I regurgitating this long note I wrote sometime in August 2010. Toba Falode and Oyams Alamieyeseigha were killed in Dubai recently, I like to think its not random....... Early this month, I decided to accompany friends on a business trip to Dubai. All I imagined was a few days in the glitzy global hub, shopping and having much needed down time. At least it started well, the Boeing 777 flight from Lagos was one of the smoothest,turbulence free flights ever and the in flight entertainment system was by far the best I had seen in my years of international travel. We landed in Dubai at about 2am local time and were quickly herded into the arrival hall to some biometric equipment which was supposed to scan our irises. There my problems began. I’m naturally slit eyed and the operator kept asking me to open my eyes as wide as possible which I did till it became comedic after the seventh attempt, and I leaned back into the chair and joked with the operator to hurry up that he was wasting my time after a seven hour flight! Wrong move, as almost immediately I was accosted by the ‘manager ‘ an Emirati who actually called me ‘crazy’ and seized my passport. He asked me to wait aside while other people were scanned. It was surreal. I had been to Dubai before but as a member of a government team that was treated with civility, respect and courtesy. And I said so, demanding that a visitor to his country should be treated with civility, respect and courtesy. To no avail. I was marched off to a police center, all the while the manager threatening to delay me, which he did for over an hour before I was forced to produce my ID card and ask for intervention from the police itself. It ended well; at least I was allowed entry. Our business hotel of choice was located in the centre of Dubai in the Deira district, close to the Gold Souk. Our agent deposited us there and left quickly. One word about ‘agents,’ in Dubai most business people employ the services of a guide who is usually a Nigerian migrant with some level of language skills and local knowledge of shopping deals and eateries. Deira district has two things worthy of note, well apart from the boisterous markets which dont close until early morning; one of the biggest police stations in Dubai, the Naif police station and a large African population. Intelligence has been described primarily as ‘pattern recognition’, but I’m not sure I’m as intelligent to have noticed the connection at first, but I soon did. Emiratis as well as migrants from Pakistan, India, Iran, etc treat Africans with nothing less than a new racism, though I am told that there are also different levels of ‘racism’ or ‘classism’ as the Emiratis look down on just about anybody but white skinned Caucasians. I must have entered over a hundred different shops all across Dubai and thankfully free from the drudgery of shopping to replenish a boutique, immersed myself in the luxury of observation, according to Wikipedia, receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses. Many Dubai shops at least in Deira, jam 9ice, Tuface, P Square and Skuki, yes Skuki’s music but once you remove yourself from the haggling reality distortion field, you notice a patronizing undercurrent. Yes we want your money because we know you came to Dubai with probably ten thousand US dollars, but we believe you are uncouth, uncivilized, and are generally to be tolerated. And sometimes this intolerance busts open to manifest as pure disdain, the kind a Syrian shopkeeper spewed at us when one of our company mistakenly sat on his throw pillows or a Chinese shop attendant rudely counting us with her index finger as we filed into her shop. I assure you we bought nothing at those shops. Or when despite the fact that you’re wearing a healthy amount of Paco Rabanne’s One Million scent, an Emirati woman, moves perceptibly away from you and uses the lower part of her veil to cover her nose as if one was smelling of horse shit! To be honest Nigerians give the Emiratis cause for concern, and there are several comparisms between Deira and Hillbrow in Johannesburg for instance, but is it not racism to treat a whole nation according to the sins of a few? I enjoyed Dubai, the sheer over the top opulence, the crazy inventiveness of the gold souk, the perfect forgery of Ralph Lauren polo shirts, (I got three by the way lol), the Dubai mall( the largest shopping mall in the world) with the coolest indoor aquarium, again with the worlds largest aquarium window, I had ever seen. And being a sweet tooth I enjoyed frolicking inside the worlds largest candy store the Candylicious, then just outside at the Dubai Fountain, at the foot of the Burj Dubai , the tallest building in the world(yes Dubai has a thing for superlatives), water dances, yes, dances incredibly, to light and music! We arrived Dubai smack in the middle of a 42degrees temperature run and Ramadan, and our guide rumored we could be arrested if we ate outside and liable to a 500 dirham(N20,000) fine, but there are endless things to do and see; the Jumeirah Mosque, the Dubai Museum, etc, but I never got to go to the 7 star hotel Burj though I now have a souvenir of it on my office desk. I realize that Nigerians can be a proud and arrogant people and to be honest several of the people in the group I was travelling with, were arrogant enough not to even notice the insults but there are many sensitive people who are disrespected because of their skin color. As the Airbus 340-400 that was taking me back to Lagos climbed into the air, I looked down at the city below and shook my head. You got to be kidding me.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 09:41:10 +0000
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