Sheikhs, Lies and Real Estate: The Untold Story of Dubai (2 page)

I leaned forward to get a better view of the
buildings now towering over us on either side, but I was distracted by a
flashing light in the distance behind me. I tried to ignore it at first, but
the flickering only seemed to get closer and brighter until I had no choice but
to shield my eyes. I looked at Fadi, who was nervously mumbling something to himself
under his breath. And then without warning our car swerved violently to the
left and I was thrust back into my seat with a force that almost snapped my
neck in two!

‘You crazy guy!’ screamed Fadi, slamming hard
on the brakes. He followed with excessive honking of the horn as he battled to
regain control of the wheel. From nowhere, a scarlet Ferrari cut across us in a
death-defying move, inches away from taking out our car and three others in an
instant. My eyes briefly caught the face of my would-be assassin: an Emirati
man of no more than 20 wearing traditional headdress and dark aviators,
chatting away on his mobile phone. Oblivious to the chaos he had almost caused,
the insane driver pushed into the perilous leftmost lane and sped off into the
distance with an ear-splitting roar of horse power.

‘I am so sorry, sir! These drivers are crazy,’
said Fadi apologetically.

My heart was racing hysterically. ‘Don’t worry,
I’m fine,’ I replied, urging Fadi to keep his eyes on the road.

‘This is a big problem in Dubai, sir. Every day
on the Sheikh Zayed Road they will come up close behind you, and if you don’t
move they will do some crazy move to overtake. They don’t care about others
here! Many people have died this way.’ This tragic reality seemed genuinely to
sadden Fadi and he didn’t say much more for the rest of the journey. Perhaps he
felt he had somehow let me down, but I was just grateful to be alive and
unharmed. It seemed that the unforgiving Sheikh Zayed Road had lived up to its
sinister reputation and I was certain this wasn’t the last time such a
senseless near-fatal incident would occur. Thankfully, we were not too far from
the hotel now.

My new employer, Imperial Bank, had offered to
put me up at the Emirates Towers for a month while I found a permanent place to
live. Overlooking the Sheikh Zayed Road, the twin skyscrapers were two of the
most contemporary and iconic buildings of the Dubai skyline, and their
distinctive sharp edges and reflective glass made them an unmistakable symbol
of ‘New Dubai’. One of the towers featured one of the world’s most
distinguished business hotels; the other boasted the most exclusive office
space in the region, including Sheikh Mohammed’s own private offices, which
occupied many of the higher floors. The Towers even boasted their own shopping
mall, The Boulevard, where lonely housewives wasted countless hours in high-end
boutiques while their overworked husbands slaved away in the offices above to
bankroll their lavish spending habits.

‘Welcome to the Emirates Towers, sir,’ said the
impish Indian valet attendant, dressed in a grey uniform and matching hat. He
opened my door and I stepped out and thanked him, walking towards the giant
revolving doors of the lobby as his colleagues unloaded my bags.

‘Goodbye, sir! Goodbye! I wish you best of luck
and prosperity!’ I turned around to see Fadi waving at me frantically, before
getting into his Mercedes to leave. I had warmed to him over our short ride as
he preserved me from the heat, become my makeshift tour guide and even saved my
life. I smiled and waved back with genuine appreciation before he drove away to
pick up the next unsuspecting visitor.  

The lobby inside was brimming with sharply
dressed international businessmen and executives sipping on cappuccinos,
discreetly watching the passing guests over the pages of the
FT
or the
Gulf
News
. There was a chic ambience that resembled a day spa rather than a
hotel lounge: a subtle water feature trickled serenely near the entrance, and
the gentle music from the female pianist added a touch of sophistication. At
the far end, a futuristic glass elevator transported guests up and down the
soaring atrium at breathtaking speeds like a scene from a science fiction movie.

As I waited patiently by the check-in desk, I
was approached by a frail old Emirati man dressed in a traditional
dishdasha
and sandals, who offered me local coffee and dates in what seemed to be a
customary welcome gesture. I happily obliged, but as I sipped from the tiny
porcelain cup its unfamiliar bitter and spicy taste almost made me gag. It was
a far cry from a Starbucks cappuccino and I handed him back the full cup,
desperately hoping I had not offended. He didn’t seem too amused and abruptly
walked away shaking his head. Clearly, I still had some cultural adjusting to
do.

While the pretty European receptionist tapped
away on her keyboard to check me in, I looked up and noticed a giant portrait
of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai’s illustrious ruler, watching
over the room. His black beard was perfectly trimmed, his nose large and noble,
and his
khaleeji
headdress flowed over his shoulders. There was a boldness
in his deep green eyes as he seemed to stare well beyond the parameters of the
picture frame, perhaps into an affluent future for his ambitious new city. And
then something altogether peculiar happened. By some inexplicable miracle, he
began to speak to me!

