So, my inbox occasionally flashes an e-mail from an outfit called eAristotle with notices from the TravelMole newswire. Since the extent of my travel writing involves regular excursions into Rock Creek Park, I quickly delete the mole’s messages. But the title of last week’s note caught my eye: “Dubai Gets Serious With Its Social Restrictions.”
Coming in the midst of the fracas over Mayor Adrian Fenty’s all-expenses-paid trip to that small Arab nation, the e-mail might give us clues into why our local leader decided to travel halfway around the world for a family vacation. Why Dubai? Why not the Bahamas, or Jamaica or London?
Finger-wagging reporters and good government nags have pressed the mayor to explain why he chose Dubai, how he arranged to have that country pay for his trip, what benefit the trip might bestow on our nation’s capital, or — more importantly — what benefits or favors Dubai’s rulers might expect for their largesse.
Reading news about Dubai’s latest social rules gave me some possible explanations to the question of why Dubai paid $25,000 to bring Fenty over. The new rules would “give police more leeway for fines or arrests in places such as beaches and malls. Dubai is still governed by rulers with traditional and conservative Gulf sensibilities.”
Those sensibilities were offended last year by a British couple convicted for having sex on one of Dubai’s beaches. The Brits were fined and sentenced to jail time, but Dubai’s rulers suspended the sentence and threw them out of the country.
Under the new rules, “Dancing and playing loud music in public will be banned. Couples kissing, holding hands or hugging could face fines or detention.”
The mayor and his wife returned home without getting fined, so we can assume they were not caught holding hands or hugging. But I am beginning to see what Dubai got from its $25,000 investment for Fenty’s trip.
“If approved and enforced,” the TravelMole says, “the restrictions could deal another blow to Dubai’s carefully manicured image as an easygoing oasis amid the Gulf’s more frowning codes.”
Unless, of course, Dubai can publicize Fenty and his wife and two sons frolicking freely on the country’s beaches. What better way to bridge the gulf between Dubai’s frowning mullahs, who want to preserve Islamic religious values, and the country’s tourist industry, which relies on foreign visitors, such as the mayor of the capital of the United States?
Dubai is fat with riches from its oil fields. Yet its building boom has gone a bit bust because of falling oil prices. Rest assured that Dubai’s ruling family, which published news of the restrictive new rules in its favorite newspaper, Al Emarat al Youm, rarely does something for nothing. The $25,000 for Fenty’s visit will pay off handsomely by deflecting attention from Dubai’s harsh social restrictions.
Chuck out a British couple one year; pay $25,000 to import the D.C. mayor the next.
Perhaps Fenty sold himself — and the city — for chump change.
