Anya Schiffrin

By Anya Schiffrin
The views expressed are her own.

The mood at dinner in Alexandria last week was so gloomy that the only time anyone cracked a smile was when I told them about Donald Trump being roasted at the White House Correspondents’ dinner in April. Everyone vowed to get on YouTube straight away to see the look of agony that crossed the visage of the legendary stubby- fingered vulgarian as he was mocked for his hideous taste in architecture.

Architecture is very much on their minds, because among the casualties of the new controlled chaos in Egypt are the historic Alexandrian villas that are being torn down at night by property owners who realize they can now get away with turning their storied houses into apartment blocks. With the police more or less out of commission, these law-breakers are no longer punished and architectural preservationists said that in the new Egypt they are viewed as “snobbish elitists” clinging to a nostalgic past.

The lamenting of the needless cultural destruction was just one sign that, in some quarters, the excitement of the Arab Spring has given away to gloom. Egyptians are riding an emotional roller coaster and this past week has been grim.  The news coverage of tens of thousands of bearded men entering Tahrir square last Friday, and on Monday clearing out the liberal protestors who had been camped there for weeks, shocked the intellectuals of Cairo and Alexandria. “Those pictures. That’s just not who we are,” one economist told me.  ”I see Iran before my eyes. It is frightening,” said one woman who is already trying to figure out where to emigrate.

The older generation that I spoke to hopes for a Turkey-type scenario with a moderate Islamic government that respects the rights of those who don’t want to wear veils and likes museums that have sculpture and figurative painting. The internet savvy youth are bubbling with energy and plans for cleaning up the slums, delivering health care and creating jobs. But they need to figure out how to turn their democratic, disparate social networks into organized political parties with strong leaders. It would help if they could be brought into government in a meaningful way and use their formidable technical skills to create a functioning e-government that would help drag the entrenched bureaucracy into the 21^st century.

Instead, everyone seems paralyzed by the enormity of the tasks before them and the government is now on its third finance minister in six months.  More important than the destruction of Alexandria’s patrimony is the urgent need to create jobs. There are millions of new entrants into the job market every year and tourism has fallen sharply on fear of political instability. Even before the revolution, unemployment was a massive problem but at least there was work in the sprawling government bureaucracy. New hires are unlikely and with the future so uncertain, investors are afraid to put their money into creating new companies

The obvious solution to Egypt’s macroeconomic problems would be for the government to stimulate the economy in the hope that the spending will grow the economy. But the government’s deficit is large and if it borrows, it will face high interest payments over the coming years. The  Gulf States have offered loans at ridiculously high interest rates. The IMF and World Bank have offered cheaper money but no one in Egypt wants to borrow from these foreign organizations out of fear that they will impose strict conditions

Fuel subsidies take up a third of the government budget, tying up funds that are badly needed for spending on  health and education but getting rid of the subsidies is not seen as an option anytime soon. These subsidies are a form of populist symbolism although in fact they mostly benefit wealthy car and factory owners. There are ways of eliminating subsidies and still helping the poor but Egypt has not yet come up with a plan.

In the meantime, controlled chaos reigns. Small cafes and stalls have set up all over the country, spilling from sidewalks into streets and worsening the perennial traffic jams. Everyone complains about the new talk shows on television that bring in random people who comment on all manner of topics despite not having any expertise.

There is still some excitement about the revolution and the feeling that government officials are more respectful now. Dignity was one of the main demands of the January protestors and there is a new sense of pride in the country. Egypt is now known not only for its ancient civilization and rich culture but for showing the world what peaceful protest can achieve.  As for those worrying about the future, one person told me that what keeps her going is the feeling “it  can’t get worse than it was.” Let’s hope that’s true.

