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A Dream Called Dubai

I grew up with the dream of driving my own car since as long as I can remember — from those teeny-weeny toy cars to cardboard models put together by an enterprising older cousin. I am not sure how long I would have waited back home in India to see that dream come true. Dubai fleshed it out within a year — or as soon as I got the licence to drive.

Mine is not a rare story of an average Joe. This is the shared experience of faceless multitudes in this incredible city. This is the city of everyone’s dreams. And it’s full of people whose lives are a living tribute to their 
impossible ambitions.

Of course, all great cities are full of dreamers and achievers with a myriad tales of implausible achievements. But what makes Dubai stand out is its ability to fulfill the dreams of just about everyone. No matter where you come from and what you do, Dubai has a place and slice for you. I can’t think of any other city where dreams are built at this pace and with such ease.

Which is perhaps how it should be. After all, this city itself is the outcome of an ostensibly hopeless dream, a vision that has wowed the world and awed friends and foes alike. Today, that dream finds itself once again under attack — attacks that get vicious and virulent by the day. Knives are back. But the knives had always been there—hidden behind the backs as they all waited for Dubai to falter so they can pounce and finish off the enduring vision that has stood tall, defying all predictions and challenges, continually mocking the sceptics and naysayers.

During the emirate’s mindboggling construction boom that started with the new millennium, whenever you travelled around the world people would ask with a smirk, ‘so how long is it gonna last?’ When one indignantly protested that Dubai’s boom was not a passing, accidental phenomenon, they would shake their heads warning us of the ‘imminent bust’ ahead. And since the world woke up to the US Wall Street meltdown, thanks to long years of bankrupt economic policies in Washington and its crazy, extravagant wars around the world, just about every pundit has been telling us that it’s end of the road for Dubai too.

During a recent trip to Europe, one was repelled by the glee in fellow hacks’ faces and voices. “Oh, from Dubai!” would be invariably followed by queries about the ‘millions of workers’ who in their view were fleeing the emirate.

The Dubai World’s announcement last week seeking more time to restructure its $59 billion debt has proved the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back. Western news networks and journalists, especially those from the tiny crowded island that once ruled this part of the world, are circling and attacking Dubai and the UAE as hungry vultures would target a dying animal.

Look at some of these Schadenfreude headlines. The Times of London once again leads the attack by screaming: “Bling Central Loses Sparkle!” Rod Liddle, its star columnist, declares: “Dubai is wrecked but, like an old tart with a kiss-and-tell contract from the red-tops, threatens to drag the rest of us down with it.” Elsewhere the paper posits: “Dubai is a monument to the excesses that gave us this global 
financial crisis.”

And we all thought the global crisis was sparked by the sub-prime circus in the United States!

Another Dubai-datelined dispatch exclaims: “How Dubai’s burst bubble has left behind the last days of Rome!” And the team of reporters concludes: “By any conventional logic, Dubai is now a busted flush.”

In another report, the paper vents its frustration over the poise and dignity of the emirate’s leaders amid all this talk of gloom and doom: “Dubai keeps its head in the sand!”

And the Times is not alone in this ‘Mission Kill Dubai’. The Observer declares: “Dubai’s property bonanza just wasn’t built to last!” Another Observer report asks: “As Dubai crashes from wonder to blunder, who’ll go 
down with it?”

I can think of only one answer to all this endless and mindless bitching and carping about Dubai: Shut Up! Just shut up! That was the answer offered by the man who has been the architect of this miracle in the desert.

For it’s not just unfair but downright silly to suggest Dubai is finished just because one of its many companies has requested a rescheduling of loan. Rescheduling of loans and debts happens all the time in this business. One company doesn’t make or mar Dubai.

Have we forgotten how many mighty banks and legendary financial institutions in the United States, UK and elsewhere have been savaged by the global meltdown? From Lehman Brothers to AIG to Citigroup in the US to the Northern Rock to Bear Stearns in the UK, many a giant has fallen from its hallowed perch. The US and governments across Europe and Asia had to step in with massive stimulus packages to support their crisis-struck institutions. While the US pumped in a whopping $787 billion to rescue its financial institutions, the bailout for British banks hit 850 billion pounds. Does this mean all those countries are finished?

This is a global crisis and Dubai and UAE are doing what governments elsewhere have done to deal with it. This is not a crisis of our making and is not special to Dubai or UAE. One fleeting setback cannot undo all that the emirate has built over the years.

This reality is not lost on our friends in Western media. Only they choose to see what they want to see. They just can’t stomach the fact that an Arab and Muslim country has demolished historical stereotypes to beat them at their own game.

Ironically, the first among those rushing to pronounce Dubai dead are those who have benefited the most from the Arabian paradise.

Overpaid Western expats, especially British, who have all these years enjoyed a secure, tax-free existence in their cocooned, luxury beach villas with their SUVs while Asian maids take care of their brood have been the first to carp and snigger about the end of the party. No sense of loyalty there whatsoever, even after decades spent enjoying the good life and sun and sand 
in Jumeirah.

On the other hand, South Asian desis, Filipinos — the people Johann Hari of the Independent calls “slaves in a sinister mirage” — and Arabs and Africans are springing up to Dubai’s defence. They have reasons to get angry. After all, unlike the people you know who, they have built this country. This has been home away from home.

As long as the emirates are blessed with such hard-working, well-meaning people, I would like to believe, 
there’s hope.

A banker friend from Nepal wrote in this week: “The downgrade by the ‘poor’ Standards & Poor notwithstanding, Dubai stands as a beacon of Asian enterprise and chutzpah. If it folds up, it will be decades before our part of the globe will again be able to stand up to the West.”

While Madhukar’s concern is appreciated, I believe Dubai will not just sail through this pocket of rough seas smoothly, it will emerge even stronger. The idea of Dubai will continue to bloom long after the wagging tongues of its detractors have fallen silent. Because the never-say-die spirit that gave birth to the phenomenon called Dubai and the UAE is as alive and vibrant as ever. The can-do spirit that started a revolution in a sleepy, desolate region once known for nothing else but the Empty Quarter is far from beaten 
and vanquished.

Let Dubai’s critics not forget that it has already accomplished in a span of just four decades what mighty nations with infinite resources at their disposal take centuries to build.

Besides fashioning a peaceful and vibrant, multicultural society in a troubled region and its fabled property market, Dubai has established itself as the Middle East’s commercial and financial hub and one of the top 20 such centres in the world. It is the third largest re-export hub in the world. Its airport is the fifth busiest in the world and its duty free is the largest and best airport retail operator. Its container port is the fourth largest port operator in the world, managing close to 50 ports in every part of the globe. These are just some of the things that come 
to mind.

And remember Dubai created all this out of thin air, without the riches of oil to back its sky-high ambitions. If you need to get an idea of the emirate’s true contribution, just look around and see how many Dubais have come up all over the Middle East and across the globe. They are a living, thriving tribute to this great city and its enterprising spirit. And they are the answer to its critics. Envy, jealousy and pure venom cannot kill an idea like Dubai. It will outlive its bitchy critics.

Aijaz Zaka Syed is Opinion Editor of 
Khaleej Times and can be reached at 
aijaz@khaleejtimes.com