Boom and boomer

View from the top, view from the bottom

DRIVING from Abu Dhabi to Dubai is always a shock. Abu Dhabi is booming, but its growth is positively restrained compared to its northern neighbour. On the outskirts of Dubai, warehouses line the main highway, while platforms of the elevated-rail system, which will connect to the subway being built elsewhere, are being built as I drive past. Further into the city, skyscrapers shoot up from the flat terrain, their windowless frames topped by bevies of cranes.

Today I’m meeting an Emirati woman whose father bought land in Dubai in the 1950s, when it was just a pearling and fishing village—“nothing: just desert, sand and a few palm trees”, as she describes it. Now she heads a real-estate company, where she routinely deals in prices that would make her father’s head spin.

AFPLord and vassals

For lunch, her Indian driver takes us to BurJuman, one of Dubai’s many malls. She dresses elegantly—her head today is adorned with an orange-and-yellow Fendi scarf, which playfully complements her long black abaya—and she likes BurJuman’s selection of markat (designer goods).

She beams when she shows me the buildings she owns around town, and tells me that the value of her house in the Palm Islands, off the coast of Dubai, has doubled every year since she bought it. She attributes much of her success (and Dubai’s growth) to character, hard work and luck.

Of course, the boom has been luckier for her than for many others: I get lost heading for al-Quoz Industrial Area—a warren of warehouses that sell construction materials—and find myself on a building site where some 40 dust-covered workers sit exhausted on a small patch of grass as they wait for buses to take them back to the makeshift dormitories where they live. Another turn, and I’m back on the highway, where the workers are obscured by the high rises they’ve built, some of which my Emirati acquaintance owns.

I finally reach al-Quoz, and I park at the end of a dusty, unmarked road. Abu Bakr, an Indian man who has been working in Dubai for 18 years, leads me through a thick set of wooden doors into his bazaar of a warehouse, which supplies 18 retail shops around the city. He shows me Indian pashminas in bright colours and patterns; hand-crafted Egyptian jewellery boxes with mosaic patterns; lanterns, oil lamps and hand-made wall hangings of elephants from Burma; masks, purses and statues of camels from Vietnam.

Like many Asian immigrants, Abu Bakr came to the Emirates to make money to send to his family, who still live in India. The dirham’s recent fall (it’s pegged to the dollar) has hit him hard. He tells me he plans to return home, but he’s vague about exactly when—in two years, a few years, when things improve, soon. This, too, is a common refrain. I buy a double-sided drum made of two half-coconut shells, animal skins and a bamboo shaft and leave.

The boom may have brought opportunities for everyone, but everyone doesn’t benefit equally. Low-skilled workers toil at construction sites for around $250 a month. Indians educated in India make less for their work than people with American and European educations who do the same job. In general, everyone makes less than the Emiratis. Your origin dictates where you stand in the divided society of the Emirates, and whether you’re at the bottom of the boom or the top.

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Tuesday

“YES, yes, I turned left at the light, and passed the big pink house. Roundabout? What roundabout?” Once again, I'm lost. I am on my way to an exhibition of two Iraqi artists’ works at Qibab Art Gallery, one of the city’s few, which is located in a nondescript suburban villa.

Getting there proves a challenge. Not all roads have names, which means not all houses have addresses, which makes navigating the unknown blocks of suburbia difficult. This problem is exacerbated by a new crew of taxi drivers, part of a government-sponsored expansion of the city’s fleet, who don’t yet know the city. I struggle for about 20 minutes on the phone with the gallery’s owner, making U-turns and looking for unmarked streets as the taxi driver grumbles.

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When I finally find the gallery, its owner, Lamees Bazirgan, a stout Iraqi woman, welcomes me into the villa’s main floor, where the exhibition is taking place. Koranic verses emblazoned on wall hangings flutter above colourful ceramics decorated with Arabic script in the three rooms comprising the ground floor of the gallery.

Mrs Bazirgan owned a hair salon in Iraq, where she displayed works by her husband and his brother. When she emigrated to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in January, she decided to open a gallery here: not, she says, as a business, but as a symbol of her family’s appreciation of art, and the respite it has given them from the turbulence of Iraq. Simple enough—but in the UAE's tiny art scene, a commitment to local talent is exceptional.

Though exhibition centres and hotels host international art-exhibitions with increasing frequency, there exists no culture of nurturing or appreciating local artists. This is one of the only galleries showing the work of artists like Sarmed, a potter from Dubai who walks me through his collection.

The museum’s business manager, a gentle, young Iraqi woman, offers dates stuffed with dried apricots. I accept and realise a French couple has entered the gallery, along with a few Arab women. Mrs Bazirgan tells me the gallery sells works, but interest from the Emirati community is limited.

Given the government’s commitment to development, particularly in the arts (the Louvre and Guggenheim are both building branches here), the country will almost surely become a regional centre for art and culture. But the gap between that future and the current realities of this struggling art gallery are stark.

As I make my way out, Mrs Bazirgan tells me that she’s planning to put a sign on the main street to alert people of the gallery (and presumably help visitors like me find our way). I head to that street, a highway lined with palm trees, and realise the gallery is only a short walk from my apartment. Abu Dhabi could surely use more signs, and more galleries such as this one.