As I get out, he says, “We are not different, all men are…” and struggles to remember the word.
“Brothers?” I say.
“No,” he says.
“Unified?” I say.
“No,” he says.
“Part of the same, uh…transcendent…”
“No,” he says. He can’t remember the word. He is old, very old, he says, sorry, sorry.
We say good-bye, promising to pray for our respective governments, and for each other.
CLEANING AMONG THE MAYHEM
Dubai is a city of people who come from elsewhere and are going back there soon. To start a good conversation—with a fellow tourist, with the help, with just about anybody—simply ask, “Where are you from?” Everyone wants to tell you. If white, they are usually from England, South Africa, or Ukraine. If not, they are from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Kenya, Nepal, or India.
One hotel seems to hire only Nepalese. One bar has only Ukrainians. You discover a pocket of Sri Lankan golf-cart drivers, all anxious to talk about the tsunami.
One day, inexplicably, everyone you meet, wherever you go, is from the Philippines.
“Where are you from?” you say all day, and all day people brightly answer, “Philippines!”
That night, at a club called Boudoir, I meet L, an employee of Ford in Dubai, a manic, funny, Stanley Tucci–looking guy from Detroit, who welcomes me into his party, gets me free champagne, mourns the circa-1990 state of inner-city Detroit: feral dogs roaming the streets, trees growing out of the upper stories of skyscrapers where “you know, formerly, commerce was being done, the real 1960s automobile fucking world-class commerce, man!” The night kind of explodes. This, I think, this is the repressive Arabian Peninsula? Apparently, anything is permitted, as long as it stays within the space within which it is permitted. Here is a Palestinian who lives in L.A. and whose T-shirt says LAPD—WHERE EVERYBODY IS KING. A couple of blond Russian girls dance on a rail, among balloons. On the dance floor, two other blondes dance alone. A guy comes up behind one and starts passionately grinding her. This goes on awhile. Then he stops, introduces himself, she shakes his hand, he goes back to grinding her. His friend comes up, starts grinding her friend. I don’t get it. Prostitutes? Some new youthful social code? I am possibly too old to be in here? The dance floor is packed, the whole place becomes the dance floor, the rails are now packed with dancers, a Lebanese kid petulantly shouts that if this was fucking Beirut, the girls would be stripped off by now, then gives me a snotty look and stomps away, as if it’s my fault the girls are still dressed. I drop my wallet, look down, and see the tiniest little woman imaginable, with a whisk broom, struggling against the surge of the crowd like some kind of cursed Cleaning Fairy, trying to find a small swath of floor to sweep while being bashed by this teeming mass of gyrating International Hipsters. She’s tiny—I mean tiny, like three feet tall, her head barely reaching all the gyrating waists—with thick glasses and bowl-cut hair.
Dear little person! It seems impossible she’s trying to sweep the dance floor at a time like this; she seems uncommonly, heroically dedicated, like some kind of OCD janitor on the Titanic.
“Where are you from?” I shout.
“Philippines!” she shouts, and goes back to her sweeping.
MY ARRIVAL IN HEAVEN
The Burj Al Arab is the only seven-star hotel in the world, even though the ratings system only goes up to five. The most expensive Burj suite goes for twelve thousand dollars a night. The atrium is 590 feet from floor to ceiling, the largest in the world. As you enter, the staff rushes over with cold towels, rosewater for the hands, dates, incense. The smell, the scale, the level of loving, fascinated attention you are receiving, makes you realize you have never really been in the lap of true luxury before. All the luxury you have previously had—in New York, L.A.—was stale, Burj-imitative crap! Your entire concept of being inside a building is being altered in real time. The lobby of the Burj is neither inside nor out. The roof is so far away as to seem like sky. The underbellies of the floors above you grade through countless shades of color from deep blue to, finally, up so high you can barely see it: pale green. Your Guest Services liaison, a humble, pretty Ukrainian, tells you that every gold-colored surface you see during your stay is actual twenty-four-karat gold. Even those four-story columns? Even so, she says. Even the thick fourth-story arcs the size of buses that span the columns? All gold, sir, is correct.
I am so thrilled to be checking in! What a life! Where a kid from Chicago gets to fly halfway around the world and stay at the world’s only seven-star hotel, and GQ pays for it!
