Writing Dubai: Indian labour migrants and taxi topographies

Abstract

Since the discovery of oil, the Gulf states have become the most sought after destinations, especially for job seekers from South Asia which, in turn, has resulted in a rapidly growing population in the Gulf states mainly due to the large expatriate work force [Kapiszewski, A. 2006. “Arab versus Asian Migrant Workers in the GCC Countries.” Accessed November 5, 2012. http://www.un.org/esa/population/meetings/EGM_Ittmig_Arab/P02_Kapiszewski.pdf]. Proceeding from Amitav Ghosh's pioneering essay, ‘Petrofiction: The Oil Encounter and the Novel’, where Ghosh maintains that despite its dramatic nature any literary engagement with the oil encounter and its main protagonists has remained ‘imaginatively sterile’, this paper examines the literary representation of Indian labour migrants in Dubai. With a particular focus on Shamlal Puri's novel Dubai Dreams: The Rough Road to Riches (2010), which centres around the lives of a group of Indian taxi drivers in Dubai and Ali F. Mostafa's film City of Life, it explores the forms and conventions of literary and filmic responses to petro-migrants within an urban context. As such, the novel and the film provide alternative narratives to the ‘muteness of the Oil Encounter’, as identified by Ghosh.

Keywords:

• City of Life
• Amitav Ghosh
• labour migrants
• Ali F. Mostafa
• petrofiction
• Shamlal Puri
• taxi novel

Notes on contributor

Christiane Schlote teaches drama and postcolonial literatures and cultures at the University of Zurich. She has published extensively on postcolonial and transnational literatures, British Asian theatre, postcolonial cityscapes, Anglophone Arab writing, war and commemoration and Latina/o American and Asian American culture. She is the author of Bridging Cultures: Latino- und asiatisch-amerikanisches Theater in New York (1997) and co-editor of New Beginnings in Twentieth-Century Theatre and Drama (with Peter Zenzinger, 2003) and Constructing Media Reality: The New Documentarism (with Eckart Voigts-Virchow, 2008). She is currently editing the manuscript for a book on transnationalism in British Asian and South Asian American drama and fiction and co-editing a volume on literary and linguistic representations of war and refugeehood.

Notes

1. As David Commins explains, naming ‘the body of water between Iran and Arabia either the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf is rooted in convention’ (2012, ix). In this article, the use of ‘Gulf states’ refers to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which was established in 1981 as a ‘collective security body’ and which includes the following countries: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates (Commins 2012, 234). ‘Indians and Pakistanis make up nearly 45 percent of the UAE's population of about four million. Emiratis account for only 20 percent’ (Dagher 2006).

2. Ghosh himself has addressed the oil encounter in The Circle of Reason (1986) and In an Antique Land (1992). For an analysis of his petrofiction, see Chambers (2006a, 2006b).

3. Dubai is one of the seven emirates of the nation-state the United Arab Emirates (also including Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman, Ras al-Khaimah, Umm al-Quwain and Fujairah; Khondker 2011, 428).

4. The quintet includes Mudun al-Milh: Al-Tih (1984; Cities of Salt, 1987), Al-Ukhdud (1985; The Trench, 1991), Taqasim al-layl wa al-nahr (1989; Variations on Night and Day, 1993), Al-Munbatt (1989, The Uprooted) and Badiyat al Zulumat (1989, The Desert of Darkness).

5. Arab petrofiction includes Ghassan Kasafani's Men in the Sun (1963), Hanan Al-Shaykh's I Sweep the Sun of Rooftops (1998), Nawal El Sadaawi's Love in the Kingdom of Oil (2001), Mohammad Abdul-Wali's They Die Strangers (2001), Yousef Al-Mohaimeed's Wolves of the Crescent Moon (2007) and Mohamed El-Bisatie's Drumbeat (2010).

