THE morning after the United Arab Emirates turned 38, the streets were deserted but for the foreign workers dressed in orange coveralls. They swept the confetti from Dubai’s beach road, wiped Silly String from the lenses of the traffic cameras and retrieved the carcasses of rockets. Long gone were the crystal-encrusted Hummers and Escalades that had paraded up and down in their finery. A cacophony of horns and cheers and firecrackers had filled the night; now everything was quiet.
Abandoned near a bus stop, one S.U.V. still bore the signs of Dec. 2’s celebration: heart-shaped green stickers peppered the hood, streamers in the national colors fluttered at the rear window, the windshield was plastered with an image of Dubai’s ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. His hundred-yard stare is meant, one imagines, to convey the impression of a man gazing at the glorious realization of his vision. But as the emirate teeters on the brink of economic meltdown, Sheik Mohammed’s enigmatic expression seemed more like the look of a man who is seeing his dream rapidly turn sour.
At 38, the brashest, and best-known, of the seven emirates is facing something of a midlife crisis. She has lost the blind optimism of her youth, when the oil rush brought Mercedeses and McDonald’s drive-throughs to the desert, but she has yet to gain the wisdom of old age. Despite constant, furious reinvention and desperate attempts to direct the world’s focus to her door — Come see the world’s tallest tower! A fountain visible from space! A shopping mall that sprawls across 12.1 million square feet! — this city is in danger of losing her oxygen. Without positive publicity, Dubai ceases to exist meaningfully on the world stage.
And if the money really is gone, there will be a significant demographic shift within the expatriates who constitute the majority of the population. We all come here for the money. Some choose to stay for the lifestyle, some for the lack of a better alternative. Many see life in Dubai as a welcome break from civic responsibility; the expat can skim the surface, cream off the good, ignore the bad, live the dream. As long as there’s an economy to speak of. If that fails, you have to leave. No work, no visa, goodbye.
All summer there were reports of cardboard-box shortages and serried ranks of dusty vehicles abandoned at the airport’s international terminal; there were telephone calls from concerned friends and family: “Are you O.K.?” “When are you coming home?” In the air hung the expectation that thousands would leave to ride out the global recession back in their country of origin. Surely, with the end of the academic year, families would pack up their possessions and head off.
But the fact is, many Western expatriates are less capable of escape than they like to believe. They now consider Dubai to be home, for better or worse. They have opened bank accounts and started businesses; they have mortgages on houses in incongruously named developments like the Springs, the Lakes, the Meadows. They are tied to the fate of Dubai as a viable business hub, and if they leave, they stand to lose everything.
So the registrars at the myriad schools catering to European expats say that their waiting lists are still long, their classrooms at capacity. And the mothers gathered in the playgrounds to pick up their children talk of things other than the economy — plans for Christmas, the change in the weather, Rihanna’s New Year’s concert in Abu Dhabi.
Their husbands have reassured them that it will be quite all right. It’s not as bad as has been reported, they say. All countries have financial problems. America’s debt is bigger than Dubai’s. Britain’s economy is in freefall. What we need to do is be optimistic. Abu Dhabi, Dubai’s wealthier, more conservative neighbor, will bail out the prodigal son. And where are you getting your turkey from this year?
Claudia Pugh-Thomas is a writer.
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