Even in the midst of a pitch black sky, I could tell we weren’t far from landing at Dubai International Airport when I looked out the window to see the fires ablaze in the ocean of darkness. Oil refineries dotted the sparse landscape off the coast of Damam, Saudi Arabia and followed quickly by those in Manama, Bahrain. As someone who campaigns for a global lessening of reliance on fossil fuels, who walks, bikes, buses wherever she can and advocates for stronger public transit, there is an unmistakable irony in my origin story.
Origin stories are a popular theme in today’s cultural landscape. These days you might struggle to find much else at the theaters or on television. Both seem to be littered with the origin stories of everyday characters, offshoots of movie franchises both mundane and played out. We seem to be fascinated with where stories began and what makes our favorite characters who they are.
Mine began in the barren before the boom. A Dubai before it was synonymous with the biggest, the tallest, the largest, the widest. A lot of children play in the dirt, but in those days, we had no choice. The sparsely populated and relatively newly formed “city” was mostly sand. It stretched for miles in either direction and as I grew up and the city grew with me, I continued to measure the city in terms of sandlots. By the mid-2000s, the city was fast approaching puberty; each smooth patch of sand being taken over by yet another pimply building. Roads changed like the shifting walls of an Escher painting - there one moment and gone the next. In the days before GPS, getting to your destination on time was nothing short of a miracle, but being on time was never a hallmark of the culture.
When I left in 2012, I didn’t realize how much of the culture I’d miss. I missed the ease of communication which seemed to allow every conversation, be it with alien or friend, to flow smoothly. I missed the ready availability of cuisine, no matter how specific and most of all, I missed the familiarity of non-white culture that made it so easy to connect with even the strangest of strangers. When I left Dubai, I also didn’t know it would be forever. And unknowingly, one day in August of 2012, I looked down at the city emerging from the dust in what would be my last trip. Even when the realization sunk in, from the unease of my new home in Canada, slowly but sadly, I was convinced that the city would set aside its penchant for perpetual construction and freeze, forever a familiar skyline. This year, I went back to close the loop on my young adulthood, an open circuit that left endless what ifs in my head.
What if I don’t recognize the place?
What if my friends don’t recognize me?
What if everyone has moved on?
What if it's not what I thought it’d be?
What if it's not worth it?
The sole and likely most important question was one I daren’t speak out loud, but blared at full volume in my head for months leading up to the trip, louder still in the airport and at a decibel high enough to drown out the sounds of the plane engines I seem to always end up sitting over, despite taking pains to choose my own seat well ahead of time - What if I’m no longer Dubai Girl?
To answer that question I have to examine what makes a Dubai girl and why I have clung to that moniker for all these years. Growing up without a sense of belonging to my own native India, with a rudimentary grasp of Hindi and very little knowledge of the culture caused me to tether myself to an idea of home, even a home that didn’t want me in return. And when I arrived as an international student in Canada over ten years ago, I found that just like in Dubai, I didn’t fit in. There were Indian students aplenty, but hardly any South Indian ones and none among those that shared my unique, if confusing, upbringing in the Middle East. So, in an effort to both stand out from the crowd and blend in just enough to stymie criticism of my decided un-indian-ness, I chose to identify myself primarily as Dubai Girl.
I’d enjoy the reactions I’d get from new acquaintances. Watch them light up in fascination as they peppered me with question after question about all the claims Dubai was making in the news. For a while, I played along; fancying myself someone worldly and knowledgeable about my birthplace, someone who had eaten the gold leaf-adorned ice cream and frequently drank expensive cocktails at bars atop the highest towers, but in truth my life was a lot less glamorous, and most of all, I despised the very nature of the capitalist excess that turned the UAE from the a humble bedouin cluster of villages it once was into the megalith it now is.
As my trip “home” loomed, I felt a mysterious, perhaps misplaced confidence which only seemed to heighten during the 21 hour journey. Deplaning and boarding the metro that connects the different sectors of the vast expanse of Dubai International Airport, I stepped on to the carriage with confidence and an uncanny familiarity. “Al abuab a tublak”, I mouthed alongside the female announcer. Doors closing. The Arabic I had resisted learning in school came back to me in fragments. I walked quickly and confidently, eager to show myself and others that I knew what I was doing. Upon reaching the exit, I was hit with the thick swell of the 86% humidity that I’d found so normal as a child.
