly perched atop a gently sloping hill and surrounded on all sides by acres and acres of perfectly mowed lawn. Both the Allahu Din Mosque in Konya and the present building conjured up images of breathtakingly beautiful - but jilted brides: leaving the on looking stranger perplexed as to the reason for such wanton and foolish abandonment.
Needless to say finding a parking space in the car park was a non-issue, I counted only 4 other cars in all. Entering the library I felt like a trespasser, up to no good, as though I was stealing into the building through some forbidden entrance to perform unspeakable acts of depravity. It was only on entering the main hall that I was reassured to the contrary. Making eye contact with other human beings (library officials) confirmed that I was not in some poorly guarded restricted building, but was in fact as I intended, in the reception area of Sharjah public library.
After driving around the “University City” for about 20 minutes in search of the library it dawned on me that this place was architecturally one of the most stunning places I had visited anywhere in the region. Countless huge domed edifices projected the idea of massive elevated heads, with gigantic intellects engaged in higher learning and enlightened thought. The various faculties and campuses that dotted the University highway were typically arranged by gender ‘Women’s College of Information Technology’; ‘Faculty of Arts for Men’; and each owned a subtle variation on the be-domed Islamically inspired architecture that gave the whole place the feel of a modern-day-medieval Cairo or Damascus.
The grounds were immaculate, evenly cut lawns and flowerbeds spread out in all directions with self indulgent water features punctuating the verdant landscape with desert defying displays of aquatics resulting in the most delightful man-made occasional-rainbows. As always there were armies of lean mean dark brown men from the subcontinent in overalls; orange for cleaners, blue for gardeners, and green for general maintenance, laboring with exaggerated integrity in the mid afternoon winter sun. One thing was missing from this scene of ‘academic utopia’, possibly the most important thing for any academic institution; Students! As we drove around this gargantuan meta-campus we caught only an occasional glance of what may or may not have been a student. Similarly the massive car parks were virtually empty suggesting: as it was with out; so it was within. The immediate assumption we arrived at was that it must be a holiday period; however on further enquiry this was found not to be the case. The simple fact was, this University City, was in reality a ghost town, especially when compared to the lively, arguably over-populated, academic institutions of my own land. The sheer size of the place, combined with the scarcity of inhabitants, left me feeling as though I could occupy any one of the palatial faculty buildings and live there rent free and unmolested for a decade.
Our mission had been to join the library and eventually we arrived at our destination, another be-domed monolith that would rank as landmark in any great city in the world. This building in several ways brought to mind the Allahu Din Mosque in central Konya. This mosque was built atop a hill for defensive reasons at a time when the Mongols were ravaging the region and earning the epithet, yellow peril. Similarly the present building was elegantly perched atop a gently sloping hill and surrounded on all sides by acres and acres of perfectly mowed lawn. Both the Allahu Din Mosque in Konya and the present building conjured up images of breathtakingly beautiful - but jilted brides: leaving the on looking stranger perplexed as to the reason for such wanton and foolish abandonment.
Needless to say finding a parking space in the car park was a non-issue, I counted only 4 other cars in all. Entering the library I felt like a trespasser, up to no good, as though I was stealing into the building through some forbidden entrance to perform unspeakable acts of depravity. It was only on entering the main hall that I was reassured to the contrary. Making eye contact with other human beings (library officials) confirmed that I was not in some poorly guarded restricted building, but was in fact as I intended, in the reception area of Sharjah public library.
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