Desert field of dreams - Page 5

From Griffith REVIEW Edition 20: Cities on the Edge
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.

Written by Sally Breen

MR AISHA ABDULLAH AL NUAIMI, Associate Professor of Mass Communication at Sharjah University, is less evasive, ‘We do not have a free press yet but rather scared journalists and writers.' The line between fear and confidentiality is a fine one. On my last morning in Dubai, it is still raining. I meet an Australian urban planner. He tells me that, regrettably, he won't be able to say anything on the record. ‘I checked my contract. It's watertight.'

There is a lot he would like to say. I tuck into my lunch but he seems bound, taking small sips of water, watching his words, crossing his legs. I do most of the talking. I ask: ‘Is this it? Is Dubai the epitome of what we can do? Shopping malls, giant palm trees and rows and rows of tall buildings.' He agrees that everything is back to front, that people like him are constantly playing catch up, troubleshooting, that the whole project is a missed opportunity to create a city from the ground up amenable to the environment, a model of best practice in urban planning and design. It could have been a twenty-first century city that learnt from what preceded it. Instead, it has embodied excess. In his very carefully chosen words, the urban planner says: ‘I'd say it's an unhealthy city.' He looks resigned.

Dubai is a city of stories. Official stories. Projected stories. Stories untold. In the hotel bar, I meet Peter, an expatriate engineer stationed in Dubai for more than a decade. He recently rescued two Pakistani women from a fire in a locked compound in which eight perished. Officially, the women were secured in the room by their employer, in accordance with their own cultural practices and religion. A clause in their contract prevented them from fraternising with men away from home or without chaperones.

This practice is not uncommon, and is not limited to the camps. Many men lock their women and children in their homes or apartments while they indulge in a Westernised lifestyle. Peter described seeing a woman throw her children off the balcony of a locked apartment before she was consumed by the fire. The children also died. The reason for the tragedy went unreported. One paragraph in the paper noted that three people had died in a house fire. ‘Ultimately,' he tells me, taking another long drag on his cigarette, ‘there is no legal recourse for such practices.'

Like many expatriates who have spent long stretches of time in Dubai, Peter is both outraged by and reconciled to the complicated intricacies of the society. As an outsider, he oscillates between frustration and a quietly spoken desire to make a difference. Every night after work, he walks into the hotel bar, plants himself in the same seat and asks Suraj or Richard to keep the Jack Daniels flowing. He talks to the staff and tries to ignore the consistent stream of enthusiastic new arrivals from America, Australia and Europe whose most burning question always relates to girls. ‘I know they're going to ask me – it's just a matter of time.'

I describe what I've seen in the labour camps, and he does not argue with me. Furiously stubbing out his cigarette, he says he knows the people in
charge of safety at the camps: 140 inspectors who oversee almost 250,000 businesses. He points to Richard and Suraj who are almost psychically attentive to our every need. ‘These guys live in camps. You ask Richard: twelve-hour shifts for shit. Just chicken biryani to eat, just rice and a bit of chicken intervening.'

Richard looks at me and smiles. ‘It's true, ma'am. I'm so sick of chicken biryani.'

We talk about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as if we were anywhere in the world, not propped up at a comfortable bar on the doorstep of those conflicts. I tell him about Mahboba Rawi, an Afghani refugee resident in Australia who runs an internationally recognised aid organisation dedicated to improving the lives of widows and orphans in Afghanistan. I tell him she started the organisation with $120. He is unimpressed, as if the desire to change the Middle East is a fool's errand.

Yet in December 2004 Peter joined the large-scale UAE intervention after the Asian tsunami, proud his was one of the first teams on the ground, thanks to swift government pledges to action and huge funding. When I ask him why more isn't done to protect people closer to home – those in the labour camps, UAE neighbours affected by the wars – he shrugs. ‘I prefer natural disasters. At least with natural disasters there's an end-point, the job finishes. The kind of battle you're talking about, that battle never ends.'

Maybe he's right. We face forward, dragging hard on our cigarettes.

Richard pours another Jack Daniels. ♦