Dubai: The City of Paradoxes

Dubai is a city of paradoxes. There's nothing like it. It's a chaotic blend of the old and the new, of the vain and the intellect, of the fake and the real, and of prejudice and equality. Dubai will charm you just as much as it will offend you. That's why millions land here like flocking birds, embrace this city for a day or for years and then inevitably fly away. The people of Dubai are so transient that even many who were born and raised here have trouble saying they're from here. Citizenship is not a birthright. It cannot even be earned with blood or with sweat. Yet for many, it is their second home.

Dubai has become the 4th most visited city in the world. It's still not a typical destination for me and my closest friends. Why? There's a sublimal culture of constantly expressing your own and measuring others' wealth, a characteristic of people (and places) that didn't fully learn and earn their way to it. It represents a tiny measure of everything we have fought not to build in the west. Yet I'm here. Some of my friends live here. I talked to them to see the city through their eyes. I walked the old dusty dirt streets of Deira, the old Dubai, and the crowded diverse spaces of business bay, the new Dubai. I searched for the soul of this city. I can't claim to have found it but I did find a heartbeat.

Far beneath the glamour and the glitter of this city is a place of refuge for the poor and weak who choose to sacrifice their lives so they can build a better life for their children. That unwilling choice to struggle in an unknown land instead of rusting in the adversity of their origin is the heartbeat of Dubai. It resonates with me because my own parents made that choice when they brought me to the middle east first before they found better fortune in the west. Understanding that choice helps you look beyond the vanity of this city. It helps you ignore the quantity of this city's vice and accept the quality of its virtue. It makes you realize that everything good or bad is fleeting. Dubai shines bright when it rises and struggles when it sets. There's hope beyond its many limits. There's also beauty in its chaos. Yet it will never be home. We will eventually fly away.