From Past to Future: What Was Important in Dubai?

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“It’s good to know your corner,” said my taxi driver cryptically, as we drove into Dubai from the airport. After a pause, he added musingly – “there are no keys in life.”

“Er, sorry? What do you mean?” I said, snapping out of my distraction. All I had done was tell him my hotel name. Did he say ‘keys’?

“Thinking positive,” he replied pensively. “It’s not a must, that positive things happen as a result.”

“Oh, you mean metaphorically.” I wondered what had put him in this pessimistic mood. And yet, I couldn’t argue the perspective. Indeed, in life it’s not always the case that positive thinking would be enough to get positive outcomes.

It’s not a must. 

Staying creekside in Al Seef

We were getting close to where I would spend my layover. It was my first time in Dubai, and the UAE was only my second country in the Middle East. But I came expecting that Dubai was going to be very different from Oman. Everyone says so. They say that Oman was the more “authentic” country, and Dubai was only shiny and superficial.

Nonetheless, being a natural scientist, I test hypotheses before simply accepting them. And I like to begin a visit to a brand new country by acquiring some basic context. So I deliberately looked for the original part of Dubai, to see if it was true that Dubai had nothing “authentic”.

The Al Seef Heritage Hotel is within the neighbourhood of the same name. It’s part of the Old Dubai area near the mouth of Dubai Creek, called Bur Dubai. It seems I cannot go anywhere without immediately ending up at the nearest water body! But in my defence, it really only ends up that way, because old settlements are disproportionately located thus.

It wasn’t a very big area. As far as I understood it, Old Dubai only stretches along the creek from Al Seef to Al Shindagha, and Deira across the creek. It seemed a doable size. I could plausibly see what Dubai still had in its old city, while on a layover.

It’s not original, my taxi driver told me, though it was going to be his first time to see Al Seef when he dropped me off. But when he turned into the drop-off area, he exclaimed in surprise. It really looks as if it’s old, he remarked, and very much like his mother’s house back in Egypt.

A restored heritage neighbourhood

My hotel was a Hilton Curio Collection hotel. The rooms were distributed across several buildings rather than all within a dedicated hotel building. So you had a short walk through the streets from reception to the building where your room is. Even the hotel breakfast and coffee house is in a separate building. I was charmed.

Al Seef really did seem authentic. If it was a reconstruction, I thought they must have tried to do so with original building methods, or close to it. I don’t know if I could have figured out that it was not all original, if I weren’t told. The only reason I might have, I thought, is a slight sense of walking through a movie set, of things being just a little staged.

But does it matter, when it’s staged with actual antiques and restored old things?

The rest of the neighbourhood was a souk, which was another thing I liked. Iranian saffron for 15 dirhams a gram, sugar-free Turkish delight, Kashmiri embroidered garments, carpets and cashmere, couture abayas, gemstones and spices, incense and halwa, new lamps and old.

I’m a sucker for antiques. It took all my willpower to restrain myself from buying random things impractical for someone who lives in a small apartment, such as a medieval turtle padlock with a trick catch, or a bronze door knocker shaped like a pair of fishes.

It was only on the second day that I realised the soundscape matched as well. In all of the cafes and stores that played music, I only heard local or traditional music. I wondered what it would be like, if the Melaka heritage zone back home only played local and traditional music. Somehow, I thought maybe it wouldn’t feel quite as natural.

The wind towers of Al Fahidi neighbourhood

Huh, that’s different. I had only ever seen mosque domes topped with a crescent and star. But the one in Al Fahidi neighbourhood did not have it. Instead, on both the dome and minaret was an open circle.

It was fortunate for me that Al Fahidi was interesting. I didn’t go there until the next day, even though it was adjacent to Al Seef. Soon after I arrived in Dubai, I received news that my father had suffered a stroke and was in hospital.

It wasn’t clear how serious it was, though. He didn’t want me to turn back. So as I waited for news about the doctor’s verdict, I decided I might as well go out rather than be miserable indoors.

It’s strange, but though Al Fahidi looks similar to Al Seef, somehow it felt more authentic and less staged. Indeed, Al Fahidi is billed as the historical neighbourhood, because much of it was still original. Some of the buildings still had its original coralline rock construction.

I discovered more of the strange towers I had seen in Al Seef. An explanatory sign tells you that they’re called wind towers. They were an Iranian invention to create passive cooling in buildings. It’s why the courtyards inside buildings are noticeably cooler the moment you step in from outside. 

