Episode two. Return to Dubai three weeks later. The comfort is still comfortable, yet the glamour ceases to impress. The fountains are still dancing, the weather is at its perfect equilibrium, the airport is as spotless as ever, the service as rapid and slave-like as in episode one, and yet something is missing. That something can be summarised in one world: soul. There is simply none of it to be found here - no feeling in human interaction and no means really to facilitate it - no theatre, no museums, nothing at all to get attached to, despite the flurry of activity in this desert land. In terms of entertainment, there are essentially can be divided in two categories: eating and shopping. The result of the former, as the expats joke is "Dubai stomach" and the result of the latter is the nickname DoBuy that the place has earnestly earned itself.
Of course, to impress the tourists, Dubai now features everything that any other tourist destination can offer: immaculate golfing, magnificent beaches, safaris into the wild. This great all in all, except for one thing these all have in common - they are all artificial - from the new cities being developed by the government to the skiing slopes which did not spring up naturally in Dubai which has neither the mountains nor the snow. Not until it was brought in, that is. Beyond that artificialness, there is an ultimate irony in the nature of the climate and its interaction with the surroundings. Since for most of the year, the weather does not incite anyone to wonder outside beyond the inevitable run to the car parked in the closest possible proximity, no one walks in Dubai and indeed there are no pedestrian areas to be seen anywhere. Even strolling on the beach is impossible, as I was explained by the patient hotel staff at my instance to go walk around, "it is only villas and private beaches, madam". Strolling in the city is likely impossible - indeed except for the Indian construction workers, no one ever goes outside and even they don't do it out of any desire to be outside. In Dubai, a place known for its incredible dynamism, there are no dogs, no cats, no ants, no butterflies, and actually no life whatsoever outside.
When I insisted to the hotel boy that I had two hours and no desire to spend them in another air conditioned perfectly spotless building, he came up with various suggestions which inevitably revolved around going to the mall. Souk Al Medinat, which is supposedly one of the more "local" placed in Dubai is nothing than a mall with oriental decorations. And then, of course, there is the originally titled Dubai and Emirates Malls, which are where most locals, whether single or with families, male or female, looking to buy a plastic cup or a million dollar diamond necklace, spend their evenings and days. And in the absence of competition from any cultural activity, the malls in Dubai are indeed as impressive as everything else. There are ten meter high aquariums with sharks, skating rinks and musical performances and all those activities which in any other place have as much to do with a mall, as a plastic cup with that diamond necklace.
The final destination that met as closely as possible my desire to walk outside was the Dubai Mall, which is conveniently located near the tallest building in the world, constructed in the pointless competition among the Gulf states for the biggest, the most expensive, and quite bluntly, the glitziest. It meets the criteria of being the tallest building, in all its cold highness, pointless and shining, but once again, with not an ounce of the soul of its much shorter and much less imperfect neighbour - the Eiffel Tower, which tingles the heart with its lights on cold winter evenings or warm summer nights. It seems that in the absence of any historical remnants, the local approach has been to create - as fast, as high, as big, as impressive as possible.
Rumour has it that one UAE Minister once told their Egyptian counterpart that if the UAE had the history of Egypt, they would have already toppled the tourism figures of Egypt. And they might have already, substituting malls for pharaons, hotels for Ottoman-era mosques, and orientally styled malls for real souks, the likes of Cairo's Khan al Khalili. This supremacy of Dubai as a hot Middle East destination is all the more surprising given the existence of other hidden jewels of the Gulf like the Musandam peninsula of Oman. Musandam, only two hour's drive from Dubai, is a world apart from it's consumerism, its architecture, its luxurious restaurants and artificial ski slopes and is completely unexposed relative to its glitzy neighbour. Perched between the UAE and Iran, it does not need to offer anything beyond what its nature has endowed it with - the emerald coloured transparent waters, dolphins swimming alongside old boats navigating between its magnificent mountains, and its people, descendants of Iranian, Arabic, Indian, and Baluchistani tribes.
Just a short drive from Dubai, through Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah, the Deihra checkpoint separating the UAE and Oman is a window to the soul of the Gulf - the Musandam peninsula - with the old fisherman towns the likes of of Khasab, the tiny villages perched between the majestic mountains, and a history of traditions and cultural melting pot that has survived despite the Sunni-Shia rift, the tensions between Iran and the rest of the world, and the lack of tourism and modernity that boasts its neighbour. In Musandam, life tick-tocks according to its own rhythm, without grand ambitions and glitzy malls, but with a sort of bizarre tribal multiculturalism that gives it a soul - something that oil money has not yet succeeded in reproducing.
