My Future in Dubai
The dirt was uncontrollable, the sand storm had almost buried us alive. What could the escape be? Nobody knew anything about that crumbling megalopolis that was fading away under the desertic area surrounding it. Everything had already collapsed: The sewage system, the water sources were already dried, the plants were dying since there was no more water to wet them, and the last of the issues was the famine, so starving people were roaming the streets looking for the little available resources that were in hands of the elite. You might be wondering why they still stayed there, having enough money to have successfully run away from that chaos.
I need to go back to the very beginning, when the petrodollars started ruling over this country once called the United Arab Emirates, but now just more seemingly resembling a huge quarry. Therefore, you might wanna know what actually happened…and the answer is easy to get, their oil and excesses left a terrible environmental impression on its land.
The basis to this situation was that the government of this country wanted to create artificial land recovered from the ocean, and with it, they forgot to think of the sources of water and an efficient sewer system to support the growing population, who by the way used to come in terms of millions just to visit the jewel of the desert.
I am in front of the ruins of The Burj Khalifa, whose magnificence was one time looked up to by foreigners as well as locals. Everything is the resulting effect of climate change combined with a wrong policy of unsustainable urban growth.
The few remaining rich in the country were banned to leave it because the rebels were fighting for their right to survive amidst this chaotic soaking atmosphere, where there was no circumvention…so they were left to share the fate of their former citizens, the most of them just foreign employees, who, with the times, had contracted a kind of infectious disease, a consequence of the starvation and insanity: Leprosy combined with TBC were infecting the people, both poor and rich, since the strong wind was making life a challenge, suffocating people in small areas where the resources were scarce, condemning them to spread the contagion caused by those bacterial illnesses.
Everyone had almost forgotten when the trucks of poop were taking all the feces out of Dubai's astonishing hotels. Now, converted into a surreal enormous pot of garbage, where the efforts to bring a source of sustainable food were lost against their biggest enemy, the desert; despite that, those with no other opportunities were ghettoed into this evil prison of sand. Every week, helicopters threw water and food to the locals, not to be seen as inhumane, so they could only share the same destiny given to Palestinians by the Israeli, a kind of prolonged suffering to which they could not be awakened… an eternal nightmare, where I was caught too because I went to teach Spanish, but I was devastated by my poor students’ doom, so I decided to stay and become a witness to retell what happened to them and their families. I am not sick yet, but it could be a matter of days or maybe weeks before I can get the same symptoms. My heart is broken at the sight of the poor kids who run trying to get a little survival supplies from those that come by helicopter.
The thought of my family makes me feel like I wanna go back home, but it is too late now, I have to pluck up courage and go on, since this world needs more bridges of understanding and no more gaps of discord…there’s no time for homesickness… our reality is oppressive.
The internal fights are increasing with the painful effects of the diseases, the lack of valuable resources, the poor sanitation, and the warmer temperatures that are life threatening.
Those days when you thought that the world’s tallest building – a structure that required embellishing complex engineering and technology to reach its zenith – would have an equally amazing sewage system. To all its inhabitants, it was only a dream because it wasn’t connected to a municipal wastewater treatment system – so when people pooped in the Burj Khalifa, that waste was really trucked out of the city. Aren’t you appalled? We were honestly astounded by the inadequacy of that system. One of the world’s most futuristic buildings was working on an ancient method to transport wastewater to a treatment facility outside of town. So you might have been concerned about the fact that some of those unfortunate guys might have been collecting your poop if you once happened to have visited and used the Burj Khalifa’s restroom, this luxurious hotel which had outstanding facilities, also had workers who were used to driving the excrement away and now they are secluded and condemned to die in a horrible manner, due to pride combined with lack of common sense.
By Miss Odilia Pérez B.
E.L.A. Teacher
