Sorry Meghan, Harry’s adoring looks won’t last
VAST fortunes are spent portraying the UAE as a caring, benevolent, modern society. Then something like last week’s draconian sentence handed out to PhD student Matthew Hedges for allegedly spying blows that public relations construct to smithereens.
This time last year I visited the UAE to speak at the enormous Sharjah Book Fair. Sharjah is one of the smallest and most conservative of the Emirates but the ruling family are very keen on the pursuit of literacy. No alcohol can be drunk anywhere and the only beach where Emirati women can bathe in a swimsuit is overseen by a female lifeguard.
Up the road is the more lenient Dubai, where I met up with a group of young women in the Dubai Mall’s Armani cafe to discuss life in the UAE. They all arrived modestly dressed, in flowing gowns (abayas), trousers covering the ankle, headscarves – and wonderful eye make-up.
They were a sophisticated, highly educated and well-travelled group; fashion designers, journalists, a financier. But nonetheless I found them baffling.
When I asked about the traditional dress code they insisted that they weren’t under any pressure to dress this way and that it was entirely their choice not to be disrespectful to Emirati tradition. It marked them out from the masses of tourists and expats wandering around with their cut off denims and sleeveless dresses.
Indeed, they didn’t voice a word of complaint about a single aspect of the society they inhabit, unlike us Westerners for whom complaining about our lot is a way of life. Most striking of all was their total acceptance of – indeed praise for – the staggering degree of surveillance in the UAE where the state monitors their every movement.
Rather than finding the wallto-wall CCTV cameras and the interception of their texts, WhatsApp and email a chilling invasion of their privacy, they lauded it as empowering.
Far from objecting to the scrutiny, they all agreed it made them feel safer to go about their work and lives. ‘I can walk home alone from my studio at five in the morning without any fear,’ one explained. ‘In fact, I don’t know what I’d have to do to be raped here.’ Not a sentiment that I imagine is shared by the thousands of female, migrant workers locked into abusive domestic employment in the region.