The way some people live

Sunlight filtered through stained glass casts coloured rays on a pew and tiled floor, St. Saulve Abbey, Montreuil-sur-Mer, France.

Bonjour les tous! I am back in Paris and will write later about my trip. Meanwhile, my thoughts are with the people of L'Aquila, Italy and the surrounding villages, left devastated and homeless after an earthquake. But I have little regard for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who told a German television station that the earthquake survivors "should see it like a weekend of camping."

Berlusconi made his typically clueless remarks after visiting one of the temporary camps set up to shelter and feed the earthquake survivors. "They have everything they need, they have medical care, hot food...," Berlusconi said. "Of course, their current lodgings are a bit temporary. But they should see it like a weekend of camping."

One has to pity the nation that keeps electing such a buffoon. Last week at the NATO summit in Strasbourg, Berlusconi's car pulled up, he got out, nodded to German chancellor Angela Merkel waiting to greet him, but kept talking on his cell phone! After welcoming two other world leaders - with Berlusconi still talking on the phone - Merkel lost patience and left Berlusconi behind, as she and other NATO leaders crossed the bridge to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Dubai's glittery facade threatened by shifting sands

I urge you to take ten minutes to read The Independent's Johann Hari's eye-opening article about Dubai's failing fortunes. It is a cautionary tale of greed, deception and modern-day slavery. The many twists and turns of a barren playground without water suggests the city ultimately will be absorbed by the shifting sands of Arabia. Meanwhile, Sheik Maktoum and his entourage continue the ruse of a solvent business mecca, racing champion thoroughbreds at Longchamp and acting as though there's no tomorrow. I read this late last night and have not been able to get it out of my mind.

An excerpt:

"...and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look..."

"Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young men who build Dubai are bussed from their sites to a vast concrete wasteland an hour out of town, where they are quarantined away. Until a few years ago they were shuttled back and forth on cattle trucks, but the expats complained this was unsightly, so now they are shunted on small metal buses that function like greenhouses in the desert heat. They sweat like sponges being slowly wrung out.

"Sonapur is a rubble-strewn patchwork of miles and miles of identical concrete buildings. Some 300,000 men live piled up here, in a place whose name in Hindi means "City of Gold." In the first camp I stop at – riven with the smell of sewage and sweat – the men huddle around, eager to tell someone, anyone, what is happening to them."

"Sahinal Monir, a slim 24-year-old from the deltas of Bangladesh. "To get you here, they tell you Dubai is heaven. Then you get here and realise it is hell," he says. Four years ago an employment agent arrived in Sahinal's village in Southern Bangladesh. He told the men of the village that there was a place where they could earn 40,000 takka a month (£400) just for working nine-to-five on construction projects. It was a place where they would be given great accommodation, great food and treated well. All they had to do was pay an up-front fee of 220,000 takka (£2,300) for the work visa – a fee they'd pay off in the first six months, easy. So Sahinal sold his family land and took out a loan from the local lender, to head to this paradise.

"As soon as he arrived at Dubai airport, his passport was taken from him by his construction company. He has not seen it since. He was told brusquely that from now on he would be working 14-hour days in the desert heat – where western tourists are advised not to stay outside for even five minutes in summer, when it hits 55 degrees – for 500 dirhams a month (£90), less than a quarter of the wage he was promised. If you don't like it, the company told him, go home. "But how can I go home? You have my passport and I have no money for the ticket," he said. "Well, then you'd better get to work," they replied.

"Sahinal was in a panic. His family back home – his son, daughter, wife and parents – were waiting for money, excited that their boy had finally made it. But he was going to have to work for more than two years just to pay for the cost of getting here – and all to earn less than he did in Bangladesh.

"He shows me his room. It is a tiny, poky, concrete cell with triple-decker bunk-beds, where he lives with 11 other men. All his belongings are piled onto his bunk: three shirts, a spare pair of trousers and a cellphone. The room stinks, because the lavatories in the corner of the camp – holes in the ground – are backed up with excrement and clouds of black flies. There is no air conditioning or fans, so the heat is "unbearable. You cannot sleep. All you do is sweat and scratch all night." At the height of summer, people sleep on the floor, on the roof, anywhere where they can pray for a moment of breeze.

