Congratulations are in order. The country I’ve lived in for over 25 years just celebrated the 40th anniversary of it’s unification. It has come a long way in these 40 years. The pace at which things have changed over the years is just indescribable, especially in the city of Dubai. I like to think I’ve witnessed the most incredible transformation of a city in the history of time. The transformation of a dead and barren expanse into a bustling city full of life, in the space of little more than a decade. I’ve been a part of it, in my own way, and it has been a truly remarkable experience.
I have learnt to call this country home. Twenty five years in once place does that to you. I know the streets of Bur Dubai like the back of my hand. For a good part of my childhood, I used to play hide and seek around where Bur Juman sits right now. Sometimes my mother would walk me over to al Fahidi street. We’d go grocery shopping at the Choitram’s there, get ice cream from Baskin Robbins and then rent a couple of VHS tapes at al Mansoor Video. There used to be a Modern Bakery van parked right outside. I remember playing cricket on the grounds near Karama, near where Wafi now sits. I remember the desert looming large, right across Defense roundabout. Back then, al Ain’s Hili Fun City wasn’t a derelict scrapyard, and the World Trade Center was bewilderingly tall.
But when my father got off the boat, 35 years ago, none of those things existed. He landed at Abu Dhabi airport with nothing much else but fifteen Dirhams to his name, money he’d borrowed from a friend in Karachi, his hometown. He started out working in advertising, with one of the Galadari brothers, long before Khaleej Times or Galadari Publishing were even a dream. He then took up a sales position with an engineering interest the Galadaris owned, and engineering is what he’s been doing ever since. He had walked into a land of opportunities. “It was really a bed of roses, ready for the picking” he says.
Before he came to the UAE, my dad spent his early twenties in Tokyo, cooking meals in diners, labor camps, five star hotels. Pretty much any place that would hire him. He worked the kitchens of Honk Kong, Bangkok, Singapore and Kobe amongst others. His sentiments on the UAE’s 40th ‘National Day’: he regrets not having settled down in Tokyo. “Life would have been different.” he says. He’s voiced his regret many times before. And now I understand his reasons.
The UAE has never been home to him. Even though he’s made his life here, lived (very) comfortably, and enjoyed freedoms he would not have in his native Pakistan, he hesitates to call this country home. And I find it hard to disagree with him. Not for the fact that most of the roses have been picked and all that’s left is thorns, but because, at the end of it all, we’re just expatriates here.
An expatriate is one who leaves his home country to live elsewhere, by choice (as opposed to being exiled, perhaps). This puts me in a difficult position. I never made that choice. I was born in Dubai, and have lived here all my life.In my twenty five years here, I have hardly been out of the country for a cumulative four years, including vacations, business trips, visa runs, education abroad etc. I find it harder to identify with my ‘native’ Pakistan than I do with the UAE. I have absorbed the (multi) culture of this place just as much as any one else. And I have been attacked by certain very nationalistic ‘locals’ for saying so. But the truth is, the culture of the UAE is the very amalgamation of the scores of nationalities that are represented here.
What I haven’t and can’t lay claim to, is the heritage. I am not a UAE National. Neither am I a citizen. The law recognizes me as a temporary resident. Which makes it all the more hard for me to call it home. The realization that I might one day have to return to Pakistan makes me fearful, for a great many reasons I will not discuss here. I am now learning that this country is a house, not a home. If my dad had settled for Tokyo, I’d have been a Japanese citizen several times over now.
I do not wish to call myself Emirati. I understand that the Emirati identity needs to be a nationalistic one in order to survive in the face of the huge emigrant population. Nationalism in the interests of self preservation is understandable. But how is it possible to justify how it is the ‘expats’ that have built this place (a lot of them with their bare hands too) from the ground up are largely expendable? The fact that the ‘expat’ is an expendable ‘worker drone’ to the ‘locals’ is best illustrated by what happened at Jumeirah, post 2nd Dec: a large majority of people cleaning up the streets were resident aliens, with a lot of locals clicking photos on their cameras and phones.
The people who’ve spent entire lifetimes in this country leave with nothing but severance pay and an overpowering fear of how they will adjust to their new life ‘back home’. I know people who live in great fear of being axed, or going bankrupt, or just having to leave the country otherwise. These people feel like they belong here. They do belong here. How can they not?
These fears are probably faced by long haul expats anywhere in the world, regardless of where they are living and where they ‘belong’. But there is an added worry that comes with being an expat in the UAE: you can’t belong here. No matter if you were born here, or if you’ve lived here for 35 years, and built your entire life around the country. You have to prepare yourself to go ‘back’ one day. If you’re lucky you’ll get a chance to stay behind and look for another job to hold on to. Most people get four weeks. Some don’t even get that.
But what do I go ‘back’ to? More importantly, what am I ‘here’ for? Economic sensibilities (or lack thereof) aside, I still try to believe in this place. Lately I’ve begun to wonder if it’s worth doing so. All around me are people who come here for a quick buck and that’s it. The quick buck defines their life in the UAE. It reflects a great deal in their attitude towards the country. Most of them don’t feel the need to be responsible towards the well being or sustainability of a country they aren’t allowed to call home.
The crux of it is simply a question of why: why should I put in my blood, sweat and tears towards somebody else’s dream? Why should I invest so much into building a house that I’ll only be a temporary (paying) guest in? Yes, it was okay so long as the money was good, but what now?
Such questions are usually answered with “If you don’t like it, go home” around these parts. But I am home, and I do like it. I just don’t know how much longer I can count on calling it home, and whether it’s sensible to do so anymore. At a personal level, these sentiments (and the decisions they will influence) may or may not have significant impact on my career and my life in the UAE. But if you zoom out just a bit, these sentiments being present across a vast majority of the population of a country can not be healthy.
Citizenship might be too much to ask, but some recognition beyond ‘resident alien’ would be welcomed with open arms. The right to ‘return home’ to the UAE whenever required, or the right to maintain resident status without having to return to the country every six months would really put a lot of people’s doubts and fears at ease.
I don’t count on anything happening. I just hope something does. I’d love to actually be a part of National Day celebrations some day, with the reassurance that some small unfortunate mistake won’t lead to me being thrown out of my home for good. And barred from re-entering. Maybe December 2nd will be rightly called ‘Union Day’ by then. Until then, I might try to stick around anyway, but not sure I will. For now, I’m just trying to pick whatever roses I can find, to take away with me to plant somewhere with greener pastures.
Posted from Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
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Tags: dubai, expats, national day, uae
