About Dubai

6 min readAug 13, 2021

This is about my first few days in Dubai in the seventies, nostalgic impressions

The first thing I noticed:

When I arrived in Dubai, the weather was too hot. The heat hit me on my face as I got off the Boeing 747 onto the tarmac. For a youngster on the threshold as an adult, on his first-ever overseas trip, everything looked strange. There were kandura (robe) wearing Arabs with beards, long eyebrows and headgear everywhere.

The thing about landscape and architecture:

The architecture was different. It was similar to the images from my Tin Tin magazines of what a Middle Eastern country could look like. Houses and apartments had flat roofs. Mosques were everywhere, one every few hundred meters. Tall arches were the dominant theme of architecture.

My day one in Dubai:

My accommodation was in Rashidiya to the south of the airport. I met many new friends who welcomed me with open arms into their fold. Youth power and banter were on display. In the evening, one of them took me to a local cinema to see a Hindi movie. The movie theatre was huge compared to the ones in Colombo. It was a great experience, being blasted with Dolby sound on a huge screen, with singing and dancing Bollywood stars. My newfound friend paid for my ticket, six Dirhams in the local currency. It was a generous and kind act for a stranger.

The thing about colours:

All buildings were light-coloured. The harsh sun had turned all dwellings to a creamy pastel shade. From a plush green environment back home in Sri Lanka, I was surrounded by whites and pastels everywhere.

The thing about local customs:

Almost everyone was Muslim. Respect for the majority religion was ingrained in the culture. Men wore white robes. All women, including young women, wore black bourkas covering their faces. No young girls were to be seen anywhere, another culture shock. Everyone prayed five times a day, even at odd hours in the morning, listening to the blaring prayers on loudspeakers beamed to the neighbourhoods from the mosques’ minarets. Very quickly, I learned to respect the local rules and customs.

The thing about the landscape:

Dubai was built in the middle of a desert. There was sand everywhere, with no trees anywhere I looked. There were the occasional sandstorms. Some days, the ground was so hot that I feared that the sand under my feet would catch fire.

What about the animals:

There were no dogs. They were haram (banned) in the Muslim culture back in the day. With no grass, there were very few cows. I saw a skinny cow eating a newspaper, a weird sight. I felt sorry for the cow. There were camels everywhere. I had never seen a camel until I turned up in Dubai. These tall creatures seemed so calm and battle-hardened.

The thing about food:

The eatery in front of my accommodation was Indian. It served great-tasting Rotis with lentils, tinned fish and meats. For breakfast, it served omelette sandwiches. Biryanis for lunch with a chicken leg. Throughout the day, Lipton tea was served with milk from tins. Teabags were a novelty that I saw for the first time. Coming from Sri Lanka, tea was brewed and served in pots. The Inter-Continental Hotel, where I worked, served three meals to its employees in their cafeteria. White rice with meatballs or some sort of insipid gravy was served. In town, great food outlets served Indian and Pakistani foods from all parts of Southeast Asia. Then there were Lebanese foods, shawarmas and kebabs sold at two Dirhams each. The food was cheap and yummy.

The thing I aspired to:

It was my moment of reckoning in Dubai at such a young age. I was in a new country, out to discover the world. Curiosity was my friend. I was amazed seeing the stereo setups and television sets in my friends’ apartments. The first thing I wanted was a stereo cassette player, a luxury back home. I needed at least ten months of pay to buy one back in Sri Lanka. My first pay was only for a week because I joined the hotel at the tail end of the month. I bought a National Panasonic stereo from the Pansonic showroom with just seven days of pay. I felt ecstatic about this newfound purchase because I had lusted for it as a teenager. I felt accomplished now that I could buy that with a week’s pay in what could have been a lifetime of savings. A rapid increase in purchasing power for a lad. I could not believe my luck.

The thing that surprised me:

When the immigration clerk from the hotel took away my passport just as I arrived at the Dubai airport, I felt I was a slave. An industrial slave. I was determined to get my passport back one day. I achieved that feat within four months, but that is a story for another time.

Weekends:

Everybody worked six days a week. The weekend was on Friday. Just one day. It was the Islamic holy day in a majoritarian Islamic country; everything was quiet in the mornings. All males wore their prayer caps and congregated in various mosques. Once prayer ceremonies were over, the bazaars opened, and everybody gunned for action. I joined my friends to go browsing and shopping. There were fake Wrangler shirts and Lee jeans on sale to tempt fashionistas like me. Haggling was normal. It was an experience like no other. Suddenly I could buy anything I wanted. My money had become so much more valuable. We navigated the bazaar, jostling among the sweaty crowds in the torching heat of Dubai. Crossing the Dubai creek on wooden boats with no lifejackets, we landed in Bur Dubai on the other side of the desert city. There, we continued to shop again. Everyone figured om Sri Lanka when we spoke in English. Indians and Pakistanis spoke Urdu, the unofficial language in Dubai. They called us Ceyloni, the race of the latest migrant kids on the block, hovering in their backyard. The whole market was almost entirely male, full of migrant workers from South East Asia enjoying their only day out.

After a long day, we walked into a bar by the creek for a cool beer, returning to Rashidiya on a bus at night.

What I missed in my early days in Dubai

My parents, family, and many of my pals, including the occasional girlfriend. Lots of connections to miss. In Sri Lanka, I had absolute freedom. There were no mobile phones or international calls back then. Every interaction was through snail mail. I had taken my parents and my liberties for granted, and now I knew what I had missed. My parent's unconditional love.