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.