Dubai

[June 2022]

The last 48 hours of my life have been intense. I might be inclined to some hyperbole about them being the most intense of my life, but that would probably be a blatant over exaggeration. It just feels intense because the emotions are still so close in their proximity, close to the surface. They’re still fresh, the incision site still oozing, with a scab only beginning to form.

I don’t think dramaticism is my style, but when I was sobbing into my phone at 1:30 AM this morning, my emotions only heightened by the lack of sleep, it all did feel quite dramatic.

Today it’s Thursday, and I am on a flight back home. I spent just over 48 hours in Dubai, from 4 AM Tuesday morning to 7 AM today. And both my body and mind are exhausted.

This was my first time in the Middle East, and I made the trip all on my own to meet a group of strangers who technically are my colleagues, but usually remain hidden behind computer screens, muted mics, and an absence of profile pictures. To make matters more bizarre, I’ve only been at this company for just over a month. So, while all of them are finally putting faces to all the names and voices they’d grown familiar with over months and years, I am struggling to even catch and recall all 57 new names. Why weren't there any name tags…

The first thing I notice about Dubai, this being unmissable really, is the lavish, luxury, and comfort of it all. I knew to expect this, of course, but unsurprisingly it’s quite a different thing when experienced first-hand.

The airport is huge and modern, a well-oiled machine running 24 hours a day. The driver arranged to pick me up in the early hours of the morning insists on opening the door for me and the journey in his airconditioned hybrid Lexus feels like the appropriate welcome into the city.

My eyes must have been saucer-sized, staring out of the window with complete fascination at the never-ending onslaught of illuminated skyscrapers, most of them bearing names of companies I had never heard of in huge fluorescent letters. Not the kitschy neon kind, though. Only classy elegance in glass, steel, concrete, and warm, white-yellow light to be found here.

I don’t think I’ve ever been on a trip this fancy before, my parents apparently didn’t ever possess that kind of spending money, and I most definitely never have for myself. My poison of choice being the cheap, basic, but preferably pest-free hotel room that you reach via public transport. So, imagine my surprise when the receptionist hands me a key to a room on the top floor. Not even the boss’ suite is on the top floor.

But the shine of the city wears off faster than imagined. I was very definitely impressed by it at first, and continue to be, acknowledging that this place is positively crazy. I doubted whether that was meant as a complement or criticism.

It is absolutely criticism.

Where are all the people of Dubai? Those 3.3 million people I read about on Wikipedia. The streets are wide, populated with cars. But empty.

I gaze out of the huge panoramic window of our conference room to watch an occasional jogger circle the park on the other side of the man-made canal that runs past our hotel, and I wonder how they aren’t fainting while exercising in 40-degree weather. I suppose they are Dubai residents, not visitors. So, I’ve already counted 3 of the 3.3 million, I am only missing a couple more.

My silly European self opened Google maps before my visit, the way I always do before going on trips, in an attempt to scope out what’s around the summit venue for me to see in our leisure time.

“I can walk that, that’s only a couple of streets”, I say to myself, only to realise that the thing that appeared so close is at least 25 foot-minutes away. My destination and I are separated by at least two highways, likely devoid of any pedestrian crossings. Uber it is then.

The first day is filled with introductions, polite small-talk, friendly banter, and team building exercises that put me completely on the spot. That’s alright, though. The extrovert within me can handle it. I can handle singing two fast-paced self-written verses in German and Spanish to the tune of 99 balloons, the 80s German anti-cold war hit. Acapella. My nerves only thinly veiled, however, the shakiness in my voice clearly betraying my tension to anybody paying attention. But I establish myself as the fearless young woman, who doesn’t shy away from a socially challenging situation. I even receive a stream of compliments and my team earns the second spot. First place would have been overdoing it, to be honest.

I ride the high of all the attention and am impressed by my ability to keep up with conversation, remaining in good spirits, despite only getting perhaps 3.5 hours of shut eye the night before.

I get dressed for dinner; the dress-code having announced to be “Smart/Elegant Casual”. Though, judging by everybody’s interpretation of business casual, I can predict I will be overdressed.