The wind towers were ubiquitous in Al Fahidi because the neighbourhood was first settled by Iranian merchants in the 1890s. Back then, it was called Al Bastakiya, after a town in Iran.

The wind towers often had lattice decorative patterns. The designs reminded me of the decorated eaves in Vigan. Perhaps they were originally in colour as well, since I saw one wind tower in the process of being painted.

Saving a historical neighbourhood

But even Al Fahidi was not entirely historical. Part of it was reconstructed, like Al Seef. The rest was a restoration.

The story was, during Dubai’s rapid development and prosperity phase, it went through an obsession with building modern shiny things. New things, in place of old. So perhaps, there is some justification for Dubai’s superficial reputation.

And anyway, old buildings in Dubai aren’t that old, compared to other places in this ancient region. Perhaps they didn’t seem to be worth keeping. So in the 1980s, Dubai zoned Al Bastakiya for re-development.

It seems stupid now. But coming from a likewise rapid-developing country, I kind of understand. We had such a ‘shiny building’ phase too. We lost or neglected many heritage buildings as a result too. There was a compulsion to leave our ‘backwardness’ behind.

Before long, half of the neighbourhood was demolished. And the rest of it would have followed, had Britain’s Prince Charles (now King Charles) not intervened.

It was all because a British architect happened to stay there at the time. Rayner Otter noticed what was happening, and felt that Dubai would regret losing its historical neighbourhood one day. He petitioned Prince Charles to intercede for the area’s preservation during his planned visit to Dubai. To his credit, the prince mentioned the matter to the Ruler of Dubai, who was persuaded to cancel the demolition.

Today, it’s a very nice tourist area. I stopped at one of the nice cafes to have camel steak for lunch. This was a good British intervention, I thought. Because it wasn’t selfish. Friends stop friends from doing things they might regret.

After all, even if a settlement isn’t very old compared to truly ancient cities in the region, it’s still historical to you. And these roots matter.

The ambiguity of choices and outcomes

An East Asian tour group spilled into the shady courtyard in front of the Sheikh Muhammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum Centre for Cultural Understanding. A Jewish tour group had just left before them. I sat in the relative shade, trying to cool down from walking a tad too much in the rising heat, observing them as I had observed the first group.

It would be several months yet until the fateful Oct 7 ‘Al Aqsa Storm’ attack from Gaza, in retaliation for a series of increasing Israeli attacks on Al Aqsa mosque earlier that year. At the time, the regional tension on resolving the Palestine issue was basically one between the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, and President Trump’s Abraham Accords of 2020.

So I wondered where the Jewish tour group was from. Were they from Israel, or were they visiting from another country – the USA, perhaps? The group leader had given her talk in Hebrew, but I had the impression that some of them were American. An Emirati man stood nearby, apparently acting as the Centre’s host, and occasionally interjected to add brief inputs.

Knowing the events unfolding today, I think back to that day. But also beyond, several years beyond to the height of Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment that spilled worldwide in the aftermath of George Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ and which defined the world I entered as a young Muslim woman.

Did the UAE’s choice to build relations with Israel embolden them to do what they’re doing today? Or were there silver linings? Did it also help to break through the pervasive Islamophobia, so that groups like If Not Now are possible today? Wallahua’lam, only God knows.

A city that hosts the world

I didn’t know what to expect from Dubai. It was, after all, my first visit. The people who came there seemed very diverse. More so than Oman, which had a sort of regional diversity. But in Dubai, just from walking around for a couple of days, I had seen or heard Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Pakistanis, Indians, Americans, Russians, British, and Africans. In fact, there must have been enough Chinese tourists for the souk guys to know to greet them with nihao.

I knew factually that I should expect diversity in Dubai. From online and social media information, you could expect that. Still, somehow the extent of the diversity fascinated me. Coming from the diverse capital of a diverse country, I notice when a place is even more diverse.

It wasn’t Dubai’s diversity that was fascinating, per se. It’s more that they seem so comfortable about it, and not at all insecure. After all, they might be the only country where natives are outnumbered 9:1 by foreigners, a ratio that historically tended to mean you’re being settler-colonised. Except that Dubai chose to do this.

Even before visiting the Museum of the Future and reading The Sheikh CEO, I could guess that Dubai’s vision is to position itself as a host culture to an international resident community. But they must have an incredible confidence in their native cultural integrity, to actually ‘host the world’ in this way. Many countries have panic attacks with a population of migrants even at just 10%, after all.

On the other hand, confidence is infectious. The East Asians in the courtyard looked like they were enjoying their tour. The ladies were shawled against the sun, and likewise some of the men wore keffiyeh around their heads in the Arab style.

