I made my first trip to Dubai in 1979 and made regular trips, sometimes three times a year, and witnessed many changes. Then In 2013 I stopped and did not visit again until early 2023. Nothing much had changed though I was surprised how claustrophobic I felt as there was just “more Dubai”. Here is my sensory perception of this vibrant Emirate.
The Sense of Dubai.
The taste of Dubai is dust.
Not sand riding winds with the Jinn
but cement, powdered brick and stone.
Dust that fills my eyes hides the gloss
of towers that would otherwise gleam,
with red and gold, burnished copper.
The smell is apple tobacco in sensuous curl
from glowing coals of hour-glass sheesha,
rough diamonds of frankincense,
tarry pebbles of myrrh spilling
from Hessian sacks in the old souk onto
fragrant, smooth logs of sandalwood.
The sounds are of a hundred tongues,
the rustle of four million people,
mobile phones that chant and sing,
Mosques calling over car-filled roads;
the rake gathering leaves in my hotel garden
with blooms that had fallen in the night.
I see painted horses, plastic camels
grazing under palms along the green verges
before architects’ most beautiful wild-minds.
Men in turbans, unique cotton clothes
that tell me where they were born
and where they sail to in high-prowed dhows.
When I stand still, tilt my face to the sky,
I feel Dubai in the heat of the sun,
deliquesce to meld with scents in the air
that blows across cold, bright stones
of floors and walls in hotels and malls
to dissolve in the waters of the creek.
© Anthony Fisher December 2007