British expatriate workers in the Arabian Gulf like to tell new arrivals a bleak metaphor. “Living here,” I was once told after arriving in Qatar, “you carry around two buckets. Every day, one of them fills up with money and the other fills up with shit — the shit that you take from being bored and drunk and trapped in a compound. The minute that one of the buckets is full, you leave the country and never come back.”
The Gulf reminded me of Las Vegas. The first 48 hours are like taking every drug at once and stepping into the future. But every hour after that soon becomes unbearable. You hardly need to be an expert in Zen Buddhism to know that indoor skiing and the Burj Khalifa’s viewing deck and another trip to the world’s largest shopping mall are not ways to achieve spiritual fulfillment. A tax-free life in a luxury gated community sounds good at first. But there’s not much else. Expat life is a way for insanely wealthy man-children to earn Bezos money so they can spaff it on supercars, Champagne, and therapy to treat their crippling depression.
Dubai’s expat community: “a whole new breed of oddball millionaire.”
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