PHOTO: Thousands of protesters gather in Tahrir Square in Cairo July 29, 2011. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

On Monday I went to Bloomingdales, the Gap and Starbucks but passed on a visit to Magnolia Bakery. Instead I  stopped by the St. Moritz bakery where you can order hot chocolate and sit by a video of a cozy winter  fire that overlooks the indoor ski slope and is just around the corner from the largest candy store in the world, which happens to face an aquarium that occupies an entire wall on one side of the world’s largest shopping malls. This by the way is opposite of what claims to be the world’s largest candystore whose mission statement is to make every day “happier’. Earlier, while exploring the watery depths of the bright Pink Atlantis Hotel (one of the white elephants of the property crash of 2007) I knew it was really the last kingdom because the fish swam around two cracked thrones and other kitschy stone artifacts.

Dubai is utterly overwhelming, the kind of  dystopia that blogger Evgeny Morozov sees in Huxley, a consumeristic paradise where mind-numbing shopping replaces real thought. Most of the I had no idea where I was except that my passport had been stamped Dubai  and many of the mall-going women were shrouded in black. After a few hours I sank into a state of ennuie. Given boatloads of oil money in the 1970s and the chance to build a whole new city, who on earth would decide to build a series of shopping malls?

It’s not like the developers didn’t have ambition, what with the architecture that demands superlatives -- the gondolas, medieval stone houses and soaring illuminated sky scrapers and islands built in absurd never-before-seen configurations. But why not build a museum with, say, the most incredible collection in the world or a university with the finest research laboratories? With so much money why build this Disneyland? And what about the workers who make up most of the population?

Who would go to expensive old Harvey Nichols or French boulangerie Eric Keyzer? The answer is pretty much anyone who can afford it goes not just to shop but to eat. For Arabs living in the region, the malls are closer than a flight to London or New York, they are air conditioned in the sultry summer, they have indoor sports and entertainment facilities, and are safe and family friendly. They are the old village green and the public square that Jurgen Habermas wrote about though not as he imagined it, surely.

The choices are limitless: an ice skating rink, a swimming pool, cinemas, as well as Penhaligon’s, Haagen Daz, California Pizza Kitchen and Nando’s. Even a tiny artsy neighborhood in an even tinier industrial quarter that showed angry Iranian sculptures of war-time prisoners, some held by Iraqis and some by Israelis on their knees with their hands behind their heads. My favorite piece was a video of a row of colorful balloons bobbing on the water that were tied together and shot one by one. This piece was done by a Turkish artist, who also filmed the balloons being executed. Metaphor for the human condition, anyone?

The locals say shopping malls are precisely why Dubai will never blow up as Egypt, Libya and Tunisia did and as Yemen threatens. Dubai is a safety valve for the whole region. Saudis come here to shop, expats come here to drink, people from places where it’s hard to find a job such as India and East Africans come here to work. Without Dubai, the whole region would be less stable. The city benefits as it always does from instability in the Middle East because like Switzerland it’s a safe haven. Everyone comes here to hide out; real estate prices and hotel occupancies go up at the sign of trouble in Bahrain.

The only people who are not happy are the domestic and construction workers whose appalling treatment has been repeatedly documented by Human Rights Watch. They aren’t given visas even after decades of life here so if they complain they are deported.

The question on everyone’s mind is will Saudi Arabia have the next uprising? I repeatedly heard the same words: Saudi has all the ingredients: high unemployment, high youth unemployment, a vast gap between rich and poor, a surprising amount of poverty and an unsurprising resentment of the royals and their million dollar allowances.

Efforts to finally educate Saudi women will only raise expectations further. It’s got potential for trouble but so far the Saudi government is throwing money around hoping to tamp down the unhappiness. If it succeeds it will be another example of bread and circuses (this time in the form of the Dubai fountain light show and a raisin baguette from Eric Keyzer) winning over the hearts and minds of the masses. Just as it does in much of China and Singapore.

Photos, top to bottom: Youths walk past a shop at Emirates mall in Dubai December 25, 2009. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah; Shops in Dubai Mall are reflected in the glass of an aquarium as a diver holding the UAE flag swims past on the country's National Day in Dubai December 2, 2009. REUTERS/Steve Crisp