The taxi line up exacerbated the heat and the displeasure I felt about the journey that, until then, had entailed travels on a ship, a bus, a plane and another plane. So when I was approached by an enterprising young man with the offer of a quick ride, I lept at a chance to jump the long, winding line. He quoted an exorbitant and laughable price but I haggled with him even as I walked to the unmarked car idling in the pick up zone, safety be damned. We went back and forth, throwing monetary punches. “That’s my final price,” he said with a wry smile. “Do you want to wait in line? Long line.” he quipped, gesturing with his chin across the parking lot. “Doesn’t bother me”, I responded defiantly. “I’m from here”. “Oh, why you didn’t say, madam?” he responded chirpily as he loaded my bags into the red sedan.
Finally, settling on what I thought was a reasonable price, we parted ways as the other kid involved in this scheme took off en route to the hotel, driving with the kind of abandon so commonplace in Dubai, nonchalantly scrolling through instagram and single-handedly texting. When we arrived, I handed the driver the agreed upon price and he balked. It was much more, he insisted and stopped me from leaving as he called his partner in crime. I listened calmly as they argued in Hindi but felt my patience being tested as I responded “No” each time they insisted I pay them more. Finally, on my very last nerve, the phrase “Main Dubai se hoon. Mere saath gore logh jaisa vyavahaar math karo” seethed through my gritted teeth. “I am from here. Don’t treat me like one of those rich, white foreigners”. I slammed the door and walked into the lobby of my hotel. I rode the fatigue-fueled endorphin high of telling my grifters to go grift someone else and when the guest services agent asked how much I paid for a taxi, I exclaimed excitedly. They can’t pull one over on me, I thought. I’m from here. “That is twice as much as a regular taxi would have cost”, the agent said. I instantly deflated. I had barely arrived and the country had already rejected me. Later, friends I had relayed the story to applauded my savvy in avoiding the hour long wait for a taxi in the intense heat, but in my mind the die was cast, my grasp on Dubai Girl was slipping.
In the time that followed my Arabic faltered and recollection of the traditional arab foods I’d grown up with evaded me. I tipped too much in some places and too little in others and the roads that had been a staple of my life in the UAE seemed so foreign behind the wheel of a car. I missed turns I had taken hundreds of times in the past and patiently waited my turn to merge instead of aggressively taking up space on the road. I tried to walk places that looked just a few blocks away on online and found myself languishing on the wrong side of a highway barricade, forgetting how truly unwalkable the city was. How did I manage all these hurdles when I lived here? Or was I simply remembering a version of this city that never really existed?
The Dubai I remembered was markedly different than the one I had returned to. In my recollections, I walked down the street freely chatting with neighbors, every destination correlating with google maps and never a highway between us. I lived in a multicultural neighborhood - not divided by whites and Arabs, Indians and Chinese. I saw friends easily, bumping into them in town or at the local shisha cafe. I hopped on a bus or metro that took me downtown in a matter of minutes, never having to navigate endless traffic, sitting bumper to bumper to go a measly 6km. I went into government buildings for official business and got my work done, never being turned away by the whim of the woman behind the counter who had enough work for the day, despite it only being 11am. I wore whatever I wanted and men didn’t gape or hiss at me on the street. I shopped for groceries and knew, despite the cost that they’d be tasty and not waxy and bland, their rate of spoilage hastening the moment I had paid.
But upon reflection, perhaps what I was remembering was the home I had forged in Canada, over 12 years and in three different cities, instead of the one I was born into. In Canada, I had no choice but to make a home, even when I cried myself to sleep night after night for years, missing the things I thought my home in the Middle East gave me. In Canada, I walk down the street at any hour of day or night, chatting with neighbors and reveling in a multilingual soundscape. In Canada, I don’t bat an eye at pricey fruits and vegetables, knowing they are grown locally and taste extraordinary. In Canada, I only have to hop on one of hundreds of available, albeit underfunded, public transit options where I would and always do run into friends. In Canada, I can wear shorts without feeling like a steak among wild dogs, seldom second-guessing my outfit for how it might make me a target. In Canada, I walk into a government office and I, myself, do the work as a proud public servant. And when I get exasperated with the bureaucracy, I know I can demand better and hold those in charge accountable as a registered voter.
I left Dubai not long after I arrived. At the airport, I held on to a hug from a friend much longer and tighter than I ever had before. When I left in 2012, the hugs seemed brief, seeming to communicate that it would not be long before we saw each other again. When twelve years past and those friends were still there, willing against the tumults of life to embrace me, I felt truly lucky. This time, I held on because who knew when I’d be back, what stage of life we might all be in, and most of all, if anything at all in Dubai would be recognizable. I seemed to have encountered the city at the cusp of yet another transformation, almost as if it stayed vaguely recognizable so I could close the open wounds on my memory and my heart, just long enough to say goodbye to the last vestiges of both my childhood and “Dubai Girl”.
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**Starting Sept 22, 2024, my social media pages will change their handles from “dubaigirlvstheworld” to “strangeandforeign”
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