Dubai not on rudest list

Dubai's ranking among world cities took a hammering this week in a survey by Reader's Digest. While Mumbai, London, and Paris all scored predictably well, Dubai didnt even figure in the 35-city study of rudness.

Yet another example of the western media's bias? Surely Dubaians can slam doors in each other's faces as well as the citizens of more established capitals. Certainly, Tamsim a British tour guide, think sthat many Dubai residents could mix with the world's most objectionable people. " I think that we have to have a ' be nice to people' day. I have seen some extraordinary examples of rudness," she says. On the beach road I recently went over to speak to a women who abused a worker after she asked him to move a car that had nothing to do with," she says.

Yet despite isolated acts of aggression, Dubai is hardly going to compete with Paris, Moscow or Mumbai-whose residents topped the survey by failing to pick up fallen papers or hold open doors. Often, perhaps, in Dubai we lack the linguistic tools to really wind each other up effectively. Even a gesture can be just as perilous-however reasonable the sentiments behind it. " I was driving when another car with three men in it blocked my way," says Irina, a Russian journalist. " Everytime i tried to get around them , they moved in front of me slowed down," she says. But when she reported the driver to the police, she was told that if she made a complaint she might also face prosecution for giving him the finger.

All the same, it is odd that Dubai manages so often to ignore provocation, grit its teeth and get on with life. Paradoxically, Dubai's politeness is all about our distance. We are all too invloved in our own lives to aim to offend. " There is no point getting angry," says Tamsim. If someone does something, I just use language in the privacy of my own car," she says. Still if that fails to satisfy, the alternative is to find a legal expression for your aggrevation.

7DAYS Friday 23rd June 2006

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