Dubai

Here’s another post from some years back that I never hit the ‘publish’ button on. I actually had a Dubai layover about a month back (we were caught on our way out by historic rainfall and flooding and were very lucky to have gotten out without a days-long delay. But reading this October, 2019 draft reminded me that I still agree with what I wrote then.

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Dubai.

This is my first time back to this place in at least three years—since I left the MD-11 and went to the 767 as a copilot. And I’d forgotten how intrigued I am by it.

But I’ve always been taken by it. I’m trying to figure out why.

I think there are a couple of reasons. First, it’s a long way from home. If one likes to travel—and I think I’m really taken with the romantic aspects of my job to a degree unusual among my coworkers—you feel *very definitely* not in Kansas anymore. But not in a bad way. Flying from the East, we cross the Indian Ocean and make landfall on the Eastern shore of the Arabian Peninsula below the Straits of Hormuz. It’s not very far across this spit of land (maybe 80 miles), and the entire body is desert. And not Western-US-style desert, but Great Dune Sea desert. Because of the heat, even on a cloudless day it’s hard to see detail from above through the haze. Everything appears to be exactly the same color, as though all structures are made from the same native sand.

But as we descend into DXB things become clearer. The sand is shaped in literal waves, like an ocean—though a stationary one. And roadways are cut through these dunes like a child scratching a stick along the beach. I remember even seeing remote areas which had clearly been maintained with a plow, the waves drifting onto the roads and having to be removed. Out in the middle of the desert, miles from anywhere, there appear to be habitations. The roads to them are really just tracks across the desert, and every place is surrounded by a cement wall. Are these for security? To keep sand from drifting? To keep critters out? There are no plants to be seen anywhere. Until one reaches the city where plants become a kind of status symbol, it seems—clearly some wealth is required to acquire and plant them and to keep them watered. It’s just the occasional tree or modest landscaping at the margins, but becomes bigger, grass-covered estates with big groves of trees as one moves into the city. These are conspicuous because there’s nothing like them for miles in any direction.

All this is because the climate is shocking, at least to our sensibilities. As we descend to the airport, one begins to feel the heat seep through the skin of the airplane. And when we open the door upon landing the heat hits you like a fist. It’s shockingly, laughably hot. And especially with the midday sun, which feels like a physical assault. It’s a cliche, but 90 desert degrees when the sun is not out is really quite pleasant. It’s the sun coming up that makes it scary hot.

And in that setting, the lavish plantings around big hotels and fancy condo complexes seem a little frightening. The landscaping only survives with elaborate watering (one can see the vast network of tubes in the sand in many locations where construction is going on / is abandoned or where a building has fallen into disrepair. And the land is surrounded by salt water, so having this fresh water for landscaping seems beyond ostentation. It’s literally trying to beat back a violent and deadly nature, like being underwater in a tinfoil bubble. So there’s this violence and danger underpinning everything. I can imagine how folks from a warm climate look on a Minnesota winter in exactly the same way: All our houses, our cars, our pets, our food; everything has to accommodate a climate which would kill surely and quickly if not countered. But I’m used to the cold; the desert heat is something new to me. (The temps when we arrived yesterday were only in the low 100s, which is not especially hot for the region, nor for the deserts of the Western US. So I wonder how much of my impressions rest on my being a Northerner.)

Then there are the people. Even more so than NYC, Dubai seems completely multicultural and multiethnic. The native Emiratis are seen only in public places, mostly in leisure. One does encounter well-dressed natives working in the airport, say, but even then I don’t know that these workers are not imported from elsewhere. Certainly, most of the people we deal with—the airplane load / unload crews, the mechanics, the security people, the hotel staffs, most any worker in the gigantic malls—are not natives. They come from all over the region: India and Pakistan, numerous places in Africa, some Europeans, people from China and other parts of Asia.

There’s a favorite chestnut observation about personal hygiene with men from the Middle East, but there’s certainly a kernel of truth in it. Some of it is just different standards of what constitutes “clean.” Having an odor is of course a completely natural state of affairs. And there are degrees, a scale that might have “odor-free” on one end, and pass thru varying degrees of fragrance to arrive at “rancid.” Most all Americans seek to live on one end of this spectrum, but I actually find a bit of masculine odor a not unpleasant thing. Riding the Dubai train is more fragrant than anything in normal American life. But I can see how up to a point this can be a cultural thing. Of course, for those having to work out doors in this intense heat living odor-free is out of the question. Some of the guys who come in and out of the airplane as we go about our preflight are conspicuous. But they’ve likely sweated out more in their 8 hour shift than I sweat in a week. And I’m a sweater.

Of course, this mix of people of a zillion nationalities and languages only adds to the international mystique. The scene in any restaurant in Dubai is utterly, fundamentally different from what you might experience in Dubuque (though not necessarily in NYC). Again, this contributes to the sense that you’re *traveling,* as does the prevalence of Muslim culture.

Several aspects of Islamic culture are quite captivating to me. I find I love the call to prayer, which crackles over loudspeakers several times per day. It’s a chant, rather like Gregorian chant, but with a distinctly Middle Eastern flavor, typically sung by (I assume) an Imam. I wonder if it’s always live and if the chants are known, or if there’s a degree of improvisation. I’m also very taken with the dress. The coverings for women threaten to distress—especially in rare cases where a woman is so fully covered that she cannot even see and must be led around by (presumably) her husband—but I try to just observe without needing to attach a judgment. I know so very little about customs, and in very many cases the women are not much more covered than the men accompanying them. Many men walking in the mall or coming in and out of our swanky hotel wear the traditional white robes (called, I believe, a Thawb) with sandals and a head covering. This seems very utile clothing for the desert, and they’re really magnificent to look at. I’ve never seen someone dressed this way who was not absolutely clean, and most men wear a cologne--subtle, but expensive-seeming--such that walking behind them is very evocative. There’s something in that smell that is absolutely characteristic, and some similar kind of perfuming of the air is in play in many public places. It just seems that people of this region are in a much different scent world than ours—and that very much informs one’s experience.

I also enjoy (perversely?) that as Americans we’re not *particularly* welcome. No one has been overtly rude to me, and in places of business I’m treated with deference and courtesy. But there’s a sense that one is an outsider and there’s certainly a vein of anti-American sentiment. I mostly sense this, or I think I do, in glances from people on the train or when I’m walking through neighborhoods. Not hostility, really, but notice. I’m a foreigner. (I do remember one instance a few years ago where a bunch of men smoking outside a bodega stopped talking and stared at me when I rounded a corner. Another time some guy in a car pulled over as I was walking along a back street and asked me out of the blue if I were American. “Canadian!” I said. “Ah. Montreal or Toronto?” he asked. I made something up and he drove off. I always had an uneasy feeling about that encounter. But that’s twice in a decade.) This hint at unfriendliness serves to make the place feel more real somehow. It’s not a Disney creation designed to bamboozle ME. It’s a place that exists very much apart from me; I’m no part of what they’re aiming for, so I really observe as an outsider.

All of this makes the desert memorable. When I bid a schedule that has a Dubai layover I’m always a little thrilled. The hotel (we stay at the Fairmont) is as nice as any property at which I’ve stayed, and the airplane catering is actually to be anticipated. That’s not something you say every day.