Even the drinking water is contaminated

"The water delivered to the camp in huge white containers isn't properly desalinated: it tastes of salt. "It makes us sick, but we have nothing else to drink," he says.

"The work is "the worst in the world," he says. "You have to carry 50kg bricks and blocks of cement in the worst heat imaginable ... This heat – it is like nothing else. You sweat so much you can't pee, not for days or weeks. It's like all the liquid comes out through your skin and you stink. You become dizzy and sick but you aren't allowed to stop, except for an hour in the afternoon. You know if you drop anything or slip, you could die. If you take time off sick, your wages are docked, and you are trapped here even longer."

"He is currently working on the 67th floor of a shiny new tower, where he builds upwards, into the sky, into the heat. He doesn't know its name. In his four years here, he has never seen the Dubai of tourist-fame, except as he constructs it floor-by-floor."

"Is he angry? He is quiet for a long time. "Here, nobody shows their anger. You can't. You get put in jail for a long time, then deported." Last year, some workers went on strike after they were not given their wages for four months. The Dubai police surrounded their camps with razor-wire and water-cannons and blasted them out and back to work.

"The "ringleaders" were imprisoned. I try a different question: does Sohinal regret coming? All the men look down, awkwardly. "How can we think about that? We are trapped. If we start to think about regrets..." He lets the sentence trail off. Eventually, another worker breaks the silence by adding: "I miss my country, my family and my land. We can grow food in Bangladesh. Here, nothing grows. Just oil and buildings."

"Since the recession hit, they say, the electricity has been cut off in dozens of the camps and the men have not been paid for months. Their companies have disappeared with their passports and their pay. "We have been robbed of everything. Even if somehow we get back to Bangladesh, the loan sharks will demand we repay our loans immediately and when we can't, we'll be sent to prison."

"This is all supposed to be illegal. Employers are meant to pay on time, never take your passport, give you breaks in the heat – but I met nobody who said it happens. Not one. These men are conned into coming and trapped into staying, with the complicity of the Dubai authorities.

"Sahinal could well die out here. A British man who used to work on construction projects told me: "There's a huge number of suicides in the camps and on the construction sites, but they're not reported. They're described as 'accidents'." Even then, their families aren't free: they simply inherit the debts. A Human Rights Watch study found there is a "cover-up of the true extent" of deaths from heat exhaustion, overwork and suicide, but the Indian consulate registered 971 deaths of their nationals in 2005 alone. After this figure was leaked, the consulates were told to stop counting.

"At night, in the dusk, I sit in the camp with Sohinal and his friends as they scrape together what they have left to buy a cheap bottle of spirits. They down it in one ferocious gulp. "It helps you to feel numb," Sohinal says through a stinging throat. In the distance, the glistening Dubai skyline he built stands, oblivious."

Comments

[Di Overton]

I Berlusconi thought it was such fun he should have spent a few days with them.
I hate Dubai and all it stands for, it has the same effect as Monte Carlo - FALSE!

[Kirsten]

So very informative! Thanks for this!
Kirsten

[Michelle]

Wow, I just posted about that exact same article!! It is really an eyeopener.

That remark about camping sounds like something Bush would have said...

[A Cuban In London]

Nothing surprises about Berlusconi anymore.

Johann Hari continues one of my favourite British journalists alongside Gary Young and Yasmin Alibhai Brown. He's one of the main reasons why I signed up for the Huffington Post and why I occasionally betray The Guardian and dash off to the Indy's website. Johan's article is yet further evidence of Dubai's Alice-In-Wonderland mirage. It's beyond surrealism. Welcome back. Many thanks for your post.

Greetings from London.

[jeanie]

A bit temporary? Weekend camping? What a dufus. I can't imagine anything more callous or cold.

Well, welcome home! I'm sneaking in some blogs while I'm on my high speed at work and catching up on all your wonderful images and thoughts!

(And at home, I've been devouring Paris guidebooks! I'm so excited!)

[stephanie]

I have long been disgusted and dumbfounded by Dubai, but this is a side I as not aware of, thank you again for opening my eyes to this.

