Campside media.
Hello everyone, it's Vanessa Grigory-Audis, and you're listening to a special short episode of Infamous.
So you've listened to the story about the princesses who escaped from Dubai.
And since then, we've gotten a lot of listener questions about the culture in that part of the world,
and the UAE in specific.
So I'm going to introduce Natalie Robamed, my co-host for the series,
and our producer, Shoshish Malavitz, who are going to discuss some of the answers to those questions.
Okay, so before we really dive into listener questions,
Natalie, maybe you can just answer a few very basic questions about Dubai.
First of all, where is it?
So Dubai is this small city state in a country called the United Arab Emirates,
that is sandwiched kind of between Oman and Saudi Arabia, very close to Iraq,
and right across a body of water from Iran.
So it's in the Middle East, does it have lots and lots of oil?
I mean, we know this is like a pretty rich country.
Yeah, absolutely.
So the UAE itself does have a huge amount of oil, but as I said again,
but the UAE, it's comprised of six different states.
You can think of that as similar to American states like California or Maine or whatever.
And where the oil is is not dispersed equally within the country.
So Abu Dhabi, actually, and that's the capital, has the larger reserves of oil
and Dubai in comparison has very little oil, actually.
And that is one of the reasons why they have really tried incredibly hard to diversify
through tourism and real estate and a million other assets and potential money makers.
This man, Sheikh Zayed, he's passed away now, but he's really known as kind of the founder of the nation.
And he brought together these different families and different groups into the United Arab Emirates in 1971.
So that's actually still relatively recently, right?
That's super recent.
Exactly.
Yeah, I know.
So especially when you think about it like that, there has been an incredible amount of progress in that time.
And, you know, very few countries established the kind of international influence or kind of reputation
that the UAE has already achieved.
And it's funny because even though Dubai is not the capital and it doesn't have the most oil,
it's still kind of the one that we hear about more than Abu Dhabi, for sure.
Like, for example, Beyonce performed there.
Why did Beyonce perform in Dubai?
Because she was paid a lot of money to celebrate the opening of a hotel and kick it off with this headline grabbing performance.
And I actually think that really speaks to the great job that Dubai has done in creating a kind of PR reputation for itself around the world.
Dubai is the place that rappers shout out.
People say, oh, I want to go there for this exotic holiday, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, they have made themselves known for five star hotels or even seven star hotels and malls,
kind of as a symbol of quote unquote Western progress or capitalist progress in the region.
You know, Dubai is known as being very high-end, but there are also a lot of package vacations that kind of go there.
And they're tourists there from...
Do they have a club med?
They don't, but like spiritually they do.
No, there's...
If you go at any given point, there's tourists.
We're not just talking from the UK or America.
You've got tourists from Russia, from all over there.
And the same goes for expats.
There's a lot, a lot, a lot of expats living there.
I don't have the exact figures in front of me, but it might be something like 90% of people living in the country are expatriates
and only 10% are actually nationals.
What?
Yeah, I know.
Isn't that crazy?
I mean, it kind of makes you wonder, like, how do you have like a national character?
It's a really interesting question, and I think that that is something that from my perspective, I watched the UAE debate while I was there.
So when I was in school there, you had to take Arabic up until what would be the American equivalent of the 8th grade.
So that was one way to be trying to establish a national identity.
And of course, all the traffic signs and road signs or whatever have Arabic on them.
There have since been various government programs to ensure that there are Emirati nationals working in businesses and working as partners to open new businesses.
So they're really trying to ensure that nationals are integrated into the country.
That actually brings us to one of our listener questions.
Oh, okay.
Which is what do most average Emirati citizens do for work?
Yeah, I mean, I think there is no easy, quick answer to that because it's like any other country.
What are a lot of people doing for work?
I mean, plenty of them are working in the police or in the armed forces, a lot are in government roles, right?
Whether that's Ministry of Finance or whatever else.
I feel like back in the day, you wouldn't have seen an Emirati woman working in a store, you know, working in Sephora.
And yes, there are Sephora's in Dubai.
But that is something that you might see these days.
So you have this regular Emirati's regular people from Dubai putting on your trial makeup for you?
They wouldn't be putting on your trial makeup.
They would probably be the store manager.
Okay. Okay. Okay.
I think that's like an important distinction.
So they might be in like management roles.
Yes, there's, yeah, I'm laughing because I'm trying to find a delicate way to phrase this.
But there's like an incredible amount of racism in the UAE just as there isn't in any other country.
And there are certain roles and especially service roles that are typically kind of like occupied by
expats from say the Philippines or the country.
South Asia.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And yeah, that's a whole other topic which we can get into.
So it'll be like somebody from India putting on your makeup at Sephora.
But the manager is from Dubai.
Exactly.
Maybe yes.
And then like status wise, they would have like the status of guest workers.
Is that right?
Yeah.
And that's the other thing I wanted to say is there's really not an easy route to the
route to naturalization.
And what I mean by that is that it's not easy to get an Emirati citizenship just based on having lived there for X number of years.
You can't naturalize in the way that you can in lots and lots of other countries.
And part of that is because being a citizen confers a whole lot of rights and privileges to you.
But also I think of that as a way to kind of protect the national identity when you are in a country that has so many expats.
Right?
That makes sense.
So yeah, you can have lived there for 30 years, but you're not a citizen.
And presumably if you're there as a guest worker, you get kicked out once you lose your job.
Yeah, exactly.
Or you get to a certain age that might be retirement age and you have to retire elsewhere.
Okay.
Let's get to the next listener question.
How much does Islamic law figure into Dubai's secular legal system?
