You can tell how long ago I went to Dubai, because I was still a columnist for The Guardian. This was around the turn of the 21st century, when the paper had enough influence to bag two first-class flights and two suites at the Burj Al Arab hotel, which opened in 1999. Everything was so computerized that I couldn\u2019t work out how to open the curtains until I was packing my case to leave. This led a friend to quip: \u201cAt least you\u2019ve had the local female experience \u2014 sad, in a darkened room.\u201d<\/p>\n
How times change. In recent years, Dubai has become a kind of promised land for the young and the restless, the sleazy and the shady and international criminals evading justice \u2014 and the most amusing cohort, those who believe Britain is going to the dogs by importing too many Muslims and so go to live in a Muslim country where apostasy is a crime, gender apartheid is practiced and the law punishes homosexuality with anything from fines to floggings to a sizable jail sentence.<\/p>\n
Mind you, it\u2019s hardly Liberty Hall for heterosexuals, either. Even married couples who are overcome with lust to the point of hugging in public may expect a stern warning while thousands are cautioned by police on the beaches each year for showing affection. The most shocking case happened when in 2024 a London boy, Marcus Fakana, was sent to jail for having a holiday romance with a female fellow teenager, also on holiday from England with her parents. He spent around a year in prison before being freed due to a \u201croyal pardon\u201d from Dubai\u2019s ruler \u2014 Dubai being one of seven hereditary emirates within the United Arab Emirates, each one of them an absolute monarchy.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s an inherent tension in young British men and women, famous around the globe for their intoxicated displays of lust under the foreign sun, flocking to a place with such savagely stuffy sexual standards, and where prohibitions on revealing \u201ctoo much\u201d flesh is a matter for the law. There\u2019s a vital get-out clause, though; these rules don\u2019t apply to Westerners in waterparks, beaches, clubs and bars, which are pretty much the only places Westerners in Dubai frequent. Other foreigners in Dubai, especially the non-white ones, aren\u2019t so privileged. Major construction in Dubai only started in the Nineties; now it is home to one of the world\u2019s densest skylines, including the Burj Khalifa, the world\u2019s tallest building. All this has been built in record time by migrant workers \u2014 generally from South and South East Asia, particularly India and Nepal \u2014 who have spent 12-hour shifts sacrificing themselves to the monster hotels which house Western tourists. The documentary Slaves of Dubai<\/a> presents a grim picture of a side of the city that most visitors choose not to see.<\/p>\n Thousands of these workers die every year; some estimates have it as high as 10,000 deaths across the Gulf region, with more than half recorded as \u201ccardiac arrest\u201d. As most of these men are young, this seems unlikely to have occurred \u201cnaturally\u201d. It seems far more likely that falling from great heights, electrocution, heat exhaustion and generally hazardous working conditions are to blame.<\/p>\n Dubai is a place in which an Arab and European overclass are waited on hand and foot by an Asian servant class. In an amusingly mis-timed piece in this week\u2019s Heat magazine \u2014 \u201cLIVING THE DUBAI DREAM\u201d \u2014 the reality TV personality Luisa Zissman named a better quality of life as her reason for moving there, summed up by the fact that she was able to get a pair of false eyelashes delivered in 11 minutes on New Years Eve; I\u2019d take a punt that her speedy courier was neither European nor Arab. But then, this modern slavery practiced in places like Dubai seems not to trouble the westerners who flock to the Gulf in search of luxury goods and Instagram likes. What was my excuse for going there, then? Well, we didn\u2019t have the internet back then; no one has that excuse these days. Everyone knows exactly where they\u2019re going and how it got there.<\/p>\n Founded in the early 18th century as a fishing settlement, Dubai became a trade hub in the early 20th century before oil discoveries made it rich in the Sixties and Seventies. These discoveries were relatively minor however; oil revenue makes up less than 2% of its GDP, hence the diversification into real estate and tourism. The emirate is now the seventh most-visited city in the world and its airport is the world\u2019s busiest in the world. Some 92% of the population are expatriates; a lot of these are British, and a good proportion of them are young Britons, often social media influencers. For unformed souls whose fragile sense of self requires ceaseless reassurance from the labels in their clothes, Dubai is perfect. It\u2019s cheaper: Move International recently came up with the figure of 37% cheaper than London, with gasoline, rent, and public transport costing far less. There is, of course, zero income tax. It\u2019s always hot \u2014 worship of the sun has become almost a religion to youngsters. Every car is a limousine, every carpet is red and everything is covered in so much gilt that it makes Versailles look like Bauhaus.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n