Dubai, eternal city
The people I speak to do not sleep well these days. Usually their waking is voluntary. Now there are alarms, incessant and immutable, that jolt them to life. On the worst nights they rouse themselves for a second or third time, and look out above the glimmering city for supersonic and subsonic streaks, for lights that rise to meet them, for that moment of interception.
They draw the curtains shut and head to a bathroom away from the building’s periphery, just as the government has advised them to. There, they wait while explosions rattle the windows, the jet engines turn faint once more and the sense of emergency recedes. There will be another message to everyone with a phone: everything is fine. They return to bed. There is nothing further until the next alert. For now the problem has been handled, and the unusual thing has passed. With the payload neutralised, they fall into an approximation of sleep. The authorities may confirm debris “from routine air defence operations” and urge people to avoid said debris, if they aren’t already beneath it.
The government is taking care of everything, a person I know tells me. (There will be no names taken here; despite a tentative ceasefire it is wartime, and although Dubai has been one of the centres of the conflict, the most famous emirate still hopes to present itself as on the periphery. For that reason, everybody is a potential snitch in the authorities’ eyes.) He says they have made life normal. There is no danger, there is nothing to worry about.
He says that his office is full of people, the area is thrumming, and business is all right. He will not entertain any suggestion of returning to India, even briefly. His tone is of heightened enthusiasm, so unyielding to the possibility of danger that I join him in his appreciation for Dubai’s governance over the open telephone line. They are amazing, they really take care of residents, it is the best place to be. His wife is not as cheery. She begins to describe her own surreal existence, a story quite removed from her husband’s. I remind her that the line is not private in this autocratic state, and we agree to speak another time.
Mid-1980s. Onlookers stand at the edge of a crumbling road to gape at a flash flood in the desert. The author was forbidden from getting too close © Rahul Bhatia
Dubai, the most populous of the United Arab Emirates, is the destination of choice for south Asians and westerners hungry for opportunity and Russian money hungry for a sanction-free home. The city has space for appetites of almost every kind. It attracts people seeking relief from taxes, from war, from disorganisation and dysfunction. Fortified by an unseen undercity of labourers, Dubai allows the very rich to live their best lives. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of south Asians, Iranians and Arabs work in the banks and government enterprises or run companies of their own — keeping the city’s lifeblood of capital flowing. These are the people I grew up with, and attended school with, and who I speak to over the course of a few weeks as this new conflict in the Middle East deepens.
Recommended
United Arab Emirates
UAE projects normal life as missiles shake haven reputation
Weeks have passed since Iran carried out its threat to hit places of financial and economic significance across the Gulf in response to the attacks by Israel and America. This adds another dimension to the threat confronted by the UAE, which comes under attack from Iran as soon as the conflict begins, when it responds to some 346 drones and missiles. On March 13, the Dubai Financial Centre is hit by the debris of an intercepted drone, which causes “a minor incident on the facade of a building”, in the words of the Dubai Government Media Office. These fragments are presented as evidence that the country’s air defence can turn powerful ammunition into “minor incidents”. But the intercepted debris strikes buildings and gas plants across the UAE, sometimes leading to casualties. In between, some drones and missiles slip through to strike fuel tanks and one of the world’s largest aluminium plants — damage so extensive that it will take a year to recover fully.
The people who work at the financial centre now turn up remotely, while someone else worries about the compliance and other regulatory transgressions this causes. But in the wealth management division of a European bank, management decides that remote work is now over. Normalcy has not returned, but the frequency of drones and missiles has dropped enough to move the needle just past the fine line between the headache of liability and the headache of compliance. Still, an employee wonders, is it too soon? The previous night was a rough one: alert, projectile, boom, alert, projectile, boom and so on. Morning life is normal again, as if nothing happened. The duality is jarring. It disorients her, this quiet war that intensifies for hours before subsiding, and then intensifies once more. During the quiet hours, she looks around and sees others fulfilling their functions. It is the most banal act and the most necessary one: to step outside and travel some distance; to turn up at work.
Late 1980s. Watching a powerboat race. The author was forbidden from toppling into the Arabian Gulf © Rahul Bhatia
She shops, meets people and goes about her day. But she thinks constantly about departure. She has dispatched her parents to safety, a move they resisted for its whiff of betrayal to Dubai. She told them to imagine it was a brief vacation — that was what it took to convince them. Now they are in Mumbai, getting massages. With her other relatives she has been less successful. She made the case that disaster rises like a flood and they were unmoved. They said they would leave only if they saw Iranian troops land on the city’s beaches.
