Making the Desert Boom

"We have many cultures here," says Bitar. "A lot of Muslims, Druze. I am Catholic. When we are dealing with any issue, we try to deal with it only as it is newsworthy."

And how does that work, say, if you are a Lebanese journalist sitting next to a Syrian one?

"They are blending here perfectly," she says. Some of her best friends are Syrians.

All of this carefully buried tension is reminiscent of a play -- perhaps the only play set in an Arab satellite channel -- written years before there was an al-Arabiya, or an al-Jazeera. In 1992, Lenin Ramly published "In Plain Arabic," a compendium of inside jokes about the Arab world's incapability of finding unity in anything, played out in the studio of "Arabsat Satellite."

It is a merciless collection of caricatures -- the sensual and wily Lebanese, the misogynistic Saudis, the religiously paralyzed Egyptians, paranoid Syrians, backward Yemenis and a Libyan, who woos his sweetheart with revolutionary tracts ("Allow me to offer you my dearest possession! My copy of 'Revolutionary Unity Between Fundamentalism and Contemporaneity' ").

Before beginning a debate, Mighwar, a Moroccan character, lays down the following ground rules for discussion: "They are not, under any circumstances, to embark on topics concerning politics or religion or ancestry or sex or history or nationalism; they are also categorically forbidden to attack, directly or indirectly, or even symbolically, any great Arab figure, past or present. Other than that, we are prepared to participate with open hearts and minds."

If you want to work together, certain things must not be criticized. Tribal loyalties must be redirected into something productive. Mohammed A.R. Galadari, the publisher of the English-language newspaper the Khaleej Times (and chairman of a very prosperous group of businesses in Dubai) has an easy formulation for how this works.

"We are all capitalists," he says, with an easy smile. He says this inside his office, which is of awe-inspiring proportions. The windows are shaded, the room is cool, the noise of the nearby cement plant entirely inaudible. Galadari explains Dubai in terms of personal betterment. People are prosperous and getting more so. They are busy. They are happy.

The journalists of Dubai, or al-Arabiya, may not be criticizing the local government very often, but why would they?

"We have no politics here," he says. In the literal sense, there are no politics here. There is a ruling elite, and a lot of people who don't ask too many questions about that elite. And so long as prosperity continues, everyone seems to be happy.

Galadari's view is reminiscent of Calvin Coolidge's old line about the business of America is business. This might make you think that Dubai is an exception to the prevalent anti-Americanism of the region. But the polls are discouraging. In the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part, only 14 percent (according to a poll commissioned by the Washington based Arab American Institute) holds a favorable opinion of the United States. (Even that 14 percent feels elusive when you talk to people here, but Galadari, who admires Bill Clinton, firmly belongs to it.)

Unfortunately, there's no readily available poll that would tell us what the Arab world thinks of Dubai. And it's not an idle question. Dubai's busy industry is held up as a model of prosperity that the rest of the Arab world could only envy. And through al-Arabiya, Dubai is in the forefront of defining opinion, and creating an image of the whole Arab world. The pan-Arabic fantasy of Ramly's play is, in some ways, a reality in Dubai. But what would the rest of the Arab world think of the free-flowing booze (available in hotels) and the vigorous business of prostitution that flourishes here?

On the way back from Galadari's office, you pass something that seems, for a moment, to confirm his sunny view of America. On the side of one of the local skyscrapers (Dubai is a fantasy land of over-achieving modernist architecture) is a huge picture of the Statue of Liberty. It's there to advertise the air carrier Emirates' service to New York, and it's hard to tell if they chose the Statue of Liberty because of its iconic association with American opportunity, or its iconic association with New York tourism. Impossible to say. And then you start thinking about its size. As the car whizzes past you try to count the floors, 15, perhaps 20, or more? And then a mental calculation: The Statue of Liberty stands about 150 feet from base to torch. Which means this picture of the Statue of Liberty could be as big as the actual statue.

And that seems more important than whatever it is meant to represent. Imitation here is definitely not the sincerest form of flattery; it's a form of competition. And competition is not the means to something, but an end in itself. Materialism is not a reward for hard work, but the basic social glue that binds this small bastion of prosperity and openness. It doesn't seem like it should be enough to hold together a society, especially a society that is a motley collection of people from everywhere. If they falter in their effort to be always and everywhere the biggest or most expensive, will the whole busy, industrious, madcap energy of the place simply implode? For a moment, zipping down a highway named for a sheik, you can imagine this surreal landscape going back to desert, sand blowing through marble lobbies, and The World, if it is ever finished, a huge, empty folly in the ocean.