Now it feels like I'm in the Middle East

Today, I finally felt like I was in the Middle East, after questioning for the whole week about whether I truly was, or whether this was all just a joke and I was actually in Chicago.

Ansh’s dad took me to the part of the city across the creek, Deira, famous for Gold Souk and its significantly well-established wholesale market. There are three main sectors to Dubai: Bur Dubai, where both Ansh’s neighborhood is and also where Dubai Mall and Business Bay are; Jebel Ali, the new, more southwestern area of the city built around the new shipping port and the waterfront; and Deira, the oldest sector of Dubai, north of the creek, whose buildings look how I would imagine a more cleaned-up version of Cairo to be like. My first impressions of Deira were amazement; Ansh’s dad and I shared in the wonder of how different the city looks from place to place, and how wonderful it is that this style of building, this way of life still exists here, despite the city mainly having moved on to more white-collar work. Walking around Deira, I heard the most amount of Arabic, I struggled to communicate the most, I was constantly approached by people trying to get me to buy something I didn’t need, and a much higher portion of Arab-looking people were dressed in more traditional clothes than downtown. This could be the only place I’ve been in the city where English is not the language you’d hear 80% of the time if you wandered off and listened to a random conversation between strangers.

Before we got out of the car, Ansh’s dad drove me around Deira first to get a feel for the place. And what it was was a wholesale market for everything imaginable: utensils, spices, clothes and fabrics, gaming consoles, kitchen appliances, kids’ toys, empty unbranded perfume bottles, you name it. Any product that may be needed for a retailer could be found here, each on their own respective city block. He explained to me that most people here are not selling retail themselves—that’s just the way the businesses have grown in this area, and how these businesses are different from those in, say, the Medina of Marrakesh. They import goods, mostly from China and SE Asia, and sell them wholesale at a good price to, say, Iranians, who, in turn, go back to Iran and sell them in a local market for a mark-up. An Iranian can leave off the Dubai Creek, right next to the market, in the morning, and be back home in Iran by the evening, so for people like this, their business is necessary, well-established, and reliable. What wholesale goods do not go to other Middle Eastern local markets end up getting sold to hypermarkets and emporiums, and later in the tour, we walked around a few of these.

In this market, negotiation is not only common, but expected. Since on each street there are twenty stores selling the exact same goods, survival and business comes down to having meaningful relationships with the merchant. Often times, bargaining is seen as a way to establish this relationship, and since it means that your customer is likely to come back in the future, it’s actually beneficial to the salesman to bargain below the initial price. The one thing that cannot be negotiated in Deira, though, is the price of gold itself. The gold working price is a different story—the price that the artisan adds onto the price of the objects pure weight in gold to reflect the craftsmanship and time that went into forming that piece of jewelry. So, the sale of gold can be, as one would expect, a sort of stock buy-out. Ansh’s dad said as well that these sellers are on a very tight leash—is anyone suspects that you’re selling fake gold, there will be an immediate investigation, and harsh consequences should those suspicions be true. There is no room for forgery in Gold Souk, which is really reassuring and promising.

We entered the area through New Gold Souk, which is an extension to Gold Souk that is hardly a year old, though had you asked me how old it was, I’d have said a few decades at least. That’s sort of a theme that I’ve noticed with this city—even the newest construction projects are so well cleaned up, so well-integrated into the city that you’d never notice something different about it. Even the architectural style matches the rest of Deria. But you can tell that New Gold Souk is less popular of an area as Gold Souk proper. It’s more like an outdoor mall than a market. But Gold Souk itself is an amazing place, filled with treasure, beautiful works of gold, and some fashion statements that would probably make me want to punch the wearer in the face.

