Day Thirteen - My lover but not my sweet heart

Day Thirteen

That title hooked you did it not?  I will come to that in a minute - #clickbait

I have been out all day from 10am to 10pm at an exhibition and you really are lucky to get a post today, but I am determined not to spoil this run of posts.  I am interpreting the rules my way because here in Dubai it is already past midnight and so I missed todays deadline.  However I started the challenge in Finland and in Finland it is only 10pm and so I have two hours and this will take a good deal less than that.

Then I shall connect with people on Social Media from all the business cards I collected today and message a few of them and then, finally bed.

Lover not sweetheart

So – lady Dubai -

I have such a tempestuous relationship with this lady.  I love her and at times I have hated her.  She has given me great pleasure and frustrated the hell out of me.  She is my lover but not my sweetheart.

I had not even really heard of her when we met, not many people had back in 1995.  She was young and exciting and full of potential when we first met.  She was finding her way in the world and pushing the boundaries, doing things the other cities around and about were not doing. 

She embraced change, welcomed foreigners and helped them settle and encouraged a really interesting and diverse mix of people.  Of course she was not perfect, but who is?   There were dirty little secrets and not so nice things that were rumored.  Sometimes these got exposed and the world acted all shocked.

She was small.  You would recognise the other expats in the few local supermarkets selling western goods.  The big malls had not yet arrived.  We all worked hard but this lady had plans and many of us bought into those plans and visions and tried our best to make them work.  True friendships developed that continue to this day.

I feel lucky to have seen the lady grow up, but grow up she did and on fast forward.  Changes that would take decades in other places happened in years.  Things did go wrong from time to time, but when everything is changing so fast of course these things will happen.  But oh, how the western press would jump all over these with glee, often ignoring the many wonderful and good changes that had taken place.

This lady was always being judged by the standards of others, be they imperialist western views or conservative ideologies of neighbours.  She took these knocks mostly very well.

But grow up she did.  Bigger, bolder and glitzy.  She adorned herself in iconic and not so iconic buildings, like ‘bling’ jewelry.  In the rush to grow up she sometimes lost her way and I think forgot that the very best thing about her was not her buildings and material symbols, but rather her people.  They had been humble, modest and kind and most of all hospitable.   Sometimes, for a while, some lost that and tried to be as big and bold and in your face as the architecture around them.

As I landed here yesterday many of the passengers had their noses pressed to the windows looking out at the sand dunes and the buildings and a landscape so different to the one we had left in Finland.  I looked out and still felt a sense of coming back to see a lover.  Not one I want to settled down with and raise a family, but one for which I do hold deep affection despite her faults.  I want her to do well and prosper, I want to be proud of her, I am proud of her and yet, and yet....that small feeling that something got lost in the growing up, but perhaps that happens to us all?

The view this evening from Dubai WTC

This evening at a reception on the 33^rd floor of the World Trade Center (and I do recall when that was the tallest building in the city)  -  I looked out and felt lucky to have seen this lady grow up.   She is not to everyone’s taste but she has been a very good lady to me.