‘Welcome to my city, my friend, whatever you
need just shout,’ said the bellowing voice. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Was the
picture really talking to me? I looked around to see if anybody else had observed
the wonder, but they continued with their business. Before I could pluck up the
courage to thank His Highness for his kind hospitality, the receptionist
interrupted.

‘Here is your room key, sir. You will be
staying in a wonderful room on the twenty-seventh floor. We hope you enjoy your
time at the Emirates Towers.’ The tiny piece of plastic she handed me was
hardly a key in the conventional sense; rather, it was an ingenious mini
replica of the building itself, a clever gimmick, except that the sharp edges
dug into my groin when I put it in my pocket.

‘Thank you,’ I replied keeping one eye on the
painting above.  

Before leaving the desk, I looked up at it
again and nodded in acknowledgement. This time there was no response.

‘Is everything okay, sir?’ asked the
receptionist, confused.

‘Yes, fine thanks. Just fine.’ She looked up at
the portrait and back at me with bemusement as I walked towards the elevators.

The moment I entered my room on the
twenty-seventh floor, I rushed towards the giant window to absorb the awesome
spectacle. It was more than just a view; before me was an incredible animated
snapshot of a great vision being brought to life. There were construction sites
in every direction as hundreds of men in blue overalls and yellow hard hats
worked industriously in the beaming desert sun. Dozens of cranes moved giant
blocks of concrete and steel amid an intricate web of scaffolding. For every
completed tower there were three emerging in the distance, currently only half-built
shells but soon to be competing for air rights in the Dubai skyline. And there
again was the dream weaver himself; a giant image of Sheikh Mohammed across the
façade of an adjacent building, like an omnipotent shepherd watching over his
flock.

I eventually sat on the edge of the bed and began
thinking about how far I was from home. A sudden bout of homesickness overcame
me as I pondered what had possessed me to embark on this insane journey into
the unknown. Was it a desperate bid to escape the daily routine of the London
rat race? Perhaps. Was I responding to an innate need for adventure and
excitement? Possibly. Or had I fallen victim to the irresistible lure of the so-called
city of the future? Whatever the reason, the fact remained that I had left
behind a safe and secure career on the hunch that in 2004 there was no better
time or place in the world than this tiny Emirate to achieve my greatest dreams.

This was my time to shine.

Since my earliest memory, I always wanted the good life.
When asked the familiar question ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ by
my unsuspecting primary school teacher Miss Penny, my answer was somewhat
unorthodox for a boy of 6:

‘I want to be really rich so I can buy a boat
and sail around the globe, and I can have my own plane, and live in a big
mansion and drive a Porsche, and I will be really happy...’

Miss Penny was speechless as the other kids
began to question their own lowly aspirations to be firemen, bakers and nurses.

Growing up, I was never too interested in fame
and celebrity. The thought of paparazzi camping on my front lawn, or images in
the gossip magazines of me stumbling out of a nightclub with my arms around two
blondes seemed like a frightful inconvenience. But money, on the other hand,
meant so much more. Money could buy independence, choice and freedom to live
the good life without a worry in the world. This to me was a worthy pursuit
indeed.

I am sure I had my mother to thank for
instilling such immense ambition into me at an impressionable age. Despite my
modest upbringing, she had always taught me to aim high and expect the very
best in life. My parents had emigrated to the UK from Pakistan as teenagers.
They had met at college in London and married young, and I was born soon after
a passionate honeymoon in Paris. My father was a builder by trade, while my
mother had worked as a secretary in a small shipping company. It was my
father’s idea to call me Adam, a universal name that he believed would bridge
the cultures of my ethnic roots and the Western world. Ironically, as I grew
older I didn’t seem to fit in to either.

I was never very comfortable with the peculiar
customs and traditions of Pakistani culture, which were often imposed on me by
visiting relatives against my will. They were all so foreign to me, and I never
understood the point in odd rituals like arranged marriages and blowing strange
prayers over food. Yet being the only ethnic kid at a white school also meant
that as much as I tried to be one of the lads, I would never be wholly accepted
there either. It didn’t help that I looked more Middle Eastern than Asian, and
taunts like ‘camel herder’ and ‘rag head’ became part of life. And so caught
between two opposing worlds, I took it on myself to make wealth my passport to
freedom from the petty concerns of identity. With money, I convinced myself, people
would respect me regardless of who I was or where I came from. Once rich, I
could live comfortably on my own terms without the pressure to ‘fit in’.