The inaction recalls the first days of the pandemic, when people were paralysed by the internal weights that measured loyalty with preservation and probability with mistrust — scales that were all wrong. They will only acknowledge the war’s danger if they feel it on their own skin. The shops are open, the prices are kept affordable because someone up the chain is swallowing rising costs, and the authorities arrive within three minutes of an interception to manage the damage. Just the other day, she says, she was at a hotel for a little staycation. When a successful interception happened, people at the pool clapped enthusiastically. Although her relationship with the city is strained by ballistic missiles, she tells herself this is the country to be in.
There is an unshakeable belief in Dubai, among some communities that have moved there, which verges on delusion; every other place on the planet pales in comparison: Paris is dirty, New York smells like toilets, Mumbai is madness. Growing up in the city for over two decades, I heard it referred to as a golden bird, a lucky place, a city where your fortunes changed. It was a manicured garden, where the problems of the outside world were kept out of sight, beyond the trimmed hedges. Immunity from the pressures and restraints of other cultures and geographies was guaranteed. Here, Indians and Pakistanis arrived in such numbers that the alienation that often accompanies migration was softened, and suspicions were overcome so quickly that they fantasised about a team with Sachin batting and Wasim bowling. Making a financial killing was possible with hustle and a little luck. It began with the airport, where a traveller passing through Dubai Duty Free could attain an affordable raffle ticket for an unattainable car. Crazy things happened, but in Dubai, the feeling went, crazy things happened a little more often. The city turned normal people into actuaries of their own fortune.
I remembered this while interviewing a former resident who had lived there for three decades. Dubai was behind him, but it had not let go of him. We talked about the questions over Dubai’s future, and about the western press’s conclusion that the dream was irrevocably broken, with money-grubbing non-doms forced to flee home. “There aren’t many places on earth that offer you high-quality living, safety, are very well connected, with developed infrastructure that’s better than western countries, and are multicultural,” he told me. There was something for everybody in Dubai, he said, from labourers to billionaires, precisely because it offers a quality of life proportionate to their purchasing power. “No income tax, a little corporate tax. People respect the law, and are aware of the consequences if they don’t. The royal family is innovative, very supportive, and gives you an environment where business can grow. It’s easier to go there with the golden visa. Can you go to Singapore that easily? No.”
Inside Dubai, some of this fervent optimism has to do with the carefully curated morning newspapers, which arrive with mitigatory language. Despite the fact that the UAE is under attack, that its refineries, fuel depots, data centres and banks are vulnerable, that traffic to its main port is falling because of the strangled Hormuz strait, the main story one morning is about Israel bombing Lebanon.
Other stories are calming. The economic stimulus announced will create confidence; business leaders hail the resilience of Dubai’s economic model. The only evidence of the conflict comes as downed missiles and drones, which cannot be denied. The war itself is referred to as “regional tension”, or a “geopolitical development” that creates “temporary disruptions” or “airspace closures”. A columnist explains that the strict control of information is necessary because, in the UAE, “perception directly affects economic resilience”.
Some of it also has to do with the quiet ways in which a government reassures a city’s residents. By decree, children across the country now attend school online; textbooks are delivered home. Fares are cut for the elderly, parking fares and tolls lifted, visa restrictions relaxed. Traders who raise prices too high too quickly are fined over $50,000 by government inspection teams. There are plans to open neighbourhood parks everywhere, triple the number of trees and construct dozens of affordable schools. This dissipates the sense of siege.
1980s. A boat race © Rahul Bhatia
But where people meet and talk, there is the unavoidable discussion of mortgage payments and cutbacks, of parents airlifted to safety or parents too old to be transferred elsewhere. The nine-to-five continues, and the usual vacation restrictions are in place. Discussions about property transactions and bargain sales are even more common. Someone tells me how well they are being paid in Dubai, and the difficulties they would face in beginning anew elsewhere. Another says simply that this place and its streets are what he knows.
These are the voices of loyal longtime residents, the ones who stayed through the imminent threat of the first Gulf war, the wars after 9/11, and then the collapse of the real estate market during the global financial crisis in 2008. They remember these moments as points of inflection, pauses between stretches of the city turning itself from one thing to another through expansion, but also erasure.
They understand the mores of the city, they know where to find things and have developed a sense of direction. Of course, if an Emirati passport was available, they would take it in an instant. But in its absence, they carry themselves as though they were citizens all the same. It is part of the compact of life here. The illusion of belonging grows stronger over time, even though their status is as tenuous as ever. In return, they will not disturb the idea of the city. They will internalise the understanding that “perception directly affects economic resilience”. Basically, the immigrants will go along with it.
One of the perils of returning to Dubai infrequently is hearing how much the place has changed. Constant renovation is the local pastime. But, over the years, I’ve learnt that Dubai’s residents tend to prefer their relationship with the city to be uncomplicated by civic participation. That is why, when the war began and questions about Dubai’s future made global headlines, as if a long-held illusion of stability had suddenly vanished, I thought the city had been misunderstood.
