The feeling of coming full circle in a life experience always facilitates introspection for me. Having lived in a foreign place for an extended period of time, it's hard in a way to synthesize one's feelings about the period of time coming to an end. Perhaps a lack of perspective is to blame for this -- being so close to it, it's hard to absorb what "it" really is until you gain some distance.
In some ways I feel like a character on the ABC drama "Lost." Dubai has been a unreachable island of sorts for me, exisiting in its own time and space and operating according to a reality unlike nowehere else in the world I have visited. Much like Lost, Dubai leaves you conflicted as to how badly you want to be rescued and return home. Your initial certainty about wanting out slowly subsides as you adapt to the alternative reality that is Dubai.
So what makes Dubai "stick" for people besides the obvious ($$)? For me, it sticks because it is just so hard to figure out. After living here for almost a year, I could never really explain Dubai to someone who had never been here. Much like Lost, Dubai maintains its viewership by never revealing a linear storyline. For all of the discipline demonstrated by various government plans and pronouncements, living in Dubai brings you face to face with how totally incongruous life here actually is.
My sadness about leaving my friends here is accompanied by a less familiar sadness of leaving a place that will literally, never be the same place again. Unlike most cities in the world, Dubai won't be recognizable to me the next time I come here. Most of the endless construction and confusion surrounding it will likely have coalesced into an actual city by then. And while that Dubai will probably be a lot more manageable to live in, I suppose it might not be quite as fascinating...
