Burj Khalifa

A new ritual has arisen since Julie and I have been abroad. When traveling or in Sharjah we turn on the TV and I play a quick game of "mental sequence," matching a number with its respective English-language channel. Channel One--Dubai One, Channel 4--MBC 2, Channel 13--Fox Movies, Channel 33--Al Jazeera English, or however they may turn out with the respective cable or satellite provider. Upon one such occasion in Sharm al-Sheikh, I flipped to BBC News to their weekly Middle East Business Report. The show introduced its theme: the Grand Opening of the Burj Dubai on 4 January 2010, the fourth anniversary of Sheikh Mohammed's rulership over Dubai. The symbolic date that had been set months before the event was abruptly (and disgracefully) exterminated when the surprise news came out: the name of the Burj Dubai was changed to Burj Khalifa. In a brief and rare speech, Sheikh Mohammed left any explanation of the name change to the whims of the collective imagination saying only that it was to honor Sheikh Khalifa's leadership of the UAE. He made no mention of why, whatsoever. Freshly printed signs leading to the Burj for the opening ceremonies listed it as the Burj Dubai, the gift shop's merchandise in Dubai Mall called it the Burj Dubai, and all media and other promotional material listed it as the Burj Dubai. Perhaps, he offered no explanation because nothing had to be said, by the second he uttered the words, everyone knew exactly why the name was changed. The utterly unexpected became immediately intuitive. The ten year old boys from my class even seemed to understand why the name was changed.

In response to Dubai's debt woes that came out in late November before, Abu Dhabi bailed out the neighbor emirate less than a month before the Burj Dubai's opening. Unlike past financial assistance, a list of conditionalities loomed in the background. The assumed financial incentives for Abu Dhabi took a turn that no one would have ever expected. The Burj Dubai is Dubai's namesake. It was created, as I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, as the testament to the city's achievement. As Paul Goldberger concludes in "Castles in the Air," his recent article in The New Yorker, built "not to house people, or to give tourists a view, or even, necessarily, to make a profit. You do it to make sure the world knows who you are." So, one can only imagine the backroom talks that ended in such embarasement. There could not be a more potent way to shame the city's leaders and slander Dubai's name and image. Goldberger writes: "It's as if Goldman Sachs were to rename its new headquarters the Warren Buffett Tower."

Upon hearing the news on Middle East Business Report, Julie and I just lay there. I open-mouthed and stunned into silence and Julie stammering over the question of how this happened (the only comment that did come out was not about the name change but the fireworks display that seemed like a reverse parody of the 30 Rock episode where the firework celebration of Rockafeller Center made the skyscraper look like it was on fire). And so our initial impression was set.

So, how has this perception changed after the Burj Khalifa has now been open for a little over a month? For me, the tower is moving more and more towards a place of normalcy. That is not to say that it lost its symbolic place altogether. Whenever I get in the car or change directions on a road, the Burj is the first thing I always look for. It has served as my gauge that the dust storms are coming, since, for the past few weeks, I have not been able to see the skyscraper from my flat in Sharjah. Goldberger explains, gently, in the following way: "The tower is a shimmering silver needle, its delicacy as startling as its height. You would think that anything this huge would dominate the sky, but the Burj Khalifa punctuates it instead." Following this author's lead, I would describe the opening ceremony, with its expected and all too commonplace extravagance, as a comma along the Burj's symbolic journey (albeit one that encapsulates a very salient footnote about the nation's political tensions and regional rivalries). It's a sentence that will continue out as its name and image revurberate throughout the world. The one hope that the city must have is that its initial name will persevere coloquially, and that the Burj Khalifa will only serve as the official name. If any other outcome does occur, only then must one start to question the value of this investment.