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My camera is somewhat dysfunctional. It has sand in it maybe, or it got injured in my pocket when I fell down a sand dune, having failed to balance myself on a child's snowboard. It can still be coaxed into shooting photographs, but now it is a negotiated process rather than the camera simply accepting its job. I am now very relieved to see the WARNING!!! BATTERY EXHAUSTED!! sign rather than the CAMERA LENS ERROR!!! sign. One can be fixed in a calm, rational manner; the other is corrected through bashing the camera off the inside of my hand. Technology is mine to wield as I see fit!

There are some rather amazing sights here in Dubai, if you know where to look. Or if you have somebody nice to take you there. Orange-pink sand dunes that stretch out to forever, punctuated only by mammoth power lines and the occasional shrub. Mosques. More mosques. Rows and rows of shops, fancifully titled "Trading Companies", which each sell the exact same selection of knock-off Gucci handbags as their neighbour. Or the same huge adhesive decal of a famous Sheikh lookin' badass to put on your car windshield. The Sheikh'll keep your leather seats cool, yeaaaaah, and yes that is a wolf howling in the background.

I have always wondered how these near-identical shops stay in business without anything to really distinguish themselves from the competition... it was the same deal in Bangkok, and in Beijing. You get the sense that the entire street is one big family, getting together to have an after-dark laugh after the tourists have scuttled home. Swapping tales of fleecing the foreigners, one-upping each other with stories of gargantuan rip-offs and retards reaching eagerly for fat wallets. I imagine Cheshire Cats grinning out of darkened doorways, one shopkeeper fading into the next into the next. Capitalism seems to take a rather xenophobic bent in these places, but maybe it's just me.

We did, however, meet a lovely Pakistani man and his son last night, when we drove out into the desert towards Oman. They were, as was the trend, selling silk rugs and 'authentic'-looking pottery from a roadside shack. After some agreeable haggling, we all sat down and had a cigarette and took classy pictures of each other. The old man told us that the rest of their family resides in Pakistan, living off the money sent home from the rug-stall. This is quite common out in the Middle East, Scutt tells me: men leave their families to go work in unfamiliar countries, sending large portions of their paycheque back home. They'll be estranged for upwards of ten years. Lonely, supporting a wife and children that they haven't seen in a decade... not a very enticing lifestyle for these dudes.

It is a fearsome balance, here: between the skyscraper and the crane, between the dressed-up baller and the rag-tag labourer. I do not think I have ever been to a place that has such a sharply juxtaposed division of class, such an immense divide between the haves and the have-nots.

Tomorrow we fly to Cairo, perhaps there I'll be re-educated.

Posted by Chris at 05:58 AM >> Commentations (1)