I had five days in Dubai, a stopover on the way from Hong Kong to Europe. The original plan was Riyadh. That trip was cancelled when the Houthis in Yemen began firing at the Saudi capital and other cities. This week alone, debris damaged an Aramco building in Riyadh’s financial district, and the airport was named as a target. I always thought that people in flip-flops with a Kalashnikov should not be able to ruin your day. But when drones, ballistic missiles and even cruise missiles come into play, it is worth paying attention. People have died in this war, on both sides of that border, and that part is tragic and no joke.
Dubai is quite a miracle. I know some people are critical of this and the other Emirates. They are usually the same people who can neither appreciate nor plan such a rise in prosperity. This week the Executive Council approved a metro extension to the new airport, to open in 2031. At the same time in Germany, they are struggling to implement a “sugar tax”, not even speaking of any infrastructure investment.
The history of Dubai fits on a postcard. A fishing and pearling village on a saltwater creek. The Al Maktoum family arrives from Abu Dhabi in 1833. In 1894 the ruler abolishes taxes for foreign traders, and the merchants from the Persian shore move over and build the wind-tower houses that tourists photograph today. Around 1930 the Japanese cultured pearl and the Great Depression kill the pearl trade. Then Sheikh Rashid borrows more than his emirate’s annual income to dredge the Creek, a bet no risk committee would have signed. Oil is found in 1966 and first shipped in 1969, but there was never much of it, which was the luck. Dubai had to live from trade, ports, an airline and other people’s ambitions.
On 2 December 1971, after the British had announced their departure from the Gulf, the rulers signed the union in a round house on the Jumeirah waterfront. Ras al-Khaimah joined a few weeks later as number seven. The state is younger than I am.
What struck me most this time is how much culture the place now shows, and whose. The main library, the Mohammed bin Rashid Library at Al Jaddaf, is built in the shape of a rehl, the folding wooden stand for the Quran, and sits directly on the Creek. On the seventh floor are the “Treasures”: Quran manuscripts going back to the 13th century, Blaeu’s Atlas Maior of 1662 with its 600 or so maps, the Description de l’Égypte that Napoleon’s scholars brought home instead of a victory, a first edition of Don Quixote, a Quran written on gold paper in Golconda, and an issue of Akhbar Dubai, the first magazine printed here. An Arab library that collects the world, and the world’s view of Arabia, under one roof. I believe that curation of knowledge matters more than mere provision. I was a happy man.
A few minutes along the water is the Jameel Arts Centre. Free entry. The main show is Salah Elmur, a Sudanese painter whose work grows out of his family’s photo studio. In the smaller rooms hang a Kurdish-Iraqi artist from London and, since this week, a Pakistani one from Karachi. In the library there is a research display on the baqala, the corner grocery, as the real planning unit of Dubai. I found that more telling than any skyline photo.
That is the pattern. Dubai is where the Arab world, Iran, South Asia and Africa exhibit when home is difficult. In the warehouses of Alserkal Avenue, between the car workshops of Al Quoz, a gallery that started in Damascus sits near galleries built on Iranian painters, a foundation for South Asian art and a Ghanaian family’s gallery for African art. Rem Koolhaas’s office turned one of the sheds into an exhibition hall. At Shindagha, at the mouth of the Creek, some 80 restored houses now form a heritage museum of 22 pavilions, one of them for perfume alone. The Etihad Museum, next to the house where the union was signed, was designed by Moriyama & Teshima of Toronto, which made me feel briefly at home.
Art Dubai held its 20th edition in May, a month late and much smaller, because in March the drones were Iranian and the target was this city. About 75 exhibitors stayed away. About 50 came, and entry was free. The next thing is already drawn: a museum of modern art by Tadao Ando, to stand on the Creek. Down the road in Abu Dhabi, the Louvre and the new Zayed National Museum get Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim as a neighbour on 11 December. One may call this buying culture. Florence did the same, and nobody complains any more.
I also strolled along the old Creek, where the abras still cross between Bur Dubai and Deira. And of course I met friends, and looked at EV World, the first edition of Dubai’s electric vehicle fair at the World Trade Centre. More than 300 companies were announced, a partnership with China EV100 was signed, and the city wants every taxi electric or hydrogen-powered by 2040. Having spent a good part of my life in the Chinese car industry, I recognised the pattern: Chinese technology, Gulf capital, and a free port in between.
Of course, before I arrived I carefully monitored the odds of a renewed large-scale US-Israeli attack on Iran, which would have meant counterstrikes all over the region, Dubai included. This is not theory. In March a drone set a fuel tank on fire at the airport, and some 61,000 people left the city within a month. By the summer the population was above its pre-war level.
It is too painful to follow the stumblings of the current US president, or of a defence secretary with more testosterone than strategy, to attempt any forecast of my own. So I asked AI to check on them and on other sources (especially the move of military assets) every day, and to translate the result into English. The verdict for the week: no war, no peace, talks via Qatar, departures on time.
In Dubai, construction and development are in full swing. Everybody here is busy building a future, and nobody has the time or the mood for a military confrontation. Perhaps the US government should also focus a bit more on its own country.
Today is Friday the 13th, and I am flying out. It was the day the tickets were cheap. Superstition, it turns out, is the only thing in Dubai that sells at a discount.
