Backstory: Dubai's mirage – having it all

The Eiffel Tower, Swiss Alps, and Arabic script that can be seen from space – all in the borders of one little emirate.

from the February 14, 2007 edition

Page 2 of 2

Page 1 | 2

Where do they all stay? Well, there is the Burj Al Arab option. The world's first seven-star hotel, in the shape of a giant billowing sail and covered in Teflon, the Burj features in-room marble staircases, an underwater restaurant reachable by submarine, and white Rolls Royce taxi service to the airport. If you book on TripAdvisor.com, you might get a steal at $2,156 for a simple room. Or, you can go for the rack rate of $13,900 for a suite. Either way, you get to keep the Hermès goodie bag. Andre Agassi and Roger Federer played an exhibition match on the hotel's helipad rooftop a couple of years ago. Apparently it was very nice.

For those hankering to own a pied-à-terre , you could go the David Beckham route and purchase a second home on a fake island in the shape of a palm tree. The Palm Jumeirah was created by dredging out sand and repositioning it in the shape of a date palm tree – complete with a trunk and 17 fronds – on the seafloor. It is almost finished – and filling up with luxury hotels, residential villas and apartments, water theme parks, health spas, and cinemas – and, at $1.2 million a villa, almost sold out.

And what to do while in town? Shopping, maybe? Shopping just happens to be Dubai's forte, with everyone from veiled Saudis to tank- topped Germans joining the mad rush – to the strains ofMuzak – to get into the Victoria Secret sales or get a new MP3 player in one of the mega-malls. The recent Dubai Shopping Festival featured late-night shopping specials, carnival performances, Foreman-esque special appearances, a private island lottery (second prize: a private jet), and a whole range of Guinness World Record events.

In fact, breaking records is a national pursuit here. Among those contested in Dubai this year were the world's largest gathering of people reading at one time, longest line of footprints, and largest buffet; also the world's biggest wallet, pillow, inflatable balloon, and spoon. Results were not yet in, but Hisham Nammour, owner of the feng shui stall at the Emirates mall was hopeful. "We always win," he said over a mug of hot chocolate at the après-ski bar. "We excel at breaking records."

And indeed, last year, Dubai broke the record for the largest gathering of people sharing a name (2,500 Mohammads showed up) – leaving previous record-holder Spain (375 Marias) in the dust. Also Dubai put together the largest display of rice dumplings: 23,000 – trouncing dumpling doyen Singapore (13,192 in 1992). And, let's not forget to mention the "Burj Dubai (u/c)" which aims to be the tallest skyscraper in the world. They had a little celebration here last month when the building hit the 100-floor mark – 67 more are apparently on the way.

Meanwhile, in the realm of faux islands, there is a lot happening as well. First of all, there is "The World (u/c)" – a "blank canvas in the azure waters of the Arabian Gulf with endless possibilities," as the website puts it. In normal-speak, this translates into an archipelago of 300 man-made islands, each the size of several city blocks, which, when taken together, make up a map of the world. Fancy owning Italy? It's still up for grabs. Developers aren't purists when it comes to exact world proportions, and island owners, it is promised, can re-shape the planet by "merely moving the sand," to create unique features such as coves and marinas.

And there is also the new palm tree project, known as "Palm Jebel Ali (u/c)," which is going to be 1-1/2 times bigger than Palm Jumeirah and is to be surrounded by houses on stilts that will take the shape of Arabic letters and spell out a poem by Sheikh Mo:

Take wisdom from the wise
Not everyone who rides a horse is a great jockey
It takes a man of great vision to write on water
Great men rise to great challenges.

All of this will be written there, they say, and be visible from space.

Sabir Ali Rehmani owns a small retail business selling simple cloth from Indonesia for the long dishdashs traditionally worn by Arab men here. He has been watching Dubai sprout around him for the past 20 years from his one-room office in the old souk on the creek.

"This is a fantasy land," says Mr. Rehmani, sitting down to a quiet morning cup of sweet Arabic tea. "You forget what is real."

1 | Page 2