This presents no issue. I am determined to be the eye-catcher of the night, to lay it on even thicker than necessary with the winged eyeliner. This is still a toned-down version of myself compared to how I would present to a group of friends back home, but I know that even in this state, nobody will hold a candle to me.

I am right.

Though, I admit I am relieved to see one or two more women who took the prompt more seriously than the rest. Despite all my confidence, a shadow of self-consciousness gnaws at the corners of my mind.

Dinner follows as the next success. I command and steer the conversation among five quasi strangers. We laugh at the shenanigans of older, more senior staff members, who seem to have a different concept of embarrassment than us. Our bosses, drunk and cheerful, drag us to join the improvised stage, to step and clap along to the live Lebanese music. Or what I assume was Lebanese music, since we were in a Lebanese restaurant after all.

We continue the night in a club that one particularly enthusiastic colleague located. It’s a Tuesday, so his fears of it being packed are clearly unfounded. I live all my afro-beat dreams. I command once again, this time the dance floor, because those who sing fearlessly also move their body freely to the music without the inhibitions of awkwardness or embarrassment. Again, it’s a Tuesday, so there’s plenty of room to dance.

I manage to get the boss to buy my beer as he’s about to pay for another colleague’s, and it is confirmed to me that I am the life of the party when suddenly all remaining team members leave once I exit the room.

I am a comfortable level of drunk: giddy and social, but not sloppy nor unhinged. I carry myself well before the audience of professional acquaintances, some of which write me my cheque at the end of the month. I am maybe not the best, but likely the most interesting hire they have made in a long time.

In the Uber ride home, I cannot stop smiling to myself like an idiot, as my colleagues around me chat idly in Hindi. They don’t know that my ego is nearly as big as one of Dubai’s skyscrapers right now. I fall asleep contented, relishing the ecstatic feeling. The two extra hours of sleep I get tonight, compared to the previous one, are balm to my body and mind. I barely even feel hung over.

But that doesn’t last.

My spirits are crushed by every passing hour we are locked away in the conference room on Wednesday, my final day. I miss the rest of my colleagues in their teams, because we ran an hour behind schedule, delaying lunch. I hear their voices chatting happily outside of the doors, and I long to re-join the group, banter just a little bit more before I must leave. Riff on about the events of last night. Have a couple more laughs with those that made me laugh so much yesterday.

But it was not meant to be. My anguish grows as I listen to my colleagues drone on about topics I probably should care about, but I cannot bring myself to. My frustration at the leisure and social time that is currently being robbed from me by their inability to present and lead discussions efficiently turns into violent phantasies in my head. This type of anger only rises very occasionally from the depths of my otherwise very calm and placid nature.

It's really not even them I am angry at; they are all doing their best. I like them, despite their never-ending bombardment of questions and comments that feel senseless and nitpicky to me. More than anything it is the anger at an expectation unfulfilled. I had hoped to do either of two things: actually see some of Dubai and have an experience of connection with this strange scorched but cold place, the way I seek to have every time I travel by myself; or find some of those fun colleagues and recreate just a little of that feeling I was reveling in last night. Just this little taste to send me home without the regret of missing the final day of the summit, making up for the company dinner, the social stage it would have provided, and my last chance to grasp Dubai, which I must all forgo by departing early.

No, instead, the herd of unpleasant feelings grows bigger and bigger inside me. I spend the two hours of over-time, the over-time our boss had promised would be avoided (my mistake for trusting the word of a drunk 50-something-year-old with fuck-you-money at 3.30 AM) bargaining with myself, talking my expectations down wrung by wrung, until I make semi-peace with the fact I would see none of the city, see none of my colleagues, and would need to be contented with views from the distance.

By the time the two hours are over, the anger has subsided, replaced by pure resignation. Whatever happens, will happen, I’ll let the situation guide me wherever I go next.

But I feel empty, I feel sad, and I can’t help but feel disappointment.

And there is something else, strange within me.

I feel untethered. Untethered is the word. The opposite of grounded. I feel like I am floating away between the tall buildings of Dubai, nobody there to throw me a rope or open a tightly insulated window to drag me back inside.

