Arabistan

Arabistan

The United Arab Emirates are a somewhat unlikely destination for members of the poverty jet set, but here I am, sitting in a freezing cold a/c apartment in Abu Dhabi.
Arriving at Dubai at 4am, jet-lagged and half dead from watching US propaganda for six hours on the plane, I am disgorged onto the almost deserted airport forecourt. The floor is marble and clean enough to eat off and there is not a single Arab in sight.
In fact, less than 25 % of the Emirates’ population are Emiratis. Familiar faces everywhere. Indians, Pakistanis, Filipinos make up the work force. The Arabs, through trade and the oil discovered here in the 60s, are just too rich to work and are more likely to be off to Paris for some shopping. The taxi drivers are Indian. The people building the roads and skyscrapers that rise out of the desert like surreal pieces of giant jewelry are from South Asia too. Even the police force is hired in.
A shifty-looking guy with a great smile and a scarred face approaches me for a light and then asks me what my business is. Aroon is from Kerala, southern India. I tell him that I need to get to Abu Dhabi, 180km down the coast and he offers me a lift. I can’t afford a taxi but no problem, he will make a special price for me. The price he offers is so special I find it hard to resist and ask him what his secret is. Aroon stares at me, looks around him and whispers conspirationally, “I have private car, no taxi licence.”
I am too tired to stand, too impatient to wait out the dawn in the airport and I follow him into the night. We cross a couple of car parks, go up and down in elevators and I figure this guy is not going to rob me of 30 kg of luggage, not in the richest country on the planet. And I’m right. Aroon is just a dodgy guy into making money any which way he can. Which is why he has a small car, a jeep and a motorbike back home, where he spends six months of the year. His sponsor, the man who gets him the visa to enter the UAE is one of the Sheik’s bodyguards, ‘a nice old man’.
Aroon tells me about being scared of the police, as he is breaking the law by taking me as a paying passenger and then does a 150 km past a never-ending stream of radar warnings. We are the fastest vehicle on the road. Most of the early morning traffic is open buses loaded with construction workers. After an hour on the road I still have not seen a single Arab.
The Emirates rise out of nothing, out of a flat expanse of fine white sand that drifts across the freeway, clings to the side of the road and is all that is visible beyond the road. Except for shopping centers, housing complexes, small collections of villas called villages (where the Arabs live in splendor) and mosques of all shapes, sizes and (often futuristic) designs. More shopping centers, more villas, more mosques and housing projects for the foreign workforce. It’s clean, well organized but not oppressively so, hence Aroon keeps breaking the law, pushing his Toyota to a 160km. We follow the coastline and Aroon, over the din of Hindi pop blaring from the speakers, points out the sights. “The Sheik, he is a good man. Everyone gets a place to live, the Arabs get free apartments, already furnished. No one has to work. A lot of the money coming in goes back out to the people. Every Emirati is cared for. If you are born here and you don’t want to work, no problem. The foreigners are paid to do all the work.”
He grins and then confesses that he runs other businesses, that two brothers and a brother in law have been here with him for the last two decades and with a crooked smile he adds, “Is good for me to be here, in India there are too many people, here there is always something to do. And driving is great work, the petrol is almost free.”
Outside Dubai we pass strange skyscrapers that look like rockets with broken backs pointing into the clear morning sky. These stand pretty much in the middle of nowhere, only refineries and the sea beyond. Sand is all around. Properties are surrounded by low walls to keep the drift out, even forests are surrounded by walls. We pass a couple of forests. The road signs tell me these are forests, to me they look like nurseries, trees neatly lined up in long rows, stuck in the sand.
As we approach Abu Dhabi, the richest Emirate, we pass a Ladies Beach. At 6am it’s deserted but apparently, ladies do come here, no one else allowed. Beyond there are more oil refineries. An internet park turns out to be a gigantic industrial zone with Microsoft, IBM and other familiar multinationals digging into the sand with sprawling complexes. Not a soul in sight anywhere.

Rush hour in Abu Dhabi is a flash of half empty streets running through polished high rises. I spot Arab restaurants, lots of beauty salons (there are far fewer women here than men, the workforce being almost entirely male), and a lot of Asian looking shops. Giant video screens stuck to the buildings spew forth silent advertising. David Lean is long gone, Bladerunner got rich, got stuck in the sand and decided to stay. We race past more speed traps, police vehicles and police stations. Nothing happens.
Aroon drops me off at the central taxi stand, a sickly green construction that has enough parking bays for a couple of hundred vehicles but there’s only a hand full of Pakistanis waiting for a fare. A red gleaming Alfa Romeo cruises past, windows down. Behind the wheel, a middle-aged man, dressed in spotless white, his eyes hidden by shades that look like a year’s worth of my income. They’re not all in Paris, at least one Emirati is taking care of business.