Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [71]
“Want to know something funny?” Nick asks chirpily “The architects were British, right? And when they were designing the building they included a gigantic white crucifix.”
“They did? Where?”
“You can't see it from 'ere. It's on the ocean side.”
How wise.
Seems the white cantilevered shelf the hotel uses as a helipad cuts across a white vertical steel rod at just the right point to form a cross. I wonder how long it'll be before someone important finds out, and, when he does, if in a fit of rage he'll have the whole place torn down and indiscriminately order someone to be thrown into jail for five years.
“The company has never admitted it was deliberate, of course,” Nick tags on, “but if you believe the rumors, it was their big F.U. to the Muslim community.” And he laughs again.
Don't you just love this guy? His corner-of-the-mouth gossip, his candor. The sort of candor you'll only get from the British, who have a nose for the truth and tongues unafraid to speak it—contrasting starkly with Dubai City, which somehow, to the nonpartisan observer, feels like a very big fat expensive lie, a pricey diamond half-blinding you with the many-faceted brightness of its riches, while never quite allaying the suspicion that what you're looking at is really just a huge dazzling chunk of Diamonique. Mutton dressed as lamb. The Emir's New Clothes, if you will.
“The Burj is reputed to be the world's only seven-star hotel,” Nick throws in. Seven stars! Wow! That's two more than they could ever need.
If true, such braggadocio is typical of the city's juvenile clamoring for the world's attention, by breaking records, putting up buildings that graze the stratosphere, and generally being the biggest and best at things that the rest of us don't really care about.
Tallest flagpole in the world, anyone?
Largest number of men called Mohammed assembled in one place?
And on it goes. One shameless ploy after another. Extremism for its own sake. Underscoring a broader principle: “If you can't see us, then we may as well not exist.”
The $400 billion that continues to be pumped into making this the center of the earth has produced other important firsts: the world's tallest free-standing structure, the largest housing development ever; the largest shopping mall containing the world's largest aquarium, the glitziest financial and media center; the sprawlingest airport; the biggest amusement park—Dubailand1—and the largest working refrigerator, which, because nobody has any use for a refrigerator that big, they turned into an indoor ski slope twenty-five stories high instead.
We stopped by Ski Dubai briefly. An enclosed alpine wonderland of chairlifts, pine trees, and frosted railings, it boasts five different runs of varying difficulty, plus what's hilariously called a Freestyle Zone, reserved for those whose technique could broadly be described as “wanting.” Mainly it amounts to falling over and slithering the rest of the way on their ass. All in all, then, a totally self-contained and convincing world, as long as you don't look up at the ceiling, which is studded with lights and also vents from which showers of real snow fall every morning.
Afterwards, I was chatting with a stunning Jordanian model called Samar. I met her in Starbucks. Though, since we're in Dubai, no way could I just meet her, as that would be against the law. Our accidental rendezvous had to be set up in advance. And not in any old Starbucks, either. Theirs turned out to be a grandiose, sprawling coffee mosque-type affair, crowned with