And so, I am empty and untethered with the only thing left to make an impression on me being how my own emptiness is reflected in that of Dubai.

I wonder whether behind all the glass facades, there really sit human beings, or whether they are all only for show. My colleague tells me how she loves Dubai, how she would have liked to rent a car to take photos for her social media, as we drive 30 minutes toward a different part of town. On the surface, the small talk in this car closely resembles that of dinner the night before. But somehow, it is different. This one doesn’t make me laugh, not genuinely. Only some of those polite chuckles I tend to give. It is mundane like any other small talk between people who barely know each other, but this one isn’t even funny. I participate merely to foster the pleasant working relationship I am trying to establish with these few colleagues.

My last hopes of running into somebody, anybody that could provide an emergency band-aid to the gloomy void inside me are positively quashed and I surrender to heading to bed, my body begging me for rest.

But the dam breaks. I enter my room and crave home, crave love, crave connection and everything feels surreal. I am untethered again. What am I even doing here? How is it possible I have spent these last 48 hours in this place that feels like a soulless accumulation of blinking lights and fast cars? How did I get here, and how did so much happen so quickly? The bed I sit on is so unfamiliar that my distressed brain cannot seem to place it in my reality. It feels like a dream, or a movie, perhaps, whose credits will roll any moment, because this cannot possibly be real life.

What adds to this feeling of surreality is that all the people I met here, I will likely never see again. So, what is it that stops them from being just an elaborate fiction? Their lives are completely detached from mine, their details completely irrelevant to any of us. There are no relationships to be built, no connections to be made, as we will all return to our desks that are spread all over the world, to sit behind computer screens with disconnected cameras.

But why care about these people whose existence was pretty insignificant to the course of my life two days ago, and will continue to be insignificant moving forward? I don’t know, but all I know is that right then, the sorrow that I feel manifests as a deep wish to be around somebody who may understand me, listen to me, engage with me beyond that what lies on the surface. And all of that in a city that appears almost comically superficial.

And then I am flooded with questions about Dubai. Why would you even come here? To flee the heat, constantly sprinting from one airconditioned space to the next, and to then spend your money on things you don’t need, things you can find elsewhere. Things that are things. Not human.

I regret taking that Uber to the gold market, I should have just stayed with whichever Brit I could find at the bar, their eloquent brutishness entertaining me at least. But I try to comfort myself with the knowledge that I got to see a little more of the Dubai that doesn’t immediately repulse me. The Dubai that isn’t so sterile and excessive. Still lavish in its own way, but at least a little more genuine. Or maybe that is just what I want myself to believe. The market was only yet another shopping destination after all.

I break down, reeling at how anybody could enjoy it here. Don’t they miss the warmth that comes with community and human closeness? Do they not see the irony of this supposedly flourishing city built in the middle of sandy nowhere, a place too harsh for any type of life? Where are your chance encounters, your public spaces, the life blood of any city, its people? …At the mall?! How am I the only one here that is at risk of loosing my footing and floating away, away from all that what keeps me hopeful on this doomed earth?

Perhaps your perspective changes when you do finally make it to fuck-you-money. I’m unsure whether I’ll ever get there. But if I do, I hope it doesn’t make me suddenly appreciate the strange cabinet of funhouse mirrors that is Dubai, which distort reality and make you cackle at its state.

In that way, I must thank this most famous Emirati city. It harshly reminded me of my values and the things that I want to fight for and against in this life. It does somehow reaffirm my sometimes lost or meandering sense of purpose, and I think I am grateful for that. I am grateful for the day I spent feeling fantastic. I am grateful for having had the chance to have this experience and draw lessons from it. And I am grateful knowing that I will be fine, that this feeling will pass, and the ache will dull.

Yes, I was crying on my bed last night, and then again when watching the sun rise in the dessert today, and then again while composing this text. But shed tears are not always something to fret over. I am starting to see the beauty even in my negative emotions, once the urge to suppress them dissipates. So, I write about them, perhaps so that the beauty I perceived may be recorded and I may look back when the fuck-you-money starts rolling in, to remind me of my humanity.