Waday Payen Dubai Honday Nai

How does it feel if your country is filled with foreigners? Unlike the expats and the slave class, I can’t just approach the native Emiratis to ask questions when I see them wandering around – the men in cool white robes, the women in sweltering black. If you try, the women blank you, and the men look affronted, and tell you brusquely that Dubai is “fine”.

In the UAE, I can personally vouch for the fact that anyone who is not a local (Emarati) or a gora, is subject to some kind of prejudice, and Pakistanis too are scrutinized in a circumspect manner. So how do you survive? Well, you learn to hustle, all kinds of hustles. There’s legal hustles. You pay everything in stamps. Those are the currency. One of the growing concerns with present day Pakistan is how do family businesses, which have supported Pak economy for centuries, are dying. The rules of the game, which family empires have gotten used to and in fact have excelled in, have changed radically, and there are several challengers on the block which are far more nimble and resourceful.
One of the avenues family entrepreneurs with dying cottage businesses have resorted to is to send their newer crop to search for newer avenues, especially an to Middle-East, and expect them to infuse new vitality in the organization of family structure. While the business heir never comes back, regularly transacts remittances and some key constructs. There is a constant rift between the action of doing business and unwillingness back home as the “foreign investment” translates into some revenue. The difficulty is in reconciling with long lost lust of working day and night to make both the end meets. Why do? “Waday Payen Dubai Honday Nai”.

People here are turning into lazy, overweight babies!

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