And can you drink booze there?
To very important questions.
I will handle the booze question first.
So yes, you absolutely can drink alcohol there in five out of the six.
Otherwise the resource wouldn't be very much fun.
Right.
So yeah, five out of the six states, you can drink alcohol.
One of these Emirates, Sharjah is a dry Emirate.
So there's no alcohol served there.
It's a dry state.
This is probably why most people haven't heard of Sharjah.
Of Portiaurja.
But yes, so you absolutely can drink booze in Dubai.
One thing I do think is funny is that if you listen to radio ads there, they actually like can't say the words wine and champagne.
They'll have to use code words like bubbly or like, I'm making this up like grapes.
50 dibs for dinner and grape.
What does that mean?
You say you can drink it, but you can't say it.
Exactly.
Not on the national radio.
The other thing I was going to say was that in order to have a liquor license, like typically you have to be inside a hotel.
So that's kind of one of limitations.
But that's the reason why a lot of the nightclubs and a lot of the bars are within hotels.
Oh, that's so interesting.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, I think that's a good question.
Do women really have to get permission from a male relative to travel?
No, that's not a thing that's happening in the UAE.
I mean, again, like probably depends on the family and question, right?
I feel like most Emiratis that I know live very, very free lives and very kind of like equal lives.
Women aren't asking for the permission of a male relative to travel.
That is maybe stricter or more conservative.
That might be happening.
But across the board, I would generally say no.
So is it just if you're royal that you might have to worry about that kind of thing?
Yeah.
And I think that's something that we heard about a little in the series is that there are these stricter lives for royal women.
I do think that's kind of similar to being a British royal.
You have somebody figuring out your travel and wanting to know where you are.
You have like minders.
Exactly, exactly.
That brings us to our next listener question, which is how integrated are the royals to daily culture?
Is it like British level?
I would say it's perhaps even more so because the other thing to know that is strange if you've never been there is that the faces of the royal family are everywhere.
And what I mean by that is on the front page of the newspaper every day, there would be a picture of the president or the head of Dubai, the head of Abu Dhabi shaking hands with ex-dignatory or doing something with a diplomat on the front page of the newspaper every single day.
I mean, there's even like on the highway, there's this big highway between Abu Dhabi and Dubai called Sheikh Zayed Road and there's kind of a giant billboard essentially with Sheikh Zayed's face on it, but has just been up for years and years.
So they're pretty ubiquitous, but is there like a yellow press, like a paparazzi that's publishing gossip about them or like?
Do you want to end up in a prison in the desert? No.
I'm joking, I'm joking, that's a joke, but absolutely not.
There is no free press or kind of tabloid TNC-esque press in the way that we think of it in the US.
Actually, I worked at a newspaper there in the summer when I was still in college and there was a lot of self-censorship that happened.
If I remember correctly, I tried to publish a review of something and I'd use the phrase like, Seventh Heaven.
And my editor, she was like, oh, we can't make any references to heaven because that would be like Christian, I guess.
And I just thought that was so funny because it wasn't like the top editor reviewed that or some sense or somewhere, cut it out.
It was more that she was just like, oh, I want to stay in the good graces of X1'sy people, so I'm going to make sure that we don't print this thing.
So I want to take us back to what you were saying about the royals earlier because that gets us to the next question.
What are the roles of these Arab monarchs in the US and in terms of business investments?
What are Emirati business interests in the US?
So the UAE is one of the US's biggest allies in the region.
Saudi is another huge ally and they're heavily invested in Hollywood in various ways, in various film slides in production companies, sports teams, real estate, tech, pretty much any industry you have.
The industry you can think of, the UAE is invested in it, primarily through its sovereign wealth fund.
A lot of that information, I would say, is somewhat hard to find, but they're incredibly diversified because they're preparing for life after oil, right?
They know that oil is going to run out at a certain point, so they need to diversify.
That actually brings us to our last listener question, which is about climate change.
What is Dubai doing about climate change? It's really hot over there and it's a desert. Where do they get water?
These are such great questions. So pretty much every time I go there, I have a minor freakout internally about the climate crisis because you kind of drive around and you're like, this is so unsustainable.
There's so much air conditioning. There's these kind of like gardens that are being watered every single day and it feels incredibly unsustainable.
There are a couple buildings that I absolutely love. There's this one skyscraper in Abu Dhabi. It has these awnings that move around the side of the building with the time of day.
So if the sun is hitting that side of the building, there are these awnings that kind of stretch out and it kind of almost looks like these waffle kind of hexagons or whatever, of awning that cover over the glass.
The other thing I was going to say that a lot of people don't know is that they actually seed rain there.
I am not a scientist. You will be surprised to learn, but they seed clouds. So they kind of like engineer these clouds that then pop and produce rain.
So where does Dubai get its water? Is it just from these like rain clouds that they're impregnating?
So desalination plants are huge and there's lots and lots of desalination plants. So essentially Dubai, Abu Dhabi, they're right on the coast.
So right next to the sea and a lot of the water that gets used is desalinated. So it's kind of taken from the sea and then made useful.
It's also very expensive desalination.
Yes, I've never thought of that. I mean, this is also a very rich country. Right? So it might be expensive, but when you're one of the most important kind of exporters of oil, your desalination plant might be the lowest of your concerns.
You know, I could keep asking questions about Dubai all day. I think I need to just go there. Well, let me know when you do and I'll show you around.
Okay, so that's all for this episode. You can send us questions and comments about all of our podcasts on Twitter at campsite media. That's our handle there.
So please check out Infamous's next series. It's about a possible Russian spy and the American political operative who left her.
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