I enjoyed walking around the rest of the area, and then Ansh’s dad took me to his own showroom. I knew he worked in Deira, but I didn’t realize that he was himself one of these businessmen. He actually has been selling umbrellas his entire life, and it’s a business that his family began in India before he moved here. He was sent here by his family to open a new HQ for their umbrella business, and given by how his family lives, including the fact that Ansh’s mom doesn’t work, it’s seemed to have really paid off for him. He was explaining to me the differences in how things sell in the US versus in other parts of the world. He said that in the US, the simpler the better. Simpler means cheaper, larger shipments and hence supply, and less hassle when buying. He claims that in the Middle East and India, people need something special to keep him from losing business to the guy across the street. He was showing me all his patterns he has available, the textures, the strength so it doesn’t fly away in the wind, the UV protection (which is especially important in the Middle East…), and a hundred other features. I found it so interesting, and a look into not just what he sees important and values, but also into what goes on behind the hustle of the salesmen trying to get you to buy things on the street. It really humanized, say, the salesmen and scammers in the Marrakesh Souk for me, who I found as more of a thing to avoid than to engage with.

What he does say, though, is that thought there is immense competition between those selling practically, if not exactly the same goods, they are all friends. They help each other out to some extent, and they enjoy each others’ company even when the work day is over. He also said that these businesses, despite the competition, are very, very profitable. They need a down payment of close to USD$25k to get a stall in the first place, and continue to pay as they have it. But he claims that this is chump change for them, and many of them will find themselves making that money back easily, given enough hard work and shameless hustle.

Seeing Deira from the inside has completely changed (for the better) my opinion on the Middle Eastern marketplace, and I am looking forward to my next experience in one!

After lunch, Ansh and I went on our desert safari! There’s not too much to say about it, except that the views were amazing, driving over the crests, into the valleys, and along the rims of sand dunes really got the adrenaline pumping, and the mini 4x4 tour on rather flat ground was a lot more fun than it looked to be from the outside. Anyways, I’ll just leave this part to some pictures from here on out, as there’s not all that much to say about it.

Sunday we pretty much lazed around, packed, and ate. Yeah, I would have liked to do something on the day, but it was Ansh’s last day at home for at least the next 8 or so months, so we mostly spent the day together with his parents. We went to Dubai Mall to see the Ferrari movie since that’s what Ansh loves (the start of which was controversial between the four of us, but we all agreed that it had a good second half), and then went back to the house to finish packing. After, we went to Ansh’s best friend Kanishka’s house, which is this beautiful apartment on the creek overlooking the skyline of the city, directly westward. The sunset from the 44thfloor was truly stunning, and after the sun went down, we took a lap around the creek a bit. Kanishka goes to BU as well, but they’re unsure if they’re going to see each other any time soon. In the meantime, they play video games over voice chat almost every day, so I’ll get to say hi to him at some point I’m sure. He was a really nice guy, and we just talked about what life is like here versus the US, his life at school, and other pretty introductory topics.

We then picked up Ansh’s parents and headed to Casa Mia, an Italian restaurant where the Mehta’s are close to royalty! Everybody knows them, since they literally come every single week, and have been for the last 25 or so years. It’s just Italian food with a real good ambiance; it’s part of a courtyard of restaurants with live music in the middle. Overall, the food was great, and we just had a really nice conversation over dinner. Much of it was about both Dubai and Michigan and how they’ve changed, which has seemed to be a thread in our conversations throughout the last week. Just things about tourism, crowdedness, land development and housing, and prices of everyday goods. Ann Arbor landlords, flight routes, and so much more as well… I’ve so appreciated getting to know Ansh’s family, and I hope that our paths will cross soon. They’re really easy people to talk to, and they have been just so welcoming to me, especially willing to accommodate me on such short notice as if it were no problem. Eating at Casa Mia was a real fun experience, though, since it’s something that’s been such a constant in Ansh’s life, and I’d never heard about it. (I guess a theme of dinner would be change and lack thereof.) But getting to sit there confirmed this weird thought that I’ve had all trip—that I’m not in Dubai just to see Dubai, I’m there because I want to see what Ansh’s world looks like, what he came from, and what his “normal” is. I am so, so glad to have had this opportunity, and I think now I can come to our deeper conversations with a new level of insight and understanding that I have never had before.

And that wraps up the Dubai trip! Now, I’m not 100% sure, but I can say with pretty good certainty that there will be more on this UAE/Dubai front in the future, because I do not feel done with this city yet! So, for now, I’ll be back soon enough with something new!