Development that feels balanced

Back at the hotel, two women in wheelchairs were in the hotel lobby, checking in. The sight reinforced the image of a cartoon mural I had just seen. The mural was a collage of snippets about UAE culture and aspirations. One part expressed admiration for the UAE as the most disabled-friendly country in the world. Indeed, the official term for it in the UAE is “People of Determination”. You’ll see this term in signage for amenities intended for disabled people.

I was intrigued. Was the UAE really the most accommodating country for ‘people of determination’? At any rate, at least they got to thinking about it, very soon after modernising.

I remembered my surprise once, when international media reported on female soldiers in the UAE. In hindsight, I realised that my reaction reflected my ignorance. I assumed that just because they were nearby, the women’s rights situation in the UAE was similar to Saudi Arabia.

In reality, gender equality progress seems a lot smoother in the UAE than even my own country, where it isn’t even news when the top judiciary posts are dominated by women. Its seafaring culture meant that women already ran a lot of things even before modernisation.

Furthermore, Dubai’s development felt very balanced. The UAE makes the news for its construction projects, its investment focus and aerospace ambitions. But it also spends its wealth to provide excellent universal healthcare, quality education for its people, and inclusion for People of Determination. They have prominent centres for literature and poetry, and every public place has accommodations for children.

Normally, when a country rapidly develops, there is a disproportionate emphasis on “masculine”* ministries like Economy, Infrastructure, Investment, and Finance. But in Dubai, their “feminine” ministries are equally powerful – Family, Culture, Health, Education.

The gold souk in Deira

I discovered that the way to get to Deira Grand Souk was by crossing the creek with the boat ferry. It costs 2 dirham each way. Once across, I went straight in.

Deira souk comprises of the old market structures and narrow alleys, with more modern shop buildings that have sort of grown around and within it. There are actually several souks. Most are banal, such as the herbs souk and utensils souk. Not that the old souk divisions are still relevant. There are no mattresses in the mattress souk anymore!

It was a delightful warren, old wares in new shops and modern wares in old shops, but also old in old and modern in modern. A sign pointed to a poet’s museum tucked away somewhere within. The discovery felt like a bit of an easter egg.

But the main tourist draw is the famous Dubai gold souk. It actually used to be the pearl souk, back when Dubai’s main economy was pearling. There are still pearls, but gold clearly now dominates. And I don’t mean just your typical bracelets and necklaces either. Here, we’re talking gold bibs and bracers, gold tiaras and mail vests, gold niqabs and caps. The bling is completely #extra.

But the most fascinating thing was not the piles and piles of gold**. It’s that the gold souk doesn’t have a single security guard – never mind an armed one – despite the piles and piles of gold. Now that’s a public security flex.

Dubai’s diplomatic district

I underestimated two things on my first layover in Dubai. I underestimated how hot it would be even in May, and I underestimated the value of staying in close proximity to the Metro line.

Even a heat-loving person like me could feel the heat stress after some time walking under the sun, and it was not even properly summer yet. On the other hand, you could avoid most of it by simply staying closer to a Metro station. On yet another slog back to my hotel, I resolved to stay near Union Metro station next time (I didn’t), where I’d be able to get on both the red and green lines.

However, Al Seef had the Old Dubai vibe that I was looking for. And I quickly realised that it was also near the diplomatic area. Since I’d have to take the Metro to go to Museum of the Future anyway, one day I thought I might as well walk the long way through the embassies and consulates.

It was one of the things I sometimes do on a trip that’s semi-spontaneous, without anything particularly in mind. Sometimes nothing comes out of it. Sometimes an interesting insight. And sometimes, I only notice the interesting things afterwards.

The diplomatic district was classy and quiet. That was expected. The diplomatic buildings were consulates, not embassies. Which was also expected, since the UAE capital is Abu Dhabi, not Dubai.

But many countries also have consulates there, even though Dubai isn’t far from Abu Dhabi. There were consulates from other Arab countries. The State of Palestine has a consulate, aside from its embassy in Abu Dhabi. The US has theirs next to Saudi Arabia’s. Amusingly, Pakistan and India are also neighbours here. And interestingly, the UK has an embassy, not a consulate.

Can you take photos in Dubai?

If you don’t travel on business for a western corporation, you may not know about the – shall we say, poorly calibrated – business travel risk summaries for countries. It was one of my pet peeves.

For starters, the risk advice is phrased as though your ethnic attributes are not relevant to your risk, but the risk assumption clearly has a default race profile, i.e. white. So not only is the risk summary sometimes incomplete for some places, in others it’s also too conservative. Whereas in Asia, we’re a lot more open about this.

