This is the story of a small Arab village that grew
into a big city.
It was a mud village on the seaside, as poor as any in
Africa, and it sat in a region where pirates, holy warriors, and dictators held
sway over the years. There was even a communist uprising for a time, right next
door. But the village was peaceful, ruled by the same family generation after
generation.
No one thought the village would become a city. It sat
on the edge of a vast desert, surrounded by a sea of sand. There was no running
water, no ice, no radio, no road. The village drifted in an eddy of time. While
other nations launched rockets into space, the villagers fished and napped. They
and their slaves dove for pearls in the sea.
The villagers trusted the family that ruled them. The family
produced generous men who ruled by three principles: what is good for the
merchant is good for the village; embrace visitors, no matter what their
religion; and, you cannot win if you do not take risks.
The ruling family and their villagers were sorely
tested during the hard times of the 1930s and 1940s. People starved. Slaves fled,
because masters had no food. Rivals rose against them. Schools crumbled into
the earth. The only blessings came as clouds of locusts, which the villagers
toasted and ate.
But the villagers were a gregarious and hardworking
bunch. They pulled themselves together. They enlarged their sailing fleet and
began trading and smuggling. They borrowed money and dredged a little port. They
invited foreigners to settle, promising freedom from taxes and turmoil. Foreigners
who ventured in liked the village and its ambitious leader, a man named Rashid.
The village grew into a town. The foreigners told Rashid of the wonders of the
modern world, the skyscrapers of New York and the London Underground. He listened
intently.
Rashid wanted the name of his town, Dubai, on the lips
of every person on earth. When a family sat down to dinner in America, Rashid
wanted them to discuss the happenings of Dubai. And when two Englishmen paused
for a glass of beer, it was Dubai that he wished them to talk about. Farmers in
China, bankers in Switzerland, and generals in Russia: All of them must know of
Dubai. For this to happen, the town couldn’t stay small and poor. Rashid made a
wish. Dubai must become the most luxurious city the world has ever known: the
City of Gold.
In 1960 Dubai set off on a journey that was more
exciting that anything the Arabs had done in seven hundred years. The town grew
bigger and more dazzling with each passing day. Rashid’s son Mohammed took over
and pressed forward with even more passion. The villagers whose parents ate
locusts donned gowns embroidered in crystal. Illiterate elders went shopping by
private jet.
Arabs everywhere admired Dubai. A people down on its
luck found pride flooding back. They asked their own leaders why they couldn’t
be more like Dubai.
But like all great wishes that are granted, the
success of Rashid’s quest brought unforeseen trouble. Lives were trampled by
the city’s growth. Greed eclipsed common sense. The old ways were lost, and
simplicity disappeared, never to return. The dream of capitalism brought them a
new city, unlike any other. It also wed Dubai to the fickle ways of the global
marketplace, which, as the desert-dwellers learned, can inundate you with wealth
and then, even more quickly, take it away.
The story of Dubai’s wild ride contains powerful
lessons for all of us. It starts long ago, when a great migration took place in
Arabia’s most isolated corner.
KRANE, Jim, “Dubai. The story of the world’s
fastest city”, London, 2010.
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