A look beneath Dubai's glossy surface

BOOK OF THE DAY: Dubai Dreamsby Raymond Barrett Published by Nicholas Brealey 232pp, £12.99

IF I HAD read Dubai Dreamsbefore I packed for a recent trip to that part of the Middle East, I wouldn't have been so ridiculously overdressed. Mindful that I was going to an Arab country, and keen to be respectful of local customs, the party dress I packed was a navy, ankle-to-neck long-sleeved number.

In the hotel lobby on the first night, I looked like a nun on day release from an enclosed order circa 1950, while most of the other women were dressed like hookers. Sure there were some local women in burkas, but the tourists and expat professionals who flock to holiday or work in this shiny new city – and these are the people out at night – looked ready to party.

Dubai isn’t a destination for which you need a travel guide, because there isn’t much more for a tourist to do than lounge by a pool or go shopping. What you really need is a primer that explains the cultural and historical background to this extraordinary place, and Raymond Barrett’s book delivers in an entertaining and personal way. Having lived in the Middle East for nearly a decade, he is well-placed to give an overview of how the tiny emirate grew from a desert trading post into a boom town.

The first concrete building in Dubai was built in the 1950s, he notes, a massive contrast to today’s Dubai, with its gleaming glass-walled skyscrapers shining in the sun like pieces of costume jewellery.

“There is something akin to a magician’s trick about Dubai. You know it’s not real, but it grabs your attention nevertheless,” writes Barrett in an early chapter, and he goes about delving beneath the glossy surface by going out and talking to people and documenting their stories.

The biggest group of workers are from India, and he charts how these mostly shockingly exploited workers, particularly those in construction, first pay a recruitment agency at home as much as €2,200 before arriving in Dubai, where they surrender their passports, thereby becoming virtually indentured slaves to their employers as they try to earn enough to keep themselves and send money home. In the sprawling labour camp of Sonapur – and it shows how tenacious Barrett is that he gained access to such a place, which is usually shielded from reporters’ eyes – he meets some of the thousands of south Asian construction workers, whose monthly salary hovers at about €130, even though the average income in the UAE is about €1,500 a month.

Professional young European, American and Australian expats come for a few years of tax-free earnings in a city that, if you’ve money, is a vast playground.

At the other end of the scale, Barrett is succinct in his explanation of the power of the ruling family. Sheikh Mohammad exercises absolute power in the emirate, giving locals the sort of lifestyle – free housing, healthcare, a guaranteed job – that inspires loyalty.

In Dubai in January, despite the lavish party to launch the Burj Khalifa – the tallest building in the world – there was an air of melancholy about the place. Giant concrete skeletons of half-finished skyscrapers dotted the downtown landscape, while cranes stood idle. The Dubai dream, says Barrett, was built on “a tsunami of borrowed money, and this in turn fuelled a property bubble of epic proportions, which finally popped.” This book is a good, accessible primer, but the real story will be what happens next for Dubai.

Bernice Harrison is an Irish Times journalist