For another, it tends to exaggerate risks in some countries, relative to others. For example, there’s a warning about terrorism in Jakarta from one single incident years ago during the peak of ISIS activity, but there is no advance warning of US gun violence.

Anyway, though I was on a personal layover, I checked the risk summary for Dubai out of habit. It cautioned me against uploading photos on social media, suggesting that this might run afoul with the law. 

I thought that was strange, because as a travel blogger, I know there’s a crap ton of Dubai influencer photos online. So I was curious to reconcile this on my first visit. Were there really secret police monitoring what photos you take? How does that work while also having free flow images of Dubai from hundreds of social media accounts?***

In practice, I was never stopped from taking photos anywhere. Not inside museums, and not even of the massive wealth in the gold souk.

In fact, there were only three places I found with ‘no photography’ signs. One was inside a random clay artist’s shop. The others were all around the US and UK diplomatic buildings – and only there. Ironically, there were no such prohibitions at the consulates of the ‘authoritarians’ – not Libya, Saudi Arabia, or China.

Water & the story of Dubai’s transformation

Some countries that we think of as developed, only got there fairly recently. It’s just that they carry themselves like it, and well enough, that we assume they must have been so for much longer than is actually the case.

I happened to be reading a book my friend Marina gifted me, The Museum of Whales You Will Never See, whose similar themes of a culture’s total transformation in a short time reinforced this reflection when I was in Dubai. It was a book about chronicling strange museums in Iceland. But through the snapshots of these museums you also learn how Iceland had been among the poorest in Europe, along with the hard life that this entails, and how it reached unprecedented prosperity more recently than you think.

You wouldn’t think it, given its image today. But Dubai had that pattern too, only with an even steeper development curve. The Shindagha Museum gives a detailed description of life only 2-3 generations ago. Back then, Dubai was no different from some countries in the global south that are frequently written off as having no realistic development prospects.

But that all changed, and not because of oil.

No, it was a resource much more basic and precious. Dubai changed its fate by building water infrastructure. And not charity infrastructure either, but large-scale infrastructure. So the people no longer had to carry water for hours every day from communal wells, nor buy it from the water-sellers. In addition, surplus water made possible everything else that came after.

Some countries develop only gradually, having to grow all the elements of a complex society for the first time. But others already have them in the culture from previous eras in history, and are limited by a single external constraint.

Dubai’s futurism does have a practical twist

Shipwrights in Dubai used to make ships according to their judgment of market demand, before even getting an order. So there were ready made ships in stock by the time the order came.

It was one of the things I took away from Shindagha Museum. Not because I was particularly interested in pre-modern shipbuilding. But because it was a significant investment of resources. Building a ship is eight to nine months of work.

It told me that even before it became the Dubai we know today, this is a forward thinking people who value predictive abilities, and are willing to bet on those predictions^.

So it coloured other things from my first visit to Dubai differently. The investment in a good Metro line at a time when population density was low. The numerous housing projects so busily under construction. On the incoming flight, the entertainment system defaults to the Dubai Future Foundation podcast. It was talking about a 50-year master plan, opening Dubai up to new sectors to diversify away from fossil fuel dependency.

Infrastructure-led development is gaining more respectability now, following China’s breathtaking execution. None now can doubt its power to lift millions upon millions of people out of poverty, in record time. But you sure need to know what you’re doing, and you better be right on at least the more expensive of your predictions.

Downtown in Dubai

The Burj Khalifa courtyard has a startlingly similar vibe to the fountain area in KLCC Park. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was, in fact, inspired by it.

I wasn’t sure if I would go to see the Burj Khalifa at all, actually. Initially, I meant to focus more on Old Dubai, and thought I could pick up the iconic landmarks on my return layover instead. But my father’s health news meant that there wasn’t going to be a return layover.

Personally, I preferred our own Petronas Twin Towers. After the very, very long walk along the elevated walkway and through the massive Dubai Mall, I felt the Twin Towers was more approachable – literally.

However, from a distance, the Burj Khalifa looks magical at night. Unlike the silvery glitter of the Twin Towers, the Burj Khalifa is lighted up with subtle sparkling lights, running up and down randomly along the tower, so that you could infer the tower’s presence from the lights but can’t really see it. Like a mirage in the desert.

Downtown, it was even more obvious that Emiratis are minority residents in Dubai. Just 10%, in fact. It still blows my mind that they’re unfazed by this. But I guess, it’s not that new to them. Even in the 1930s, Dubai’s population was already a quarter expatriate.

