Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Teaching College in Dubai: Osama on the Screensaver

After 13 years in the desert Middle East, I carry certain sentimental longings of home: Green leaves, black clouds, hard silver rain (or soft rain of any color, for that matter), and the change of seasons.

Still, “The UAE is like a resort compared to Saudi Arabia,” say the weekend visitors who come to escape Saudi, a nation run like a vast, gender-segregated prison. They are amazed that dating is allowed, abayas (those tent-like black burkas) are not required, and you can have a real drink. Their jaws drop (the better to imbibe mass quantities of beer) and exclaim “Boy, you guys have got it made!”

Imploding economy aside, Dubai is still the place to go in the Middle East. It’s a modern-day Casablanca on steroids, a soon-to-be over-the-top, oversized, outlandish version of Las Vegas that even without the casinos will make Vegas look like a quiet hamlet in Vermont where the biggest excitement came in 1952 when Mad Dog Madden chopped down Mortimer Pumblechook’s maple tree in a fit of syrup-producer envy. Dubai Developments on hold are supposed to include replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, giant ships in the middle of the desert and, according to one account, “a huge snow dome that looks like Superman’s home planet.” Until then, Dubai’s got pubs, nightclubs (yes, alcohol flows freely), really big malls (Emirates Mall has an indoor ski slope), tropically landscaped beaches and the world’s highest concentration of hotels.

“Ah,” says my mythical cigarette-smoking fat man in the hotel café, “And how long do you staaayyy in Casablanca?–I mean, Dubai?”
“Who can tell, sir–who can tell?” I reply, patting my inside pocket to feel the letters of transit that are signed by General De Gaulle and cannot be rescinded or even questioned. “I live in Dubai. Perhaps I will die in Dubai.”

This smog-encrusted jewel by the sea supposedly sports about 100,000 British residents installed in their newly owned condos (built by Pakistani laborers laboring under slave-like conditions and wages). The Brits have apparently eschewed the old Spanish Costas for the more cosmopolitan trappings of Dubai. But do they know the summer temperature in Dubai soars to 120 degrees F. with 90% humidity? Thank goodness for air-conditioned malls with indoor ski slopes. Who knows–fake London-style drizzles and fog may be just around the corner from that Burberry shop.

In the summer of 1997, after a year of underemployment in Houston (where at least I had bought a house with my Saudi earnings) I accepted a job at a government women’s college in Dubai. Government colleges in the UAE don’t take any guff from teacher-drones. The job was well-paid, to be sure, with the usual package of tax-free salary, free housing, and annual ticket money to your home of record, but if you stick up for yourself, you’re out the door. It’s the first college I’ve seen where a teacher was fired within 10 days of his arrival (during orientation and before classes even started). This was disturbing, I thought, given that the usual procedure is to wait until instructors have actually entered a classroom and taught a few incompetent lessons before booting them out the door. The college president has to answer to the education minister–a Royal Family Sheikh. One time His Excellency saw a class picture with a male instructor and noticed one of the women students had her hand on his shoulder. Swhoosh! That was the sound of the teacher flying out the front door and onto the next plane out of here. Kissing the Sheikh’s ass doesn’t help either: the computer hardware lecturer who sat near me should have kept his mouth shut when His Perfumed Magnificence stopped by our workstations. “Would you like some tea, sir?” he offered.

The Sheikh glared at him. “WHAT ARE YOU, A LECTURER OR A TEABOY?” he thundered back.

Our abaya-clad students added to the underlying sense of anxiety, considering, for example, their reaction to the latest Palestinian intifada during which they screamed insults at the college president, who was American, and sent emails to some American teachers accusing them of being Jews. The local Arabic-language press also ranted about our college being riddled with Jews, an accusation that was both false and, of course, racist. I remember what I was doing in the Middle East on September 11, 2001, four years after I joined the college, although it’s not very dramatic. I certainly wasn’t George Clooney racing across sand dunes in an SUV, trying to save the Emir. I was in a classroom with a lot of other teachers receiving instructions on operating our new laptops.

“Have you heard about this plane crash in New York?” somebody said nonchalantly. “Something about a jetliner crashing into the World Trade Center. It’s bizarre.”

I screwed my face up. “Sounds unlikely to me,” I said. Later, as the facts filtered in, an Arab faculty member scooted past me, stopping just long enough to blurt, “I tell you something–it’s only the Israelis who stand to gain something from this!” Another was overheard saying it was about time the Americans got what’s coming to them.

Some students had Osama bin Laden screensavers on their laptops. Others came to my cubicle to dispute my intelligence and teaching methods with insulting remarks. My classes became a nightmare. Finally, the next July, I resigned from the college and took a position in Abu Dhabi at the Petroleum Institute, a men’s university where the students were surprisingly affable. It is reassuring to note that the UAE is, with a few exceptions like that silly women’s college, and compared to Saudi Arabia, actually a fairly gracious and friendly country. At least I didn’t have to listen to Rush Limbaugh.