Mixed feelings
So, a week from now I will be sitting in my cramped BA seat and drinking as many free bad cocktails as possible -- on my way to Dubai! It was such a wonderful and awful year living there last year, both at the same time. And I feel like I was such a different person there than I am at home (and have become such a different person for having had the opportunity to live there). I have no idea what to expect on this trip, my first post-fieldwork trip to Dubai.
I have so many mixed feelings, so many things I miss, and so many things the distance from Dubai has made me dislike even more. So I am excited but also a bit nervous. I miss being so in touch with Indian culture, Bollywood, Indian food, using Hindi on a daily basis, not being the only brown one, and also, despite all the leering, I felt incredibly safe living by myself in Dubai, safer than I have ever felt in any city. But the distance from Dubai has made the insane segregation and discrimination between nationalities and races there seem so intolerable, even though I tolerate similar things here, and even though I got so easily accustomed to it when I was there. I am not ready to deal with Western expats who feel perfectly entitled to make three times more money than similarly qualified Asians, white people who won't talk to me at parties (yes, I have experienced this as an American in Dubai, and NEVER in the US, although there is definitely a ton of racism here), 100 degree weather at night but still needing a sweater in the mall, no real public spaces that don't require money, the crazy level of consumerism (which, again, I so easily enjoy after a short time living in it), cab drivers that try to convert me to Islam, and in general people who think I am stupid or a prostitute because I happen to have a uterus and not cover my head.
But the thing is, for all of you reading this and thinking that "oh, but she thinks the US is so much better," I don't. Actually my entire dissertation is an argument AGAINST how much Western academics treat the Middle East and Islam as exceptional, outside of their perceived norms of late capitalism and modern state formations. In fact, living in Dubai taught me a lot about how similar Dubai and the US are. But they are also very different. And here is the thing - there are power differentials and ridiculously frustrating things everywhere, but the place you are becomes normal and other places so easy to criticize.
So my trip to Dubai is a bit scary -- will I feel like an insider or an outsider? Will the things I have been writing about for 6 months hold true when I am there, or do they only seem true from a distance? And the scariest thing, will I hate it and never want to come back? Because I have to admit hating it much more now that I am not there and thinking about it from a distance than when I was immersed in it. But I also feel so nostalgic, like I never have about any other place. These contradictory feelings are what makes writing a dissertation with integrity difficult. Nothing is black and white, and if people represent places that way, they are taking the easy route. How to turn the complicated, contradictory, and confusing emotions and data I have into an argument that holds together and also holds true to my experiences?
It is a very exciting and scary place to be, thinking about going back to a place that I have basically been creating through my writing for six months. What will the relationship be between my production of Dubai over the past six months (and ALL knowledge is produced) and my experience of Dubai after six months away? I guess we will find out soon enough...
I have so many mixed feelings, so many things I miss, and so many things the distance from Dubai has made me dislike even more. So I am excited but also a bit nervous. I miss being so in touch with Indian culture, Bollywood, Indian food, using Hindi on a daily basis, not being the only brown one, and also, despite all the leering, I felt incredibly safe living by myself in Dubai, safer than I have ever felt in any city. But the distance from Dubai has made the insane segregation and discrimination between nationalities and races there seem so intolerable, even though I tolerate similar things here, and even though I got so easily accustomed to it when I was there. I am not ready to deal with Western expats who feel perfectly entitled to make three times more money than similarly qualified Asians, white people who won't talk to me at parties (yes, I have experienced this as an American in Dubai, and NEVER in the US, although there is definitely a ton of racism here), 100 degree weather at night but still needing a sweater in the mall, no real public spaces that don't require money, the crazy level of consumerism (which, again, I so easily enjoy after a short time living in it), cab drivers that try to convert me to Islam, and in general people who think I am stupid or a prostitute because I happen to have a uterus and not cover my head.
But the thing is, for all of you reading this and thinking that "oh, but she thinks the US is so much better," I don't. Actually my entire dissertation is an argument AGAINST how much Western academics treat the Middle East and Islam as exceptional, outside of their perceived norms of late capitalism and modern state formations. In fact, living in Dubai taught me a lot about how similar Dubai and the US are. But they are also very different. And here is the thing - there are power differentials and ridiculously frustrating things everywhere, but the place you are becomes normal and other places so easy to criticize.
So my trip to Dubai is a bit scary -- will I feel like an insider or an outsider? Will the things I have been writing about for 6 months hold true when I am there, or do they only seem true from a distance? And the scariest thing, will I hate it and never want to come back? Because I have to admit hating it much more now that I am not there and thinking about it from a distance than when I was immersed in it. But I also feel so nostalgic, like I never have about any other place. These contradictory feelings are what makes writing a dissertation with integrity difficult. Nothing is black and white, and if people represent places that way, they are taking the easy route. How to turn the complicated, contradictory, and confusing emotions and data I have into an argument that holds together and also holds true to my experiences?
It is a very exciting and scary place to be, thinking about going back to a place that I have basically been creating through my writing for six months. What will the relationship be between my production of Dubai over the past six months (and ALL knowledge is produced) and my experience of Dubai after six months away? I guess we will find out soon enough...