But there was a difficulty.
HELP, HELP, HEAVEN IS MAKING ME NERVOUS
Because, for complicated reasons, GQ couldn’t pay from afar, and because my wife and I share a common hobby of maxing out all credit cards in sight, I had rather naively embarked on a trip halfway around the world without an operative credit card: the contemporary version of setting sail with no water in the casks. So I found myself in the odd position of having to pay the off-season rate of fifteen hundred dollars a night, in cash. And because, turns out, to my chagrin, my ATM has a daily withdrawal limit (Surprise, dumb ass!), I found myself there in my two-floor suite (every Burj room is a two-story suite), wearing the new clothes I had bought back in Syracuse for the express purpose of “Arriving at the Burj,” trying to explain, like some yokel hustler at a Motel 6 in Topeka, that I’d be happy to pay half in cash now, half on checkout, if that would be, ah, acceptable, would that be, you know, cool?
My God, if you could have bottled the tension there in my suite at the Burj! The absolute electricity of disappointment shooting back and forth between the lovely Ukrainian and my kindly Personal Butler, the pity, really…
Sorry, uh, sorry for the, you know, trouble…I say.
No, sir, the lovely Ukrainian says. We are sorry to make any difficulties for you.
Ha, I thought, God bless you, now this is service, this is freaking Seven-Star Service!
But over the next few hours, my bliss diminished. I was approached by the Lebanese Floor Butler, by several Mysterious Callers from Guest Services, all of whom, politely but edgily, informed me that it would be much appreciated if the balance of the payment could be made by me pronto. I kept explaining my situation (that darn bank!), they kept accepting my explanation, and then someone else would call, or come by, once again encouraging me to pay the remaining cash, if I didn’t mind terribly, right away, as was proper.
So although the Burj is a wonder—a Themed evocation of a reality that has never existed, unless in somebody’s hashish dream—a kind of externalized fantasy of affluence, if that fantasy were being had in real time by a very rich Hedonistic Giant with unlimited access to some kind of Exaggeration Drug, a Giant fond of bright, mismatched colors, rounded, huge, inexplicable structures, dancing fountains, and two-story-tall wall-lining aquariums—I couldn’t enjoy any of it. Not the electronic curtains that reveal infinite ocean; not the free-high-speed-Internet-accessing big-screen TV; not the Burj-shaped box of complimentary gourmet dates; not the shower with its six different Rube Goldbergian nozzles arranged so that one can wash certain body parts without having to demean oneself via bending or squatting; not the complimentary three-hundred-dollar bottle of wine; not the sweeping Liberace stairs or the remote-control front-door opener; not the distant view of The Palm, Jumeirah, and/or the tiny inconsequential boats far below, full of little people who couldn’t afford to stay in the Burj even in their wildest dreams, the schmucks (although by the time of my third Admonitory Phone Call, I was feeling envious of them and their little completely paid-for boats, out there wearing shorts, shorts with, possibly, some cash in the pockets)—couldn’t enjoy any of it, because I was too cowed to leave my room. I resisted the urge to crawl under the bed. I experienced a sudden fear that a group of Disapproving Guest Services People would appear at my remote-controlled door and physically escort me down to the lobby ATM (an ATM about which I expec
t I’ll be having anxiety nightmares the rest of my life), which would once again prominently display the words PROVIDER DECLINES TRANSACTION. It’s true what the Buddhists say: Mind can convert Heaven into Hell. This was happening to me. A headline in one of the nine complimentary newspapers read, actually read: “American Jailed for Nonpayment of Hotel Bill.”
Perhaps someone had put acid in the complimentary Evian?
MON PETIT PATHETIC REBELLION
On one of my many unsuccessful missions to the ATM, I met an Indian couple from the United Kingdom who had saved up their money for this Dubai trip and were staying downtown, near the souk. They had paid fifty dollars to come in and have a look around the Burj (although whom they paid wasn’t clear—the Burj says it discontinued its policy of charging for this privilege), and were regretting having paid this money while simultaneously trying to justify it. Although we must remember, said the husband to the wife, this is, after all, a once-in-a-lifetime experience! Yes, yes, of course, she said, I don’t regret it for a minute! But there is a look, a certain look, about the eyes, that means: Oh God, I am gut-sick with worry about money. And these intelligent, articulate people had that look. (As, I suspect, did I.) There wasn’t, she said sadly, that much to see, really, was there? And one felt rather watched, didn’t one, by the help? Was there a limit on how long they could stay? They had already toured the lobby twice, been out to the ocean-overlooking pool, and were sort of lingering, trying to get their fifty bucks’ worth.