6. Terminologically, Julia Elena Rial uses the term ‘petro-narrativa’ (2003) and Raúl Cazal uses the term ‘novela del petróleo’ (2012). Other works from South America and the Caribbean include Miguel Otero Silva's Oficina N° 1 (1961), Carlos Fuentes's La cabeza de la hidra (1978), Héctor Aguilar Camín's Morir en el golfo (1985), Patrick Chamoiseau's Texaco (1998), Laura Restrepo's La Novia Oscura: Novela (1999). North American fiction and film about the oil industry also include Mary King's Quincie Bolliver (1941), Dallas (1978–1991, 2012), Dynasty (1981–1991), James Keache's The Stars Fell on Henrietta (1995), Cole Thompson's Chocolate Lizards (1999), Lisa Moore's February (2009), Gus Van Sant's Promised Land (2012), Omar Madha's Burn Up (2008) and Gary Nunally's The Gambit (2006).

7. Further works on Nigeria's oil include Ben Okri's ‘What the Tapster Saw’ (1988), Chris Cleave's Little Bee (2008), Sandi Cioffi's documentary Sweet Crude (2008) and David Attwood's Blood and Oil (2010).

8. Puri's work also includes The Dame of the Twilight (1978), Axis of Evil: Blood Money (2006), That's Life: Michael Matatu at Large (2006), Dubai On Wheels. Speeding Headlong on a Dangerous, Slippery Road (2010), Triangle of Terror (2011) and the forthcoming novel The Illegals.

9. Ironically, while much of Kerala's male population has migrated to the Gulf states, Bengali migrants ‘call Kerala their “Dubai”’ and fill a ‘massive labour gap’ in Kerala (Menon 2011).

10. In contrast, Marc Wolfensberger's documentary, Oil Rocks: City Above the Sea (2009), is a detailed portrayal of the daily life of oil workers on an oil platform in the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijani cinema, while mainly used as a ‘communist propaganda machine’ during the Soviet period, also foregrounded oil workers as ‘Soviet heroic labor’ (Badalov 1997). Representations of the oil encounter in Azerbaijan include the Lumière Brothers’ Oil Wells of Baku: Close View (1896), Boris Svetlov's In the Realm of Oil and Millions (1913), V. B. Pumpiyanski's Symphony of Oil (1933), Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli's Ali and Nino (1937) and the Bond film The World Is Not Enough (1999).

11. Kamal's film Gaddama (2011) about a Kerala-born maid in Saudi Arabia is also based on a real story by K. U. Iqbal, published in the Malayalam literary magazine Bhashaposhini.

12. One of the projects of the NGO Mideast Youth, ‘Migrant Rights’, is devoted to the plight of migrant and expatriate workers in the Middle East (see http://www.migrant-rights.org/about/).

13. Interestingly, Dubai Dreams also includes ‘a British man who had set up a new advertising agency in the Media Zone’ (Puri 2010, 153). Also, in City of Life, Natalia describes Berger with the same phrase that is used in Dubai Dreams to describe the Lebanese businessman Fadhi: ‘He could sell desert sand to the Arabs’ (Puri 2010, 96).

14. References include Uday witnessing a ‘grisly crash in which both occupants in the car’ are killed, Binu's involvement in an accident scam and Uday's warning that ‘there are maniacs on the road’ (Puri 2010, 54, 64, 102).

15. For a similar use of public space, see Tabish Khair's The Bus Stopped (2004), which depicts the stories of a variety of passengers travelling on a bus through India.

16. The Har-Anand Publications/Crownbird Publishers edition (2010) does include a number of typos.

17. See also Joshua Z Weinstein's documentary Drivers Wanted (2012).

18. Given that a gendered perspective of South Asian labour migration to the Gulf is mainly absent in the novel, the small image of a woman's head (with a headscarf) on the cover is surprising. For a discussion of two of the very few works addressing the life of women migrant workers – in this case, foreign-born maids in Lebanon – Hoda Barakat's Harith al-miyah (1998) and Danielle Arbid's Maarek Hob (2004), see Dyer (2010). For a study of female Indian migration to the Gulf see Percot (2006).

19. Lighthearted and satirical portrayals of the oil encounter and South Asian migration to the Gulf are rare and include Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan (2006), Paul Carter's Don't Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse (2007), Sathyan Anthikkad and Sreenivasan's satirical comedy Nadodikattu (1987) and Soman Priyadarshan Nair's romantic comedy Oru Marubhoomikkatha (2011).

20. According to Stephen Jones, local ‘papers are occasionally peppered with stories of Indian workers walking out in front of speeding cars in order for their families to claim a life insurance payment that often exceeds what they could offer through normal working means’ (2008).