Summer Dispatches
Dubai: Let's Throw Down
Issue date: 9/19/07 Section: Features
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By Teal Pennebaker (MPP2)
I spent my summer living 200 yards from the construction of the world's tallest building. I had drinks in a seven star hotel and went indoor skiing one Saturday. My morning coffee stop put me in line next to abaya-clad Emiratis, British suits, Pakistani consultants and Lebanese ad executives. I didn't have to preface my American nationality with an apology like I had in every other country I'd visited in the past five years.
Welcome to Dubai: a Western-friendly Middle Eastern melting pot with vast economic opportunities. I interned in this United Arab Emirate city over the summer and have spent the few weeks since my return trying to make sense of the experience. I expected to fall in love with Dubai. Instead, I feel unsettled by the experience … much of this colored by my own history.
I saw my journey to Dubai as very similar to my grandfather's trek 60 years earlier to West Texas. He had just graduated from law school and, along with dozens of other young Ivy League alums (including future President George H.W. Bush, fresh out of Yale), heard that Midland, Texas was the place of opportunity. My grandfather moved to the dusty town in 1949, despite having never visited. Over the next few decades he was pivotal in shaping this city that has grown to over 100,000 people, setting up a summer theater program and seeing the creation of a university. It's his city, and my dad's city; I even feel it's sort of my city because of the pride my grandfather took in making it his own.
Dubai promised that same sort of raw opportunity for me. Beyond the obvious physical similarities-abundance of oil potential, flat desert land, extremely hot temperatures-Dubai today and 1950s Midland were both meccas for the well-educated who wanted a new life and a chance to mold a city with vast potential. I loved the idea of having a real stake in a place, of helping leave a lasting imprint for future generations.
Midland in the mid-century promised to unite the eastern elite with small town Texans, but Dubai offers something much larger and more profound. It has the draw of being a continual stronghold in the Middle East. A safe place where Arabs and Westerners can mingle and do business without the discomfort of political differences. This concept was so contrary to everything I'd known … my college teemed with tension between the Muslim community and "everybody else." In Dubai I would have Lebanese friends and Syrian co-workers and wouldn't have to worry about a meeting between them being awkward at best.
I spent my summer living 200 yards from the construction of the world's tallest building. I had drinks in a seven star hotel and went indoor skiing one Saturday. My morning coffee stop put me in line next to abaya-clad Emiratis, British suits, Pakistani consultants and Lebanese ad executives. I didn't have to preface my American nationality with an apology like I had in every other country I'd visited in the past five years.
Welcome to Dubai: a Western-friendly Middle Eastern melting pot with vast economic opportunities. I interned in this United Arab Emirate city over the summer and have spent the few weeks since my return trying to make sense of the experience. I expected to fall in love with Dubai. Instead, I feel unsettled by the experience … much of this colored by my own history.
I saw my journey to Dubai as very similar to my grandfather's trek 60 years earlier to West Texas. He had just graduated from law school and, along with dozens of other young Ivy League alums (including future President George H.W. Bush, fresh out of Yale), heard that Midland, Texas was the place of opportunity. My grandfather moved to the dusty town in 1949, despite having never visited. Over the next few decades he was pivotal in shaping this city that has grown to over 100,000 people, setting up a summer theater program and seeing the creation of a university. It's his city, and my dad's city; I even feel it's sort of my city because of the pride my grandfather took in making it his own.
Dubai promised that same sort of raw opportunity for me. Beyond the obvious physical similarities-abundance of oil potential, flat desert land, extremely hot temperatures-Dubai today and 1950s Midland were both meccas for the well-educated who wanted a new life and a chance to mold a city with vast potential. I loved the idea of having a real stake in a place, of helping leave a lasting imprint for future generations.
Midland in the mid-century promised to unite the eastern elite with small town Texans, but Dubai offers something much larger and more profound. It has the draw of being a continual stronghold in the Middle East. A safe place where Arabs and Westerners can mingle and do business without the discomfort of political differences. This concept was so contrary to everything I'd known … my college teemed with tension between the Muslim community and "everybody else." In Dubai I would have Lebanese friends and Syrian co-workers and wouldn't have to worry about a meeting between them being awkward at best.
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