The Land Of The Crescent Moon

We land in Dubai to be greeted by the biggest airport terminal I think I’ve ever seen.

Due to the sheer volume of flights in and out of the UAE, a new international airport, specifically dedicated for Emirates Airlines, is presently being constructed in Dubai, so we had to park on the tarmac as opposed to pulling up to the walkway gate because they'd run out of walkway gates by the time we arrived. We disembark to a fresh breeze in a balmy 15 degrees. A wonderful change from the roasting humid heat of a Brisbane summer. Buses came to collect us to take us to the arrivals hall.

As we head there, we can see the Dubai skyline in the background – all covered with a fine haze which I understand to be a combination of sand, concrete dust and smog. Early in the morning the misty shroud looks almost romantic, but you probably wouldn’t want to be breathing it in for too long. Goodbye health, hello asbestosis or some such thing which will kill you slowly and painfully.

We reach the arrivals hall and disembark from the bus, where we are met by a lovely and exotic looking girl from Arabian Adventures. It seems as though, as it is in Asia, all westerners seem to look the same to Arabs, so our guide asks me to identify everyone so she can check off her list. Once we were all present and accounted for, we head off towards immigration and security.

I was dreading going through the security check, and fully expected to have a personal appointment behind the curtain with a sadistic, brutish looking woman wearing rubber gloves and a smug sneer. Just as well the girls at Brazilian Beauty had sorted me out before I left Australia and I could disrobe with silky-smooth confidence if required. However, to my complete surprise and delight, we were whisked through the arrival and immigration process inside 15 minutes. In all my experience of travelling, I’ve never gotten out of an airport that quickly before and I wasn't alone there. Every one of us was stunned into silence at how efficiently and quickly the paperwork was taken care of before we were on our way. I’ll tell you this for free – travelling with Collingwood and Emirates has distinct advantages. We felt like very important people as we sashayed past lines of people and through a special line with no queues.

It was almost impossible not to stare at all the people and I tried very hard not to be rude. You suddenly have to pinch yourself and realise that you are indeed in the Middle East when faced with masses of men and women in their traditional dress – men in white and women in black. It’s almost as though the whole emirate of Dubai was barracking for the Pies as we stared into a sea of Magpie colours. We blended in very well, except for the fact that our heads were uncovered.

In response to our questions, we discovered that the male traditional dress is officially called a kandura, but everybody seems to call it a ‘dishdash’. It’s extraordinary how these never seem to look creased or dirty, despite the fact that they’re usually of a pristine white colour in summer (to reflect the sun’s rays). Sometimes the dishdash is olive, brown or grey, but mostly we saw white ones. The headscarf is called the ‘guthra’ and is also usually white, although the Bedouin colours of red and white checks are very popular. The guthra is held in place by the egal – the black rope-like binding that keeps the guthra fixed to the head. Apparently the Bedouins traditionally used the egal to tie the feet of their camels together at night when they were travelling in the desert to stop the camels from wandering.

The women in the UAE wear an abaya – a long black dress made of a lightweight fabric. The abaya is worn over the clothes, which mostly are of Western design. Due to the inordinately large Indian population in the UAE, many of the ladies’ clothes will also be Indian in design and are very colourful under the misdleading black abaya. It is possible to see glimpses of colour as the ladies walk around. Some of their abayas are intricately designed with stunning embroidery and sequin work, and these can cost up to 2000 dirhams to have tailored. With the abaya is worn the ‘shela’ which is the female headscarf. All Muslim women in the UAE will wear the shela to cover their hair in accordance with custom. However, the covering of the face seems to be a personal choice. Some women choose to show their faces, some choose to partly obscure their faces and some choose to cover all of their faces, with just the tiniest slits for sight. The ‘gishwa’ is the veil used to cover the face. Occasionally one might see ladies wearing black gloves as well, and these are called ‘gafaaz’.

There’s something compellingly mysterious about people who are covered up. The Arabs of both sexes are fascinating to look at, and for an avid people-watcher like myself, it’s almost too good to resist openly gaping at them like a trout out of water. However, for the sake of good manners and cultural respect, I keep my gawking to a very discreet level and try not to be obvious. The one mitigating factor is that the Arabs like gawking at us just as much as we like gawking at them so it’s not all ‘one way’ rudeness.

We are whisked far from the madding crowds into the carpark, where fabulously luxurious limousines the size of tanks await us. We get one limousine per pair, so there’s plenty of space. I guess the beauty of owning most of the world’s oil reserves is that everyone can drive around in cars the size of small Australian country towns without remortgaging their houses to fuel them.

We stare out of the windows in numb fascination of the spectacle before us. It’s hot, it’s dry and there are cranes absolutely everywhere you look. Every vacant square metre of Dubai is a construction site. It looks like an elegantly wasted Beirut. In between the concrete rubble stand massive towers of glass and steel, some of them 80 floors high. It occurs to me that a great job for an expat in Dubai would be as a chiropractor to tourists. I can guarantee that many a C4 dislocation has occurred on the drive from the airport to the hotel or on the never-ending round of city tours.

We arrive at our hotel, the Sofitel City Centre, to be greeted by friendly and smiling valets. We’re ushered inside where we try to check in, only to be directed to ‘my colleagues on the 11th floor’. We glance at each other in uncertain doubt before we realise that the 11th floor is for ‘executive guests’ and is in fact the VIP floor.

We check in, ogle the view for a bit and quickly change clothes. We have to head straight back out again for our special training session with the Pies.

No rest for the wicked. We're not here for a long time, but we're here for a good time, and it's about to start now.