The mind accommodates itself, even to the least comfortable: after days, immersed in starched keffiyahs and shalwar kameezes and abayas to the max, I am getting used to the proliferative whites and blacks of the observant.  I find, though, that the head-to-toe blackness of the covered blobs/women still disgusts and offends me.

I sat aboard a riverboat dhow, eating on one of the dozens of colorful harbor boats on the Creek here in Dubai – each decked and draped in blazing strung lights unlike any other of their companion harbor craft – some in bright yellow, others in red, a few mixing magenta with blue and white trace lights outlining all windows and features of these storied boats.  The Dubai marina at night--beautifully multicolored and logo-drenched, neon light-aureoled.  The harbor and passing dhows became a metaphor, perhaps, for the silent, encroaching puissance of the emerging megastore, the ultimate marketing tool-cum-playground with money and glitz, the new paradigm.

Pundits here soberly predict that by 2020, the 10 million or so visitors and floating alien workers and non-residents would become 20 million annually. It's not hard to imagine.  Already, though the U.K.'s Heathrow and Atlanta in the U.S. are astronomically busy air hubs, the vast Dubai International Airport receives and flings out 50 million transiting people, according to the latest stats.  Also spoken of with pride: The city will host the 2020 Soccer Championships.  This, this is really a Big Deal, everywhere but where soccer is just an annoying blip of pestiferous sport, in the U.S.  Soccer has more advocates, probably, than coffee in the world at large.

News is afloat that the government seat will also, by 2020, be "the world's most beautiful city," rivaling Paris or name-your-poison.  Plans are afoot, as they are in all forward-thinking dictatorships or monarchies, to build, build, ascend, ascend.

A breathtaking chit in the 360 of diversion and heavy romance of evenings in this glitter city is the nightly phenom of dancing-light shows that run from 6 to 6:30 to 7:00, each show different from the one preceding, each choreographed to traditional Arabic music, hot rock or the strings of Bach and Brahms and the daddies of classical delight.  Lincoln Center has a touch of these dancing lights, of course, but Dubai's take place in front of the dazzling tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, which, during the performance and while waiting between, glimmers with electrifying bursts of sparklers every 10 stories or so, a lit fuse-box of magnetic, soaring civilizational aspiration.  

Another come-on: the Emirati shrewdness of no taxes.  A clean, safe, modest, well-regulated city-state or two to catch the eye of the keen and entrepreneurial – what's not to like?

In most of the countries of the Levant, where the uneasy shoulders of Shi'a rub distrustfully against those of the Sunni, mosques of each will be in some way molested, the better to show you're the Big Dog.

In Sharjah, the third of the United Arab Emirates' seven states, after Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the Blue Mosque, resplendent in two massive tile-festooned wings, houses a series of shops and kiosks.  But the big thought is not the ambiance or the deep blue beauty of the thousands of Persian tiles lining the under-eaves of the Blue Mosque, but the fact that museums and malls declaring themselves Sunni remain unvandalized.  Sunni places go commando, lacking the style smarts of the Shi'a.  But both coexist.  That alone is a reason to send a Hallmark.  When you think a fight might break out...it just subsides.

Along with amiable ties to the nations afield and farther from its shores, Dubai has an elusive (in the Middle East) knack for being relentlessly stable, despite its education ranking of a distracting 48^th in a recent measurement by the international educational ranking panel – Program of International Student Assessment, or PISE – of how nations rank in educational sufficiency.

The explanation I got was that education is a huge priority, but the flux of the substantial "floating population" makes steady gains difficult to impossible.  Teachers leave mid-stream, their contracts run out, or they need to return to their countries of origin.  Or other factors intrude on their completing the semester.  Substitute teachers then fill the gap until a replacement happens along.  Meantime, curricula lag, and children fail to stay up to grade-level.

Government schools, free, are solely the province of citizens.  And citizens can be citizens only by legacy – three generations or more have to have lived here.  Visitors, long-term professionals, even those here 30 years or more never become citizens.  And despite exceeding the cost of living elsewhere in the Middle East, non-citizen kids must go to costly private schools. Similarly, medical care is via a profusion of private clinics and hospitals – the UAE government neither subsidizes nor offers health care to the bleachers, period.  So it is a layered picture, education and health care in the UAE, not told merely by the PISE numbering.

The lack of subsidies, other than the giant gift of no taxes, forces workers and consultants and entrepreneurs to push and hustle for their pita.

Dubai is demolishing thousands of units to reacquaint its people with the way life was before Big Oil came to stay.  The only surviving historic district in Dubai, Bastakia (also Bastakiya), almost fell victim to the demolition squads in the 1980s but is now the only place where people can get a real feel of what the emirate was like before developers changed it all.  The area was settled in the early 19^th century by traders from Bastak in Persia, today's Iran.  The traders thrived and built mansions for their families that flanked the lanes and alleyways.

Today, these mansions and the connecting thoroughfares have been renovated to house attractions, galleries, souvenir shops, and cultural organizations.  Atop the roofs, barjeels, traditional towers, adorn the plain stucco.  During the afternoons, à la South America, shops, galleries, and classes are shuttered, creating a sleepier atmosphere than one expects.  The long siesta lasts an irritating 1 to 3 hours, from one to four, prime afternoon time.

When several pairs of my earrings were stolen from my room, the security people, twice, asked permission to go through my stuff – assuming for some reason that I stole my own earrings, or dropped them somehow in my luggage.  Then they asked if they could go through it a third time, this time without me present.  Earrings and necklace are still unrecovered, but they asked if they could search my room again.  It's a hotel room.  There's nothing going on except little soaps and lotion in squeeze bottles.

If I were important, this would all be a boost to the ego.  But since it merely involves saving their reputation, it is an annoyance.  Blaming the victim of a theft by rifling her possessions repeatedly in a vain hope that she still has them tucked away, forgotten, is not a winning strategy.  Even in the UAE.

Aside from that irksome misadventure, the UAE has been a not unpleasant personal education.