At this point, I was, I admit it, like anyone at someone else’s financial mercy, a little angry at the Burj, which suddenly seemed like a rosewater-smelling museum run for, and by, wealthy oppressors-of-the-people, shills for the new global economy, membership in which requires the presence of A Wad, and your ability to get to it/prove it exists.
Would you like to see my suite? I asked the couple.
Will there be a problem with the, ah…
Butler? I said. Personal Butler?
With the Personal Butler? he said.
Well, I am a guest, after all, I said. And you are, after all, my old friends from college in the States. Right? Could we say that?
We said that. I snuck them up to my room, past the Personal Butler, and gave them my complimentary box of dates and the three-hundred-dollar bottle of wine. Fight the power! Then we all stood around, feeling that odd sense of shame/solidarity that people of limited means feel when their limitedness has somehow been underscored.
Later that night, a little drunk in a scurvy bar in another hotel (described by L, my friend from Detroit, as the place where “Arabs with a thing for brown sugar” go to procure “the most exquisite African girls on the planet,” but which was actually full of African girls who, like all girls whose job it is to fuck anyone who asks them night after night, were weary and joyless and seemed on the brink of tears), I scrawled in my notebook: Paucity (ATM) = Rage.
Then I imagined a whole world of people toiling in the shadow of approaching ruin, exhausting their strength and grace, while above them a whole other world of people puttered around, enjoying the good things of life, staying at the Burj just because they could.
And I left my ATM woes out of it and just wrote: Paucity = Rage.
LUCKILY, IT DIDN’T COME TO JAIL
Turns out, the ATM definition of “daily” is: after midnight in the United States. In the morning, as I marched the twenty-five hundred dirhams I owed proudly upstairs, the cloud lifted. A citizen of the affluent world again, I went openly to have coffee in the miraculous lobby, where my waiter and I talked of many things—of previous guests (Bill Clinton, 50 Cent—a “loud-laughing man, having many energetic friends”), and a current guest, supermodel Naomi Campbell.
Then I left the Burj, no hard feelings, and went somewhere even better, and more expensive.
HEAVEN FOR REAL, PLUS IN THIS CASE IT WAS PAID FOR IN ADVANCE
The Al Maha resort is located inside a stunningly beautiful/bleak, rugged desert nature preserve an hour outside of Dubai. My Personal Butler was possibly the nicest man I’ve ever met, who proudly admitted it was he who designed the linens, as well as the special Kleenex dispensers. He had been at Al Maha since the beginning. He loved it here. This place was his life’s work.
Each villa had its own private pool.
After check-in, we’re given a Jeep tour of the desert by a friendly and intensely knowledgeable South African guide, of that distinct subspecies of large, handsome guys who love nature. I learn things. The oryx at Al Maha have adapted to the new water-sprinkler system in the following way: at dusk, rather than going down to the spring, they sit at the base of the trees, waiting for the system to engage. I see a bush called Spine of Christ; it was from one of these, some believe, that Christ’s crown of thorns was made. I see camel bones, three types of gazelle. We pass a concrete hut the size of a one-car garage, in a spot so isolated and desolate you expect some Beckett characters to be sitting there. Who lives inside? A guy hired by the camel farmer, our guide says. He stays there day and night for months at a time. Who is he? Probably a Pakistani; often, these camel-feeding outposts are manned by former child camel-jockeys, sold by their families to sheiks when the kids were four or five years old.
For lunch, we have a killer buffet, with a chef’s special of veal medallions.
I go back to my villa for a swim. Birds come down to drink from my private pool. As you lower yourself into the pool, water laps forward and out, into a holding rim, then down into the Lawrencian desert. You see a plane of blue water, then a plane of tan desert. Yellow bees—completely yellow, as if spray-painted—flit around on the surface of the water.
