Rollin' with the Emir

Highways to Nowhere, Part 3

I had been in the deepest sleep of my life when the phone rang in my hotel room at the Grand Jebel Hafeet Al Anin.  It was my friend Gary the Persian, who told me to get ready for dinner and the night out in the city.  

I looked at my travel clock and it said 7:30 pm.  Dinner would be in a half and hour. No need to rush things.  I laid back down in the bed, and noticed for the first time a metal arrow set into the ceiling.  It was pointing towards Mecca, I realized.  

Everything here in the UAE is modern and Western, yet there are some things a Muslim dares not secularize.  Muslim women must walk several feet behind the men when out on the street, always dressed in black.  The men wear massive white sheets and red checkered head wraps that resemble pizza parlor table cloths.  

I asked Gary why the rich, young Emirs put on all this traditional show and then on the other hand violate everything else.  They surround themselves with burka-less women, eat and drink forbidden foods, consume alcohol, and indulge in other forbidden pleasure of the flesh.  This cafeteria Islam seemed to be growing in areas flushed with black gold fortunes.   

Gary smirked, and began by saying he was an observing Muslim, and did not take part in much of the Emir’s business besides doing his job.  He avoided the Emir’s less conservative activities, such as going to nightclubs.  

I can vouch for his truthfulness, because he and I were chatting outside “9”, an exclusive club in the heart of Dubai.  He had declined to accompany his boss into the club, and I had been able to slip out momentarily for a breath of air.

My evening had started at the hotel, with a subtly elegant dinner outdoors by the poolside at the Grand Jebel.   I’m no food critic, but I did eat some marvelous stuff.  Delicately roast partridge in a red wine sauce seasoned with some mysterious Middle Eastern nuclear-spicy pepper, on a bed of succulent couscous in a olive oil reduction.  Dessert was an expensive medley of exotic fruits, with a side of yogurt I guessed was cultured from the dairy of Mount Olympus.   It would have stumped even Gordon Ramsay as to why it tasted so good. 

After dinner, the Emir wasted no time in leading me back to the hotel, and inviting me to ride shotgun with him in his brand-new, jet-black Rolls-Royce Phantom.  The Phantom is a behemoth of a car: nearly 20 feet long, and chock-full of menace and opulence.  It is also the pinnacle of luxury.  No other vehicle on the planet can match the atmosphere and aura of the full-bodied Rolls.  It rides on a suspension made from butter churned by the cherubim.  It is powered by horsepower harnessed from Pegasus himself.  The wheel wells are carpeted with Egyptian cotton. The wood in the dash is harvested from the cedars of Lebanon.  Needless to say, this car fit the Emir perfectly.   

Dubai was approximately 90 minutes from the Mercure, and that meant it would feel like 2 minutes for us, since we were in a Phantom.  It’s like getting a free upgrade to first class on a 40-minute flight.  

The club was in the basement of some executive building, and like all expensive nightclubs, had a dumpy, barely-visible front door.  The Phantom pulled up in front, and a bouncer abandoned his post to open the suicide doors for the Emir and I.  The crowd waiting to get in was immediately split in two in preparation for the Emir’s entrance, which, as always, was going to be a big deal.  Me, the Emir, the supermodels, and four of his retinue slid past the front door with ease, and we entered Club 9.

The first thing you hear, of course, is the music.  When we walked in, it was Paul Oakenfold’s Ready, Steady, Go pulsating from every side.  I expected some Middle Eastern rave or trance beats, but instead, I got a British DJ.   Another side effect of Dubai’s desperation at Westernization.   

The next thing you notice is the blinding lasers, strobes, and ambient lighting used.  In this particular club, the theme was electric blue.  Everything radiated blue.  The floor tiles were backlit with LEDs that changed patterns.  The walls were giant screens showing seizure-inducing flashes of themed images. The dividers that separated tables and booths were sheets of falling water, coming from nozzles on the ceiling.  I have to admit it was all jolly exciting.  The thing that ruined the ambience were the masses of throbbing, heaving, sweaty bodies that we had to ford to get to our VIP table.  I was also irked at this club’s resemblance of the club used in the film Collateral.  I expected a shootout to occur any second. 

Personally, I had no care to be at Club 9, and was only doing so because I had to.  The Emir would be offended if I asked to be taken back to the hotel.  So I joined him and the two supermodels in a big, broad VIP booth, and sat staring curiously at the walls of water.  It was the only thing I felt comfortable doing.  

The Emir’s personal waiter asked if I would like anything to drink.  I asked for an iced tea.  He blinked and stared at me for a long time, as if waiting for me too add any other ingredients to the beverage.  But no.  Just an iced tea, please.  The Emir laughed at my lack of creativity, and asked how I got my job when I was so boring.  I politely explained that if I got too excited every time I drove a car or did something fun, my critical mindset would be blurred.  My analytical abilities would be compromised.  

That all sounded like a load of rubbish even to me.  I was just too straitlaced to throw down at nightclubs and spend lots and lots of money.  That was one of the reasons why I sought out the occupation of a motoring journalist: I wanted to drive nice, expensive cars, but it never made sense to me why people would buy them.  

Gary the Persian laughed at this.  He understood, he said.  As we were standing there, I felt another presence with us in the urban Arabian night.  It was one of the supermodels.  She took a thin cigarette from her handbag, and lit it.  The fumes surged out her nose in a big cloud of blue, putrid smoke.  I was downwind, and coughed.  She apologized in a monotone, disinterested Italian accent, and walked farther down the street.  Then it hit me: Dubai was a truly Western city, all the way down to the dirty, sad parts.  Behind the prosperity and wealth was the dark side of capitalism, kept neatly behind nightclubs called “9”.  

I had never felt more love for a nice, quiet hotel room than I did when we got back to the Mercure at around 4 am.  I needed to get home.  I wanted to see my cars, my friends, the cubicles of the Publication.  Strange and exotic places are overrated.  In my opinion, at least.