Not so long ago, when there were fewer skyscrapers and much more sand, Dubai was a place where police clomped around on horses to enforce bedtimes and shoplifters were threatened with their parents, not the police. Morality and threats to the family name were the chief instruments of control. Between the unsaid rules that defined an immigrant’s place and the licence to make money, a life could find expression.
If we trace the trajectory of my idea of the city backwards, we land in the year 1979, at the coordinates of an affordable housing colony for migrants from south Asia, the Philippines and other parts of the Middle East. At one of its edges sits a very seedy cinema hall that plays Mallu porn. The colony consists of long, low white buildings set on a rectangular grid. The city has not yet colonised the desert. There are no seven-star hotels, no underwater restaurants, no giant palm tree housing developments constructed in the sea. It feels like a town, and its residents keep village timings. Except for the shopping, of which there is plenty.
The place existed, in my parents’ account, courtesy of The Sheikh, a mysterious benefactor who had subsidised housing built to ease a family’s passage into the country. The rent was unbeatable, adding to The Sheikh’s reputation as a top-notch guy. But Rashid bin Saeed al-Maktoum was also a kind man, like a gentler version of the man they called the “Leader Necessity” across the water in Iraq. The Sheikh was behind the colony, the roads, the traffic signal timings, the height of the pavements. His will moved water through the pipes and carried away our sewage to who knew where. He terraformed the desert, and his planes caused the clouds to rain. I was given to understand, very clearly, that we were all there because he uttered the words, “Build it and they will come.”
1980. At Jumeirah zoo. The author was forbidden from touching the lion © Rahul Bhatia
At the time, The Sheikh was a framed picture on the wall. My true interest was in how we used his infrastructure, primarily by turning the giant parking lot into football pitches some days, and cricket grounds on others. Dozens of children congregated on the tarmac and made the neighbourhood unbearable in the evenings. In such a crowd, invisibility was assured. On one side in the chaos one day, a small group gathered around a boy promising to show his audience an unforgettable sight. “Have you ever seen a naked woman?” he whispered, waiting for a reply, then brought out a card with a picture of an extremely naked American woman with big hair all over. It was foolhardy, and I worried that it could have ended in jail — lashes and deportation for all of us. My understanding was that even looking was potentially a crime.
The sensation of guilt by association was amplified another day when two Emirati boys picked me out of a football game and ordered me to meet them behind a nearby car. They looked as if they could cause trouble, and so I obeyed. One pressed me against the car door and put a hand over my mouth. The other whispered in my ear that he wanted to measure something. On the car’s other side, the game went on.
I was certain, upon returning home, that something wrong had happened. But to talk about it would have upset some carefully managed balance, inviting a degree of uncertainty into our life. I had been made to understand that a local’s word weighed differently. The healthiest thing to do, under the circumstances, was to pretend that nothing happened and not speak a word of it. This was not the Dubai that would come some day, with its facilities for the rich and tax arrangements for the obscene. But there was oil in the UAE, and money flowed easily, and that was all anyone could ask for. So I took on board the family’s usual advice: keep your head down and do your work.
When survival demands pretence, it becomes a habit. In late March, by the war’s third week, to quell rising panic, police have arrested 109 people suspected of filming “incidents related to Iran’s attacks” and posting “inaccurate information on social media”. They’re accused of sharing unverified content from unofficial sources, of affecting internal security, of glorifying a hostile state, and “adding commentary and sound effects aimed at inciting public anxiety and panic.” Besides them, 35 others who filmed interceptions are quickly put on trial.
If we trace the trajectory of my idea of the city back, we land in the year 1979, at an affordable housing colony for migrants
At least some of these people are responsible for the offence of sharing what they had witnessed. It’s easy to imagine why they did so, despite the restrictions on documentation. An incoming attack is a singular event, in contrast to the cool reporting through official news channels, with its spirit of collective resilience: “Cancelled flights, unexpected gains: UAE residents find silver linings close to home”; “The world predicts chaos — Dubai proves resilience”; “Ten shows confirmed for April in the UAE”. But the singular experiences launched from Iran short-circuit all pretence, and experiencers look for ways to diffuse the current. When residents anonymously report explosions and debris from across the city on social media, they are reaching out for emotional solidarity in the aftermath of a shock. All they are really doing is counting the bangs. Four. Five. Now in this district. Then in that district. Condemnations of Iran, of Trump, of Israel. The messages were accompanied by warnings that locating the explosions could give them away.
On Reddit, responses to online queries by nervous residents (“What tf is going on”; “another debris”) come within minutes (“We have interceptors for missiles, but nothing for debris”), and are one of a few high-frequency indicators the people I speak with rely on to check the temperature of the conflict. Undergirding it all lies the desire for a fuller picture. “A colleague returning from England last week said the flight to Dubai was 80 per cent full. And look, there are property transactions happening online. Not like before, maybe 60 per cent, but they’re happening,” an old Dubai hand tells me.
