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