blog

By Sean Mc Allister

Returning to Dubai was a big thing for me.  I was here in September last year looking a film idea for the BBC. Then, it was still booming. Now it feels on the brink of going bust. My cab driver from the airport was moaning that he’d only had 3 jobs in 4 hours. Crazy for a Friday night. He’s thinking of going back to his family in Egypt. After 14 years here he says he’s never seen it so bad. As I get out of the can he whispers, “Dubai is finished”.  Maybe that’s my story.

I check into my cheap, run-down Indian hotel near the creek in old Dubai. Yes, there still is an old dirty run down area. I feel at home here. The hotel reminds me of my hotel in Baghdad in 2004, but without the danger. Well without any obvious danger. The manager shows me 7 hidden camaras in the run down foyer. They are for my safety he says.

“But this is the safest place in the Middle East”, I tell him. He says this is why. He makes it clear that I cannot have ‘guests’ in my room. In other words the female hookers who run free in the night hours littering the roads and bars, pleasing the ex-pats and tourists that litter Dubai by night as well as by day.  He tells me some hotels here are down to 20% occupancy. Tourism is plummeting and much major construction has stopped or is on hold.

Later I meet Ray and Sarah in a sports bar. They tell me the credit crunch has hit Dubai big style. Many of the ex-pats I speak to have lost their jobs in the last 2 weeks. Some have paid 12 months rent up front, others have expenses like kids’ schooling fees to worry about.

They say that every week hordes of them are leaving, often escaping big debts. Easy credit here means that many people have been living beyond their means.  If you’re not a tourist it’s impossible to be here without a job. And other concerns aside, it is extremely expensive. Apart from the super rich, most people share rooms. The guys I was drinking with last night share a 2 bed flat, but it still costs them about 300 Euro a week – each. The cost of a drink in the bars frequented by the ex-pats makes severe incursions on their tax-free life-style. But this is where most of them spend their hard-earned cash.

Workers housed in the dense labour camps on the outskirts of Dubai apparently get 5 Euro a day from which they manage to send money home. At least their squalid accommodation, packed 10 to a room for 11 months a year, is free!

All of this is far from the Dubai dream that Piers Morgan showed in his fantasy documentary on ITV on Dubai last week. The  guys in the bar were fuming. It wasn’t the reality for them!

They were pushing me to make my film here but I told them of my dilemma. I couldn’t find  anyone interesting or brave enough to let me film them.  In the main this place is ugly as is what it represents, but I don’t simply want to confirm that in a film. There doesn’t seem to be any point. However, this morning I woke to the call for prayer. I opened my door and stepped onto my balcony. Down below was a bustling shopping street selling textiles, a very Indian scene.  I felt happy to be here. The huge and horrible buildings that are the new part of town were hidden from view. I got up and strolled through what could have been Delhi to my favourite humous restaurant on the creek. I am writing here now, watching the water taxis pass. Beautiful, and it doesn’t feel like Dubai. Well, not how we have come to think of it.

Today I hope to meet Roberto or Marina or Ray who will hopefully lead me to the guy I’m looking for. But he still feels a long way away yet. So I better get back down to the sports bar which is where I’m starting this new adventure in my life.

Sean McAllister studied documentary film at the National Film and Television School in UK with Laurentiu Calciu.  Currently he makes observational documentaries for BBC and Channel 4.