I’ve never bought into the idea of Dubai as a glittering oasis of fun, freedom and unfettered capitalism. Sure it has the world’s largest shopping mall with its own ski slope and waddle of Gentoo penguins. But sunshine so hot you can’t actually go outside for more than 10 minutes in summer? I’ll take my chances with stage one hypothermia on an Irish beach, thanks. In any case, there are only so many slightly cheaper Tag Heuer watches a person with the standard number of wrists needs.
But it seems plenty of Irish people do lap up the Dubai dream. In the first six months of last year, more than 37,000 Irish people chose to holiday in the world capital of gold-plated taps and glass elevators. About 10,000 Irish expats call the city home.
“Live your story” is one of Dubai’s tourism slogans, but its own story has two sharply contrasting sides. The one the tourists usually see is the diamond-encrusted capitalist fever dream which it is obsessed with projecting to the world. The other is the Gileadean hellscape occupied by the migrant workers from South East Asia who built the city out of desert sand over the last 40 years – lured there with the promise of a big pay packet and low taxes, only to often find those high wages disappear on arrival, along with their freedom and their passport.
Yes, you can “live your story in Dubai” if you’re a tourist or expat who stays on the right side of the law, or a member of the wealthy, male, Arab ruling class. But not if you’re one of their wives, whose husband can demand sex at any time and she may not refuse without a “lawful excuse”. He may also mete out “discipline” as he sees fit under “progressive” new domestic violence laws introduced amid much fanfare four years ago.
The freedom to live your story doesn’t apply if you’re a member of the LGBTQ community, who may face jail for consensual sexual activity. Or if you’re someone who has got into debt you can’t repay – dangerously easy to do in a place where the high cost of living is compensated for by a steady flow of offers of “zero interest” credit cards. Consenting adults can be imprisoned if they are charged with having sex with someone other than their spouse (they say “spouse”, but since only husbands and male guardians can make a complaint, they really mean “husband”).
When Tori Towey went to the authorities to seek help for what Mary Lou McDonald described as ‘sustained and brutal domestic violence and abuse’, she was sent home with her husband, her alleged abuser
The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs warns intending travellers that they may run afoul of Dubai’s “laws and customs” if they do “something which may not be illegal in Ireland”, which is a coy way of saying some of the laws would not be out of place in The Handmaid’s Tale. One woman was banned from leaving over swearing in a WhatsApp message to her flatmate, who reported her. They had been having a row over who could use the dining room table as a workspace during the pandemic.
A British-Australian citizen was detained for several weeks in 2016 for mentioning a charity assisting Afghan refugees on his Facebook page – UAE laws only permit the promotion of charities registered in the country. Another British woman, Laleh Shahravesh, was arrested along with her 14-year-old daughter after she wrote “you left me for this horse” under a photo of her ex-husband with his new wife on Facebook. She made the comment while she was living in England, three years before she travelled to Dubai for his funeral.
Other things that can effectively be criminalised at the whim of the Dubai authorities, as Tori Towey discovered in recent weeks, are being a victim of a domestic abuse or being suicidal. The details of what happened to her are tough to read, tougher still to imagine. It won’t help her, or anyone, to go over them again. It is enough to say that in 2023, she moved to the UAE to work with Emirates airline. In March last year, she got married. At some point, the Dáil heard this week, the relationship became abusive. When she went to the authorities to seek help for what Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald described in the Dáil as “sustained and brutal domestic violence and abuse”, she was sent home with her husband, her alleged abuser.
“Her husband then destroyed her passport so she couldn’t travel and she couldn’t work,” McDonald said. After a further brutal alleged attack, outlined in graphic terms in the Dáil, she tried to take her own life and ended up not in hospital, but in a police station, where she was charged with attempted suicide – an offence punishable by six months in prison and/or a fine of AED 5,000 (€1,250) – and alcohol abuse. Her situation is only unprecedented for the speed at which it was resolved once the Irish Government got involved.
The Dubai that criminalises people who are suicidal or who swear on the street is the same Dubai that allowed Daniel Kinahan – who has been accused by authorities in Ireland and the United States of running a deadly global drug cartel and is under US sanctions – to build a life, a property empire and several public-facing businesses. This should beggar belief, but a place that makes a virtue of being able to keep penguins alive in the desert clearly has a high tolerance for double standards – and so do the millions of people who travel there and allow themselves to be so dazzled by the glittering skyscrapers and tax regime that they fail to see beyond the mirage.
Recently, the city unveiled its new tourism slogan for 2025: “Only in Dubai.” It could hardly be more apt.