A weekend in Dubai

Saturday morning: the Dubai that came before

First, a calendar fact that throws plenty of people: since January 2022, the weekend in the Emirates is Saturday and Sunday, as in the West. Before, it was Friday and Saturday. They changed an entire country’s weekend by decree, to align with international markets. Friday is a half day and at midday comes the main prayer of the week.

Saturday morning goes to the Creek: the Al Fahidi quarter and its wind towers, the museum in the 1787 fort that’s the oldest building in the city, the abra crossing for pennies and the Deira souks. All of it is ten minutes by metro from the towers and a century away.

Go early and do it in the morning: it’s the only part of this city you cover on foot and in the open air, and therefore the only one the heat can ruin for you.

Saturday afternoon: what gets sold

In the afternoon, when you can’t be outside, comes the other thing: Downtown, the Dubai Mall, the tower and the fountain. And it’s worth understanding what a mall is here, because judging it by European standards is to understand nothing.

In a city where for five months of the year the street is literally uninhabitable, the mall isn’t a place to shop: it’s the town square. It’s where people meet, stroll, take the children, exercise and spend the weekend afternoon.

That’s why they’re giant and have an aquarium, an ice rink and a real ski slope with snow inside. It isn’t excess for its own sake: it’s that public space, in this climate, has to be under a roof.

With that idea in place, the walk through the Dubai Mall becomes anthropology instead of shopping. After dark, the fountain outside fires every half hour and it’s free.

Sunday: the desert

The desert starts an hour out of Dubai. The standard trip is dune bashing: getting into a 4×4 and driving up and down dunes at speed until somebody feels sick. It’s fun, and it’s also what has wrecked entire dune areas with tyre tracks, besides being fairly dangerous when the driver is showing off.

There’s a better alternative and it’s worth seeking out: the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, a protected area covering a notable share of the emirate’s territory, where activity is regulated, operators are limited in number and you go to see what’s there. Gazelles, oryx and falcons. That’s where paying makes sense.

And the underlying reason: the Arabian oryx, the national animal, went extinct in the wild in 1972 and was brought back by breeding it in captivity and releasing it. The ones you see in that reserve descend from those. It’s one of the few conservation stories on the planet with a happy ending, and it’s an hour from the tallest tower in the world.

Sunday night: the city that works

Finish the weekend in the other city, the one that makes this one work. In Al Karama, in Satwa or in Deira, ten minutes by metro from the towers, are the neighbourhoods where most of Dubai’s population lives: Indians, Pakistanis, Filipinos, Bangladeshis, Egyptians.

That’s where you properly eat dinner and for a fraction of the price: biryani, south Indian dosas, Iranian kebab, Filipino chicken, under fluorescent lights at formica tables. It’s the best food in the city without argument and it’s where you’ll see Dubai without make-up.

Let the fact stand, because it’s the one that explains the place: around nine out of ten people living here were born abroad.

Emiratis are a small minority in their own city. This formica corner is, in population terms, far more representative of Dubai than the Burj Khalifa.