I guess, this may be what causes people to incorrectly see Dubai. The bulk of what you’ll encounter in Dubai would be expatriate life and amenities. It can easily make you forget that there is an underlying host culture, with laws that are local and not necessarily the same as your origin country.

Perfectly suited to host nomads of the future

On my flight back, I noticed that the cabin ceiling was sprinkled with pinpricks of LED, giving the impression of starry sky. I wondered if it was a deliberate design choice, a callback to star navigation across sea and desert – both part of Emirati heritage.

My first impression of Dubai was that it’s a bubble of optimism. I couldn’t help but be swept away with it. Sometimes, I felt that even the security guards at iconic museums seem to like working in Dubai, because getting a front row seat to the future is kind of part of the package.

But there was also a sense of deliberately not looking at less pleasant things – of which there are many, in that region. Not that I can judge. After all, I grew up in just such a bubble. Malaysia’s own leadership was paternal in our early decades, shielding a newly modernising people through the dangers of the cold war period. The bubble will burst, by and by.

Nonetheless, on the plane I caught glimpses of the global citizens who travel to Dubai, and live close to an emergent future.

An affable Saudi man in modern clothes seated next to me.

A Frenchman in the bathroom queue, 15 years in Dubai as an expat, who asked the Polish stewardess if she gets to go home often. Not really, she said, it’s very far, but she didn’t sound too sad. He, on the other hand, had more than one home, having recently purchased one in Penang, and travelled between the two regularly.

A pair of Malaysians – Malay and Chinese by ethnicity – discussing their business travels in Arabia and China.

Another passenger finds the mini pizza snack acceptable. The stewardess replied, he will look forward to the amazing food in Malaysia, and he agrees. 

^ Recommended reading

Dr. Yasar Jarrar. The Sheikh CEO. 2020.

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On my second layover in Dubai, I bought a book in the Museum of the Future gift shop to understand what they’re thinking here in Dubai, and why they do what they do. It’s different, and often makes Dubai (and the UAE) controversial to observers.
The Sheikh CEO is primarily a book about leadership. However, in order to demonstrate the key leadership attributes that propelled Dubai to prosperity, it also included personal anecdotes of the Sheikh’s more prescient decisions.
Dubai faced many naysayers throughout its development journey because of these decisions that only made sense when they were done in time for a status quo change.
For instance, in the 80s Dubai invested in a major port expansion at the Creek, when the ships big enough to fill up the dry dock hadn’t even existed yet – but they do now, and Dubai was already there.

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Notes:

* Gender equality at a meta level

By masculine, I don’t mean literally staffed by men. Rather, I mean it in a metaphysical sense, i.e. ministries intended for more active functions, or enforcement of limits. In the UAE, these ministries may have women in them as well. In fact, a previous Minister for Advanced Technology was a woman.

Likewise, by feminine, I don’t mean literally staffed by women. Rather, I mean ministries whose functions are about nurturing and society. It’s telling that in so many countries, the most underfunded and disrespected ministries all fall in this category. And then we’re surprised to get culture erosion, dwindling community life, family breakdown, an aging population, and an unhealthy, unhappy nation.

** Ethical gold regulations

Part of me thought that I should take advantage of the decent gold prices and buy a bit of financial hedge. However, having been in sustainability for so long, I’m instinctively uncomfortable when I can’t find a clear explanation for why there’s so much gold at such a competitive price. I did end up getting a pendant, but more as souvenir jewellery than for its value; it weighs hardly anything.

The UAE does have regulations for responsible sourcing of gold. However, it’s a relatively new law, and the sector is assessed as high risk. From my experience, it takes a while for government to get a handle on things until the desired outcome of a new law is realised. Even with laws, a regular person just does not know enough about commodities markets to be sure, but at least there would be an attempt to trace it.

*** Where the travel advice came from

Later, I learned a bit more about what led to this travel advisory. There really were a few incidents where foreign visitors got in trouble in Dubai. But all the posts had something in common. The social media post wasn’t what they got in trouble for, it just broadcast their infringement of public decency laws.

To be delicate, by ‘public decency laws’, I mean what they did wouldn’t breach just the UAE’s decency laws, but those of most countries except on a nudist beach. So it’s yet another example of a ‘standard’ risk advice, which really isn’t relevant at all to 99% of travellers to Dubai.

Carbon offset information to Dubai

A return flight between Kuala Lumpur and Dubai produces carbon emissions of approximately 2,518 lbs CO2e. It costs about $20 to offset this.