The Steel and Glass City

For the last time, I head to the airport to fly home. It is 2 am on Sunday 5 June. The city seems too quiet and eerie. The weekend is over and people have to work the next morning. I feel like a stranger in the city, like the first time I visited. I see everything differently. It all  looks too bright and clean, too cold. Slabs of concrete on top of one another. Towers of glass and steel next to each other.

I wonder why huge buildings are lit up at this hour when nobody could possibly be inside. Office buildings are all totally deserted but they shine from a distance. The lights in Metro stations, which have closed hours ago, are all on too.  

There is a big billboard with several flood lights on it. The neon signs of many shops are on, even though those shops are closed. I can only think of how irresponsible and careless that is, of how much energy and money it costs on a daily basis. In a world where energy has become so expensive and even rare sometimes, some entire governments and companies still allow such extravagance just because it looks good, and because it simply doesn't matter to them. It is not because they can afford it though, they've long passed that point and they pay a lot for energy now. However, that doesn't seem to change their behavior. I drift off and randomly think that when I have my own company, I won't allow for the lights to be on after 9 pm.

In a way, I feel good about being alone at that moment and about leaving just before dawn. If I'd left during the day, I'd have been distracted by traffic and people. I feel good about leaving after 5 long years with a lot of experience under my belt- from all the good and the bad that has happened from day one till the last day.

It is only appropriate that I feel this way on my last few hours here. The whole week somehow felt like a remixed repeat of my life in Dubai during the first month I moved there. It proved to me I was never wrong about what I thought of the place from the beginning. It also meant I have nothing to regret and nothing to miss, not a single reason to look back. There're a few people to miss, but I know they will always be part of my life without me living in Dubai. On the other hand, it is much better to be away from most of the people I've met there.

Those 5 years showed me a side of human beings that I've never seen before and never thought existed. For a moment, I feel quite grateful for getting out of that place with a few scratches and no permanent damage- at least I hope so.