F Emirates
April 7th, 2009My first reaction to this piece by Johann Hari in the Independent was: Dubai an authoritarian shithole? Who knew! but it’s well worth your time. The place is worse than the concrete, class-ridden shopping mall you might have expected, it’s positively medieval, but without a peasants’ revolt on the horizon. And don’t go thinking that it’s nasty because of some kind of Arabic cultural reasons, it’s an international of ignorant rich scum. Listen to these toerags:
I asked a British woman called Hermione Frayling what the best thing about Dubai was. “Oh, the servant class!” she trilled. “You do nothing. They’ll do anything!”(…)
My patience frayed by all this excess, I find myself snapping: doesn’t the omnipresent slave class bother you[a City couple who've been coming there for 10 years]? I hope they misunderstood me, because the woman replied: “That’s what we come for! It’s great, you can’t do anything for yourself!” Her husband chimes in: “When you go to the toilet, they open the door, they turn on the tap – the only thing they don’t do is take it out for you when you have a piss!” And they both fall about laughing.
Johann Hari’s done some clownish stuff before, notably supporting the Iraq war, but this detailed, enraging story is dynamite stuff.