Sadly, my parents’ marriage didn’t last the
stresses of working-class life and they separated when I was 10. After the
divorce, I left with my mother to live in a tough suburb of North London. Life
was quite different there. Most other kids in the neighbourhood belonged to
gangs, and fights and stabbings seemed to be an everyday occurrence. Out of
fear of falling into the wrong crowd, my watchful mother constantly reminded me
of the need to study hard to make a future for myself. I did as I was told,
stayed out of trouble and kept my head in my books. Needless to say, my mother
was overwhelmed with pride when at the age of 18 my efforts were rewarded with
an offer to study at Oxford University; a passport to the distinguished life I
desperately craved.

Apparently getting into Oxford was a big
achievement for an ethnic kid from an inner-city school, but pretty much from
the day I arrived I knew that I didn’t belong there. Most of my fellow students
were private-school brats who had never had the misfortune of associating with
state-school plebs like me. I had never played rugby, nor did I row or fence,
so there was little common ground there. I tried my best to relate to their stories
of picnics at Henley and weekends rambling in the Cotswolds, but the only
interesting anecdotes I had to offer in return were of friends being mugged, or
neighbours burgled in the middle of the night. I quickly accepted it was a lost
cause. We were chalk and cheese, and Oxford was not for me
.

Lonely and depressed in my dimly lit dorm room,
I received an unexpected phone call one weekend that would change my life for
ever. Some old school friends invited me to join them for a private party at a
members-only nightclub in the West End of London called The Rooms. The club was
world renowned as one of London’s most exclusive night spots and a regular
haunt for celebrities and movie stars, so it was an invitation I wasn’t going
to turn down. It would be a welcome change from yet another boring evening in
the dreary college bar, so I dressed in my best shirt and took the coach from
Oxford to London for an adventure.

From the very moment I passed the velvet rope
into The Rooms, I was spellbound. The intoxicating music, the discerning crowd
and the irresistible ambience captivated me. As we cracked open the champagne
and danced on the tables until the break of dawn, for the first time in my life
I felt like I belonged. There was no class divide or snobbery here; instead the
revellers were united with a single, overarching purpose: to party hard and
have fun. My eyes had suddenly opened up to a new world that I had never even known
existed; where I could be anybody I wanted without a care in the world. And for
those few exhilarating hours, I was free. 

That night changed everything. Every week as
another grim schedule of lectures ended, I jumped on the coach to London to get
my weekend party fix. I became a regular at The Rooms and I soon became good friends
with the club’s owner, an eccentric Italian American called Gino del Primo.
Gino was kind enough to offer me my own guest list at the club, which meant I
could earn a cut of everything my invited guests spent, whether that was a
single bottle of vodka or a Nebuchadnezzar of champagne. Considering the
average spend on a table was over £2,000, it was an opportunity to make some
good money.

And so I was soon living a double life as an
insignificant Oxbridge geek by day, and a promoter at the most exclusive club
in London by night. I never waited in a queue, everybody knew my name and I was
rubbing shoulders with the cream of London’s in-crowd. I partied with movie
stars, sports personalities and royalty. In stark contrast to the monotony of
Oxford student life, I was recognised and respected here; I was a ‘somebody’. And
it wasn’t long before I had my first encounter with the so-called kings of
London nightlife and every promoter’s best friends: the infamous sheikhs.

The sheikhs were Arab businessmen, nonchalant royals
and thrill-seeking oil barons who left behind their unsuspecting wives (many
had more than one) to head to London for a summer of unspoken indulgence and
excess, far from the judgemental eyes of their conservative societies. They
were usually from one of the oil-rich Gulf States – Saudi, Kuwait, Qatar or the
United Arab Emirates – where most of the ‘evil’ vices of the West were
forbidden by the strict Islamic regimes.

They would ship their customised Ferrari and
Aston Martin sports cars over for the weekend to race down Park Lane and valet-park
pretentiously outside the entrances of the most exclusive clubs and
restaurants. They stayed in the penthouses of the luxurious Park Lane hotels
and they dined in the finest Michelin-starred restaurants. The sheikhs were
gaudy, ostentatious, often overweight, terribly dressed (albeit drenched in
designer labels) and spoke poor English. But despite their shortcomings, there
was one thing about them that kept restaurant owners and club promoters salivating
across London: their bulging wallets brimming with cash, waiting to be
squandered.

Luckily, The Rooms was one of their favourite
London hotspots and Gino did everything in his power to ensure that their every
whim and desire was attended to every Friday and Saturday night. They reserved
the best VIP tables, smoked the finest cigars and ordered the most expensive
champagne. And with the excessive spending came a harem of gorgeous women:
Russians, Italians, Lebanese and English, all competing for attention and
desperate to be spoilt for the night. Seldom were they disappointed, and many
found their night ending in the penthouse suite of a Mayfair or Knightsbridge hotel.