Do you know why people go to Dubai? It gives you a life without constraints. As long as you don’t do politics, you’re fine
I ask if the government accounts of the conflict and its explanations are enough for him. He gives me a list of local, Indian, Qatari, Iranian and American media sources he refers to. He has noticed the tone of forced normalcy in the papers, but life outside has not changed for him. Yes, there are concerns, he says, and the nights are less crowded, but the country is well-prepared. “They are doing an amazing job.” There’s an understanding that systems are under enormous stress, and that actions have been taken to limit the transmission of higher prices and shortages. The food supply is strong and the authorities have reminded shoppers there is no shortage of necessities.
Signals like these calm him, and allow him to justify staying in Dubai, despite being in the flight path of 75 drones and missiles on an average day, and of the intercepted shrapnel that was racking up casualties. Working from home, the explosions have become background noise. He’s aware that Iran’s missiles sometimes evade Israel’s defence systems, but the cumulative effect of the assurances he receives leads him to have faith in similar systems around him. He has made his peace with the local ministry of defence’s daily statistics, which listed air defence engagements, but not what might have slipped through. Yet he is not immune to doubt. He asks, with some hesitation, if I will let him know if I feel the danger rise.
I had begun to feel something about Dubai and the UAE under siege that may have not been entirely true, but fitted with my internalised understanding of the country. That the rules that applied to us migrants seemed to apply to the country as a whole: keep your head down, keep out of other people’s business, and be conservative. Purposeful non-involvement.
As a child, I was told that Dubai did not get involved with the world’s problems, and so the world did not interfere with Dubai. But then I remembered that Blackwater, the mercenary security contractor that had killed Iraqi civilians in 2007, had been hired by the UAE in 2011, as the effects of the Arab Spring reverberated around the Middle East. Some years later, the UAE was part of a Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen. In the 2020s, it allegedly provided drones to the Ethiopian government in a war that killed over 600,000 people. And more recently, it has been accused of arming the Rapid Support Forces, a Sudanese paramilitary group, in an ongoing and brutal conflict. As the UAE took on a more active role in the world, it seemed inevitable that the world would reciprocate.
Late 1980s. The family car, an immaculate red Mazda 929, in which the author was forbidden from eating © Rahul Bhatia
The old Dubai hand I spoke with believed that this involvement in foreign affairs was a mistake. But he believed the emirates were capable of defending themselves. He leaned back and casually swept an arm through the air in the manner of a technocrat describing an obvious engineering solution to a centuries-old social problem. “Going forward, the UAE government will invest more in their defence. They will protect petroleum and desalination plants. They will reduce their reliance on the Strait of Hormuz. They might create underground pipelines, or build an oil grid with neighbouring countries.
And once the war was over, normalcy would return, he said. They would improve their external security to match the quality of their internal security, which was “already very strong”. So good that “you can see a person’s journey from their front door to his place of work. The day the war stops, the flights to Dubai will be full.” He was unimpressed by westerners and their newspapers, whose judgment he found suspect. “These westerners… they worry about the war and so they’re the first to jump ship like rats, you know? Look, countries face external threats from time to time. Now it’s the UAE’s turn. But once it’s done, what will happen? I think this is a passing phase. Dubai is resilient. Do you know why people go there? It gives you a life without constraints that have held you back. As long as you don’t do politics, you’re fine.”
Recommended
The Big Read
In the centre of the storm: what does the Iran war mean for Dubai?
He did not mention that the UAE may be pressing America to finish the job in Iran, and what this would mean for its long-term security. Air defence may become a line item in Dubai’s cost of living over time, but the loss of container traffic to Jebel Ali — the UAE’s and Middle East’s largest port, which accounts for over one-third of Dubai’s GDP and 75 per cent of its FDI in manufacturing, trade and transport — will be harder to overcome. Iran had been levying tolls on ships that passed through the strait. For now, some traffic has been routed through ports on the Red Sea, at whose southern tip the Houthis lie in wait, ready to potentially fight beside Iran and Hizbollah.
These are hard questions, and will require a degree of “doing politics”. But with supply chains operating well so far and no shortage of groceries, such questions are kept at bay. In early April I reach out to the banker who thinks about departure often. Almost a month has passed since we last spoke, and she is no closer to a decision. There are parents and employees and pets to look after, a sudden feeling of financial frailty, as if the city’s construct was about to collapse. She turns up to work to show she is a team player. But she has the number of a private jet operator, and driving south across the border to Oman is a fallback. She can’t say when they would leave. The announcement of a ceasefire has brought temporary respite. But if there is a return to war, she will be at her window again, looking up to the stars, watching the streaks in the sky, waiting for a sign.
Rahul Bhatia is the author of “The New India”.
