Diary of an unborn writer #9

Dubai is falling down.

Not in a slow way. Quite abrupt. We’ve been having a jolly Christmas in the desert – the expats – that’s my family and I and over-bronzed Brits and South Africans they’ve befriended. Dear people. Good people. Making their way in the desert.

The desert defines Dubai. Defines and fulfils it. It’s taken me five years of coming here but finally I see it. The space. Gaps between buildings filled with sand. Sand either side of motorways lined with date palms and floodlights. Space between people. Looseness of connection. A relaxedness. More space for the self. More time for each other.

And the expat kids take it up grandly. They’re crazy. Whiling away hard hours in tax free jobs, earnings flowing into torrents of alcohol, 4x4 desert trips, then holidays skiing in Iran. They take everything this empty town has and give it back hugely to the world.

So the desert fulfils Dubai. There are many who have seen this plot and curse its rapid development. The rate at which towers scrape the ever blue sky. Forests of skyscrapers in all crazy designs mirroring ambition, largesse and most of all greed - the large eyes of prospectors knowing that as long as the development continues folk will be persaded to keep coming, keep building. Onrush and onslaught of celebrity purses and the common cattle following to where the footballers tread. There’s an ugly side here and for a while that’s all I could see until the space seeped through and I began to realise the emptiness – desolateness – of the desert town was its message not a form of abuse (though plenty still do).

The desert fulfils Dubai. Somehow expected it. Wanted it to grow as if to say: have all this, grow all this, desire all of it again, I’ll still be a space with broad enough arms to take your India, Pakistan, Britain, America, China, IBM, CNN, Al Jazeera, BBC, Financial Times and warring tribes place them in towers 1 km high and somehow you’ll forget in the cracks and widespaces between concrete dreams that the space holds you, embraces you, allows you to debauch and respect each other. This noise you create confirms how loud my silence rings.

Yes.

The desert fulfils Dubai.

***

I came out here via Istanbul. A hair’s breadth of a missed transfer meant I spent an unexpected night in the ancient city. Although I was put up in a hotel 2 hours outside the city so visiting it and making the connecting flight was not an option. That and I was broke.

The stop was not entirely dry. The food was good and I had been a little adrift of the world news until I viewed six continuous cycles of BBC World and CNN – clicking between channels for variation. It’s a strange pair of goggles with which to view the world.

And there was a lady. Stunning. Short black hair with flecks of grey like she’d undergone some trauma. A turk, she’d spent the last year in Rotterdam studying architecture. Had a visa fuck up and was thrown in a tower block of asylum seekers whores and families of 16 in 2 bedroom apartments.

She had those devastating Turkish eyes that glow as if from beneath a veil.

Yasmin the Turk.

She also had scratches on both hands and a bandage covering her left wrist. I was worried about her. She explained the bandage covered a new tattoo, pulling it back to reveal a picture of a snake that had swallowed a baby elephant in the fashion of The Little Prince – a child’s story of fitting loneliness and longing for a lady lost from home and it seems in a little adrift from the little planet. Retreating to dreamland was the safest place to be.

The scratches, incidentally, were from her cat that kept biting her. Somehow didn’t fit.

As a young man and a young woman would do when left alone in a hotel room, we fucked.

At times it felt like she was an insect as she clawed at my face and sides, though she was a peaceful little bug.

It felt good. Serene. Two people who have nothing to give each other but a sudden emotional bond with a safety valve of never seeing the other again. I'm not being cynical, the immediacy was beautiful.

***

And then on to Dubai where the building had stopped. A hectic thrust and pace of development has astonished me every time I’ve been. Swarms of workers in blue overalls – like an orchestra conducted by vast yellow metal cranes. The little black dots of their heads no doubt beaded by sweat as they worked round the clock in up to forty degree heat to fulfil the speculators dreams and most of all not stop before people could draw breath.

But now the breath has come. A deep inhale and the building has stopped. Dead. The workers have gone – back to India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Phillipines. Money’s dried up – overborrowed and hysterically spent.

A city built to house generations of sun seekers can barely fill one tenth of its rooms.

And for a second there we really thought it could escape. Do what Florida, Wall St, today’s credit market could not do and outpace the resources that underpinned it.
A relief to know that gravity still holds sway. We’re not quite ready for intergalactic speculation, though I’m sure there are a few around with the dollar to push worlds around if they choose.

Which they do.

Imagine if one of them is Buddha. I think we’re going to be OK.