A couple of critical articles on Dubai in the Graun and Observer this past week.
Carole Cadwalladr’s attempt is a bit lightweight.
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in the Grauniad does better (see accompanying series of photos), including the shocking revelation that non-white people can be racist and hold supremacist notions:
Down at the base of the pyramid are the labourers, waiters, hotel employees and unskilled workers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, the Philippines and beyond. They move deferentially around the huge malls, cafes, bars and restaurants, bowing down and calling people sir and madam. In the middle of the day, during the hottest hours, you can see them sleeping in public gardens under trees, or on the marble floors of the Dubai Mosque, on benches or pieces of cardboard on side streets. These are the victims of the racism that is not only flourishing in the UAE but is increasingly being exported to the rest of the Middle East. Sometimes it reminds you of the American south in the 1930s.
One evening in Abu Dhabi, I have dinner with my friend Ali, a charming Iraqi engineer whom I have known for two decades. After the meal, as his wife serves saffron-flavoured tea, he pushes back his chair and lights a cigar. We talk about stock markets, investment and the Middle East, and then the issue of race comes up.
“We will never use the new metro if it’s not segregated,” he tells me, referring to the state-of-the-art underground system being built in neighbouring Dubai. “We will never sit next to Indians and Pakistanis with their smell,” his wife explains.
Not for the first time, I am told that while the immigrant workers are living in appalling conditions, they would be even worse off back home - as if poverty in one place can justify exploitation in the other.
“We need slaves,” my friend says. “We need slaves to build monuments. Look who built the pyramids - they were slaves.”