At dusk we ride camels out into the desert. A truck meets us with champagne and strawberries. We sit on a dune, sipping champagne, watching the sunset. Dorkily, I am the only single. Luckily, I am befriended by B and K, a beautiful, affluent Dubai-Indian couple right out of Hemingway. She is pretty and loopy: Angelina Jolie meets Lucille Ball. He is elegant, reserved, kind-eyed, always admiring her from a little ways off, then rushing over to get her something she needs. They are here for their one-and-a-half-year anniversary. Theirs was a big traditional Indian wedding, held in a tent in the desert, attended by four hundred guests, who were transported in buses. In a traditional Indian wedding, the groom is supposed to enter on a white horse. White horses being in short supply in Dubai, her grandfather, a scion of old Dubai, called in a favor from a sheik, who flew in, from India, a beautiful white stallion. Her father then surprised the newlyweds with a thirty-minute fireworks show.
Fireworks, wow, I say, thinking of my wedding and our big surprise, which was, someone had strung a crap-load of Bud cans to the bumper of our rented Taurus.
She is her father’s most precious possession, he says.
Does her father like you? I say.
He has no choice, he says.
Back at my room, out of my private pool, comes the crazed Arabian moon, which has never, in my experience, looked more like a Ball of Rock in Space.
My cup runneth over. All irony vanishes. I am so happy to be alive. I am convinced of the essential goodness of the universe. I wish everyone I’ve ever loved could be here with me, in my private pool.
I wish everyone could be here with me, in my private pool: the blue-suited South Indians back in town, the camel farmer in his little stone box, the scared sad Moldavian prostitutes clutching their ostensibly sexy little purses at the Cyclone Club—I wish they could all, before they die, have one night at Al Maha.
But they can’t.
Because that’s not the way the world works.
“DUBAI IS WHAT IT IS BECAUSE ALL THE COUNTRIES AROUND IT ARE SO FUCKED UP”
In the middle of a harsh, repressive, backward, religiously excessive, physically terrifying region, sits Dubai. Its neighbors across the Gulf, Iraq and Iran, are war-torn and fanatic-ruled, respectively. Surrounding it is Saudi Arabia, where stealing will get your hand cut off, a repressive terrorist breeding ground where women’s faces c
an’t be seen in public, a country, my oil-industry friend says, on the brink of serious trouble.
The most worrisome thing in Saudi, he says, is the rural lower class. The urban middle class is doing all right, relatively affluent and satisfied. But look at a map of Saudi, he says: All that apparently empty space is not really empty. There are people there who are not middle-class and not happy. I say the Middle East seems something like Russia circa 1900—it’s about trying to stave off revolution in a place where great wealth has been withheld from the masses by a greedy ruling class.
That’s one way of saying it, he says.
Then he tells me how you get a date if you are a teenage girl in Saudi Arabia:
Go to the mall, wearing your required abaya. When a group of young guys walks by, if you see one you like, quickly find a secluded corner of the mall, take out your cell phone, lift your abaya, snap a picture of your face. Write your cell number on a piece of paper. When the boys walk by, drop the scrap at the feet of the one you like. When he calls, send him your photo. If he likes the photo, he will call again. Arrange a secret meeting.
The world must be peopled.
THE TRUTH IS, I CAN’T DECIDE WHAT’S TRUE, HONESTLY
One night, at dinner with some People Who Know, I blurt out a question that’s been bothering me: Why doesn’t Al Qaeda bomb Dubai, since Dubai represents/ tolerates decadent Western materialism, etc., and they could do it so easily? The Man Who Knows says, I’ll tell you why: Dubai is like Switzerland during World War II—a place needed by everyone. The Swiss held Nazi money, Italian Fascist money. And in Dubai, according to this Person, Al Qaeda has millions of dollars in independent, Dubai-based banks, which don’t always adhere to the international banking regulations that would require a bank to document the source of the income. A Woman Who Knows says she’s seen it: A guy walks into a bank with a shitload of money, and they just take it, credit it, end of story. In this way, the People Who Know say, Dubai serves various illicit organizations from around the world: the Italian Mafia, the Spanish Mafia, etc., etc. Is this known about and blessed from the top down? Yes, it is. Al Qaeda needs Dubai, and Dubai tolerates Al Qaeda, making the periodic token arrest to keep the United States happy.