The UAE’s Culture of Fear

Last week I wrote about how, ironically, I feel relatively safe from terrorism living in the United Arab Emirates, despite my violent and oppressive neighboring countries. As if Sheikh Mohammed were offended at my expression of secure feeling about anything in this place, this week has left me looking over my shoulder.

A few days ago, I was walking home from school with two friends. Our conversation turned to travel. Places we’d been, places we’d like to go. Fun places: New Orleans, Rio, Amsterdam. Beth and Courtney were recounting their Amsterdam experiences when they realized they had both stayed at the same disgusting youth hostel. There was squealing and laughter and big silly grins. We tromped along, skirting the SUVs parked in the middle of narrow streets with their hazards blinking, my friends exclaiming over their discovery. Then out of the edge of my eye I saw something flying through the air. There was a shattering crash. I looked around, confused. There were large chunks of glass at my feet.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Glass. Glass flying.”

“What? Why?”

“Someone threw glass at us.”

“There was glass, flying at our heads.” Beth pointed to the glass on the ground. “Do you see that? If it had been a foot closer, it would have hit you!”

I looked up. By its landing location, the glass had clearly come from the apartment building across the street from ours. At its base, and directly across from where we then stood, is the small grocery where I do most of my shopping. I looked around. The sky was brown with dust, but free from flying shards. I couldn’t see any human forms silhouetted in the windows. “Are you sure?” I asked. “Do you think it was an accident?”

“No,” said Courtney. “They threw glass at us.”

The chunks were heavy and white-rimmed where they had broken on the asphalt. I imagined them embedded in my skull. I imagined a shard slicing open my cheek, scarring me for life. I started to shake.

We walked home quietly. Later that night, I needed to go to the store. After psyching myself up for a while, I crossed the sandpit. I kept my eyes on the sky, watching for glass.

There was a good deal of discussion about the flying glass the next day. Some of my coworkers reminded us that people throw trash out of their windows all the time. “But do they throw glass?” I asked. “Everyone knows glass is dangerous.” They shrugged.

Perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps they were just throwing out trash. Perhaps they threw the glass at us because we were laughing too loudly, perhaps it was because we were uncovered. I’m inclined to think it was a combination of the two.

* * *

Yesterday, a UAE newspaper published a story about how police are now doing door-to-door raids searching for unmarried couples. This has left the ex-patriots living together out of wedlock in a state of panic. The likely sentence for such a crime is a year in jail; a possible alternative is lashing.

This week, I will receive a medical exam as part of my residency visa process. A friend told me not to worry unless I had recently taken drugs or was pregnant. Neither of those apply to me, but it’s horrifying to think that were I pregnant, my primary worry would not be about the baby but about jail time. Unwed pregnancy is not explicitly illegal, but because one-on-one interaction between unmarried men and women is, the unwed, pregnant woman has clearly committed a crime.

This week, I had a conversation with a Muslim friend who told me about the countless times she was sexually harassed while wearing hijab (a headscarf). This week, I was followed home from the gym. This week, another friend got a new stalker – her electrician.

It’s been a scary few days, but it’s far from the first time I’ve been frightened here. I maintain that people here seem to feel relatively safe from terrorist threats, but the culture of fear is thriving in other areas. Foreigners, men and women alike, are afraid of the UAE government. International news stories about Dubai often focus on Western ex-patriots being arrested for having sex or kissing in public. Both tourists and residents are afraid of crossing the invisible line where PDA becomes a crime. Many laborers are afraid that the government will take their visas, or that their employers will deny them pay. Everyone is afraid of being hit by a crazy taxi driver (especially because no one wears seatbelts) and of going to the doctor where blood tests are administered by gloveless hands in a dirty building.

Sometimes I think that ex-patriots here are paranoid, or that all the fear is part of the typical immigrant experience. But the fear does not stop with Westerners and Southeast Asian laborers. The Muslim women that I know express fear of men. They are told from the time they are young that men are creatures to be feared – an attitude, which in turn, normalizes inappropriate male behavior. Not only are many Muslim women afraid of strangers, they are afraid that they will be married off to a man they don’t like, they are afraid that he will take more wives with whom they don’t get along or that he will give another wife control of the family, they are afraid of being raped and possibly helpless, or possibly blamed, in the eyes of the law.

There is often a nervous tension in the air. Though I might be projecting my own anxieties, I think that there is, on a meta level, some fear. After last year’s financial crash, Dubai is afraid that its shiny, sub-prime city is unsustainable. The press practices self-censorship (though the art world seems more free). The UAE as a whole is, if not explicitly fearful of, at least intimidated by Saudi Arabia next door.

Personally, I worry regularly about sexual harassment and assault; some of my ex-patriot friends have been victimized this year. I worry about being arrested for accidentally breaking some unknown Sharjah decency law (I follow the dress code, but a grumpy police officer might decide my t-shirt is too tight or that showing collar bones is the same as showing shoulders – I don’t trust anyone here). I worry about telling people I’m traveling to Israel this summer. I worry about going to the gynecologist and admitting that I am unmarried and sexually active. I worry about being arrested for walking down the street with my one male friend. Now I can add flying glass to my list of fears.

I am well acquainted with scared societies; I am from the USA, after all. Our fear is alive and well, and, I find, inescapable. It is in the media and in our every day conversations. We are afraid of terrorists, kidnappers, germs, muggers. But, for me, those fears are on life’s periphery – I am not especially nervous about any of them and think that such threats are often exaggerated. When I am home, it is annoying to hear about fear. When I am in the UAE, I am genuinely afraid.

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Tags: Culture Shock, Gender, health, law, religion, safety, sex, terrorism