The weather has been bracing: a light breeze, some floating clouds and a warm sun soothing on the skin. November is a great time to visit Dubai. Not hot; not cold yet.
The parking spaces in Dubai are a luxury, to say the least. There are free parking spaces in every street, and free parking lots in every neighbourhood besides the parking spaces provided by apartment complexes. And besides all these there are paid parking spaces too.
The sand is everywhere. Rendered unobtrusive by human intervention, ubiquitous all the same. On the sides of roads, in unbitumined stretches, between blocks of building, the desert announces itself.
The residential apartment complexes in Dubai are almost all in brown. There are a few exceptions – I remember a light aquamarine blue, some whites and creams. But I have never seen this variety in shades of brown. Sand brown, honey brown, biscuit brown and beige, tangerine pink brown, and glowing orangish browns, mild coffee brown, graceful creamish brown...
The commercial complexes are something else. They outdo each other in height, and shape and structure – some are quite bizarre, many futuristic. And their heavily jazzed up glass frontage dazzles and glitters in the desert sun.
The desert people like shimmer, dazzle and razzmatazz – in their dress, their jewellery, the big building fronts, the decor and artefacts scream out this fascination for glitter. Maybe it has become a part of their life because of their constant exposure to the unrelenting blazing dazzle of the sun overhead. No shade but their own shadows to protect them in ages gone by.
Now juxtapose this to the simplicity of the men’s white robes and the black discreetness of the women’s, the austere plainness of mosque structures and uniform brownness of the apartment buildings and you have a striking study in contrast. Time to pore over history books to understand Arab cultural roots.
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