A recent article by Youssef M Ibrahim, a respected commentator in these parts for many years, compared Dubai's culture to other progressive cities, questioning the values of a fast changing place with a "transient population".
Ibrahim wrote that: "Something is going very wrong here. While Dubai has developed into a global crossroads...there is nothing called a core any more as it keeps on moving every week. The only stable value is instant everything, instant coffee, instant consumerism and instant tourism. Are these really values?"
Ibrahim raises some interesting points about culture here and the lifeblood of the place.
Certainly, it is difficult to pin down a core culture; an essence of what it means to live in Dubai. But he also misses the bigger point of the UAE. The locals that have lived in this region have always been transient, moving from place to place, albeit on a smaller scale - Abu Dhabi for example was traditionally only a winter habitat.
Similarly, many of the UAE nationals that now live in Dubai came from other parts of the Gulf, adapting to changing circumstances. The latest buzz phrase in Dubai is "melting pot" - the city state is supposedly a melting pot of cultures, of nationalities and of industries. However, this is inaccurate. It is a melting pot within a melting pot, within a melting pot that is spinning at breakneck speed.
The base culture in Dubai is made up of a mix of peoples that have been labelled "local" simply because they were here before records began - sometime in the early 1970s. But local culture is seemingly a mix of Nomadic, Indian and Persian influences at the very least. A "local" wedding I attended last month seemed more Bollywood than anything else.
The local food is a similar affair - a mix of spices, ingredients and flavours from around the region. Cultures are inter-mingling, transient, ever evolving and challenging. A culture is a living thing and its life force won't leave anyone totally comfortable. Dubai's blender mix of cultures is certainly most unnerving. But how can it be any other way when the land is fundamentally desert - a harsh unforgiving place.
To survive in such conditions it is impossible not to be a "a city that changes for the sake of changing" as Ibrahim put it. The change is for the sake of that old human value - survival. And generations have fought change and fought for change all over the world. Ibrahim justifiably fights his corner and questions where his Dubai is going? What direction it is taking and more importantly, why is it changing?
"In the past few years questions weighed on the minds of those of us who have known, lived and loved old Dubai: Is the ''New Dubai'' becoming, a combination of Las Vegas and Disneyland?" Ibrahim wrote. The answer is of course yes...and no. For one side of the coin Dubai will have several others. The transient nature of the place and its population means that whatever shape it takes today it is already plotting its new metamorphisis.
© 7Days 2005
