Dubai seems to be a city with no limits. From the skyscrapers to the slums, everything in this urban oasis challenges our traditional conceptions of the word “big,” and because of this, Dubai has attracted immigrants from all over the world in search of opportunity and extravagance.  

Dubai skyline

A city like this could not be found in a more unlikely place. The long needle of the Burj Khalifa, which marks the epicenter of the city, lies with the Persian Gulf to the northwest and the daunting hills of sand to the southeast. While the desert seems to give off a hum of silence, the city is electric with life.

Burj Khalifa

Since it is the business capital of the Middle East, people from all over the world have flocked there to find opportunity and prosperity for themselves and their families. In fact, even though the United Arab Emirates is an Arabic speaking country, a traveller is better off using English since it has become the unofficial common language because of the diverse groups of people residing in the city. 

Dubai provides an interesting counterpoint to the usual city found in the Muslim world, which is typically conservative in culture and values; people abnegating from the finer things in life for the sake of piety. However, among Dubai’s elite, women wear diamond-studded niqabs, men are chained with gaudy jewelry, expensive sports cars speed through immaculate highways lined with palm trees, and the architecture looks like it was stolen from the blueprints of Arabian palaces. Needless to say, Dubai is a city of fortune. Even the call to prayer plays soothingly through speakers placed around the main square, just loud enough to permeate your threshold of consciousness, as opposed to the normal blasting sound that clumsily echoes through the streets in other Muslim cities.

This nighttime astronaut photograph of the city of Dubai was taken at approximately 2 a.m. local time on September 11, 2009. Photo Wikimedia Commons: ISS Crew Earth Observations

The extravagance actually takes the form of nausea on the infamous manmade Palm Island of Dubai. The massive hotels make you squirm with insignificance while the marble floors and perfumed air cause you to second-guess whether this is reality. However, it’s funny how quickly the senses adapt. The perfume, that originally was originally choking, soon becomes undetectable to the nose. The enormous ceilings and expensive statues are not as impressive when surrounded by equally large statues and ceilings.  You quickly lose yourself in this dream, as it becomes your new reality. Will you even remember what the real world is like?

Palm Island

Palm Island. Photographed by Expedition 10 Commander Leroy Chiao from the International Space Station in 2005. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Yes. The real world can be found just outside the city where the half built skyscrapers become more sporadic, and slowly transition to the “suburbs.” However, these suburbs are not the white-picket fence and flowery garden archetype that most people picture.  Dubai’s suburbs are composed of apartment buildings that are so tightly packed that the tiny windows give the appearance of the inside of a cement beehive. The only colors that resemble the flowers in our American suburbs are the clothes hanging out the windows to dry on the sides of the buildings. At street level, instead of palm trees and expensive cars, there are cracked sidewalks, trash, and little open shops selling various household products. Most people are dressed in shabby, conservative robes instead of wrapped in jewelry and exotic fabrics.

The opportunity is tangible in the city. But moving from the city to the suburbs is like when someone wakes you up from a good dream before it’s over. You keep trying to go back to sleep but somehow the joy is already gone. Most immigrants are giving up a life with friends and family in their native country so that maybe their kids will be the ones driving the next generation of sports car.

The point of describing this unknown face of Dubai is to show that even seemingly limitless luxuries have their boundaries. To Westerners, Dubai is a place that people dream about when they think of the rich and powerful people of the Arabian Gulf, but that is only half of the story. The other half lives in poverty, trying to get back to that inexplicably euphoric dream that they can’t seem to remember.

The city of Dubai, one of the seven emirates that comprise the United Arab Emirates, is seen from aboard the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio (CG 68) as it pulls into port.  Photo Wikimedia Commons: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Matthew D. Leistikow