The sheikhs’ decadent lifestyles fascinated me.
I was soon on a first-name basis with many of them, as they entrusted me to
take care of their every need while they partied into the night. The tips alone
would be enough for me to live well for months, so I did whatever was required
to keep them spending. I was sure it helped that I looked a little Middle
Eastern as they probably saw me as one of them, although when they spoke to me
in Arabic I always just nodded or pretended I couldn’t hear. After a few
glasses of champagne, they didn’t seem to mind.

I lived my dual existence for over two years,
but as my university days drew to an end, the pressure was mounting to make the
all-important decision I had been dreading: a future career path. The ultimate
dream for most of my peers at Oxford was to sell their souls in a Faustian pact
to an investment bank or magic-circle law firm in the city of London. But a
grim existence of sitting in a poorly lit office in front of a flickering
computer screen while it sucked out my soul for twelve hours a day simply
didn’t excite me. I wanted wealth, freedom and prominence like the sheikhs, and
my new-found significance as a club promoter had given me confidence that I
could make money without compromising my integrity. So while my classmates
shamelessly whored themselves to the corporate reps who flooded the campus like
vampires looking for virgins, I was notably absent. I had bigger plans.

But as the sheikhs left London for the Gulf over
the winter, business at The Rooms dwindled and the tips dried up, I grudgingly
accepted that club promoting was not my life’s calling and I needed to find
something else. I was also constantly being reminded by my mother of the need
to build a future, and with mounting student debts I decided I had no choice
but to bite my tongue and take a ‘real’ job.

In the autumn of 2004, I reluctantly joined an investment
bank in the City of London as a trading desk assistant. It was apparently a
position that many graduates would have killed for, but for me it was a well-paid
time-filler while I pondered what I really wanted to do with the rest of my
life.

The crux of my new role was to capture trades
for equity-linked structured derivatives, and to monitor trading positions and
risk limits. Every day, irate traders would shout at me over the phone about a
trade dispute or an upcoming corporate event. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what
they expected, but rather that I didn’t give a damn, and wasn’t going to let
some guy who was earning ten times what I was talk me into a panic about
something that had no bearing whatsoever on my life. All of my preconceptions
about corporate life were ringing true: the work was boring, the hours were lengthy
and the commute was a nightmare. It wasn’t long before I was deeply de-motivated
and began looking for a way out. 

To get a fresh perspective on my dreary life, I
arranged to have lunch with Cameron, a close friend I had not seen for over a
year. I had first met Cameron on the London party circuit in my early promoting
days. At the time he was making a fortune exporting mobile phones to Africa,
and he had since invested in a fashionable wine bar in the West End that had
become a regular haunt for the hedge-fund crowd. Today he had his finger in a
number of other pies, from software companies to urban dance schools. He was
well connected with club owners and promoters at all the trendiest London clubs
and restaurants, and had introduced me to some of my biggest Arab clients.

Cameron oozed success; he was a natural-born
entrepreneur who seemed to excel in everything he touched. He was a living
example of the unshackled lifestyle I had always craved, and I admired him for
making his fortune on his own terms, having never worked for anybody in his
life.

As I arrived at the restaurant near Green Park,
I instantly spotted him flirting with an attractive brunette waitress who was
giggling like a school girl while he showered her with his boyish charm. This
was classic Cameron: his success with women was legendary and few could resist
his chiselled good looks and piercing blue eyes. He usually wore a permanent
copper complexion owing to his penchant for travelling to exotic locations, but
I noticed that today he was more golden than ever. As I approached the table,
he handed the waitress a business card and she scuttled off with a huge grin.

‘Well, well, if it’s not Mr Party Time himself!’

‘How are you doing, Cam?’ I replied, smiling. ‘You
look great!’

‘Why, thank you. You don’t look too bad
yourself after all the late nights you’ve had. Take a seat, buddy.’

We ordered some drinks and caught up. He told
me how his wine bar had recently won numerous prestigious awards, how he was
dating an up-and-coming Brazilian supermodel and that he was now thinking of
launching his own lingerie line. He listened carefully as I told him about my
mundane new job, how it lacked the thrill of the old promoting days, and that I
was desperately seeking a new direction.

‘My advice to you is you need to think outside
the box, buddy,’ said Cameron after some thought.  

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you’re doing what everybody is doing.
You’re a sheep and you need to be a wolf. You need to do something that nobody
else has the balls to do.’

‘Okay, now you’ve completely lost me.’

Cameron paused and stared deep into my eyes. ‘Do
you know where I’ve just come back from?’

‘Let me guess, somewhere ridiculously hot and
sunny,’ I replied sarcastically.

He smiled wryly. ‘Go on, take a guess.’