Dubai Description – Borrowed from an Email I Sent Earlier this Week

“About Dubai, I actually meant a lot of things. The excesses play a huge part, yes. But even more so, the sheer racism, bias, judgmental, perfectly plastic natural of people in general got to me over the past few years. It'd make me sick to my stomach to go out and see some newly rich British woman scream something insane at her housemaid in public, or to sit in a coffee shop and note how each table had its own nationality, or even get hit on by one bedu after another - no longer a compliment, but a HUGE turn off. I got tired of the fake friendships people build in an instant with strangers, claiming their love and their devotion to people they'd never met before - too many women in Dubai are like that, and it hurt to lose touch with or watch all my truly good friends leave. On top of it all, I hated the judgmental eyes of just about everyone there. You see, I converted to Islam and started wearing Hijab, just after high school. I'm not at all a good Muslim today, but at one time, I really tried. Everywhere I went, people were assuming (many even speaking of) wrong accusations about me - I was a prostitute, I wanted a local passport, I was anything but a Muslim.

I combated all that by isolating myself in my house. I think I only left my house two or three times in the entire month before I came back here. I'd been that way for about 3 years. Now, even back in Canada, I'm not sure if I know how to socialize anymore. I've completely lost touch. And I'm healing. That's what I meant about Dubai messing with your head and a person like me (I'm sure you knew or assumed even at a young age, that I'm Bipolar), doesn't need it.”

I have a lot of resentment for Dubai society right now. It’s little to do with the traditional, religious or the cultural aspects of the past. It has a hell of a lot more to do with the day-dreaming expatriates and their influence on what was once a culturally rich, incredibly relaxing place to live and socialize. I wish I could turn back time and kick the majority of the current population out. I wish I could take the ten lane highways and turn them back into four lane roads, with far fewer accidents and much shorter travel time. I wish I could go again to a shopping center and have people look at me and smile, rather than look at me and judge based on my appearance – or walk in the desert and have the traditional Bedu wave from atop a camel, way across the dunes, and be comfortable waving back, knowing he means no more than ‘Salaam’.

Dubai was beautiful once. I hope it becomes that, or something that resembles that again.