Yesterday I visited a friend who lives in a flat in a gridlock of buildings along Dubai’s overdeveloped seafront. It’s a 7.5 minute walk from my home, but I opted to take my car. Foolishly.
Driving into and out of this labyrinth of plazified skyscrapers is an exercise in patience as one wrong turn, one missed right, can land you at the outskirts of town, surrounded by sand, where no Google Maps satellite can help you. You may wander about in your dinky VW Polo (which is probably the worst buy for the city roads teeming with Range Rovers and Hummers – power – and Maseratis and Porsches – sexy power) looking for signs of life, while moving toward the distant watery blur of high rise concrete as your only hope of survival.
Driving or walking in Dubai has to be one of the best tests of tolerance in the world. You start out with good intentions and leave enough time to make it to your destination. Everything is only 23 minutes away, how mbad can it be? It can be so bad you will want to poke your bellybutton a couple of hundred counts with a kebab skewer because that would be less painful.
Dubai in all her golden glory is annoyed with your self-assurance, scoffs at your temerity to believe you’d get ANYWHERE in 23 minutes – even the corner grocery store – and spites you by spitting you out into the undigested bowels of her industrial district, making you desolate at 40 degrees – and at this time you are inside your vehicle with the air-conditioner on – until the semblance of a sign of a road you remotely recognise rears its familiar self. Ah, you think, I’m ok, I’m not going to die in the desert, dehydrated from days of being lost in Al Quoz (the city’s warehouse repository). However, you aren’t out of the dunes yet so you control your relief, ask Siri what’s going on only to be told “I’m sorry can you repeat the question” repeatedly until you’re back at the baby powder processing plant you passed just under an hour ago.
There are no statistics for people wasting 85 minutes in the desert on their way to a location 7 minutes away, but with the very unscientific support of anecdotes I can guarantee this happens to about 1 in every 2 persons. I have friends and colleagues who mention they’ll be there soon only to miss the meeting and resurface in perhaps the sands of Saudi Arabia. Sending a location pin doesn’t help because it isn’t about the accuracy of the location as much as finding the actual roads that lead to it.
It must have something to do with the diverse workforce. Filipinos, Russians, Indians, Sri Lankans, Afghanis, Koreans, Chinese, Ethiopians, Zambians, Englishmen, Irishmen, Icelanders (there are a few), Iraqis, Australians, Canadians, Costa Ricans, Chileans… the sheer volume of cultures residing within one context in this Middle Eastern oasis needs a single binding force, some regulations, some parameters to govern them all… Something which acts as an adhesive to the collective consciousness in order for all to respect the other’s way of life while being at liberty to keep their own.
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As I walked along the city’s marina last night, lined as it is with trillion dirham yachts, I saw many middle income families out for a stroll, clusters of young labourers on their evening off, laughing in good weather, a few fit couples out on a run together, the abaya-clad aunty with an adored niece. It was 9 pm. In other cities of the world this may constitute crime curfews, where such a mash of ethnicities and earning brackets begin to feel the heat on the street and retreat indoors to the safety of their home. Not so in Dubai (where the street heat is only literal). Perhaps because of the same reason the roads afford no respite from the relentless round-and-aroundness I experience when I don’t take the right exit.
Rules. Rules are the backbone of this society, brimming as it is with people from far flung parts of our planet. Rules here condense everyone together in one cohesive cloud, working jointly at protecting the city while keeping it cool in the shade. And boy are there some rules. Some clearly communicated, some unwritten. And while some aren’t taken as seriously, others are imposed with enough fervour to make a devout Catholic ashamed (actually very little doesn’t).
The metro has strict rules of conduct – no eating or drinking, no chewing gum. Zero tolerance for drunk driving (you need a license to buy alcohol which can only be given once you proffer a no-objection certificate from the closest male in your life – your husband, your father, your boss). Most petty thefts, peddling goods without the proper license etc. can land you in jail with a marked path to deportation. Any licentiousness toward women is a crime and punishable with varying degrees of severity. Heavy fines are imposed for wrongful and/or dangerous road behaviour (from the mild like illegal parking to the bank breaking crossing-a-tram-line). I was once sternly told off for walking through a pedestrian red light (I blame being too caught up in Stevie Wonder’s Sir Duke playing in my ears, I could feel it all over). I have also paid more than half my salary in speeding tickets.
This mentality for strict order probably applies in the urban planning of city streets. Highways are built not to send you to hell whether you’re from Hungary or the Honduras. It doesn’t matter how you drove in your country, if it was on dirt tracks with no marked exits so you could escape just as suddenly as you appeared or you tore through traffic in a tough Toyota Tundra. In Dubai you will drive on roads built to ensure everyone is protected against you, you will take the last exit to nowhere and do 58 kilometers back on yourself, but you will stick to the rules damnit. In Dubai you will jog along the promenade of the pond next to which you live, but should you long to crossover to the other side you may need to factor in about 33,009 additional steps because your path will take you over the ramp of the bridge, lead you up 4.5 additional flights, across the walkway, down another 3.1 flights, onto a sandpit bordering as yet undeveloped property (which will be a high-rise in 22 months) from which you will go under the over, desolate and quiet, to finally emerge where you wanted to be and could have been within moments if you weren’t walking in Dubai.
Hello, this is where I came in. And if you’ve stuck with me so far, you’ll do fine driving near-miss Dubai.