“No matter how long an expatriate has been in Dubai, even if they are born in Dubai, they are not Dubaian. At some point, they must leave. This process of exclusion leaves these particular expatriates betwixt and between–they are not legally Dubaian and can be deported at any point, nor are they culturally of their countries of passport. For some, this uncertainty is liberating; it certifies them as global citizens. For others, it merely points out the dangerous condition of their liminal state.” (Dubai: Guilded Cage)
Going through my old photos in that memory stick I found in Lebanon reminds me of old parts of old lives, now refracted through old JPEGs from old Instagram accounts, like these.
These are saved images from posts I made in March 2013, when I visited Dubai for the first and last time, as an invitee and panelist at the SIKKA art & design festival. It all seems surreal to me today. Why did I get that invite? What did I have to say about “the meaning of Dubai,” anyway? It looks like some crazy conjuring act I played on everyone involved. But I’m grateful for the memories.
There’s a lot I enjoyed about Dubai when I visited, and a lot that I didn’t. I enjoyed my friends, old and new. I enjoyed the architecture (the old more than the new), and the scrappy little spots where something radically new was being made in betwixt the old. I enjoyed when the balmy winds blew across the desert heat. I did not enjoy the racialized class hierarchy I was almost immediately engulfed in. I don’t know what it’s like now, but back then, it was inescapable: if you took the bus, if you hailed a cab, if you did anything outside of your 9-5 bubble of comfort, you would see it. And I was only there a couple of days. Would I go again? For years, I said “no.” But I think I’ve changed my mind. I’m curious to see what 11 years has done to a place that changes so rapidly overnight.
I went to Dubai a couple of years after much of its rapid transit infrastructure was built, but my friends didn’t understand why I wanted to ride the bus, let alone the metro. These spaces weren’t meant for “us,” was the subtext.
But I made sure to plan my visit around intentional transit hopping, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading the two lines they had then like literature. For example, wayfinding was inconsistent across stations, as though they hadn’t agreed on the right spellings by the deadline to build. But I’ve heard the system has greatly expanded since then. I wonder if it’s for more of “us” today.
“Memories we remember.” I heard this expression in a lyric recently and thought it was silly until I thought about it for a second or two. It’s not a tautology: some memories are indeed remembered, while others barely register, obscured in the hiss of a tape, or, in this case, the glitched pixels of a JPEG.
I vaguely remember the moment I took this photo. I was with Amal, but I don’t remember where we were or why this altar was there. But I do remember taking the screenshot in slide 2 and making the post in slide 3. The glitches came later.
I sometimes get these pangs of nausea when thinking about the photos I take and posts I make—this sort of welling up of negativity, like “what’s the point?” But it doesn’t last. The point is straightforward, same as it’s always been: the point is to remember.
Or, at the very least, try to.