[Yoli]

The Italian Prime minister is a jackass. Now, the article on Dubai will not leave me for a very long time, if ever. I am horrified, saddened, extremely angry for these human beings. Tara what is being done if anything to help these people? Is there any group that hears them? Any organization that is working towards some sort of liberation for them? Tell me please.

[Chris]

Tara, thank you for continuing to inform me. I didn't know this about the Italian Prime Minister, but it reminds me of arrogant attitudes our own leaders, most recent and notable being the Bushes, make in the face of others' tragic experiences. And the Dubai situation... I just think so much about the products of slavery available in our shops and mega-marts and I am sickened and saddened. I put down dozens of potential gifties I wanted to get for people when I saw that they were made in China or Taiwan. We just try to salve our emotions with these ephemeral things, these possessions and living spaces that we use to make ourselves feel like we've accomplished something, and we've accomplished only pain and poverty and slavery in so many instances. I recently purchased a timeshare because I've always wanted to travel and wanted to do it before health or other considerations made it impossible, but sometimes when I'm exercising that privilege I wonder just whether my tourism is helping or hurting, whether I'm contributing with my travel dollars or if I'm only further supporting the chasm between the wealthy and the poor. It's all very complicated and murky to me much of the time.

I'm just blathering on. Good to be catching up with you after my trip.

[debra]

There is no excuse for the comments of the Italian PM! And the article on Dubai! As my mother always told me, if something seems to good to be true, it probably is.

[Lisa & Alfie]

Eye opening as always. Good idea about forwarding the article, just what I am going to do.
Perhaps it should be mandatory for the country leaders to have to spend a couple nights in the same emergency conditions as their people to "get the full experience and picture".
Thanks Tara, glad you are back.
Lisa & Alfie

[Helen]

Perfectly horrible conditions in Dubai. Much has been written about this in the past year but nothing has changed except that conditions get worse.

Italy's earthquake is a sorrow on so many levels. I also thought of Barbara Bush's Katrina statements.

Once can only sigh, shake one's head, and hope that things will change for the better and not for the worse.

[urbanartiste]

There are so many environmentally detrimental construction projects going on it should be unlawful. It absolutely disgusts me to see advertisments for Dubai, particularly the informercials disguised as learning programs with people such as Trump promoting it. I have always seen the building there as gluttonous and to the benefit of the wealthy, but now the global economic crisis opens up the door on that.

[Se'Lah]

Beautiful shot of the filtered sunlight. I can see myself sitting there taking it all in.

RE: Dubai...I simply exhale and let go of the contempt building up inside me.

[Christina]

He and Barbara Bush(hurricane katrina) need to get together and spew their ignorance together. No one else cares to hear such clueless comments.

Sorry Tara, this behavior of his just makes me angry.

Love you!

[JanePoet ~ JP/deb]

The tragedy of immigrants working in Dubai is horrendous. A hard read, but important to know. It is the callousness of greed taken to a horrific level. I pray that international pressure will be put on the UAE. Regarding the Italian Prime Minister - excuse my language, but what a fuckwit.

Look forward to hearing about the trip. Sending love, Deb

[judith]

Tara,

I, too, read the Dubai article last night. It's a Must-Read-Eye-Opener !
I'd even take that a step further ... . forward it to everyone you know.

(so happy to see you back)

Jjjj

[Jane Rosemont]

Welcome back home! Thanks for this great morning read. The only thing I've known about Italy is that I love it there, so this was a good eye-opener!

[ainelivia]

Re Mr Berlusconi, I believe that all that alleged cosmetic surgery has affected whatever brain cells he had, insensitive he redefines.

Thanks for the link to the Johann Hari article. I've heard lots about Dubai, and most of it describing a kind of city of light in the desert. This article paints an entirely different picture. We will be travelling to Kuala Lumpur to visit mum in law sometime this year, and C mooted the idea of a stopover in Dubai; one because they have those big new planes, two, we both dislike flying and want to break the journey; three, emirates are offering a good deal on their business class.

Somehow I'm not so sure any more.

[dutchbaby]

I don't have time to read beyond your preamble this morning, but I just have to exclaim about the Italian prime minister's callousness. AaargH!